One of the most striking sights at the Menin Gate ceremony today is the number of young people who attend and are visibly affected by what their great-grandfathers and great uncles went through almost a century ago. So a highlight of this programme will be a visit by the famous Christs Hospital School Band, marching from the centre of Ypres to the Gate where they will open that evening’s ceremony. We will also hear what these children feel about the experience, and we’ll have insightful contributions from Professor Jay Winter, a leading historian of remembrance, on the subtle significance of the Menin Gate.
The Gate was commissioned by the British government and completed in 1927 as a monument to the tens of thousands of Allied soldiers who have no known remains. During World War I it became highly symbolic as the route that the British and allied armies took out of the town and away to the trenches on the front line. Designed by Sir Richard Blomfield, it is both a classical victory arch and a mausoleum, covered inside and out with large panels into which are carved the names of 54,896 officers and men from the Commonwealth armies - all those who died in the ''Ypres Salient'' area between the outbreak of war and August 15, 1917. A further 34,984 names, of those who died after that date, are on panels in the Tyne Cot cemetery just below Passchendaele, a few miles away.
There are many haunting details on the carved panels. For example one lists members of “the Australian mining company”, those who dug deep under opposing lines to plant huge land-mines (as described so memorably in Sebastian Faulks' novel ''Birdsong''). Many of the names are from the diverse countries of the Empire -- a significant part of the British Army in 1914 was actually the Indian regiments.
In 1928 Ypres residents formed ''the Last Post Association'' and began a new ceremony that has proved remarkably enduring. At 8 o'clock every evening, buglers of the local Fire Brigade play the Last Post. They have never missed a night, except during the second World War under German occupation. For some years during the Nineties people in Ypres saw visitor numbers declining and assumed this would continue, as not only the remaining veterans died out but their children too. But in recent years numbers are rising again, dramatically, as a new young generation is learning about it and feeling the curious power of the Last Post at the Menin Gate.
