Menin Gate
Menin Gate
The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium, dedicated to over 54,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres salient in World War I and whose graves are unknown. The memorial is located at the eastern exit of the town and marks the starting point for one of the main roads out of the town that led Allied soldiers to the front line.
Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and built and maintained by the Commonwelath War Graves Commission, the Menin Gate Memorial was unveiled on 24 July 1927.
The inscription inside the archway is similar to the one at Tyne Cot, with the addition of a prefatory Latin phrase: "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam – Here are recorded names of officers and men who fell in Ypres Salient, but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death". The Latin phrase means 'To the greater glory of God'. Both this inscription, and the main overhead inscription on both the east- and west-facing facades of the arch, were composed by Rudyard Kipling.
The Menin Gate is one of four memorials to the missing in Belgian Flanders which cover the area known as the Ypres Salient. Broadly speaking, the Salient stretched from Langemarck in the north to the northern edge in Ploegsteert Wood in the south, but it varied in area and shape throughout the war.
"Last Post" ceremony
Following the Menin Gate Memorial opening in 1927, the citizens of Ypres wanted to express their gratitude towards those who had given their lives for Belgium's freedom. As such, every evening at 20:00 buglers from the local fire brigade close the road which passes under the memorial and sound the "Last Post".
Except for the occupation by the Germansduring World War II when the daily ceremony was conducted at Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, this ceremony has been carried on uninterrupted since 2 July 1928. On the evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres in the Second World War, the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate despite the fact that heavy fighting was still taking place in other parts of the town.