World War I in Flanders

The Menin Gate is the most famous Commonwealth war memorial in Flanders. It was designed in classical style by Sir Reginald Blomfield and stands on the site of one of the old town gates.  Tens of thousands of soldiers passed through this gate on the way to the front, many of them never to return. Opened in 1927, the memorial bears the names of 54.896 soldiers who were reported missing in the Ypres Salient between the outbreak of war and 15 August 1917. Because the gate was too small to hold the names of all the missing, those who were lost after this date (a further 34,000) are commemorated on the panels of the Tyne Cot Memorial in Passendale.
The Last Post Ceremony takes place every day under the Menin Gate at 20 p.m.

Ypres and WWI
Ypres was one of the main martyr towns of the First World War. A few months after the German invasion of Belgium on 4 August 1914 the front came to a standstill near the small, mediaeval town. From October 1914 to October 1918 the battlefield was barely a few kilometres away from the centre. The trenches ran from north to south in an arc around Ypres. In this famous Ypres Salient no fewer than five bloody battles were fought.

On 22 April 1915 the Second Battle of Ypres started with the very first gas attack. The chlorine gas asphyxiated thousands of allied soldiers, mainly French troops, to which many North Africans belonged. It was the first time in history that a weapon of mass destruction was used. Later during the war the Ypres Salient yet again proved to be an experimental battlefield: indeed in July 1915 flame throwers were used for the first time. In July 1917 it was the turn of the terrifying mustard gas, also called yperite.

The third Battle of Ypres raged from 31 July to 10 November 1917, towards its final stages it was also called the “Battle of Passchendaele”. It was a hitherto unknown slaughter. Discussions are still being conducted about the purpose of this offensive. In the trenches and in the no man’s land around the town about half a million people died between 1914 and 1918. The victims not only included Germans, French, British and Belgian nationals but also Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, Senegalese, Canadians, Australians, New-Zealanders, South-Africans, Chinese, Indians, Jamaicans and many other nationalities.

During the four year war the city at the heart of the Ypres Salient was literally flattened. The last remaining inhabitants had already been forced to evacuate in early May 1915. After that date nobody lived in the ghost city of Ypres. At the beginning of 1919 the first inhabitants returned to their destroyed city and slowly started rebuilding it. During the first years the returned and new citizens of Ypres lived in wooden emergency housing. Reconstruction really took off in 1921. Also during the nineteen twenties more than one hundred and fifty military cemeteries were built in and around the city, the most important one being the Menin Gate memorial. These monuments and cemeteries and the possibly faithfully rebuilt houses are constant reminders of the pointlessness of war and of this most tragic period in the history of Ypres.

In Flanders fields (lieutenant-kolonel John McCrae, 1872-1918)

    In Flanders fields the poppies blow
    Between the crosses, row on row
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

    We are the dead. Short days ago
    We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
    Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
    In Flanders fields.

    Take up our quarrel with the foe:
    To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
    In Flanders fields.

Koninklijke Harmonie St.-Cecilia - Elverdinge
Czestochowa Pipes and Drums Band - Poland
6th/8th Dundee Boys Brigade Band - Schotland
Ypres Surrey Pipes and Drums Band - leper
Leith Community Concert Band- Scotland