Post by Administrator on Jul 31, 2017 23:25:48 GMT
THE MENIN GATE - YPRES
There was an awful tragic feature of the First World War,
Captured here in `Wipers` at it’s city door,
Only names remain in a chiselled state,
Lasting long in testament upon the Menin Gate.
Once these words were soldiers, husbands, brothers, sons,
All to perish somehow if not by hungry guns,
The telegrams delivered - though the heart was stilled,
A little hope perhaps when `Missing - Believed Killed`.
The last ray then extinguished when welcome peace reborn,
There was no grave to visit - outlook so forlorn,
No resting place to shed a tear or token left above,
Just a void of sadness and abject grieving love.
The Salient kept it’s secrets - guards it’s very own,
Few individual crosses or inscription set in stone,
So then was built a monument to mark the episode,
Topped with British lion looking down the Menin road.
Mention by a poet - popular at the time,
He called the arch a sepulchre and put it down to crime,
For the carnage of our forces - the total number stuns,
Still it was not big enough though twenty thousand tons.
At unveiling of this monument the Generals made it clear,
“These soldiers are not missing - they are resting here”
In memory of our dead, vanquished in that fight,
We stand to heed the `last post` - sounded every night.
Capt. Joe Earl.
Blomfield`s memorial combines the architectural images of a classical victory arch and a mausoleum and it contains, inside and out, huge panels into which are carved the names of the 54,896 officers and men of the commonwealth forces who died in the Ypres Salient area and who have no known graves. This figure, however, does not represent all the missing from this area. It was found that the Menin Gate, immense though it is, was not large enough to hold the names of all the missing. The names recorded on the gate’s panels are those of men who died in the area between the outbreak of war in 1914 and 15th. August, 1917..
