Menin Gate-The saddest place on Earth?
Photo attribution : Johan Bakker / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
In WW1, Ypres found itself caught squarely between German ambitions and Allied determination to thwart them. In those days, that meant trench warfare.
Ypres was the focal point of a road network the Germans needed to control if they were to prevent Allied reinforcements flooding into France and Belgium through the Channel Ports. By October 1914, the desperate Belgian Army were forced to break the dykes on the Yser River to the north of Ypres to flood the countryside and deny the Germans access to the western tip of Belgium.
As the shaky Allied defence held, five major battles ensued.
The Allies halted the German Army's advance in the First Battle of Ypres to the east of the city. It was a bloody affair as the cemeteries there leave no doubt. Ypres was bombarded through much of rest of the WW1. A Second battle of Ypres ensued in April 1915 as the German forces again attempted to take the city. The third battle is known as Passchendaele was a complex, indecisive five-month stalemate. Fourth and fifth battles ensued during 1918.
The Ypres Salient cost the lives of some 300,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers. Of these, 90,000 have no known graves.
Or is this?
Photo attribution https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=517631
In the chilling interior of the Menin Gate, carved into cold marble are the names of 54,000 young men, soldiers, cut down in their prime! You can’t help but be moved by the sheer magnitude of it. Huge plaques, covered in tiny names, each one a life wasted. Each evening, the haunting, melancholy tones of The Last Post flood the scene in the daily ceremony to remember the fallen.
The evening service at Menin Gate
Photo attribution https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/MeninGateCeremony.jpg
The Australian soldiers knew Ypres as ‘Wipers’. Many of them passed through the original Menin Gate on their way to confront fate on the Western Front.
The Lions of Menin Gate
Two carved, war-damaged limestone lions that had guarded the original gate were donated to the Australian War Memorial by the Mayor of Ypres in 1936 as an expression of gratitude for the sacrifice made by more than 13,000 Australian soldiers. They were restored in 1987 and now stand guard at the entrance to the Australian War Memorial (another haunting place) in Canberra. Replicas of the original Menin gate lions now grace the entrance of the gate in Ypres, a gift by the Australian government in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Australians serving in Flanders during WW1. Menin Gate has to be a candidate for the saddest place on earth, but it’s inspiring to think these lives lost to the stupidity of war are recalled and celebrated daily all these years later.