The Last Post

Arriving late at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, to hear ‘The Last Post’ played live, we had to stand on tiptoes to see anything at all. There is a short ceremony every night at 8pm and the silent crowd of all ages was huge although it was May and before the start of the main tourist season.

As people dispersed, we could see the troops lingering a little longer, maybe to enable photo opportunities or to execute their smart exit march unimpeded.

As we were gazing at the endless lists of names, a strange man asked me whether I was a Kiwi and when the answer was a tentative ‘yes’ he asked if I came from Martinborough?! It turned out he was Owen and Judy Thomas’s son, Nigel and he had recognised David because he looked so much like his father Harry. 
On holiday with some mates, Nigel has been teaching in London for the past ten years and although he had been to the ceremony before, he thought it was moving and memorable enough to revisit.

Also in the crowd were a number of turbaned Sikhs and we discovered that many other nationalities apart from New Zealanders, Australians and British had lost thousands of soldiers in WW1. Sixty one thousand Canadians died and over thirty thousand Sikhs for instance.  

The horror of what happened in an area small enough to cycle around in a day is hard to comprehend. Photos show the complete destruction and desolation of the area without even a tree left standing in the sea of mud.

Townspeople faithfully reconstructed the centre of Ypres making it an attractive, historic small city. In surrounding lush green fields, there are many small pretty ponds framed by trees that are actually old bomb craters. Seeing the live shells still placed on the sides of the roads to be collected for 2 controlled explosions every day is a hint of the deadly secrets that remain beneath Flanders Fields.

Immaculately kept memorials and graveyards were ablaze with flowers in the Spring, which helped make this a memorable and worthwhile visit.
 
Ineke Kershaw