Our last day part 2 - Ypres and the Last Post

It is only a short drive to Ypres and we enter the town through the famous Menin Gate. It's a massive structure and marks one of the main routes out of town (it is literally the gate on the road to Menin). The Lille Gate is the other. We will return here later but for now, Phil parks the car near the main square and we're free to roam about for 90 minutes until we meet up again at the gate.

Entering Ypres through the Menin Gate

We're all quite awed by the buildings around the main square. Ypres is a beautiful place. It seems to have all the medieval landmarks of other places we have seen over the last week ... a grand trading hall, a cathedral, a belfry... 

Cloth Hall, Belfry and St Martin's Cathedral

Ypres Cloth Hall (Lakenhalle)

Buildings in Ypres

Yet what makes it all the more remarkable is that, like Arras, Ypres was in the red zone and was essentially a pile of rubble at the end of WWI. Only a handful of buildings were left untouched while the majority of medieval and renaissance buildings lay in ruins. The destruction was so complete that some believed it should never be rebuilt and instead remain a monument to the terrible cost of the war:

"I should like us to acquire the whole of the ruins of Ypres... A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world."

Winston Churchill (1919)

Fortunately the townspeople of Ypres pressed on with reconstruction. German reparation payments funded the rebuilding of Ypres on a pre-war footprint using plans of the old city as a guide. The painstaking reconstruction took decades. The Cloth Hall for example, was only completed in 1967.

Just as the people of Ypres did not forget their town, they also did not forget the sacrifice made by so many. The Menin Gate is now first and foremost, a memorial to the 55,000 missing in Belgium, including 6,000 Australians. Their names are inscribed on every available surface inside the Menin Gate and the fact that the Gate is so very large, is a tangible measure of just how many names ... how many lives were claimed by just one conflict. And they are remembered. Except for a time during the German occupation of WWII, the Last Post has been performed at the Menin Gate every night at 8pm since 1928.

The sign on the Menin Gate

We are still full from our very late lunch so we don't join the others for dinner. Instead we make the most of our free time and walk around. We head back towards the Menin Gate and walk along the old city walls before heading back to the square to enjoy a cup of tea. Hundreds if not thousands of visitors attend The Last Post every evening and so we make a point of going back to the Menin Gate well ahead of time to find a good viewing spot.

The Menin Gate

The massive interior of the Menin Gate with its lists of names

"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."

(Inscribed on the Menin Gate)

So many names

When we arrive at 7:15pm there are already people lining the main route but Ross persists and slowly but determinedly edges forward until we are standing at the front. As it gets closer to 8pm, the crowds build and build until there are hundreds of people. Fortunately there are two jovial and chatty Englishmen standing right behind us who provide some humorous and entertaining conversation to pass the time. For us, it is our final night on the Continent, for them their first. We're reminded once again how small the world really is. One of our new friends lives in the Cotswolds and only a few minutes drive from where we stayed last week. 

At 8pm, a hush descends and The Last Post begins.

The Last Post begins

Small groups of civilians lay flowers at the Memorial.

The Last Post Ceremony

Here's a short video of the proceedings: 

In twenty minutes it's over. The crowds disperse, the road is reopened and people filter back towards the town centre.

The Last Post Ceremony marks the end of our tour and also the end of our holiday. Far from being a sombre end to our holiday, it has been the perfect end. For all its simplicity, it is a profoundly affecting service. And the fact that it is performed each and every evening, and hundreds come here to engage in a simple act of remembrance makes it all the more meaningful. It has been such a privilege to visit the battlefields, and the graves, and bear witness to those who fought, and we are both immensely glad we came here.

Lest we forget.

******

We rejoin the rest of our group and squeeze uncomfortably back into the van for the hour's drive back to Arras. It is close to 10pm by the time we get back to our hotel. Perhaps fatigued from the long day and contemplative from what we have seen and experienced today, we are all very quiet on the journey back. As we zip along the motorway, I take one last backwards glance at Ypres and see the belfry spire silhouetted against a blood red sunset. It is a fitting way to remember this landscape that has witnessed so much bloodshed and yet has reinvented itself. Darkness may fall but the land patiently waits until it can renew itself afresh tomorrow with the rising sun.