The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing
On the outskirts of Ypres, on what was one of main the roads that allied soldiers of the First World War would take to the front line, stands the Menin Gate.
Menenpoort in Dutch, the ‘Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing’, records the names of 54.000 allied and commonwealth soldiers of the First World War who have no known grave.
Between the October of 1914 and the October of 1918 five engagements, collectively know as the Battle of Ypres, were fought in the Salient (a feature that projects into an enemy’s territory and is surrounded on three sides) around the Belgium city of Ypres or Ieper.
During these five engagements, casualties may have surpassed one million
The Menin Gate was designed in 1921 by Sir Reginald Blomfield and built by the Imperial War Graves Commission
The Gate was unveiled on 24 July 1927 by Field Marshal Herbert Plumer. Inscribed inside the main archway are the words:
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
In 1928, citizens of Ypres began the tradition of sounding the Last Post each evening at the Menin Gate ‘to express the gratitude of the Belgian nation towards those who had died for its freedom and independence’.
The Last Post has been sounded at 8pm each day since 1928 and continues to this day. Ypres has also taken on a special significance as a place to visit on Remembrance Sunday. We visited Ypres on 11th November, 2011 – 11/11/11.
About The Unreturning Project
The Unreturning focuses on Remembrance – taking its name from a poem by Wilfred Owen, the First World War poet.
The poem, like much of Owen’s work, was published posthumously as Shropshire born Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 – just one week before the armistice.
Each one whom Life exiled I named and called
From The Unreturning by Wilfred Owen
The Unreturning project started with pictures taken in Ypres on the weekend of 12 to 13th November 2011 and some of these image formed the basis for an exhibition at Bishop’s Castle Town Hall to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War in 2014. Some of these images also featured in an exhibition to commemorate the centenary of the end of the war in 2018.
These images represent and uncurated collection of images. At the end of the project, I will curate a collection of images that, when considered together, best represent the project.
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All images © W N BISHOP