Remembrance Day Parade 2011
The Belgium city of Ypres hosts a Remembrance Day parade each year which attracts thousands of people from all over Europe and the Commonwealth.
The centre piece of that parade is the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, or Menenpoort in Dutch, which records the names of 54.000 allied and commonwealth soldiers of the First World War who have no known grave.
In 1928, a year after the dedication of the Menin Gate, citizens of Ypres began the tradition of sounding the Last Post each evening ‘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.
We visited Ypre on weekeend of 11th November 2011 or 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 includes pictures from Ypres (taken on the weekend of 11/11/11) and at Tyne Cot Cemetery
The images taken on the weekend of 11/11/11 in and around Ypres have also formed the basis for an exhibition at Bishop’s Castle Town Hall to mark the centenary of the start of the First World War and to commemorate the end of the war in 1918.
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