The Last Post

Tonight the field school was able to view the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate.  The Last Post has been sounded at the Menin Gate every night at 8 PM ever since the gate was created in the 1920s.  Thousands of people come every year to visit this moving memorial and lay wreaths at the ceremony.  The ceremony was stopped during the German occupation of Ypres in World War II but was started again the very day the German occupation ended.  It was definitely an amazing experience for me.  The ceremony was moving and actually quite simple with standard bearers lining the hall and groups of people quietly and slowly taking turns walking their wreaths up the steps.

One group that stuck out for me was a group of school children who were attending.  Four of the children were dressed in their best uniforms and they were clearly quite nervous.  They hurried up the steps and laid their wreath before coming back down, doing all they could not to break in to a run.  What struck me was how polite and quiet the children were.  In many cases children don't understand the solemnity of occasions such as these but this group clearly did, whether due to information from their families or their school education I am not sure.  In either case they did their school and themselves proud.  Stephen, our Professor, and his son Taylor laid our wreath and did not seem quite as nervous as the kids!  A few other groups laid wreaths and the ceremony wrapped up lasting only about half an hour or forty five minutes.  Though this ceremony happens every night there is always and audience.  I am not sure about the winter months, but every night we have been here there has been a large crowd for the ceremony.  It is amazing to see so many people dedicated to remembering the fallen and lost of the War.  I have always been struck by the words of Lord Plumer's speech at the unveiling of the Menin Gate.  He said...


"when peace came and the last ray of hope had been extinguished the void seemed deeper and the outlook more forlorn for those who had no grave to visit, no place where they could lay tokens of loving remembrance. ... It was resolved that here at Ypres, where so many of the 'Missing' are known to have fallen, there should be erected a memorial worthy of them which should give expression to the nation's gratitude for their sacrifice and its sympathy with those who mourned them. A memorial has been erected which, in its simple grandeur, fulfils this object, and now it can be said of each one in whose honour we are assembled here today: 'He is not missing; he is here'" (http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/memorial-menin-gate-inauguration.htm).

It is the last line that really hits me.  The Menin Gate is a place to find and remember those that were lost.  Plumer's words seemed to ring especially true today as I gave my presentation for my soldier from the Canadian Letters and Images Project, Frederick Ernest Carter.  His name is found with the others of the 7th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry, Panel 18-28-30.  I very much appreciated having a physical place to go to to remember him after I had read his letters and attestation papers.  I will always remember Carter, this experience and the words, "He is not missing; he is here."

Laura Lutes

Originally posted May 11, 2011