Ypres marks end of First World War at Menin Gate

The biggest ceremony in Flanders to mark Armistice Day was in Ypres, which was the centre of much of the fighting on Belgian soil, the city being completely destroyed in the five majors battles that took place there. The day began with a traditional mass in Sint-Maarten cathedral, followed by a Poppy Parade from the church to Menin Gate.

The procession was made up of delegations from across the world as well as marching bands, with soldiers in vintage uniforms from Canada and New Zealand. Five buglers from the Ypres fire brigade sounded the Last Post at exactly 11.00, the 30,125th time the call has been sounded in Ypres since the Great War ended.

To end the ceremony, a flurry of poppies was released through the cupola in the roof of Sir Reginald Blomfield’s monument.

Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops passed through the old Menin Gate  on their way to the front line; 300,000 never returned, and 90,000 have no known grave. Despite its size, the monument cannot hold all of their names; the 54,395 names inscribed on the gate only go up to August 1917. The rest are inscribed on the monuments in nearby Tyne Cot cemetery.

Among those laying wreaths under the gate was a delegation of Sikhs; 414 of the names on the monument are soldiers from India.

The ceremony in Ypres was attended by, among others, Flemish minister-president Geert Bourgeois, speaker of the Flemish parliament Jan Peumans, West Flanders governor Carl Decaluwé and the ambassadors of Great Britain, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland and Australia.

The king, meanwhile, was in Brussels for the ceremony in remembrance of the Unknown Soldier, held at the Congress column, which commemorates the dead of both world wars, as well as those who died on conflicts since 1945. The king laid a wreath and, following a 21-gun salute, met and chatted with former soldiers and representatives of veterans’ organisations.

The ceremony was also attended by politicians, representatives of police and civil defence and officials from Nato.

In related news, the Institute for Veterans has compiled a database with the names of 42,000 Belgian military personnel who died during or soon after the First World War. The list of names includes casualties of fighting in 1914-18, as well as those who died in 1919 as a result of injuries sustained in the war. 

Some of the fallen are buried in cemeteries in Allied lands – France has 3,500, the Netherlands 400 and Great Britain 350 – but the majority are buried in Belgium. The website can be consulted on

Photo: Frederik Sadones/Demotix/Corbis