2 Dec '13

Flanders Fields Memorial Garden opens in London

Summary

The Flanders Fields Memorial Garden in London, with soil from military cemeteries in Belgium, opened last weekend near Wellington Barracks

Kris Peeters requesting UNESCO World Heritage status for Western Front

Flemish minister-president Kris Peeters was in London at the weekend to attend the official inauguration of the Flanders Field Memorial Garden. The ceremony began on Friday with the arrival of the Belgian naval frigate Louise Marie carrying 70 sandbags filled with soil gathered from First World War military cemeteries in Belgium.
Kris Peeters addresses the crowds gathered for the opening of the Flanders Fields Memorial Garden in London this weekend
 

The sandbags were transported on a military gun carriage across Tower Bridge and through the streets of central London on Saturday to their final destination near Wellington Barracks. The soil was then deposited in a the memorial garden, designed by Bruges landscape architect Piet Blanckaert, and intended, according to the Flemish government, to serve as a “lasting memorial of hope, peace and international solidarity”.

During the ceremony, Peeters (pictured) said that the garden “symbolised the coming home of the sons of Great Britain who did not return from Flanders Fields”.

The Flemish government is now in talks with UNESCO to have the Western Front battlefields and war cemeteries recognised as a World Heritage Site. “The recognition of the entire Western Front as World Heritage would send a strong message that we will never forget what happened there almost 100 years ago,” Peeters said.

Peeters also took the opportunity to announce that the government was working with three Flemish musicians to create a new composition to mark the anniversary of the war. Scheduled for completion next summer, the work involves classical composer Dirk Brossé, jazz pianist Jef Neve and pop singer Frederik Sioen. “It will be a unique commission bringing together three different genres,” Peeters said.

Further, the government is engaged in talks to create memorial gardens similar to the one in London in France, New Zealand, Canada and Germany.

http://memorial2014.duo.be

The Flanders Fields Memorial Garden in London opened last weekend near Wellington Barracks.

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First World War

Claiming the lives of more than nine million people and destroying entire cities and villages in Europe, the Great War was one of the most dramatic armed conflicts in human history. It lasted from 1914 to 1918.
Flanders Field - For four years, a tiny corner of Flanders known as the Westhoek became one of the war’s major battlefields.
Untouched - Poperinge, near Ypres, was one of the few towns in Flanders that remained unoccupied for most of the war.
Cemetery - The Tyne Cot graveyard in Passchendaele is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world.
550 000

lives lost in West Flanders

368 000

annual visitors to the Westhoek

1 914

First Battle of Ypres

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