Every evening, at 8pm on the dot, a group of buglers sound the last post under Menin Gate at Ypres in Belgium.
The daily ceremony, held in all weathers since 1928 apart from a pause during the second world war, honours the 89,880 British and Commonwealth soldiers – among the 300,000 who died in this part of western Flanders – who were lost with no known grave.
In normal times, police stop all traffic and a crowd gathers to witness the homage, which was instigated by grateful citizens of the Ypres Salient who set up the Last Post Associationafter the war in recognition of the soldiers’ sacrifice.
Last month, however, the ceremony was threatened when the association was ordered to stop as part of Belgium’s lockdown rules but after delicate negotiations also involving local authorities and the Commonwealth War Graves commission it now takes place with a lone bugler and no crowds.
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“This ceremony is to honour those who died around Ypres, not the public, but it’s important around the world that people see we are continuing this tradition even in times of difficulty,” said Benoit Mottrie, the association’s chairman.
“We have done this since 1928 and we will continue to do it.”
The buglers are all members of the local volunteer fire brigade, whose uniform they wear. The only break in the ceremony was from 20 May 1940 to 6 September 1944, when Ypres was under German occupation.
Known as Ieper to the Belgians, and Wipers to the British forces who fought there, Ypres held a strategic position in the first world war, sitting on the path of Germany’s planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France, giving access to the Channel ports. Five major battles were waged around the town. Allied troops would pass through the original gate on their way to the western front.
Such was the slaughter in the muddy fields, the soldier and war poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote of Ypres that it was “the world’s worst wound”.
The triumphal arch’s Hall of Memory contains the names of 54,393 British and Commonwealth soldiers who died here but whose bodies were never identified or found. When completed it was not large enough to hold all the names, so the names of another 34,984 soldiers missing after 15 August 1917 were engraved on the nearby Tyne Cot Memorial.
The last post was first played in a 1927 ceremony by buglers from the Somerset Light Infantry. A year later five locals, including the local chief of police, commander of the fire brigade and a store owner, Aime Gruwez – Mottrie’s grandfather – formed the Last Post Association.
“It is the intention of the Last Post Association to maintain this daily act of homage in perpetuity,” its website says.
Mottrie added: “Our mission is to respect the dead and make people reflect on what happened here, especially younger generations. If we do not learn and remember our history there’s a risk of falling into the same trap.”
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