Tynemouth WW1 Commemoration Project

Reflections on the New Menin Gate 

– ‘this sepulchre of crime’ [Siegfried Sassoon]

Last week, with three project volunteers, I went to the battlefields of NW Belgium – my first visit. We planned to tour dozens of CWGC cemeteries around the town of Ieper(Ypres) – a place synonymous with the suffering and loss of more than 200,000 British and Dominion troops.

A focal event of any visit to the area is the Last Post ceremony held each evening at 8pm under the massive monument which stands over the road leading from Ieper to Menen - the exit for many thousands of British soldiers who would never return from the wasteland of shellfire and unimaginable horrors of trench warfare.

What strikes you immediately is the town itself and the orderly normality of a place that was reduced to an unrecognisable desert of rubble and the detritus of war 100 years ago. The town was rebuilt rapidly, including the massive Cloth Hall and nearby cathedral. Because of this the minor industry of battlefield tours operating daily seems almost at odds with an unremarkable small town community that has to live under the shadow of a monument whose very construction was controversial.

85 years after its unveiling the Menin Gate, inscribed with the names of almost 55000 men with no known grave from fighting in the Ypres Salient, stands as an unavoidable reminder of the suffering of the Belgian people and the cost borne by the British forces as they steadfastly maintained a toe-hold on Belgian soil - a political gesture; when military logic suggested a withdrawal to the west would perhaps have saved tens of thousands of lives.

Outside the town today one has to try hard to imagine the scene which greeted the returning Belgians in November, 1918. Lush pastures today however harbour reminders of the savage and brutal conflict which drenched these fields in blood and inspired John McCrae to write his famous poem –‘In Flanders Fields’.

The crosses he observed were replaced by the immaculate rows of headstones in dozens of cemeteries; many the final resting place of a man described only as ‘A soldier of the Great War’ and bearing Kipling’s famous epitaph ‘Known unto God’. The serenity and peace to be found in these little-visited fragments of Belgium contain anything from a few dozens to thousands of graves. Private soldiers lying alongside generals: the known amongst the unknown – preserving the Commission’s principle of equality in death.

So, how to sum up a visit which posed many questions, on one hand a raucous group of British schoolchildren, led by teachers who seemed unable or unwilling to control them - is this place just becoming a tourist attraction? Through to the mind numbing image of the walls of the Menin Gate, carrying lists of names, regiment by regiment in alphabetic order by rank, so numerous that they read almost like the pages of a telephone book – did we learn anything from this tragedy?

For the project we have secured photographs of many men’s memorials for inclusion in their database record – for that reason alone the trip was worthwhile.

Anyone with information on this week’s casualties or anyone killed or died as a result of the war is asked to contact the project. The project workroom at Room B9 Linskill Community Centre, Trevor Terrace, North Shields is open from 1000 to 1600 each weekday for visitors and for anyone interested to learn more about the project or how to get involved.

Alan Fidler