First Menin Gate Ceremony in the Great War

The men who won, and the women who lost

Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, Sunday, 24 July 1927

The Menin Gate construction began in 1922. Almost two years behind schedule, the first ceremony at the Menin Gate held on 24 July 1927. Admission to these ceremonies by ticket, and 6,000 such tickets allocated. These tickets made available to close relatives of those men commemorated on the Gate and to soldiers who had fought in the Ypres area.

In mid-June, an announcement made that funds would be provided to 200 widows otherwise unable to attend the ceremony. The generous response to this announcement allowed for provisions for more women to travel to Belgium.

The Women

This emphasis on women not unusual. By the late 1920s, the bereaved, as Adrian Gregory has noted, had come to be primarily associated with women. In its Armistice Day edition in 1927, the Daily Herald summed up the dichotomy.“The men who won, and the women who lost.” Further, the memorials considered first as a consolation for the bereaved and only second as solace for those who had fought and survived.

The intended audience for the ceremonies surrounding the opening of the Menin Gate that of widows and parents, not veterans. Before the presentation of the ceremony, a rather long examination of the construction of the Menin Gate Memorial.

Menin Gate Construction

Katrien and Steven run B&B La Porte Cochère (Patersstraat 22, 8900 Ieper. They have fascinating photos of the construction of the Menin Gate. This because Steven’s grandfather, Leo-Gustaaf De Plancke, closely involved in the building’s construction.

Steven’s maternal grandfather, Leo-Gustaaf De Plancke, worked together with his six brothers on the Menin Gate; they were all stonemasons. Leo-Gustaaf’s father and grandfather also stonemasons.

Construction of the Menin Gate began in 1922 and finished in 1927. The Cloth Hall and St. Martin’s Cathedral above, also restored to their original grandeur during this time.

Work now in full progress.

These Menin Gate Lion’s not to be confused with the pair donated by the Burgomaster of Ypres to Australia in 1936.

The original Menin (Mennepoort) Gate Lion’s of the 1820s had been placed on either side of the steps leading to the entrance to the Cloth Hall in the centre of Ypres. In the mid-19th Century relocated at the Menenpoort, one of two entrances to the old mediaeval city.

Before and After

The original Lion’s at the entrance to the Menin Gate prior to the Great War.

This photo taken from the top of the Menin Gate during its construction. Looking away from the Cloth Hall.

Concrete and Scaffolding

All the scaffolding used on the Menin Gate was wood.

Fairly new in this era was the use of iron cables to reinforce the concrete.

Proposal

In November 1921 Sir Reginald Blomfield presented a revised vision of a Hall of Memory between two archways. The whole of the space would be 66 feet by 115 feet long.

The approximate cost would be £150,000 (that would be nearly £10 million today). On 23 November 1921 Blomfield received instructions from the Chairman of Advisory Committee on National Memorials to proceed.

Blomfield’s architectural style displays a mix of classical and modern influences. Typical is the use of small red Belgian brick in a contracting combination with natural stone (Euville Marbier stone) and Portland Stone panels. This is evident in this photo.

For the 198 Portland Stone Panels, the IWGC accepted the tender of Messrs Low Giddings Limited on 4 December 1925.

The man standing behind Sir Reginald Blomfield is Steven’s grandfather, Leo-Gustaaf De Plancke. In sinking a trial hole some old foundations found which may have belonged to the old gateway.

Workers pose in front of the huge stones. The devaluation of the Belgian Franc in 1926 nearly bankrupted contractors. This led to many Belgian workers trying to find employment in France.

Leo-Gustaaf De Plancke was a stonemason, and this is his stone carvery. At the back you can see the crane and some of the people working for De Plancke.

IWGC Photos of the Menin Gate Construction

Lille Gate

The Ramparts at the other gate – the Lille Gate.

The Lille Gate in March/April 1922.

This view below captured in March/April 1922. From atop the Ramparts to the left of the Menine Gate above, before construction had commenced.

From the same location, looking back toward Cloth Hall. Note the provisional buildings in the foreground.

Aerial Images

Early in 1923 General Mewburn (Canadian Battlefield Memorials Commission) agreed to have Canada participate in the Arch and commemorate thereon the Missing who fell in the area which will be memorialized by the Arch. This communicated officially to the Minister of Militia (now called the Minister of National Defence).

On completion of the memorial, it was discovered to be too small to contain all the names as originally planned. An arbitrary cutoff point of 15 August 1917 chosen and the names of 34,984 UK missing after this date inscribed on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing instead.

The First Menin Gate Ceremony

Sunday, July 24, 1927, a bright, sunny day in Ypres. The area around the Gate filled with visitors, as the town itself.

Official Party

The official party led by the Belgian King Albert and Lord Plumer, the British Field Marshal in charge of the Second Army and the defense of Ypres from 1915-17.

Making their way to the newly built Menin Gate Memorial to take their places on the eastern side of the Gate. Flagpoles on the rebuilt buildings around the famous square hung with black flags.

MIA Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Notably absent, Marshal Ferdinand Foch in Paris on his way to participate in a ceremony for the return and placement of the Armistice rail carriage at the newly constructed Clairière de l’Armistice in the Forest of Compiègne.

Local Inhabitants

Hundreds of local inhabitants, veterans of 1914-1918 and relatives of the fallen British and Commonwealth troops gathered in the Grand Place and along the route to the Menin Gate.

War Widows

Just before the ceremony began, Blomfield presented to the King. As were two war widows, Mrs. Emily Shurbsole of Clapham and Mrs. Merriman of Croydon. Just as the Unknown Warrior represented all men who died in the War, these two women stood for all the bereaved.

Mrs Caroline Merriman of Donald Road, Croydon had two sons commemorated on the Menin Gate. Private John Merriman G/8933 of C Coy, 2nd Battalion, The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey). Killed in action on 21 October 1914, aged 24. Private Arthur Preston Merriman 906648 of the 19th Battalion, The Manchester Regiment. Killed in action on 31 July 1917, aged 23. Arthur the husband of Frances Jane Cooley (formerly Merriman), of 36, Boston Rd., West Croydon.

Mrs Emily Shrubsole of Lavender Road, Clapham (close to Clapham Junction) had one son commemorated on the Menin Gate. Private Henry Arthur Victor Shrubsole 8902 of the 2nd Battalion, Shropshire Light Infantry. Killed in action on 7 May 1915, aged 28.

On the roadway which crosses the moat at the eastern entrance of the memorial there was seating facing the memorial for about 160 official guests and military representatives. On both sides of the seating area contingents from the Belgian and British Armies on parade, together with British and Belgian military bands.

The patient lion on the top – the lion of Britain but also the lion of Flanders.

A wooden platform for those giving the speeches positioned just in front of the eastern arch of the memorial.

The Veterans

Veterans of the Great War wearing civilian clothes and carrying wreaths gathered on the pavement under the memorial’s central arch.

Crowds standing on the ramparts either side of the memorial. And along the road opposite the memorial on the eastern side of the moat.

Several hundred veterans and relatives crowded into the street leading to the memorial from the Menin Road.

Individuals in every open window of the newly built houses overlooking the memorial.

Press photographers stood on walls or ladders to get a good vantage point.

Loudspeakers set up to enable everyone to hear the ceremony even in the Grande Place.

Millions also listening to the ceremony broadcast on the wireless in Britain.

Archbishop of Canterbury

The ceremony opened with a prayer written by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Praising the “host of brave men who gave their lives for our country’s safety and for the cause of right … ‘missing’, but not outside the Father’s knowledge and the Father’s love.”

The prayer concluded with a plea for the living. “To grant that as we raise their memorial, so we may walk worthy of their fellowship.”

Lord Plumer spoke at some length, giving an account of the Menin Gate. A memorial worthy of them which should give expression to the nation’s gratitude for their sacrifice and their sympathy with those who mourned them. A memorial has been erected which, in its simple grandeur, fulfills 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.”

Lord Plumer’s Speech

The most moving part of Lord Plumer’s speech his attempt to give some comfort to the parents and relatives at the ceremony of the missing soldiers of the Ypres battlefields. Facing the Ypres Salient his words were:

“… One of the most tragic features of the Great War was the number of casualties reported as ‘Missing, believed killed’. To their relatives there must have been added to their grief a tinge of bitterness and a feeling that everything possible had not been done to recover their loved ones’ bodies and give them reverent burial. That feeling no longer exists; it ceased to exist when the conditions under which the fighting was being carried out were realized.

But 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’.”

The Memorial dedicated by Rt Rev L H Gwynne.

The Last Post at the First Menin Gate Ceremony

At the end of the service buglers of the Somerset Light Infantry sounded the “Last Post”. Pipers of the Scots Guards, standing on the ramparts, played a lament.

Strongly under the impression of this ceremony, the then Superintendent of the Ypres Police, Mr Pierre Vandenbraambussche (who died 6.4.1936) conceived the idea of having the Last Post sounded each evening at the Menin Gate.

This nightly ceremony a sound manifestation of the gratitude of the population of Ypres to the thousands of British
soldiers who, in the immediate vicinity, laid downn their lives in the defence of the town and at the same time of the liberty of our country.

Thanks to the generosity of a few people of the town and the willing cooperation of the Fire-Brigade whose buglers promptly offered their services, it was finally possible to initiate this simple daily ceremony in the early summer of 1928. On this first occasion, some seventy persons were present so public interest increased by degrees, but declined towards the beginning of autumn. In October 1928 the sounding of the Last Post was discontinued, but resumed in the Spring of 1929.

Silver Bugles

The news that the Antwerp and Brussels Branches of the British Legion had decided to present 4 silver bugles to the Town of Ypres for the ” Last Post” aroused new interest amongst ever increasing numbers as far as this ceremony was concerned. The “Last Post Committee” accordingly founded. The necessary legal formalities carried out by E. de Cock, notary.

1930

The Last Post 1930. Second from right is Pierre Vandenbraambussche, founder of the Last Post, fourth from the right is Henri Sobry, Mayor of Ypres.

During the enemy occupation from 20.5.40 the sounding of the Last Post had of course to be discontinued but resumed on the very day Ypres was liberated – 6.9.1944.

On 18.3 .1950 the Old Contemptibles’ Association of Blackpool and Fleetwood presented the Last Post Committee with two additional silver bugles. On 11.11 .1959 a further gift of 2 silver trumpets made by Colonel J. Whitaker in his own name and on behalf of all former Cavalry and Artillerymen who served in both World Wars.

Siegfried Sassoon

Like every memorial, there are detractors. The poet Siegfreid Sassoon revealed his anger in On Passing the New Menin Gate. A passionate, and angry denunciation of the way in which war dead remembered.

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, –
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride
‘Their name liveth for evermore’ the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

• ‘Salient’: a network of fortifications, earthworks and trenches. The Ypres Salient was a famous focus for intense fighting for much of the war.
• ‘paid’: here used with heavy irony: there is, in fact, no way of repaying such unaccidental deaths.
• ‘their name liveth for evermore‘: ‘their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore‘ is a line from Ecclesiasticus (c200AD), a book in the collection of biblical writings known as the Apocrypha. It comes from a well-known passage beginning ‘Let us now praise famous men’, and also observes, ‘some there be which have no memorial; who are perished as though they had never been‘.
• ‘immolation’: sacrifice
• ‘slime’: the poet chooses a word associated with the hellish and disgusting to refer to the mud of the Flanders battlefields

First Menin Gate Ceremony Research

MEMORIALS AND CEREMONIES – UNVEILINGS -CWGC/9/2/2/8/24 (ADD 9/1/10)

Poetry for Peace

Discovering Belgium

Post 16 August 1917 Memorials

United Kingdom and New Zealand servicemen who died after 16 August 1917 in Belgium named on the memorial at Tyne Cot, a site which marks the furthest point reached by Commonwealth forces until nearly the end of the war.

New Zealand casualties that died prior to 16 August 1917 commemorated on memorials at Buttes New British Cemetery and Messines Ridge British Cemetery.

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