BELGIUM ~Ypres - The Menin Gate ~

Today's postcards showing a sad part of my own countries history (WWI)...I also visited both sites and found them very impressing and overwhelming... seeing all those names engraved on this memorial is a very moving experience...even until today soldiers are found in Belgian fields... Bedankt Sabrina en Koen!

During the entire war period, from 1914 up to 1918, Ypres was the scene of some of the most important battles in the first World War, later referred to as the Great War.

The Menin Gate is the most famous Commonwealth war memorial in Flanders. Tens of thousands of soldiers passed through this gate on the way to the front. Many of them never to return.

Officially inaugurated in 1927, the citizens of Ypres wanted to express their gratitude towards those who had given their lives for Belgium's freedom. This gate displays the name of 54.896 soldiers missing in the Ypres Salient between the outbreak of the war and 15 August 1917. Because the gate was too small to hold the names of all the missing, those who were lost after this date (a further 34,000) are commemorated on the panels of the Tyne Cot Memorial in Passendale.

Every evening since 1928 the Last Post has been played under the Menin Gate: (http://www.lastpost.be/en/ceremonies/participation )

Stamp:

"This is Belgium - Belgium "cartoonland"
- Jerry Spring
(Issued 14-09-2012)