Bexhill group honours the fallen at Menin Gate

Their sacrifice advanced the front line by eight kilometres...

Like all horrifying World War One statistics, the sheer scale of the bloodshed beggars belief, as a party of Bexhillians found recently.

Douglas Mayne has been leading parties to the deeply moving Armistice Day ceremony beneath Ypres’ world-famous Menin Gate for 34 years.

This year, Town Mayor Cllr Jimmy Carroll was present to lay a wreath on behalf of the people of Bexhill.

Neatly-tended War Graves Commission cemeteries dot the hotly-disputed Flanders landscape – an area where almost every road-sign is a sad reminder of the epic battles the November 11 Armistice brought to an end 92 years ago – Ploegsteert, Zonnebeke, Passchendaele…

Douglas Mayne, chaplain to the War Graves Masonic Lodge, plans his visits with a skill born of long experience, packing the maximum into two days.

First stop was the Souvenir war cemetery at St Omer. Janet Millwood’s family had spent 95 years seeking the grave of her grandfather. Then Douglas Mayne did an internet search which solved the mystery.

Private George Isted of the Middlesex Regiment, was 29 when he died of wounds at St Omer on October 13, 1916. Janet’s mother was 13 months old at the time. The family have a single photograph of George with his baby daughter Winifred.

Douglas read Major John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields and a Gaelic poem before Janet and her son, Fred, placed a wreath on the grave.

It was the first of many poignant moments.

Essex Farm cemetery, where a concrete bunker which served as a field dressing station is preserved, holds the remains of 1,199 brave men. The youngest, Valentine Joe Strudwick, was just 15.

Tyne Cot is the largest War Grave Commission cemetery. Of 11,954 graves, many bear the inscription “Known unto God.” A long curved wall bears the names of more than 33,000 Commonwealth troops who have no known grave and for whom there was no space left on the Menin Gate.

It was through Ypres’ original Menin Gate that so many brave men marched to their deaths on the Ypres Salient. Reginald Bloomfield’s lofty 1921 memorial design bears the names of 54,896 missing soldiers.

With the exception of the Second World War occupation years, Ypres’ fire service has maintained a nightly Last Post ritual beneath the gate. The Bexhill party was able to witness this last Wednesday.

The Bexhillians were back in good time for the 11am Armistice Day ceremony. So many thousands of people throng Ypres to pay their respects that the crowd stretched back from the gate to the Market Square with its restored Cloth Hall. A huge screen in the square relayed a ceremony attended by ambassadors from the Commonwealth nations which fought there – Britain, Canada, New Zealand, India…

The wreath-laying alone took more than 20 minutes.

In an address in English the chairman of the Last Post Association said many people asked how long Ypres would maintain the nightly Last Post tribute.

“Forever!” was his answer.

That is the depth of gratitude felt by a nation twice invaded and twice liberated.

Standing at the foot of one of the gate’s towering columns of names of the missing, Town Mayor Jimmy Carroll found himself confronted by one in particular – Private J Carroll.

Also taking part in the trip were, in addition to the writer, friends Des Eakins and Phil Morris.

Thanking Douglas Mayne for his organisational skills and Jimmy Carroll, our driver, Janet Millwood summed up the feelings of all.

“We were so impressed by the way they keep the place.”

The journey home was spent largely in silence as we contemplated all that we had seen, including a preserved section of front-line trench filled due to the near-constant rain with the Flanders mud in which so many suffered and died.