Qualla: Menin Gate

Menin Gate: Introduction

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark Ahsmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. At 8 PM every evening, the traffic flowing beneath the Menin Gate stops. Buglers from the Last Post Association step forward and sound the military call that marks the end of a soldier's day. The ceremony has continued uninterrupted since July 2nd, 1928, suspended only during the German occupation of World War II, when it was performed instead at Brookwood Cemetery in England. On September 6th, 1944, the evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres, the ceremony resumed at the Menin Gate even as fighting continued in other parts of the town.

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Image: Mark Ahsmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

Menin Gate: The Gate to the Front

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Urbex84, CC BY-SA 4.0. In medieval times, this was the Hangoartpoort, a narrow gateway in the eastern wall of Ypres. By 1914, it had become the Menenpoort, named for the road leading through it to the town of Menen. During the First World War, Ypres occupied a strategic position at the center of a road...

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Image: Urbex84 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Menin Gate: A Memorial Inadequate to Its Purpose

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Snipersnoop, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sir Reginald Blomfield designed the triumphal arch that stands here today, unveiled on July 24th, 1927. The massive Hall of Memory inside contains stone panels inscribed with 54,395 names of Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Salient but whose bodies were never identified or f...

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Image: Snipersnoop | CC BY-SA 3.0

Menin Gate: Praise and Condemnation

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PMRMaeyaert, CC BY-SA 3.0. The memorial drew sharply divided reactions. Siegfried Sassoon, the war poet who had served in the Salient, condemned it in verse: the dead, he wrote, would "deride this sepulchre of crime." The Austrian writer Stefan Zweig saw it differently, praising the simplicity and lack of ...

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Image: PMRMaeyaert | CC BY-SA 3.0

Menin Gate: Those Inscribed in Stone

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Käthe Kollwitz, Public domain. Eight recipients of the Victoria Cross are commemorated on the panels, including Brigadier-General Charles FitzClarence, the highest-ranking name inscribed. But the memorial also holds ordinary men caught up in extraordinary circumstances: George Archer-Shee, whose childhood wron...

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Image: Käthe Kollwitz | Public domain

Menin Gate: The Search That Never Ends

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was D2180s at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 2.5. To this day, construction workers and farmers in the fields around Ypres occasionally uncover human remains. When identified, the soldier receives a proper burial in one of the many war cemeteries in the region, and the name is removed from the Menin Gate. The memorial thus serve...

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Image: The original uploader was D2180s at English Wikipedia. | CC BY-SA 2.5