2 min read
ByCharlotte Oliver, Charlotte Oliver
Every night, without fail, the bugles begin.
Come winter’s chill or summer’s balm, their notes play and echo around the Belgian town of Ypres. A town whose magnificent steeple and quaint, quiet streets of shops and cafes belie a war-torn history.
It was here, 100 years ago, that allied soldiers made their march towards the front line of battle. It was also here that artillery fire blazed high and wide from every side. By the end of the First World War, the town was almost completely laid to waste and erased from the modern map.
It is remarkable, then, that today it stands as a symbol of endurance and memory.
It is 8pm on Monday night and I am standing at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, the famous war memorial located at the eastern exit of Ypres.
The memorial’s arch curves across the city’s main road, and upon it, the inscription of 54,395 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the area during World War One. These are men whose bodies were never identified or buried, and so have been memorialised here instead by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
But the tributes do not stop there.
As if by clockwork, buglers from the local fire brigade take their position beneath the memorial - as they do every evening at this time - and sound the “Last Post”, a British cavalry call played at Commonwealth funerals. Wreaths are laid and the gathered crowds fall silent for two minutes. We all then chime in chorus: “We will remember them.”
Astoundingly, this ceremony has taken place every single day ever since the memorial was unveiled in 1927 - apart from during the Second World War, when the town was occupied by the Germans.
It is a tradition long upheld by the citizens of Ypres, who wished and still wish to express their gratitude to those who lost their lives defending Belgium’s freedom.
My visit - brought by the Institute of Education in the company of 45 schoolchildren from 15 different schools - marks the 30,101st time the ceremony has taken place. Two of our party, Vitale Stone from JFS and Eva Bracha from Hasmonean, have been selected to lay a wreath.
The mood is conflicting: sombre and cheerful in equal parts. We mourn the dead but celebrate their service, and marvel at their continued memorialisation.
The lesson is this: remembrance is not static. It is a dynamic, fluid motion that rings through trumpet calls and ceremonies that gather people together to face the past. It honours and immortalises and bridges that gap between the past and the now.
Even today, the remains of missing soldiers are found embedded in the fields surrounding Ypres. It has been more than 100 years since they went to battle. But towns like Ypres still stand because of them - and because of towns like Ypres, we will remember them.