Editing Ypres (section)

===Menin Gate===
[[File:Ieper Menenpoort R05.jpg|thumb|left|The [[Menin Gate]]]]

The [[Menin Gate|Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing]]<ref>The gate is called "Menin Gate" because it is situated on the road to the Flemish city of [[Menen]].</ref> commemorates those soldiers of the British Commonwealth – with the exception of Newfoundland and New Zealand – who fell in the [[Ypres Salient]] during the First World War before 16 August 1917 and who have no known grave. United Kingdom and New Zealand servicemen who died after that date are named on the memorial at [[Tyne Cot]], a site which marks the farthest point reached by Commonwealth forces in Belgium until nearly the end of the war. Other New Zealand casualties are commemorated on memorials at [[Buttes New British Cemetery]] and [[Messines Ridge (New Zealand) Memorial|Messines Ridge British Cemetery]].<ref>[http://www.cwgc.org/admin/files/cwgc_ypressalient.pdf] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110615055413/http://www.cwgc.org/admin/files/cwgc_ypressalient.pdf|date=15 June 2011}}</ref> The Menin Gate records only soldiers for whom there is no known grave. As graves are identified, the names of those buried in them are removed from the Gate.{{Citation needed|date=August 2011}}

The memorial, designed by Sir [[Reginald Blomfield]] with sculpture by Sir [[William Reid Dick]], was unveiled by [[Herbert Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer|Lord Plumer]] on 24 July 1927. It was built and is maintained by [[The Commonwealth War Graves Commission]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cwgc.org |title=CWGC – Homepage |website=Cwgc.org|access-date=5 October 2014}}</ref>

The memorial's location is especially poignant, as it lies on the eastward route from the town, which [[Entente Cordiale|Entente]] soldiers would have taken heading towards the fighting – many never to return. Every evening since 1929, at precisely eight o'clock, traffic around the imposing arches of the Menin Gate Memorial has been stopped while the "[[Last Post]]" is sounded beneath the gate by the buglers of the Last Post Association in honour of the memory of [[British Empire]] soldiers who fought and died there. During the Second World War the ceremony was prohibited by the occupying German forces, but was resumed on the very evening of liberation – 6 September 1944 – notwithstanding the heavy fighting still underway in other parts of the town. The Last Post ceremony was, instead, hosted daily at Brookwood Military Cemetery in England for the duration of that period.

The stone lions bearing the Ypres coat-of-arms, which once flanked the [[c:File:Menin_Gate_-_start_of_WWI.jpg|original gate]], were presented to Australia in 1936 by the people of Belgium, as acknowledgement of Australia's sacrifice during the war. They now reside in the [[Australian War Memorial]] in [[Canberra]]. In 2017, for the 100th anniversary memorial services of the [[Third Battle of Ypres]], or Passchendaele, in a joint effort by the Belgian, Flemish and Australian governments, the lions were temporarily returned to the Menin Gate. Exact replicas are now installed, in their original position, guarding the approach to Menin Gate on its eastern side.<ref>Australian Government</ref>

{{poemquote|Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?|[[Siegfried Sassoon]], "On Passing the Menin Gate"}}