The View National Express Winter 2017 - 63
MEMORY LANE ◆
We'll
meet
again
Paying tribute
to the fallen
Former lieutenant Claude Mole, 71, took a
trip to the Ypres Salient in Belgium three
years ago, after a different regimental
event triggered his thoughts of WW1
'Having been a member of the Honourable
Artillery Company for 49 years, I've always
been interested in its connections. In 2013,
my son Christopher, 36, (who's also part of
the HAC) travelled to Ecoust-Saint Mein
in northern France, to witness the burial
of two HAC WW1 soldiers whose remains
were found in 2009 by a farmer. They were
accorded full military honours nearly 100
years after they were killed in action, and
I thought how wonderful that was. It made
me think back to WW1 and prompted me to
travel to the battlefields in Ypres.
'However, en route to the site of the
Ypres Salient, in which 800,000 died in the
blood and mud between 1914 and 1918, it
wasn't the battle ground with its labyrinth
of trenches and the lines of memorial
headstones to the fallen that first drew my
attention, but the town of Ypres itself...'
UNSUNG
HEROES
The Menin
Gate was
designed by
Sir Reginald
Blomfield.
The site
of the
'memorial to
the missing'
was chosen
because
of the
thousands
of men who
passed
through
it on their
way to the
battlefields.
Panels in the
arch bear
the names
of more than
54,000
people who
died in battle
yet have no
known grave.
battle (of Ypres) and this place that was
synonymous with the horror of war.
'Ypres is a pretty medieval town and
today looks very much as it did during the
Flanders golden age 700 years ago, I believe.
In 1918, though, it was mercilessly flattened
by German bombardment so much so that
you could have stood at one end of the town,
looked across to the other, and seen nothing
standing higher than knee height! Winston
Churchill said in 1919: "A more sacred place
for the British does not exist in the World."
'He then went on to say: "I should like to
acquire the whole of the ruins of Ypres" - as
a testament to the folly of man's destructive
desire. However, the citizens of Ypres were
to have none of that and, incredibly, after
the War, it was completely restored.'
In memoriam
'I felt that sacredness Churchill mentioned
as I wandered past the pristine white
headstones that day, but it was the grand
Menin Gate that really stood out. The
memorial to the 54,389 soldiers and officers
whose graves are unknown, really hits home
the sheer devastation WW1 caused.
'At 8pm each evening (since 1928), the
Last Post is played under the arch, it gave
me goosebumps. Such a simple yet moving
tribute to the courage of those who fell in
the defence of their country.'
A resilient force
'Perhaps, today, the WW1 battle that is most
sharp in the collective British consciousness
is the Somme, but at the time it was this
63
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