The Menin Gate
Visited October 2025
Located in the town of Leper ( Ypres ) in Belgium.
Whilst studying military history, looking through books, watching old film reels or visiting museums, I don’t think there’s often a real connection to the human loss of life felt by the observer.
Maybe it’s the desensitisation from the special effects in action films, or perhaps the fascination with the design of the technology used “back then”.
Visiting cemeteries certainly helped me relate to the human cost of war, being confronted by names and particularly the age of the men, and indeed the youthfulness of those who died, however the Menin gate is on a whole different level when it comes to making one take a step back, to gaze upon it, walk under it, and then go up the steps, all the time looking at the walls and friezes carved into it.
Inaugurated in 1927, it is dedicated to around 54,000 men from Great Britain and the countries of the Commonwealth who died in World War One, but whose bodies were never recovered for burial.
With modern farming and more areas being made safe, remains of soldiers are still being found, and identified.
In such cases the families – if they can be located – are informed, and a funeral arranged to honour the men that have been found. A headstone is made to mark their final resting place and their name is then removed from the Menin Gate Memorial.
But 54,000 names, 54,000 men, and in some cases ( me being sixty years old ) they were just boys. 54,000 lives ended abruptly, their resting place still unknown.
My reaction…. I just began to shake my head slowly, a sorrowful frown on my features. Attempting to take in the enormity of the monument and what it represents gives you pause, quiet contemplation of the loss of life, and finally a slow search for anyone with your surname. They might well not be a direct relation, but sometimes a surname is enough connection perhaps to offer a more direct thanks than simply a general appreciation to a bank of carved names on a wall.
If you haven’t been, it’s worth the trip, and at some point, the reality will hit you.
Because on those walls are the names of soldiers from World War One who have never been found.
Their bodies lost to time, never returned to their relatives or buried with honours in the many cemeteries spread around the battlefields.
Thousands upon thousands of names, each one a person, each one a son, a brother, possibly even a father, fallen in battle, their bodies never recovered.
The saving grace, if it can be called that, is that their names are listed here. Their sacrifice remembered, their lives cut short and their relatives given a place to remember them.
One World War, so very many lives lost.
The feelings evoked are very difficult to put into words.