The Memorials in the Ypres Salient.
The Yi'REs Times.
The Ypres League has for its chief purpose the enduring remembrance of that comrade
ship in service and sacrifice. In many ways it is helping to perpetuate the spiritual
brotherhood of the officers and men of all the Empire who were a wall unto us both by
day and by night." It is a league of remembrance and of loyalty to the living and the
dead, so that the shining fight of all that valour and sacrifice shall never be put out by the
forgetfulness of careless minds. For that reason the Ypres League, speaking in the name
of many thousands of ex-Service men of all ranks, gives a cordial welcome to visitors
from overseas who also served in the dark days when we had great need of them.
Communicated by the Imperial War Graves Commission.)
The purpose of the Memorial at the Menin Gate is stated in the two inscriptions which
will be engraved on the arches To the Armies of the British Empire who stood here
from 1914 to 1918 and to those of their dead who have no known grave" and Here
are recorded names of Officers and Men who fell in the Ypres Salient but to whom the
fortune of War denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death."
The significance of the second inscription will be illustrated, to some extent, by the
following details of the Imperial War Graves Commission's work in this connection.
Of the officers and men who fell in the Ypres Salient, a large proportionhow large
cannot yet be accurately estimatedare buried in the many cemeteries which fie between
Proven and Neuve-Eglise, and stretch from Poperinghe to Harlebeke. They were buried
where they fell, or were found later and brought into permanent cemeteriesand the remains
of British soldiers are still being found here and there, and in some cases identified. For
those whose bodies were never found, or were found but not identified, the Commission
are erecting four Memorials in Belgium one at the Menin Gate, one at Tyne Cot Cemetery,
Passchendaele, one at the Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood, and one at
Messines Ridge British Cemetery.
On the Menin Gate will be recorded the names of those from the United Kingdom,
India, and the Colonies and Dependencies, who fell in the first three years of the War, and
of those from Canadian and Australian Units who fell at any time in the Salient. At
Tyne Cot will be found the balance of the names from the United Kingdom and some of
those of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, while other New Zealand names will be
recorded at the Buttes and Messines Ridge. (The South African and Newfoundland
names will be found at Delville Wood and Beaumont-Hamel respectively.)
The work of preparing and checking the fists is one of great difficulty. It will be realised
that the movements of every Battalion, Battery and Field or Tunnelling Company have
to be traced from the beginning to the end of the War before the fist of names for one
Memorial can be compiled, and the particulars to be engraved on the Memorials and
recorded in the Memorial Registers must be submitted, so far as possible, to every man's
relatives before they are considered final. The work is well in hand, but it is still too early
to publish definite figures.
It may be of interest to add that, of the whole number of officers and men whose graves
are not known, the proportion who will be commemorated in the Salient varies in English
and Scottish regiments from one-seventh in the case of the Highland Light Infantry to
over one-half in the case of the Suffolk Regiment.
The Memorial at the Menin Gate has been designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, and
descriptions and an illustration have already appeared in the Press. The names will be
inscribed on the walls of a rectangular hall flanked by arches on the East and West, and
the arches will bear the inscriptions already quoted.
