MENIN GATE

The Menin Gate was the place for a memorial as many men had passed through the gate on the way to the trenches.

There are seven men who won their countries highest honour commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, these are

Lance Corporal Frederick Fisher VC

Company Sergeant Major F W Hall VC

Second Lieutenant Dennis George Wyldbore Hewitt VC

Lieutenant Hugh McKenzie DCM VC

Captain John Franks Vallentin VC

Private Edward Warner VC

Second Lieutenant Sidney Clayton Woodroofe VC

Captain (later Brigadier General) Charles Fitzclarence VC

The last post ceremony performed every evening at 8pm local time.

Also visit The Last Post page.

 

On Passing the New Menin Gate

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
the unheroic dead who fed the guns ?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones ?
    Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
    Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
    Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
    The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
as these intolerably nameless names ?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

Siegfried Sassoon