JABQ04 said:

---

Awesome story. And yes please shoot me the name of the hotel. Still a few years away though but I love planning so I can keep busy until then.

---

30wedge said:

---

JABQ04 said:

---

Visiting Menin Gate and seeing the Last Post Ceremony is something that's on my list when I visit Europe in few years for my 20th wedding anniversary

---

I attended the Last Post Ceremony a couple of years ago. We were on a two week "doughboy"" tour for the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. The ceremony was briefly mentioned in our tour brochure but one lady on the tour asked if we were going to the Menin Gate for the ceremony. I asked her where it was, she told me a few blocks down the street, so we put our luggage in our room and walked toward it. We were tired, hungry, but I felt I should go. Stopped in a shop and got a couple of ready made sandwiches and small bottles of juice. We were a bit early, and they were blocking off the street to through traffic. There were hundreds of wreaths, each with a hundred or more red poppies. I decided rather than be the fat American, eating at the place of the ceremony, I would stow the sandwiches and juice in my shorts pockets.

Was reading all the names etched in the marble and things like "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 Ypers salient but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death." 50,000 plus names of men who were never found.

So as we waited, taking it all in, this rather short redhead turned to us, I guess she heard my wife and I talking and figured out our origin. She asked where we were from, and after we told her she said "you came all the way from Texas to see this ceremony?" I said it wasn't the only reason, but it was one of the reasons. She said we were standing the the right place to view the ceremony, but said she wanted to show us around. And she did! She was so proud of the Menin Gate, and her town of Ypers. She said this was the first time for her to see the ceremony on this particular day (I may have this wrong, but something to do with August 15th, it evidently is a big day militarily and Ypers, the Flanders Field Museum was crawling alive with Tommies). So she told us where to take pictures after dark, told us the two rows of wreaths of poppies (like 10 to 12 feet wide, and 40 or 50 feet long but with space in between) were one for our side and one for the Germans.

She was a delightful person, and she got to talking about the ceremony, it being every night at 8pm, other than during the Nazi occupation the WWII. Then she paused, and said that the Nazi's had done terrible things to her grandfather during that occupation, tears started to flow little, she kissed my wife on each cheek, kissed me on each cheek, and walked away. Though I loved getting to spend time with her, and her mini-tour, and finding out about so much of her town, I regretted being responsible in some way for her getting upset over bad memories, and her missing the ceremony.

So, for those of you who travel to France or Belgium itself, it is worth a trip to Ypers. We have Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and another day or two when we celebrate, honor, or remember, but to think they do so, every day, for nearly 100 years, other than in WWII, really hits you in the heart.

I have always been interested in history and you can read about it, study it, but to stand where it happened is unexplainable. Just do it!

---