The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing is one of four memorials to Commonwealth soldiers killed on the battlefield in the Ypres Salient and who have no known grave. The memorial names 54,389 officers and men from Australian, British, Canadian, Indian and South African Forces who fell in the Salient before 16 August 1917. (New Zealand and Newfoundland are memorialized elsewhere.)
The memorial was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and unveiled on 24 July 1927. The lion and sarcophagus on top of the memorial are by Scottish sculptor Sir William Reid Dick. The dedication over the archway reads: “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.” The names are engraved in Portland Stone panels that line the inner walls of the central hall, staircases and loggias. Over the staircases in the central hall:
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Here are recorded names of officers and men who fell in Ypres Salient, but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death
The main photo looks west into the city, where the Cloth Hall (Lakenhalle) can be seen through the archway. The lions holding a coat of arms stood on either side of the road leading through the rampart walls during WW1. In 1936, the City of Ypres presented them to the Australian War Memorial. They were returned on loan to stand by the archway for a brief time in 2017.
Every evening since 1928 (except during WW2), the Memorial has been the site of a Last Post ceremony.
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