What is Menin Gate war memorial ?

Answer 1

The Menin Gate Memorial at the eastern exit of the town of Ypres (known as "Ieper" in Dutch) in Flanders, Belgium, marks the starting point for one of the main roads out of the town that led Allied soldiers to the front line during World War I. Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and built by the British government, the Menin Gate Memorial opened on July 24, 1927 as a monument dedicated to the missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the fierce battles around the Ypres Salient area who have no known grave.

"Menin" is the French and hence English name for Menen, a small Flemish town to the east of Ypres.

The "Gate" was merely the gap in the city's star-shaped fortifications designed by Louis XIV's engineer Vauban, which were pointless in the age of shelling: Ypres was reduced to rubble.

Reginald Blomfield's triumphal arch, designed in 1921, is the entry to the barrel-vaulted passage for traffic through the mausoleum that honors the Missing, who have no known graves. The patient lion on the top is the lion of Britain but also the lion of Flanders. Its large "Hall of Memory" contains the names of 54,896 soldiers who died before August 15, 1917, incised into vast panels. Menin Gate Memorial does not list the names of the missing of New Zealand and Newfoundland soldiers who are honoured on separate memorials.

The names of another 34,984 of those who died without graves in the area between August 16, 1917 and the end of the war, are recorded on plaques at the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing located just outside the village of Passchendaele which had been liberated by Canadian troops at great human cost. The attached cemetery is the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the world with nearly 12,000 graves.

Answer 2

From October 1914 British and Commonwealth troops began to march through the Meenenpoorte gateway from the city of Ypres onto The Menin Road and into the battlefields of the Ypres Salient. For the next four years of the Great War soldiers from practically every British and Commonwealth regiment passed through this gateway.

The site of the Meenenpoorte, known to the British Army as The Menin Gate, was considered to be a fitting location to place a memorial to the missing British and Commonwealth soldiers.

Answer 3

a monument dedicated to the missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the fierce battles around the Ypres Salient area who have no known grave.

Answer 4

Menin Gate War Memorial