A Son of the Rock

There is a stairway halfway along each internal wall of the Menin Gate leading to the upper level. Here are laid wreaths brought to the Gate by various organisations.

The evening we were there the representatives of several schools performed that duty during the nightly Last Post ceremony to which this flag bearer was the prelude:-

The Last Post is played every evening at 8pm by members of Ypres Fire Brigade, a ceremony only ever interrupted since its inception by the German Occupation in World War 2 when it was apparently conducted at Brookwood Military Cemetery, in Surrey, England. On the evening of liberation in 1944 the ceremony was resumed despite fighting still taking place elsewhere in the city. A photograph of the ceremony in 1964 in In Flanders Fields Museum had few onlookers in it. The Last Post now attracts large crowds no doubt due to the greater ease of travel to Ypres from Britain and the countries of the British Commonwealth:-

Click on the picture below to go to a short video I shot of part of the ceremony:-