One night in Ypres.

We swung our rucksacks over our backs and jumped off at the small station. Outside the roads more resembled the trenches that had occupied the surrounding lands 100 years before, rather than the modern hub the town now is.

I've been to Ypres a few times before, on the classic battlefields school trips. And it is somewhere that has shaken me every time I have visited. Menin Gate is one of the most poignant structures I have ever seen, and on the 100 year anniversary of the war, it is somewhere I had to return to. 

Arriving in Ypres, the sun was slowly starting to set. We had been waiting on Kortrijk for just over an hour or so for our connecting train from Bruge to Ypres. There we had feasted on Iced Tea and pillow mints that we had found in our Bruges apartment. We agreed that that night, after watching the last post under Menin Gate, we would go to a restaurant and find something more substantial. 

In Ypres we has hired a house for the night, which was only a two minute walk from Menin Gate. We lugged our ever growing bags across the city centre, narrowly averting buses and large groups of school children, and headed for the far corner of the town. 

Eventually we arrived at the house, settled in a long terrace row of narrow buildings. The owner, Bernard (much to my disappointment, his surname was not Black) who lives next door to the rented property, let us in and showed us around. The house was extremely narrow, and built over three floors. Downstairs consisted of a galley kitchen, and a small shower room, along with a courtyard area. The next floor was a sitting room come bedroom, and in the loft space was the master bedroom. As we headed back down the stairs, Bernard told us about the history of the property. 

After the bombings during the first world war, which had devastated the town, Churchill had declared that he did not want Ypres to be rebuilt, so that it may have served as a constant reminder of the men who had lost their lives. However, Ypres was a home. Long before the war, it had been a busy town, with residents, businesses, and beautiful buildings. Eventually, after 1918, the residents slowly began to return and won the right to rebuild their town. Each family was offered a small amount of bricks to rebuild there homes. That is why the town is made up of tall, narrow, terraced buildings, that are a mix of wood and brick, with houses being over two small floors and then a large attic space; it was the best way to utilise the horrifically small resources that the English had supplied. 

Bernard left us with a couple of history books, some maps of the town, a list of the best restaurants, and a great selection of local beers. We quickly got changed, and headed towards Menin Gate for the ceremony. 

 The path at the back of the house led directly along the embankment to Menin Gate. By the time we arrived, the inside had already filled and we took our place at one edge outside.

A ceremony has taken place, every night at 8pm, since the opening of the Menin Gate memorial in 1927. The locals of Ypres wanted to express their gratitude to the soldiers who had died in the name of Belgium's freedom. Only during WW2, during the German occupation of Belgium, has a ceremony not taken place.

Each night sees the buglers from the local fire brigade play the Last Post, along side a different regiment of the allied forces. Our night saw The Blues and Royals in attendance.

The ceremony itself is extremely thought provoking. Dwarfed by an arch inscribed with the names of 54,000 men who lost their lives in the war, listening to the cavalry commemoration, as silence falls across the town, you have a small sense of the destruction the war caused.

It is so hard for anyone who has not seen war to have any true understanding of what it is like. We can read about it, see photos, watch footage. But we, thankfully, have no true understanding of what such events really do to people. However, standing under that arch, seeing the names of the a small percentage of the fallen, you have a glimpse, and the start of an understanding, of how many men actually lost their lives for their country.

After the ceremony, we walked in silence to the town centre. We each needed that time just to gather our thoughts and let what we had just seen sink in.

The town itself was busy, and every restaurant was packed to the rafters. After wandering around for an hour or so, and as the cold wind reminded me that a dress and boots had not been my wisest move, we decided to get a burger from a small burger joint, and head back to the house to warm up and enjoy a beer.