29 October 2007 by Guy Olding. To Flanders Fields, 1917, Bullecourt, Memorials.
A bronze slouch hat must be a unique commemorative device.
A Bullecourt school teacher, Claude Durand, began to translate Charles Bean’s account of the battles, partly for his own interest, partly for the benefit of his students. He was struck by the scale of the British and Australian casualties and realised that they had no local memorial. He and the mayor Jean Letaille started a campaign to build one. The funds were raised locally and the memorial was unveiled outside the village church on 24 May 1981. The ceremony was attended by the Australian ambassador John Rowland.
An Australian contribution was arranged by the AWM from a donation by the RSL and the Department of Foreign Affairs. As the cairn already displayed the Rising Sun badge, the slouch hat was agreed to be a distinctively Australian emblem. A bronze hat, weighing 7 kg, was made by Victorian sculptor Roy McPherson. The AWM director Noel Flanagan presented it to the village of Bullecourt on 17 September 1981.
The belief that the sculpture is an original digger’s hat covered in bronze is without foundation.
In 1982 a stone cross was erected outside Bullecourt in memory of the Australian soldiers who died there but with no known grave. A bronze statue of a digger was erected in the village’s memorial park in 1993.
See more images on the DVA website, Australians on the Western Front – Bullecourt
Read more on Bullecourt:
Blog articles on Bullecourt
Concise account of Bullecourt
Detailed account of Bullecourt
12 April 2007 by Craig Tibbitts. To Flanders Fields, 1917, Cemeteries, Commemoration, Memorials, Roll of Honour.
Tens of thousands of British and Empire troops remain ‘missing’ in France and Belgium. The bodies of many of them were located after the war and placed in war cemeteries where they lie in nameless graves. The remains of others have never been found. The Menin Gate at Ypres records the names of 55,000 of those killed in Belgium who have no known grave and a similar number are recorded elsewhere; for example an additional 35,000 of the names are on the Tyne Cot Memorial, which forms the northeastern boundary wall surrounding the Tyne Cot Cemetery.
Australia’s 6,000 missing in Belgium are recorded on the Menin Gate.
Australia’s war dead from all conflicts are recorded on the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour. This takes the form of bronze panels in the cloisters surrounding the Memorial’s Commemorative Area and the online Roll of Honour database, which is accessible via the Memorial’s website.
04 April 2007 by Craig Tibbitts. To Flanders Fields, 1917, Commemoration, Memorials, Research material.
Tens of thousands of British and Empire troops remain ‘missing’ in France and Belgium. Some lie in nameless graves while the remains of others have never been found. The Menin Gate at Ypres records the names of 55,000 of the missing in Belgium and a similar number are recorded elsewhere; there are 35,000 names on the Tyne Cot memorial.
The names of Australia’s 6,000 missing in Belgium are engraved on the walls of the Menin Gate.
Menin Gate Memorial
The Menin Gate was so named because here the road out of Ypres passed through the old wall defences going in the direction of Menin. During the war the two stone lions standing on each side of the Menin Gate were seen by tens of thousands of troops as they went towards the front line. The gate, beyond which these men’s fate lay, became highly symbolic. Afterwards it was decided that on this site a huge monument, designed by the architect Sir Reginald Blomfield, would commemorate those of the Empire who were killed in Belgium but have no known grave. The memorial was unveiled by Field Marshal Lord Plumer on 24 July 1927. Although it bears the names of 55,000 soldiers including 6,000 Australians, so great were the casualties that not all the names of “the missing” are here. Every evening the Last Post is sounded under the memorial’s great arch.
Acclaimed British author and poet Rudyard Kipling contributed the following words which were inscribed on both the eastern and western facades of the memorial.
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 above the staircase arches, the following:
IN MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM
HERE ARE RECORDED NAMES
OF OFFICERS AND MEN WHO FELL
IN YPRES SALIENT, BUT TO WHOM
THE FORTUNES OF WAR DENIED
THE KNOWN AND HONOURED BURIAL
GIVEN TO THEIR COMRADES IN DEATH
- Kipling
More information on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing www.greatwar.co.uk/westfront/ypsalient/meningate/meningate.htm
04 April 2007 by Craig Tibbitts. To Flanders Fields, 1917, Memorials.
In medieval times two stone lions bearing the coat-of-arms of Ypres stood at the entrance to the Cloth Hall, the town’s civic and commercial centre. Centuries passed and the town’s glory faded. The lions were moved to the Menin Gate and stood there during the war while Ypres was reduced to ruins by German artillery fire. The lions, broken and scarred, were later recovered from the war rubble and in 1936 the Burgomaster of Ypres presented them to the Australian Government as a token of friendship and an acknowledgement of Australia’s sacrifice. Today they once again stand as sentinels seen by everyone entering the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. read on
