The Playing of “Last Post”
Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, Ypres
Every evening at 8:00 p.m.
Pick up your instrument.
Place it to your lips.
When you play the first notes visualize
that from here to the heights of the circled hills
The Missing
can hear and that when the notes reach them
they stop what they are doing,
come to attention, and turn
toward the sound.
Make the next notes hang in the air.
Make them say “Gather here!”
Imagine that the men hear this, that they emerge,
eagerly, from their individual places
and begin to remember themselves.
When you blow the last notes they come,
with great urgency, all of them.
Visualize them assembled
in the fields before you and imagine
that they inhabit for a moment
this song.
.
“To the War Pilgrim, arriving at Ypres with mind steeped in the remembrance of endurance and suffering, that arrival must come with a curious shock.
We picture the Ypres of war—ruin—desolation—emptiness. We step from the train to a brightly new and very complete town. We make our way through streets to the central Place, and [find] here a square of hotels, shops, houses . . .
There is merit in this newness, in that it has followed the old lines, and as far as possible has reproduced the style of the old town, and we are lost in admiration of the industry of this people, already housed, and—after the four years’ nightmare, beginning life afresh. But it is all very disconcerting for the Pilgrim!”
—Lieut.-General Sir William Pulteney and Beatrix Brice, The Immortal Salient: An Historical Record and Complete Guide for Pilgrims to Ypres. (London: The Ypres League, John Murray, 1925. 20.)