Night After Night

The book Night After Night tells the story of New Zealanders in Bomber Command in World War II.

Night after night also applies to the people of Ypres in Belgium.

Night after night, almost uninterrupted every night since 1928, even during German occupation in World War II, they observe a Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial in gratitude for the Commonwealth soldiers who died in the surrounding countryside during World War I.

We were among about 1000 people from many different countries who stood in silence as the Last Post was played, and then as a bonus, a piper played the lament.

I thanked one of the men and told him it is an incredible tribute they are paying, night after night.

He replied, what they are doing is nothing compared to what the men they were remembering did.

They shall grow not old . . .

France and Belgium are home to immaculately kept cemeteries, tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), where those killed in the two World Wars now lie.

Some headstones bear the names of the dead, others mark the graves of those not able to be identified and have the inscription known unto God.

Visiting the cemeteries is both humbling and sobering – so many lives, most of them young, lost so far from home.

In Ypres, every night since 1928, the Last Post is played.

When I told one of the men who is part of the ceremony that theirs was an amazing tribute, he replied that nothing they do could be compared with what the people they are remembering did for them.

Last month the New Zealand Liberation Museum opened in Le Quesnoy, dedicated to the men who freed the town from German occupation in 1918.

It too brings home the high price paid by so many.

Looking at the peaceful countryside around the cemeteries we can only imagine just how terrible the conditions those who fought endured.

So many didn’t survive to grow old.

It is both frustrating, and tragic, that today 105 years after the war that was supposed to end all wars concluded, peace is allusive in so many other places and so many others shall grow not old.