Menin Gate exit simply cut through the remains of the ramparts and crossed a moat. The gateway was by this time known as the Menenpoort, or Menin Gate in English, because the road leading through the gateway led to the small town of Menen. Ypres occupied a strategic position during the First World War because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium, as had been called for in the Schlieffen Plan. By October 1914, the much battered Belgian Army broke the dykes on the Yser River to the north of the City to keep the
Dunkirk Memorial Dunkirk Memorial The Dunkirk Memorial is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial to the missing that commemorates 4,505 missing dead of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), most of whom fell prior to and during the Battle of Dunkirk in 1939 and 1940, in the fall of France during the Second World War. Located in the town cemetery of Dunkirk, France, the design by Commission architect Philip Hepworth features memorial panels, a shrine in the form of a shelter, and an engraved glass pane by John Hutton. Those commemorated include soldiers lost on ships sunk during the evacuation, as well as