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
Urana Soldiers' Memorial Hall early photographs, honour boards, a large wooden table and crockery with insignia. The site also retains historic film projecting equipment from when the 1920s hall functioned as the town cinema. The building is substantially intact, both internally and externally. There is a memorial avenue of trees nearby in Stephen Street, mature date palms ("Phoenix canariensis") which were planted in the 1920s using seeds which soldiers brought back from the Middle East. As at 9 September 2015, the Urana Soldiers Memorial Hall, dating from 1884 and 1924, is of state aesthetic and rarity significance for its monumental scale within a modest