Sir Bob Russell: My poignant visit to First World War memorial in Ypres, Belgium

I noticed the large number of names from the First World War in comparison with the Second World War.

So I welcomed the opportunity to visit the Menin Gate on a Ypres battlefield tour on Armistice Day organised by Kings Coaches of Stanway, joining around 30 other people from the Colchester area to see this part of Flanders where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed in The Great War which lasted from August 1914 to when the guns fell silent at 11am on November 11 1918.

I had visited The Menin Gate once before, in 2001 when I accompanied Colchester Sea Cadets Band who performed at a ceremony held at 8pm every night.

I was extremely proud of them as they marched, playing Hearts of Oak, through the centre of the historic Belgian city which had been destroyed by constant bombardment but was carefully re-built to what it looked like previously.

Last week’s visit lasted nearly 18 hours, leaving Stanway at 6.45am and getting back past midnight. Our journey was by road to the Channel Tunnel, then by train (sitting on our coach in an enclosed carriage) to Calais before back on the road through France to Flanders which we reached around midday local time.

We passed two small cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission before we stopped at Essex Farm Cemetery next to where there was a casualty nursing station near the Front Line to which badly injured soldiers were taken.

Part of the station is still there, concrete bunkers protected by an earth bank, which with the cemetery provides a permanent reminder of the horror of war. One grave was of a soldier aged 15.

I was told the name Essex Farm had nothing to do with honouring the Essex Regiment but rather this was simply the name of the farm where a casualty nursing station was established.

Canadian surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, author of the powerful and enduring WW1 poem In Flanders Fields, served here.

Today the fields of death are once again, as they were before 1914, cultivated farm land. It is difficult to grasp the enormity of what was happening 100 years ago, but realisation quickly comes when more war cemeteries are seen. We visited a German cemetery where 44,304 are buried.

Our third visit was to the Yorkshire Trench and Dugout which was discovered in 1992 at a new industrial estate.

In recognition of its historic importance, it has been left. On the surface, paving indicates the layout ten metres below ground of a network of rooms and passages of a headquarters, dug by Tunnelling Companies (Royal Engineers).

November 11 is a national holiday in Belgium. For Ypres, remembrance of the First World War battlefields is a major tourism industry. There is a significant British presence with Union Flags. British veterans were there in great numbers including eight from the Colchester branch of the Royal British Legion.

The In Flanders Fields museum gives an impressive account of the First World War – which, of course, only became the First when the Second World War started in 1939.

Until then it was generally known as the Great War, although interestingly the memorial to staff in Colchester Post Office calls it The Great European War.

I got myself in a good position at The Menin Gate for the Armistice Day commemoration. It was packed.

The Last Post was played as it is every evening by buglers from Ypres Fire Brigade, wreaths were laid then the oration and Reveille with the national anthems of Britain and Belgium concluding the 30-minute ceremony.

The Menin Gate was built by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and displays the names of 54,000 from Britain, Empire and Commonwealth who have no known grave.

They include 200 members of the Essex Regiment, headed by Captain C L Awbery who was awarded the Military Cross and 61 from the Essex Yeomanry.