| Citation:
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| Additional
Information: |
Son of the late Thomas and Elizabeth Curtis, of Moorgreen; husband
of Annie Catherine Curtis, of Moorgreen, Southampton. |
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| Cemetery: |
YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL, Ieper, West-Vlaanderen,
Belgium |
| Grave Reference/Panel Number: |
Panel 37 |
| Location: |
Ypres (now Ieper) is a town in the Province of West Flanders. The
Memorial is situated at the eastern side of the town on the road to Menin
(Menen) and Courtrai (Kortrijk). Each night at 8 pm the traffic is stopped
at the Menin Gate while members of the local Fire Brigade sound the Last
Post in the roadway under the Memorial's arches.
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| Historical Information: |
The Menin Gate is one of four memorials to the missing in Belgian
Flanders which cover the area known as the Ypres Salient. Broadly
speaking, the Salient stretched from Langemarck in the north to the
northern edge in Ploegsteert Wood in the south, but it varied in area and
shape throughout the war. The Salient was formed during the First Battle
of Ypres in October and November 1914, when a small British Expeditionary
Force succeeded in securing the town before the onset of winter, pushing
the German forces back to the Passchendaele Ridge. The Second Battle of
Ypres began in April 1915 when the Germans released poison gas into the
Allied lines north of Ypres. This was the first time gas had been used by
either side and the violence of the attack forced an Allied withdrawal and
a shortening of the line of defence. There was little more significant
activity on this front until 1917, when in the Third Battle of Ypres an
offensive was mounted by Commonwealth forces to divert German attention
from a weakened French front further south. The initial attempt in June to
dislodge the Germans from the Messines Ridge was a complete success, but
the main assault north-eastward, which began at the end of July, quickly
became a dogged struggle against determined opposition and the rapidly
deteriorating weather. The campaign finally came to a close in November
with the capture of Passchendaele. The German offensive of March 1918 met
with some initial success, but was eventually checked and repulsed in a
combined effort by the Allies in September. The battles of the Ypres
Salient claimed many lives on both sides and it quickly became clear that
the commemoration of members of the Commonwealth forces with no known
grave would have to be divided between several different sites. The site
of the Menin Gate was chosen because of the hundreds of thousands of men
who passed through it on their way to the battlefields. It commemorates
those of all Commonwealth nations except New Zealand who died in the
Salient before 16 August 1917. Those United Kingdom and New Zealand
servicemen who died after that date are named on the memorial at Tyne Cot,
a site which marks the furthest point reached by Commonwealth forces in
Belgium until nearly the end of the war. Other New Zealand casualties are
commemorated on memorials at Buttes New British Cemetery and Messines
Ridge British Cemetery. The YPRES (MENIN GATE) MEMORIAL now bears the
names of more than 54,000 officers and men whose graves are not known. The
memorial, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield with sculpture by Sir William
Reid-Dick, was unveiled by Lord Plumer in July
1927. |