ST
GEORGE’S MEMORIAL CHURCH - YPRES
Memory of the Fallen in Flanders Fields
It
is an English church built in Belgium. Hundreds of thousands of British
soldiers came to the Fields of Flanders, never to return home. The Ypres
Salient in the western part of Belgium was the stopping point of the
German advance to the sea, and the brutal battles of trench warfare,
attack and counter attack which lasted through nearly the entire First
World War. There are a number of sites in Ypres (Ieper in Dutch) commemorating
and remembering the war which devastated and virtually leveled the town
and turns the fields into killing grounds, museums and cemeteries (see Passchendael
and Tynecot).
Two
of the locations in Ypres and several war cemeteries were designed
by British architect Sir Reginald Theodore Blomfield, who in
the
height of his career, before the war had redesigned several of the great
manor houses of England in the late Victorian and Edwardian age and was
the responsible for the shape of London’s Regent Street. After
the war, Blomfield was called upon to create memorials. The Menin Gate
in Ypres, with its stone arches etched with the rows and columns of the
names of the lost, and the nightly pipes ceremony still honors the sacrifice
of nations, and St Georges Memorial Church.
One
of the
church dedications reads: “To the Glory of God the Great Cross
in this church is dedicated by the 23rd Division in memory of their comrades
who fell in the Great War”. There is a a plaque dedicated to
Lt Colonel John McCrae, the Canadian Medical Officer whose poem, “In
Flanders’ Fields” written spontaneously after the battlefield
death of a friend in May of 1815, and reflecting on the image of the
poppies which seemed to bloom in the earth turned up by bombs and graves.
The
brief
but
poignant poem became the unofficial anthem of the “Great War” and
the poppy, the symbol of remembrance. The
push for the building of the church was also from a Canadian, Lt
Colonel Henry Willson, who was acting military mayor of Ypres following
the war in 1919, founded the Ypres League a year later, with the aim
of keeping alive the memory of the sacrifices made in the Ypres Salient
between 1914 to 1918. Willson was also instrumental in the foundation
of Britain’s Imperial War Museum (see Imperial
War Museum). The Ypres
League had its own magazine, the Ypres Times and organized pilgrimages
to the Belgian town and battlefields from Britain (see Flanders
Battlefields Museums), and holding an annual Ypres Day on October 31st. A number of
sites for the church were considered but land was finally found on the
corner of Vandenpeereboomplein Avenue courtesy of the Imperial War Graves
Commission, purchased by the widow of town archivist, Arthur Merghelynckand,
and the cornerstone of the memorial church and school laid by Field Marshal
Lord Plumer on the 24th of July, 1927.
The
St George’s Memorial Church and a connected school remembering
boys killed in the shelling of the town were opened on 24th of March
1929, dedicated by the Bishop of Fulham. An intimate space with seating
for 200, the interior furnishing were provided by the families of fallen
soldiers, and almost every piece serving as a memorial to the men who
gave their lives in the World War I battlefields of Belgium and France.
Everywhere the walls and even the etched windows, chosen of clear glass
rather than stained to allow light into the solemn space, are marked
by plaques, banners and dedications to various regiments and individual
officers. The chairs are covered with colorful cushions representing
memorial sponsorships of the church by the families.
Some
memorials to look for - in the outer vestry a window dedicated to twin
brothers Captain Francis Octavius Grenfell and Riversdale Nonus
Grenfell who served with the Ninth Lancers, features the regimental coat
of arms and the family’s motto - Loyal Devoir. The choir window
entering the church is dedicated to the Guards Regiment. The first president
of the Ypres League, Field Marshal John Denton Pinkston French, the Commander
of the British Expeditionary Forces has a bust and large plaque among
the other generals and Viscounts, with a later brass plaque to Winston
Churchill next to him. On the south side is a window commemorating a
Captain Loftus Jones, an Australian who was a commander in the Yorkshire
Regiment, The South Irish Horse Guards from Dublin are acknowledged with
a regimental badge and the image of St Patrick. Also represented are
the Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Light Infantries, Monmothshire Regiment,
Royal Artillery Regiment and 3rd, 4th and 6th Infantry Corps. Three windows
in the northern end of the church commemorate the flyers of the war,
Royal Air Force, Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service of the
United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
Curiously,
during the Second World War, the church was damaged only by an allied
bomb which hit in the street. Many of the furnishings and
decorations were removed by citizens and hidden. The German occupation
soldiers took over the connected school and converted to an officer’s
club, using the chairs from the church, but respected the memorials inside
as symbols of the sacrifice of all soldiers in war. Any tour visit to
the WWI battlefields of Flanders 90 years on should include a stop at
St George’s Memorial Church and the Menin Gate to remember the
fallen. © Bargain
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St
Georges Memorial Church
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