Service marks 30,000th performance of
The Last Post in Ypres
At the setting of the sun, in Ypres they do not forget.
Every day at 8pm, a group of volunteer firemen sound The Last Post under the Menin Gate.
It is a tradition which has endured since 1928, a year after the gate opened. Only the German occupation during the second world war forced the bugles to fall silent - but even then, the ceremony was continued in Britain at the Brookwood cemetery.
On the very evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres, the bugles once again re-started their salute.
And every night since then, they have continued. In winter and summer, in front of crowds and to the shivering few, they have played.
For those whose relatives names are recorded on the stone plaques of the memorial, whose bodies were never found in the mud and horror of Ypres, it is vitally important it continues forever.
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Songs of war lead us into battle and songs of remembrance remind us of those battles. In places such as Arlington Cemetery and at the Canadian war memorial on Vimy Ridge and at the Menin Gate we see the futility of war etched in granite and marble.
To those who follow us we need say remember your history, learn from your history, do not repeat my history. Guns require brains willing not to use them as a tool of destruction.
