PONTEFRACT IN 1955

In a tour occupying eight days, the Member of Parliament for Pontefract, Mr. G.O. Sylvester, recently visited the war cemeteries in Northern France and Belgium. Mr. Sylvester is a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission and Mrs Sylvester accompanied him. They were met at Calais by the Chief Administrative Officer of the French District of the Commission, Brigadier-General Vale.

In that district the cemeteries near Boulogne, Calais, Bethune and Lens were visited, before moving on to Arras. The Indian memorial at Neuve Chapelle, the Canadian memorial at Vimy Ridge, and the Somme memorial at Thiepval, erected to the men who fell in those areas in the First World War, were inspected.

From Arras the tour took Mr. Sylvester to Rheims and into Belgium, visiting 73 cemeteries containing the graves of men who fell in both wars. In Belgium he saw cemeteries at Mons, Passechendale, Messines Ridge and Ypres, and he was impressed by the maintenance achieved by the British staffs at all cemeteries he visited.

At Ypres he presented to the Burgomaster a letter of thanks from the Commission for the organisation of the nightly ceremony of sounding the Last Post before the Menine Gate Memorial. The ceremony has continued except during the enemy occupation of 1940-1944 since shortly after the memorial was unveiled in 1927. The ‘Gate’ is in memory of the 90,000 men who fell in defence of the town on the Ypres salient, and who have no known graves. Among others at the ceremony was the Commissioner’s Chief Administrative Officer in Belgium, Brigadier-General Agnew, of the Canadian Army.