It was lovely to join the West Yorkshire Police Band on their tour to Belgium to sing on this year’s armistice day. We performed in the Menin Gate and at Tyne Cot Cemetery. Still more heart-warming was seeing the many people who made the pilgrimage to Ypres.

The officers and soldiers who fought in the Battle of Passchendaele passed through Ypres, so it is poignant that those who were reported missing – those who died and whose bodies were never found, so those who have no grave – are commemorated on the Menin Gate. This gave the people they left behind a place to remember them.

Still more poignant is the fact that the immense Menin Gate, with its 54,593 names, was too small to commemorate all the missing. New Zealanders and those who were missing after 16^th August 1917 are commemorated at Tyne Cot – a further 35,971 men and boys, along side 11,961 grave, 8,373 of which contain unidentified people.

We supported the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate and the annual commemoration at Tyne Cot on 11^th November, in the presence of various diplomats and other VIPs.