17. Aug 2025

Lo Reninge - Ypern

Video: "The Last Post"

The "Last Post" in Ypres, Belgium, is a moving, daily memorial ceremony held at 8:00 p.m. at the Menin Gate. Since 1928, volunteer firefighters have sounded the bugle there in honor of the British soldiers who fell in the First World War.

Photo 1: The famous 1914 Christmas Truce near Ypres took place near the village of Ploegsteert and the nearby town of Mesen in Belgium. This memorial in Mesen commemorates the happening.

Photo 2: The Menin Gate honors more than 54,000 Commonwealth sevicemen who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War and have no known grave. An estimated 450,000 to 500,000 servicemen from all nations died in this terrible military conflict.

Photo 3: On many of the stone tablets that make up the inner walls of the Menin Gate I saw my family name "Dunn" engraved. It was a very somber moment for me.

Photo 4: "Hill 62"

Thousands of soldiers from both sides were killed during the intense fighting for Hill 62, the stratigic high ground near Sanctuary Wood. The hill is aproximately 62 meters above sea level, thus rendering the hill its name. Today it is a very peaceful place with a view looking towards Ypres.

Photo 5: The famous "In Flanders Fields" Museum in Ypres, Belgium is dedicated to the study of the First World War.

My day started this morning with me losing a tooth filling at breakfast (I hope tooth holds out until I get back home in another 40 days!) and a prayer of blessing for the B&B owner where I stayed Saturday and Sunday night in Reninge. It ended on the World War I battlefields near Ypres. In between was just a short stage today of 20 km which was probably good for my right leg. It also allowed me time to have cooked vegetable soup for lunch at a restaurant instead of just getting something quick and usually cold at a grocery store. It was a God-Appointment. The waitress was a young girls from Greece trying to make a new start and find a better life in Belgium. I shared with her my story and prayed for her that she would also find the more meaningful and eternal life in Jesus. My last comment to her was: "You are a God-design. Jesus went to the cross to make it last forever. Get
to know him!"