Princess Anne and Princess Claire attended the reopening of the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, on July 7.
During the reopening ceremony, both princesses laid wreaths at the gate, which had been restored over the past two years.
Princess Anne also delivered remarks during the ceremony, praising the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the city of Ypres.
She praised the Commission’s “care and craftsmanship” with the memorial, remarking that the gate is “respectful and resilient.”
Thanking Belgium, she said, “We are also extremely grateful to the city of Ypres, to the region of Flanders and to the Kingdom of Belgium, whose people have, for generations, embraced this memorial as part of their own heritage. Your continued support and partnership – both in kind, and financial – is living testimony to the strength of the bonds that exist between our nations.”
Her Royal Highness said the gate “has long stood as more than stone and inscription. It is a threshold between past and present, silence and memory, sacrifice and gratitude. For nearly a century, it has commemorated the names of the missing — over 54,000 soldiers who marched into battle along this very path, and whose bodies were never found.”
“Their bodies may lie in unmarked graves or lost battlefields, but their names, etched into this gate, have never faded from the memory of those who pass or stand beneath it,” she added.
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