Thiepval Monument- opinions

[ArmyOfficer]

It may not be located at the highest point of the battlefield, but it is pretty high and visible at distance in places. To me, this justifies the design. And at a distance detail is less important.

Thiepval will always be my favorite memorial. What gets me about it is i always see it as an analogy for studying war.

You can see the Thiepval Memorial for a long, long way off. It's massive. Even when you stand in that car park and look all you can see is this huge, hulking memorial. But when you start to walk up to it, and get close, you lose sight of its size as you start to see individual names, thousands of them, and then you find yourself just seeing one name...one name at a time.

I always think thats like military history; for the casual reader/student all you see is this massive event. You see it's overall form and context. It's only when you get close that you can see the details of the thousands of individuals who really made it what it is or was.

At the end of the day, it IS the detail that makes it important.

thats why Thiepval is my favorite memorial....

[Muerrisch]

Least liked: Etaples, but Thiepval is next. Whatever else it does, it dominates the view for miles around and from most directions. But the nearer I get, the less I like it. Might be better as/when it has a khazi!

[Guest]

It's interesting to note that the Ieper's own tourism web site spells Menin (Gate) as just that, and not 'Menin'. Try telling the CWGC that you have renamed their memorial!

But if you look at the town plan on their site, it is Menenpoort according to the key.

At the time of WWI, Flemmish (Dutch) was very much a suppressed language for official purposes. As a result, the language question is just about the most divisive think in modern Belgium.

I am not renaming anything of the CWGC's. Just recognising that the people who live there see things differently. A few years ago, we told the owner of the hotel where we were staying that we were going to the last post ceremony. I asked her what she thought of it and she said "Oh, when I was younger the Menenpoort was just a good place to meet boys". And she was someone who knew the significance for Brits, as she had specialised in accommodating veterans in the past.