A NEWPORT couple paid an emotional tribute to Newport’s war dead when they laid a specially-made wreath at the Menin Gate memorial in Belgium carrying the names of Newport’s fallen from the Great War.

Sally and Chris Burge joined hundreds of others who had travelled to pay their respects at the iconic memorial, laying a Welsh slate disc emblazoned with a dragon on a poppy wreath to remember the sons of Newport and Monmouthshire killed on the Western Front.

Their visit came as the hundredth anniversary of the county’s blackest day of the war, when, during the battle of Frezenberg Ridge, more than 80 Newport men were killed as the Monmouthshire Regiment bore the brunt of German attacks.

A total of 526 men of the regiment died between 22 April and May 25 during the fighting in this area.

Mrs Burge said they wanted to pay tribute to soldiers of the county who died on the eve of the centenary of the battle.

She said: “Out of respect for them we wanted to put all the names from the Newport Cenotaph on the wreath of the men also mentioned on the Menin Gate."

She says it proved to be “quite a task” and “brought home to us the reality of the First World War when you start looking at names and not just numbers".

“Fifteen pages of A4 later and we had all the names,” she added grimly.

She and her husband then printed and laminated them to attach to the wreath.

A ceremony has been held at the memorial since 1928. At 8pm the traffic is stopped, silence falls on the crowds and a speech is made or a prayer given. The last post is sounded by buglers from the local fire brigade.

The Menin Gate stands on the site of one of the old town gates of Ypres on the route that thousands of soldiers took on the way to the front.

Soldiers of the Monmouthshire Regiment would have walked and fought only a couple of miles from where the Menin Gate stands today.

A poem written by Joseph Pashley was also attached to the wreath:

When last we met you spoke at length

Of going off to War,

And now return with tales to tell

Of horrors that you saw.

 

In truth, I'm glad of your return

Though words are hard to find

To tell you of the pain I feel

For those you left behind.

 

It's difficult to see them go

I pray I'm spared the sight

Of men sent off with nothing more

Than eagerness to fight.

 

This war, I fear, has taken much,

The lives of young and old.

It rages still, as winter comes

And with it, deathly cold.