Monuments & Memorials on the Ypres Salient, Belgium

Monuments on the Ypres Salient battlefields.

There are many monuments and memorials on the Ypres Salient battlefields. They range in size from official monuments commemorating thousands of people missing in action and who have no known grave to private memorials dedicated to individuals or to military units. Some are simply places or scars on the landscape from the battles which have been preserved on the old battlefields. Some have been put up to mark a particular event.

This page lists and locates the monuments to be found on the Ypres Salient battlefields.

Memorials to the Missing of WW1

One of the most famous memorials on the WW1 battlefields of the Western Front is the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres.
The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, Ypres, Belgium.

In the Ypres Salient battlefields there are approximately 90,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers whose remains cannot be identified for burial in a grave marked with their name. Similarly, there are also believed to be about 90,000 German soldiers whose unidentified remains have also never been found in Flanders. There were many French soldiers found on the battlefields whose remains could not be identified.

For the 90,000 missing British Forces there are four memorials in the Ypres Salient battlefields which cover the whole period of the First World War, except the months of August and September 1914:

The Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing south of Messines is technically outside the sector known as the Ypres Salient, and commemorates the missing of the Lys battlefield sector. Its proximity to Ypres means that many visitors to the Ypres Salient include it in a visit to the area.

Names of missing German soldiers are inscribed on oak panels and bronze tablets at Langemark German cemetery and French soldiers are commemorated in ossuaries.

List and Locations of Monuments & Memorials

Related Topic

Tyne Cot British & Commonwealth Military Cemetery near Passchendaele, the largest British cemetery in the world.
Tyne Cot Cemetery.

There are over 100 military cemeteries in the Ypres Salient where many thousands of Allied and German servicemen are buried. Visitors to the cemeteries will often find graves for which the remains of a casualty are unidentified. Although the casualty cannot be identified at his place of burial, there will likely be a place of commemoration on a special memorial in a cemetery or on one of the official memorials to the missing.

Cemeteries in the Ypres Salient