Belgium Trip Day 1

As part of our 10 year anniversary events, members of the WCoN’s have travelled to Belgium to visit sites associated with Edith Cavell. As a Company, we promote the nursing profession, the past, the present and the future. The focus on of the visit is remembrance and exploring the legacy of Edith Cavell.

On the first day of the tour members of the Company visited the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery  , which is the is a burial ground from World War 1 - it is the second largest cemetery for Commonwealth forces and most of those buried in the cemetery are war casualties who had been wounded near Ypres and later died in the four large medical casualty clearing stations.

Whilst at the Cemetery, the Master paid respects at the grave of Staff Nurse Nellie Spindler who was working at the Casualty Clearing Station and was killed by shrapnel from an explosion.

It is hard to imagine the suffering and horrific scenes that the nurses, working in these filed Casualty Clearing Stations.

The Company attended the evening ceremony at the Menin Gate, a war memorial in Ypres dedicated to the soldiers who were killed in WW1 and whose graves are unknown. The  Menin Gate Memorial opened in 1927, and every evening at 20:00 buglers from the Last Post Association close the road which passes under the memorial and sound the Last Post.

It was a privilege to attend this ceremony, an act of gratitude and rememberance. The Master, Master's Chaplain and the  Military Liaison Officer (MLO), were honoured to lay a wreath at the Menin Gate on behalf of all nurses. It was a very moving ceremony and the MLO read out the famous Kohima Epitaph memorial verse "When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today".