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The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium, dedicated to British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in the Ypres Salient during World War I and whose graves are unknown. Recording some 54,896 names, it was partly paid for by English writer Rudyard Kipling whose son was killed at Ypres. What was the brutally ironic fact about the final recording of names on the memorial?

Answer: The last of the stonemasons were still at work engraving the names of 1914-18 when the German armies arrived, as conquerors, in May 1940. The stonemasons were repatriated to Britain.

Source: The First World War by Martin Gilbert

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