Belgian buglers play at Australian war memorial

Even before they blew a single note at last night’s closing ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, buglers Filip Top and Jan Callemein of the Ypres Last Post Association lent the occasion presence and panache, the Canberra Times reports. The paper describes them as “elegant and a credit to Belgium in their grand uniforms of navy blue with a wealth of golden braid and buttons”. Every evening at 20.00 at Ypres’ Menin Gate, traffic is stopped and in the reverent silence six buglers, all of them volunteer firemen, play the Last Post. Then there is a short silence before they play the reveille. The ritual honours the dead of the Great War who suffered and perished in three horrific battles there. Approximately 13,000 Australians, among many others, died there, and the names of 6,193 Australian men with unknown graves are carved into the stone of the Menin Gate. Callemein is proud to be one of the few chosen to play at the Menin Gate. “I am only the eighteenth person to be doing this since 1928,” he said. “Our chief bugler is eighty-seven and he’s been doing this for fifty-six years. He’s our hero because there were times in the 1950s and 1960s when he played many times just for one policeman and a man with a dog. Nowadays, we have it much easier and there are always at least 300 people attending.”