Paul Foster writes:
I first started work on the project some five years ago, with a usual tour to Ypres approaching for Remembrance Day (tours that I first started for the WFA in 1981 with John Giles, the WFA's Founder, as the guide). After researching a small group of those commemorated on the Menin Gate I decided to expand the work. My small piece of research, like ‘Topsy', grew, developed and expanded. To date I have over 25,000 records. I am researching soldiers buried in the First World War cemeteries and memorials that dot the landscape throughout the world - and the list continues to expand.
Completing the work has been a labour of love, and I have spent at least eight hours a day over the last couple of years researching and writing. Some of those recorded in the books were easy to research and record their information, but for most it was like completing a large jig-saw puzzle - and most of it being ‘blue sky'! Piece by piece they came together to form the three-volumed set I have now published.
Where did I start? My criteria were reasonably wide and, with the aid of the CWGC website, I made a start. My first task was to identify the thousands of individuals and put them into order in their various cemeteries or memorials. Once this task was completed the real research began. With the use of thousands of books I have collected over the years, the internet and direct contact with some of the families, the work began to come together. Perhaps one of my biggest disappointments was the general lack of ease of access to information held by the Government or by museums, coupled with the (sometimes) excessive cost and dismissive attitude. Mind you, it does not help when you do not live in the UK. The help and attitude of the Belgian museums and the Document Centre in Ypres were particularly refreshing.
After considerable trial and error - mainly error - I finally developed a method of research that suits me, following a system that builds up the data in such a way that gives me every opportunity to create a picture of the individual I am studying.
Support and encouragement during any such project is invaluable. I am most grateful to a number of good friends, contacts made during my research, and to Tonie and Valmai Holt who kindly wrote the Introduction.
In Continuing & Grateful Memory, The Menin Gate
An appreciation by Shaun Caveney
The Menin Gate is probably the best known and much loved Memorial to the Missing not only on the Western Front but anywhere in the world. Paul Foster's three-volumed book (nearly 1,100 A4 pages) ‘In Continuing & Grateful Memory, The Menin Gate' provides us with an incredible and original insight to the Memorial itself and of many who are commemorated on its panels. Major Tonie and Valmai Holt provide a well-written and apposite introduction to the books.
Paul carefully takes us through the development, building an opening of the Memorial, through a short history of the battles fought on the Salient to the individual cameos of some 1,500 of those all too often anonymous names. The detailed research that has been undertaken over a period of more than two years is particularly impressive, revealing a wealth of personal stories. So many of those recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission do not even have their family information: Paul has been able to provide family information, the school(s) and/or university attended, their employment and career with the majority including a photograph. Where appropriate he has cross-referenced other casualties mentioned in the text who died during the war. Each book is wonderfully and profusely illustrated with contemporary photographs, drawings, diagrams and maps. The text is easy to follow that is more often than not illuminated by fascinating quotations from fellow soldiers and officers, family or friends. After reading each cameo you are left feeling you now know the man and have shared his experiences.
The reader is, for the most part, able to follow the officer or soldier throughout his Great War experiences until his death. After reading the three volumes, it is impossible to visit the Menin Gate, indeed the Western Front or beyond, without taking them with you to put faces and stories to the names. Wherever you are visiting the battlefields those commemorated in Paul's book touches on them as so many who fought at Gallipoli, in Salonica, Egypt, Mesopotamia or elsewhere died on the Salient and have no known grave.
Paul has written about all Victoria Cross winners; those shot at dawn; a wide selection of artists; county and national level sportsmen; Olympians; the known 15 and 16 year olds, and a hundred brothers or fathers and sons commemorated together. It must be the most comprehensive collection ever assembled in one publication. Paul rightly deserves our thanks and congratulations on a job well done, and we look forward to the publication of many more books that are currently in the pipeline.
No other books bring the Menin Gate to life than Paul Foster's ‘In Continuing & Grateful Memory, The Menin Gate'.
Editor's Note: you can purchase the set of books at www.remembering1418.com for £75 plus postage.
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 Menin_Gate_A5_flyer.pdf | In Continuing and Grateful Memory, The Menin Gate by Paul Foster | 215 Kb | 24/07/11 12:58 |
