Editing Menin Gate (section)

==Background==
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[[File:Menin Gate - start of WWI.jpg|left|thumb|''Menenpoort'' on 28 May 1914, before World War I]]
In medieval times, the original narrow gateway on the eastern wall of Ypres was called the Hangoartpoort, "poort" being the Dutch word for gate. During the 17th and 18th centuries, while under the occupation of the [[Habsburgs]] and the [[France|French]], the city was increasingly fortified. Major works were completed at the end of the 17th century by the French military engineer [[Sebastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de Vauban]]. At the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the eastern exit simply cut through the remains of the ramparts and crossed a moat. The gateway was by this time known as the Menenpoort, or Menin Gate in English, because the road leading through the gateway led to the small town of [[Menen]].

Ypres occupied a strategic position during the [[First World War]] because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium, as had been called for in the [[Schlieffen Plan]]. By October 1914, the much battered Belgian Army broke the dykes on the Yser River to the north of the City to keep the western tip of Belgium out of German hands.  Ypres, being the centre of a road network, anchored one end of this defensive feature and was also essential for the Germans if they wanted to take the Channel Ports through which British support was flooding into France.  For the Allies, Ypres was also important because it eventually became the last major Belgian town that was not under German control.

The importance of the town is reflected in the five major battles that occurred around it during the war.  During the [[First Battle of Ypres]] the Allies halted the German Army's advance to the east of the city. The German army eventually surrounded the city on three sides, bombarding it throughout much of the war. The [[Second Battle of Ypres]] marked a second German attempt to take the city in April 1915.  The third battle is more commonly referred to as [[Battle of Passchendaele|Passchendaele]], but this 1917 battle was a complex five-month engagement.  The fourth and fifth battles occurred during 1918.

British and Commonwealth soldiers often passed through the Menenpoort on their way to the front lines with some 300,000 of them being killed in the [[Ypres Salient]].  90,000 of these soldiers have no known graves.

From September to November 1915, the British [[177th Tunnelling Company]] built tunnelled [[Dugout (military)|dugout]]s in the city [[Rampart (fortification)|rampart]]s near the Menin Gate. These were the first British tunnelled dugouts in the Ypres Salient.<ref name=Beneath216218>Peter Barton/Peter Doyle/Johan Vandewalle, Beneath Flanders Fields – The Tunnellers' War 1914–1918, Staplehurst (Spellmount) (ISBN 978-1862272378) pp. 216–218.</ref>

The carved limestone lions adorning the original gate were damaged by shellfire, and were donated to the [[Australian War Memorial]] by the Mayor of Ypres in 1936. They were restored in 1987, and currently reside at the entrance to that Memorial, so that all visitors to the Memorial pass between them.<ref name="burness">{{cite web| author=Elizabeth Burness| title=Menin Gate lions| work=Journal of the Australian War Memorial 13| date=October 1988| pages=48–49| publisher=Australian War Memorial|  url=http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/menin/lions.asp}}</ref> Replicas of the original Menin gate lions now sit at the entrance of the original gate in [[Ypres]], a gift by the [[Australian government]] in recognition of the 100th anniversary of Australians serving in [[Flanders]] during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{cite web| author=CWGC| title=Menin Gate Lions to Make a Permanent Return to Ieper| date=27 September 2017| publisher=Commonwealth War Graves Commission|  url=https://www.cwgc.org/learn/news-and-events/news/2017/09/27/10/43/menin-gate-lions-to-make-a-permanent-return-to-ieper}}</ref>