MONS PILGRIMAGE

Evening Star, Issue 19771, 23 January 1928, Page 4

MONS PILGRIMAGE

ARMISTICE DAY PREPARATIONS COLONIALS INCLUDED. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, January 20. The Mons pilgrimage plans are now definitely taking shape. The Empire Service League is taking over the dominions’ section and the secretary, Captain Simons, anticipates that at least 1,000 will be from the dominions, of whom 300 will he Australians and 150 New Zealanders. He emphasises that the pilgrimage will be open not only to members of returned soldiers’ leagues, but to all ex-service men. The cost, once they arrive in. England, will not be more than £5 each. Captain Simons also points out. thal; ex-service men, on holiday in Europe at the time, should take advantage of the opportunity of participating. Earl Haig will head the pilgrimage, and other notables are expected to be present. The tour will wind up with a march past the Menin Gate. [A cable on October 23, 1927, stated that the Old Contemptibles’ Association was planning a. pilgrimage to Mons on Armistice Day. Three hundred representatives of every unit of the army were to be present. The battle veterans would draw up in single line to observe the two minutes’ silence; then the buglers and trumpeters who were present on the first day of the battle would sound the ‘ Last Post.’ The following Sunday there would be a drum-head service on the vspot where the first. Old Contemptibles fell. When the visit was first, projected in London in August, M. Poincare, Prime Minister of France, sent a message through the ‘ Daily Mail ’ to the veterans of the Old Contemptibles and all those who from the Home Country or from the dominions fought in France side hy side with the French troops during the war, and added: “Franco would be extremely happy if, in a few months, the British Legion were to organise with the Canadians, South Africans, Australians, and New Zealanders a voyage similar to that which the American Legion is about to make in France. The exservice men of the British Empire can count on receiving from their brothers-in-arms the warmest of welcomes.”!