A short ceremony is held every first Monday of the month at 7.00 pm at the Welsh monument in Langemark, near the memorial plaque to Hedd Wyn. Here are some photos of the ceremony on Monday 4 May 2026.

The order of the ceremony was as follows:

• Ceremony begins with a trumpet
• Commemoration of a specific soldier: Alfred Reginald Holder
• Ode of Remembrance
• Last Post
• Minute’s silence
• Rouse
• Welsh Anthem

The story of Alfred Reginald Holder, Ordinary Seaman, J/43130, Royal Navy:

Alfred was born on 29 March in Glasbury, Powys (Wales). He worked as a collier prior to enlisting in the Royal Navy on 9 August 1915 and trained at HMS Vivid I before posted to Edinburgh, joining the crew of the battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable, which was assigned to Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet. The fleet had put to sea to intercept the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea, and came into contact off Jutland. The Germans spotted the British first and made a run to the south to escape, and when Beatty realised this, he ordered his ships to follow. The Germans opened fire first and at around 16.00 on 31 May 1916 a salvo of shells from the German battlecruiser SMS Van der Tann dropped onto Indefatigable, tearing through her armour and setting off a cataclysmic explosion in her magazines, which tore the ship apart. Within seconds 1,016 men had been killed, only three surviced. Alfred was just 20 years when he was killed in the explosion that day, and is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial, Devon.

The two-day naval battle off Jutland ended in a stalemate. Of the 250 ships that took part on both sides, the British lost 14 and the Germans 11. Nearly 9,000 men were killed and around 1,000 were wounded.




























  Page made by Dominique Bascour.