Students from Ramsey Grammar School laid a wreath to honour fallen soldiers during an emotional visit to the Menin Gate war memorial in Flanders.

Some 53 students and seven teachers from the school travelled to Belgium for the school trip last week as part of their annual ’Standalone’ week.

The group visited Tyn Cot cemetery, the Yorkshire Trench and Dug out, In Flanders Field Museum and Menin Gate at Ieper (Ypres).

Hollie Devlin, modern foreign languages teacher and trip leader, organised for three students to lay a British Legion wreath on behalf of Ramsey Grammar School as part of the Last Post ceremony at Menin Gate.

This is a final salute to the fallen, played by buglers every evening, to honour the memory of the soldiers of the former British Empire and its allies, who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War.

Miss Devlin said: ’The group were honoured to have been able to have the opportunity to watch and take part in the ceremony.

’The pupils found it to be a very moving experience and were grateful to have been able to take part.

’The trip to Brussels not only provides students with an opportunity to experience another country and culture it allows them freedom to enhance life skills that they would not get if they were to remain on island.’

Official records show that 8,261 men enlisted in the armed forces in the First World War, which was 82.3% of the Isle of Man’s male population of military age. Of these, 1,165 gave their lives and 987 were wounded.

Menin Gate is one of four British and Commonwealth memorials to the missing in the battlefield area of the Ypres Salient in Belgian Flanders.

The memorial bears the names of 54,389 officers and men from UK and Commonwealth Forces who fell in the Ypres Salient before August 16, 1917 and who have no known grave. Their names are engraved in Portland Stone panels fixed to walls. The Last Post ceremony takes place every night at 8pm.