j.r.f Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 I have never thought of this before but where did the local inhabitants go for the duration of the war.Virtually all the buildings on the WESTERN FRONT would have very quickly become unin- habitable.Were they in camps or just left to look after themselves ?? CHEERS. JOHN.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frie Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 Lets take inhabitants of Ypres, Wytschaete, Hollebeke, Zonnebeke, Zillebeke. In the beginning of the war they went only to safer places close to their home-villages. Some inhabitants of Zonnebeke, Ypres, Wystchaete, went to Locre (Loker) Westouter,Reninghelst, Poperinge, border of France. In Kemmel some people were obliged by the military authorithies to leave. In april 1918 (battle of the Kemmel) the refugees in Westouter, Loker, had to leave for France. Many people of the frontline town/villages went to (far away) France. Some rich people went to Britain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 Most people went to France. Even to Normandy! They sometimes had family there. Or they were in refugee camps. Not to be forgotten, but some also went to Holland or to family in the German occupied part. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Reed Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 Some rich people went to Britain. It wasn't just rich people; the British government gave assistance during the war and there were Belgian communities in Birmingham and Manchester, where refugee familes lived with British families. Many wealthy landowners in Northern France, and maybe Flanders, had holidays homes on the French coast around Le Touquet and spent much of the war there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j.r.f Posted 8 February , 2005 Author Share Posted 8 February , 2005 THANKS FOLKS CHEERS. JOHN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frie Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 Hello, This Belgian (and french) refugees in France had a very hard time in France. It was not "the most happy time of their lives". Most of the Belgian refugees didn't spoke French. And they were seen as "foreigners"... Working hard for a living, there were a lot of problems... Be happy you Britains the war was outside Britain, you can not imagine the bad time for our Belgian refugees who lost everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marina Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 EWhat happened to those people, Frie? Did they get their porperty back after th war? Were there government schemes to help them rebuild? Marina Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 JRF they were strangers in a strange land.... Most of those people had never been abroad or further than 10 km. sometimes they were orpheans. some returned to start a new life, rebuild everything. Some stayed and started a new life abroad. Some went to Canada or the USA. Some fell in love on a Foreinger, their own husband killed in war. It was a tragic life. Most people lost everything, sometimes even their family. I am always astonished how people found the courage, the hope, the strenght to rebuild everything and start all over again. I wonder if people of today should have the same spirit. Personaly I don't think so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonycad Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 There is a monument in Milford Haven called the Belgian Monument, built by the people of Ostende, to thank the local people for their welcome and hosptality to a large part of the Belgian fishing fleet, that fished out of the town from 1914 - 1919. Tony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandyford Posted 8 February , 2005 Share Posted 8 February , 2005 Kristof I agree with everything you say about the spirit of the people to try to rebuild. I read somewhere that a lot of people returned quite quickly and lived first in tents while they were starting again. Whilst it was being discussed what to do about the ruins of Ypres, many people were already back. I do think that people now would also have that spirit. As Marina has said, I wonder what kind of government or international assistance, financial or otherwise was given for rebuilding. We see from maps, for example, that farms were rebuilt sometimes in a slightly different place. Kate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frie Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 The Belgian government - dominated by almost only French speaking ministers- got indemnification from Germany. So the Belgian government had to compensate the Belgian people, but.... The government was very avaricious. They never compensated at 100% - I took sometimes 10 years and more to get indemnification... There were mass-demonstrations of people (1924) -still waiting for indemnification. You needed a dossier, those not enough instructed people went to an agent. Those agents got a lot of money in making such a dossier, and those workers, peasants, were too honest..., and were deceived. So some agents became (very) rich but the instructed people got a better indemnification. Sometimes the poor got no indemnification for what they possessed while the richer got indemnification for what they didn't possessed... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandyford Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 That is very interesting Frie. Of course there would be endless bureaucracy and paper mountains arising from these claims. Middlemen, agents and all sorts of people would have their fingers in the pie, leaving the ordinary person vulnerable. I wonder what the figure for indemnification from Germany was. kate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Belgium was one of the biggest losers of all!! The USA claimed most of Belgiums indemnification from Germany for the food help they gave to Belgium (yes then already). The other bit went to France and England for war debts. So little was over to rebuild the country. There were a lot of volunteers donating and working for those victims. They recieved a special medal for it (I have one in my collection). Ofcourse war tourism helped too. And people builded houses out of the scrap they found. If you are interested, there are a bunch of WW1 forms for rebuilding in the Zonnebeke museum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyHollinger Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 A couple of thoughts ... the "front" was narrow, though long. Once the western front settled ... it was only a strip 10 miles wide so the number of refugees was not on a modern scale. This is not to minimize the suffering, but only quantify the numbers involved when compared to WWII or modern wars. Perhaps Ieper was the worst area because it was the "most" (?) concentrated population involved. As to reparations - I imagine it must have been horrible for the people involved and like all similar programs had plenty of private and public abuse. But. Wasn't the entire city of Ieper rebuilt to the old plans with public money? I believe Varlet Farm was also rebuilt with at least partial gov't grants ... Regardless of the hassle and heartbreak ... it is a testament to the human condition to see Ieper living again ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 A couple of thoughts ... the "front" was narrow, though long. Once the western front settled ... it was only a strip 10 miles wide so the number of refugees was not on a modern scale. This is not to minimize the suffering, but only quantify the numbers involved when compared to WWII or modern wars. Perhaps Ieper was the worst area because it was the "most" (?) concentrated population involved. As to reparations - I imagine it must have been horrible for the people involved and like all similar programs had plenty of private and public abuse. But. Wasn't the entire city of Ieper rebuilt to the old plans with public money? I believe Varlet Farm was also rebuilt with at least partial gov't grants ... Regardless of the hassle and heartbreak ... it is a testament to the human condition to see Ieper living again ... Andy here are some fact who can help: 1 Flanders is one of the most densitive populated regions of the world! Certainly of europe. So certainly more than 10000 fleed. There were about 4 milion people living in Flanders then! 2 The salient suffered almost for 4 years of intensive fights and it didn't really moved. 3 The Germans destroyed Louvain (Leuven) and other villages as revenge. 4 The Belgian population almost starved to death in 1914 -1915 because the food supplies were taken by the German army. 5 Belgium was one of the only countries who needed to fight with equipment made in other countries. Only a few km2 were not occupied That made the war for Belgium very hard... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Robertson Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 the British government gave assistance during the war and there were Belgian communities in Birmingham and Manchester and Hawick! They were given an empty mansion house on the edge of the town. Which one is bkristof? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Robertson Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Quoting from my book on Hawick during the Great War: Their enforced stay in a foreign country and exposure to the Hawick culture had affected some of Belgian refugees quite badly as a Major Archer of Leith found while serving in Belgium after the war: ‘On my arrival at Poperinghe, near Ypres, a small Belgian boy was very busy among the hotel staff, and asked me, “Wull I carry yer beg for ye, Sirr?” I gave him the number of my room. He said, “That’s across the gairden, Sirr. Wull I show it ye?” I said, ”Where on earth did you learn your English, laddie?” “At Hawick, in Roxburghshire Sirr. I was a refugee an’ went to the schule there. Dae ye ken Hawick?” I admitted I kent Hawick, and so we became brithers because we baith spoke Scotch and baith kent Hawick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bkristof Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Lovely story Dereck!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeppoSapone Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Some were also in Kent. I have a book about some of the people who escaped to England in 1940 to join the "Free Belgian Army". IIRC a number of them were born at Folkestone in 1915, 1916 etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Robertson Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 bkristof, I've often wondered if the boy in the story is on the photograph. And also if the Belgian refugees in Hawick were all from Poperinghe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frie Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Government money??? No german money.... The way they did it ? You had a small house in 1914- destructed by the Germans and Britisch or French . The government s agents gave it a low value -- They said it was not a new one, value 75% of the value in 1914. After the war, the cost of living had risen... So many people could not rebuild. But rich people - proposed to the poor people to buy the ruins for a very small sum (they knew about the indemnification) and then the rich went to the government and got a indemnification - So they could make a lot of money... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry_Reeves Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Coventry housed over 1600 Belgians during the war. At Birtley, near Gateshead, a special hutted township called Elisabethville, in honour of the Belgian Queen, was constructed for Belgian families. It had its own police force, language signs and pub. The men were employed at the nearby muntions factory. Terry Reeves Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marina Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 I admitted I kent Hawick, and so we became brithers because we baith spoke Scotch and baith kent Hawick[/b] Great story, Derek! I had a friend who went to teach English as a foreign language in Japan - he had a very strong Fife accent and a lisp - I used to spend happy moments wondering how the Japanese pupils sounded! Marina Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andigger Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Some fell in love on a Foreinger... kristof... was is love or would this be lust? Sorry, I just thougth it was funny. In Lyn MacDonalds 1915 there is a story of civilian, Aime van Nieuwenhove, who stayed after the initial battles and the returned with a special pass in March 1915. He relates his story of dodging shells and the shock at how destroyed the city was. I thought it was very interesting to read the civilian perspective. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Reed Posted 9 February , 2005 Share Posted 9 February , 2005 Derek - great story about Hawick and nice photo: thanks for sharing that little gem with us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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