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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Asylum Ypres.


johnboy

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Does anyone know of an Asylum in Ypres used to hold German POW's temporarily?

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The Ypres Asylum was used as a casualty station - was it injured PoW's ?.

 

Craig

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Not sure Craig. I will try and find out more. I have seen reference to motor buses being used to transport german POW's from there to ,I think, Belgium. Not just the odd few, but but a couple of hundred

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1 hour ago, johnboy said:

Not sure Craig. I will try and find out more. I have seen reference to motor buses being used to transport german POW's from there to ,I think, Belgium. Not just the odd few, but but a couple of hundred

What part of the war are we in time wise ?


Craig

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Info from1st Auxilary omnibus Coy ASC Convoy records.

200 German prisoners from Asylum to Steenwerk 25  & 26 September 1916

 

 

 

Edited by johnboy
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Try this. It was a Mental Hospital used by the British.

 

 

 

TR

 

Edited by Terry_Reeves
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Thanks Terry. Seems it was used for holding prisoners in 1916 though.

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The Asylum was one of the main billeting locations for whichever division was holding line from the Cross Roads Farm sector down to the Railway Wood sector.

 

asylum.jpg

Edited by IRC Kevin
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Thanks Kevin. The Asylum  buildings look big enough to hold prisoners. Are the green highlights on the aylum and buildimg marked Prison of any significance ?

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31 minutes ago, johnboy said:

Thanks Kevin. The Asylum  buildings look big enough to hold prisoners. Are the green highlights on the aylum and buildimg marked Prison of any significance ?

 

Not really, they're just places of relevance to the three battalions from 55 Division I wrote books about (each chapter has a table giving the coordinates of any trenches, billets etc mentioned in that chapter. I just used the flags to get accurate Lat/Long coordinates to transfer to the lists from my georeferenced maps).

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I have just been reading At Ypres with Best-Dunkley by Thomas Floyd, and he mentions the Prison  as providing billets for the 2/5th Lancashire Fusiliers in June 1917, particularly in the 2nd Chapter, entitled "The Prison". In one of his letters home, written from one of the cells, he describes getting back to the Prison after a visit to the town thus:

 

But we got inside the Prison safe and sound , and here I now am writing this while the shells are flying and our guns stationed in the city are speaking. The top of this building is in ruins as shells are constantly hitting it, but we are down below, and we have wire-netting to catch the falling debris.

 

A few pages later he says:

 

...we managed to get all the way back to the Prison without a single casualty.I can tell you we were very happy when we were safely inside. To think that one should look to the cells of a prison as a haven of refuge!

 

 When they returned to Ypres on 1st July after a period of training at Westbecourt, however, it was decided that the place was no longer safe and they were billeted elsewhere.

 

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  • 1 year later...

The female asylum sometimes referred to as the Red Asylum was taken over from the French in February 1915 and used as a dressing station initially by the 84th FA of the 28th Division then by the field ambulances of the 5th Division  from early April.

David 

Edited by David_Blanchard
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