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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

Restoring


zijde26

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To All,

Some weeks ago, I read "After the Ruins" written by Hugh Clout. This book deals with the restoring of Northern France after ww1.

Does anyone knows postings or litterature about the restoration of the Ypres Salient ?

Thanks,

Gilbert Deraedt B)

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Gilbert,

There's a nice book on Boezinge which has a few things on the restoration - Aurel, can you help me out with the title? I think it's Boezinge 1914-1918.

The classic one is offcourse 'Ieper, de herrezen stad', undoubtly you've read it allready. Personally, I would say that the local newspapers 'Het Ypersche' e.a. are the best reading you can possibly get on the reconstruction of the Saliënt ( appart from the archives in Brussels). You can have a look at them in the city library, just ask the librarian.

For further reading, I suggest you speak to Dominiek at IFF and Rik at the city archives. If there is anything published, they will know. If it's not published, they will know where to find it.

Best,

Bert.

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Gilbert,

There's a decent book about the buildings in Ieper itself called "The Reconstruction of Ieper - a walk through history" by Dominiek Dendooven and Jan Dewilde. This has good detail about several buildings and streets along with photographs of them (some "then and now") and also contains good maps to show you exactly where they are or were.

It's a fairly recent publication and ,I think, is available from the I.F.F.museum shop.

Dave.

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A good book which has a lot of incidental material on clearing and reconstructing the battlefields is Will Bird's book 'Thirteen Years After'. Bird was a Canadian vet who made a tour of all the major battlefields in the early 1930s. At that time the process of cleaning up the battlefields was still in full swing. It's full of amazing anecdotes: he meets and talks to a squad of Poles employed in recovering bodies; there's another about a squad working in Givenchy; a car pulls up, out steps an aristocratic German and tells them the location of a mass grave next to the church where they can find another 600 - he buried them there during the war. It's a rattling good read.

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You should read the article "A Belgian Salient for Reconstruction: People and Patrie, Landscape and Memory", by Mark Derez, published in the book "Passchendaele in Perspective. The Third Battle of Ypres", edited by Peter H. Liddle (London 1997), pp. 437-458.

Derez' perspective is much like Clout's. It is propably exactly what you are looking for. See the article quoted on my web page (see further down at the page).

/Nils

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Bert mentioned Rik at the archives, that's Rik Opsommer I think. He spoke to our US WFA group on reconstruction of Ypres during our April trip and know a lot since he's a lawyer has interesting insights.

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Gilbert,

I typed After The Ruins into Amazon (sounds like a great book) and was quoted a price of £47.50! Any reason why it's that much? Out of print I suppose...

M

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To All,

Thanks for the postings. They were very informative.

To Mark A,

I do not know if the book "After the Ruins" is sold out. This could fit with my own experience. It was hard to find it and I could only buy it in an antiquarian bookshop. The book itself contains lots of information and also a very interesting bibliography about this subject, restoring the battlefields, ....

Gilbert Deraedt :huh:

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