Veurne in World War 1

 Veurne Stadhuis in the Grote Markt

An unexpected trip to Veurne proved to be a delightful and truly interesting experience. About an hour from Brugge, it is a typical Flemish town. By that I mean it has a spacious and beautiful Grote Markt, lined with bars and restaurants and a tearoom, no less! There is a venerable church, Sint Walburga, with a little park around and a Stadhuis built in Flemish Renaissance style with interior walls lined with beautiful tooled and coloured leather, a legacy of the Spanish influence. On one corner of the Markt is a former library which was holding a temporary exhibition of paintings and ceramic sculptures from a local art group. And everywhere the lovely Flemish gables.

The very normality of this picturesque townscape, peacefully busy with its sunny quotidien life contrasted sharply with its situation in WW1 which I learned about from an excellent exhibition in the Stadhuis there. There are many memorial exhibitions in Flanders in the present period, 2014-18, to commemorate the First World War; unsurprising given the dates. But until today I had not realised that there had been a tiny part of Belgium which remained free for those appalling four years of savage warfare. Then, Veurne [Furnes] had been virtually on the front line of free Belgium [Vrij Vaderland] and, as the one remaining unoccupied town, had been declared the capital of Belgium; the King took up residence there establishing the Belgium army headquarters in the Stadhuis. From 1914 on, the town was crowded with thousands of refugees and Belgian and French soldiers en route to and from the front line with totally inadequate supplies of food, medicines, bandages, sheets and shelter to meet the myriad demands.

 Inundation

Veurne lies in the Westhoek area of Belgium and in order to prevent the German troops from taking over the northern part of the Westhoek with its access to the Channel ports, and after extensive battles over weeks, a desperate, defensive plan was launched. In Westhoek, the terrain was different; it comprised the polders, reclaimed land with water levels just below the surface, regulated by a widespread system of sluices and pumps. The lochs and sluices in nearby Nieuwpoort were opened allowing the sea to gradually flood the Yser plain down to Diksmuide, forming a natural barrier and stopping the German advance in that area for four long years.




Marie and Irene Curie in Veurne 

It was a real surprise to learn that Marie Curie, with her daughter, had come to Veurne in 1914 bringing their knowledge of radiography. It seems extraordinary that a double Nobel Laureate and revered physicist and chemist should so closely engage with the war effort as to spend several months in a highly dangerous area so that she could improve the care for, and safety of, severely wounded men. Disheartened by the trauma of war and guided by her humanitarian principles, she launched a project to establish a radiological service for the French army and bring x-ray machines nearer to the battlefield. She obtained vehicles that could be converted into mobile x-ray units, working with manufacturers to obtain portable generators. From these materials she was able to produce effective field radiological units, the first anywhere. She trained people, often women, in the use of the machines and before the end of the war had twenty radiological units with over two hundred trained personnel in active service. During 1917 and 1918, alone, these mobile facilities took more than a million x-rays enabling quicker, near-battlefield medical diagnosis and treatment thus saving many lives.

I have begun to understand more the difference between living in an island at war like England, which suffered considerable civilian disruption and fierce food and clothes rationing while millions of kith and kin fought and died in Europe, and experiencing war under enemy occupation and within an active war zone.

I happen, by chance, to be currently
reading Bastion: Occupied Bruges in the First

German troops in the Markt, Brugge 1914

World War by Sophie Schaepdrijver and learning of the deaths, the deprivation, the cruelty experienced from occupation by enemy forces. Apart from imminent and arbitrary brutality, there was the loss of personal autonomy; the constant fear of doing something wrong with the inevitable reprisals; the absence of normality with the closure of many shops, schools, universities, town halls; the disappearance of normal officials, taken-for-granted routines, services, free choices. Morality changed and all the routine underpinnings of every-day society disappeared under the oppressive regime of an alien force. Collaboration, with its implicit threat for future consequences, became a way for some, to get by in intolerable circumstances. Many chose to survive by becoming quislings for which they suffered severe consequences after the war finished. Society was riven and the bruising after-effects of the war lasted long after 1918.


British soldiers blinded by mustard gas

And so, a small trip to see a little Flemish town became an absorbing and unexpected learning opportunity to learn and understand more of Belgian history. Oddly, my own childhood memories of wartime Britain, also stirred.