Applause
EN – I don’t think they feel as if we failed them, the 54.000 souls whose names are engraved at the Menin Gate. I guess they are quite surprised, really. […]
Category Archives: Events
WW 1 related events I witnessed
Expansion
EN – April 22, 2015: one hundred years after the first gas attack in history we had wreaths in Boezinge near Ypres, and at the Brooding Soldier in Langemark. A […]
Safety in Numbers
“Not what is counted, no, what is recounted is remembered” (Gunter Grass) EN – The number of the fallen. The number of the missing. The number of the graveyards. The […]
Keep Calm
EN – “Fellow citizens, keep calm. We stay with you” The poster appeared in the streets of Nieuwpoort while the seaside resort found itself in the eye of the WWI-storm. […]
173 to 0ne
EN – Amandus Hermans had his second birthday exactly on the day the war broke out. His life had barely started. The world around him was warm and safe. […]
AN(a)ZAC DAY
EN – Dear Ana, The Dawn Service at Polygon Wood this year was a bit of a wet affair. Halfway the ceremony rain started pouring down on the nearly 1000 […]
Capital and Countryside (1)
EN – If ever the Belgian nation is tangible somewhere, it must be at the CinquantenairePark in Brussels. The imposing buildings still breathe the ambition of the young Belgian state. […]
Aspirin
EN – Hospital chinaware bearing a red cross, a superbly crafted syringe, a box of aspirin of a century old. Vintage for medics…! I’m at the ‘War and Trauma. Soldiers […]
Soil Stories
Schoolboys escorting the soldier carrying Flanders Fields soil EN – It was cool and windy below the Menin Gate on November 11, but the sun was shining and everybody was […]
A Test
EN – It was different, back in 1914. Antwerpen was under siege and surrounded by as yet undefeated Germans. Inside its perimeter: the retiring Belgian army, the British Expeditionary Force, […]
my great war / mijn groote oorlog 