The small coastal town of Nieuwpoort in northern Belgium became the focus of commemoration yesterday as dignitaries from around the world, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, gathered to pay tribute to the fallen of the first World War.
In a series of commemorative events yesterday, beginning in Nieuwpoort and finishing in the medieval town of Ypres 40km south, Belgium paid tribute to its war dead. The focus of the commemoration was the so-called “Flooding of the Yser” , a key turning point in the early months of the war.
In October 1914, as the German army continued its rapid advance through southern Belgium on its approach to France, the Belgian army retreated to the area around the River Yser, north of Ypres, which formed a natural defence line.
In what proved to be a decisive tactical move, the Belgian military command orchestrated a series of floods using the Nieuwpoort sluice complex. The lands around the river Yser were flooded, halting the German advance. Nieuwpoort was to remain the most northerly point that stayed under Allied control for the duration of the war, even as nearby Diksmuide fell to German forces.
Yesterday, at a ceremony at the King Albert I memorial, Dr Merkel honoured the efforts of the Belgian army in the war and recalled the role the German army played in the history of the country.
“I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for your invitation,” she said. “As German chancellor I consider it a special honour to have been asked to speak to you considering all that has happened, all the sufferings inflicted by Germans on Belgians in two world wars starting with the invasion of Belgium by troops of the German Reich in 1914.
“After all that, this invitation is not something to be created for granted.”
Noting that, over the last six decades, Germans and Belgians had fostered a friendship that is unparalleled, she added: “For that too I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the people of Belgium today.”
She said it was particularly appropriate that Brussels was the seat of the European Union. It symbolised freedom, democratic values and respect for international law, she continued.
“The victims of those terrible wars call on us to honour that achievement of civilisation to safeguard it and to stand up for it.
“To do anything else would be to deny them the homage they are due.”
French minister of defence Jean-Yves Le Drian thanked the people of Belgium for their courage and tenacity. Belgium’s experience of the war, he said, showed that “neutrality will not be defeated by violence”.
The ceremony at the King Albert I Memorial, a memorial to Belgium's "warrior king" who led the Belgian army during the first World War, was attended by more than 80 international representatives including Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys.
Addressing the assembled crowd, Belgian’s King Philippe, the great-grandson of King Albert I, welcomed those who had travelled from afar to attend the commemoration, “honouring your soldiers who did the same 100 years ago”.
Later at a ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres, the king laid wreaths at the monument where the names of 55,000 fallen British soldiers are etched. The arch was constructed in 1927, on the spot where one of the old gates of the city stood.
It was through here that Allied troops left the city of Ypres for the front during the four-year war. A lament was played by the buglers of the Last Post Association, while a shower of poppy leaves descended as the hymn O Valiant Hearts was played.
Some 600,000 men lost their lives on Belgian soil during the first World War.
