Thursday October 17^th, 1918

Nice morning but cold. Expect to leave hospital soon. Wrote home again. I hear the 66^th go over again and advance 10kms – I wonder if they are safe.

Refugees

10 million people became refugees during WWI.  In the very earliest days of the conflict, a quarter of a million Belgians came to Britain. ‘In some purpose-built villages they had their own schools, newspapers, shops, hospitals, churches, prisons and police. These areas were considered Belgian territory and run by the Belgian government. They even used the Belgian currency.’¹ One of their most famous, albeit fictitious, members was Agatha Christie’s Hercules Poirot.

With graver consequences, half a million Serbs fled across the mountains to Albania and then Greece. Over 40% of them perished on the journey.  Armenians were kicked out of their homes in the Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman Empire who regarded them as the enemy. Millions more were displaced across the Russian Empire and, rather circuitously, led to the creation of new countries after the war, including Poland and Latvia.²

1918

Almost two million French citizens were displaced internally, pushed out initially by the invading Germans and then the sheer destruction of war.  This number peaked in September 1918 and was reported in Britain:

‘A telegram to the ‘Matin’ from Rotterdam says the roads between Brussels and Antwerp are blocked by tens of thousands of people from Northern France whom the Germans are driving before them. The distress at Antwerp and Brussels is frightful.’²

With rather more German self-interest, came the following:

‘An official Berlin telegram says that the fear of bombardment having now spread to the population of Valenciennes, it is no longer possible to prevent the thirty thousand inhabitants from fleeing eastward. The German Government has again applied to the Swiss Government requesting it to inform the French Government of this development without delay and to propose that a promise should be given to refrain from bombardment of the larger towns.’²

Frank could spare a thought for the civilians too.

9^th Battalion War Diary – 17^th October 1918 – Maurois

Orders received to be ready to move at two hours notice after 05:00 hours.

References & Further Reading

¹ Article on BBC.com

² Refugees by Peter Gatrell, University of Manchester

² Various articles in The Guardian newspaper, October 15th, 1918, page 6.

* Q 88115, copyright Imperial War Museums