Blog

The Victims of War

Posted on 16th September, 2023 in Biography, First World War, The Netherlands

I’ve just got back from a trip to the Netherlands, where I went to visit places associated with my work in progress, a biography of suffrage campaigner and pacifist Millicent Price (née Browne).

During the First World War, Millicent’s husband, Charles, was a conscientious objector. The Prices were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and Charles worked for the SoF’s Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Committee, which was active in relief work in refugee camps in the Netherlands.

The Belgenmonument, Amersfoort

When the German army invaded Belgium early in August 1914 hundreds of Belgians fled to the Netherlands. After the fall of Antwerp on 10 October 1914, an estimated half a million Belgians entered the country. At its peak, there were close to one million refugees there. By 1916 the figure had fallen to around 100,000, and remained at that level for the rest of the war.

Initially the Dutch response to the humanitarian crisis was handled by voluntary organisations, but before long the government took over responsibility for feeding, clothing and housing the refugees. The Dutch set up camps for both military internees (as a neutral country, the Netherlands was obliged to intern members of the Belgian armed forces), and civilians.

The Society of Friends was one of many organisations which offered aid to the Belgian refugees. Charles Price was a relief worker in three of the Dutch civilian camps: Amersfoort, Ede and Uden. Monuments have been built at all three locations, with the most substantial one at Amersfoort.

Apart from some foundation stones at Ede, no traces of the camps remain. Yet at one time they housed thousands of Belgians in wooden barracks or houses. Camp facilities included kitchen and dining rooms, food and clothing stores, schools, hospitals, churches, workshops providing employment for men and women, theatres, laundries, shops and post offices.

Amersfoort

Pax: At Amersfoort

The Belgenmonument at Amersfoort was a gift from the Belgians to the Netherlands. It was designed by the Belgian modernist architect Huib Hoste (1881-1957), and built by interned Belgian soldiers. Construction began in 1917 and the work was completed in 1919. However, after the war relations between Belgium and the Netherlands were poor, and there was no official ceremony at Amersfoort until 1938. King Leopold III of Belgium and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands attended.

During the First World War, the area was moorland, but it is now wooded. A carillon was added to the monument in 1967. It was playing during our visit, and the sound of the bells through the trees lent an eery note to our visit. You can listen to the bells below!

.

Ede

Belgenmonument, Ede

Not far from Amersfoort, on the road to Arnhem, is Ede. A refugee camp was set up on the heathland here in 1915, though it closed before the end of the war, in 1917. It’s a much more modest monument than the building at Amersfoort, but standing as it does in the middle of the heather that gives the area its name (the Eder Heide – heide means heather), you feel that this is closer to how the area would have looked to the people who lived here. The monument is situated near the remains of foundations at the crossroads where the two principal roads of the camp met.

Uden

The monument at Uden

The monument at Uden was unveiled by the Belgian ambassador in 2015, one hundred years after the camp opened. Much of the area covered by the camp has now been built over by a business park. There are information boards placed on a history trail around the camp, but I wasn’t able to find any maps or information about the trail.

Today these monuments stand in quiet spots, tucked out of the way. It’s strange to stand in the middle of a heath or on a quiet country lane and remember that once thousands of lives were lived here; that here are rooted thousands of stories, many of loss, hardship and tragedy. And how little, you realise sadly, has changed. Today the refugees come from other countries, but the plight of displaced people is still a hard one, especially when empathy fails and they are treated with hostility, suspicion, and the minimum of aid given in the most grudging way.

I’ll be telling the story of the First World War refugee camps in the Netherlands and Charles’s connection with them in greater detail in the biography.