‘Fake Belgium’

Abstract

The diary of Achiel Van Walleghem is probably the best-known and also simply the best of all local witness accounts from the rear of the Ypres Salient. Achiel Van Walleghem was a Catholic parish priest in Dickebusch,¹ 5 km south-west of Ypres. In mid-1916, the war forced Van Walleghem to leave home, but he stayed as close by as possible. Hence, in 1917, we find him living in the parsonage of Reninghelst, a mere 12 km from the front line, and even closer in some periods. Achiel Van Walleghem kept a diary from the very beginning of the war until some years afterwards. The diary was originally written in the local West Flemish dialect, making it at times even difficult to understand for those who speak ‘proper Dutch’. It was written on loose papers, often official British army paper, and later copied and corrected in notebooks. Hence strictly speaking it is a mixture of a diary, a chronicle and a memoir (though written shortly after the events). Only some of these original loose notes have survived, and these are kept in the archives of the bishopric of Bruges. The notebooks, however, are preserved at the research centre of In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres. Most of the diary was published in the 1960s in three volumes, which are nowadays heavily sought after (Van Walleghem 1963–67). Some entries are very lengthy, running to several pages; the most minimal entries are just a few lines.