This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday : Zuydcoote
A visit to Zuydcoote Military Cemetery where I found not only a CWGC section of graves but also a French and a German plot. And to my surprise a Belgian buried amongst the commonwealth soldiers.
I knew there is still a hospital in Zuydcoote, And there must have been one during ww1, and indeed a search in the French archive came up with this : Zuydcoote Hôpital temporaire 34bis dep.59 but In the autumn of 1917, while the XV Corps was holding the Nieuport section, the 34th and 36th Casualty Clearing Stations were also posted at Zuydcoote.
When war was declared in 1914, the hospital was transformed into a military hospital and became one of the key elements of the health system. A little back ground information about the hospital was found in a newspaper :
During the night of 29 to 30 March 1918, the head of the Temporary Hospital 34 Bis received the order to evacuate within 24 hours. this order came from the G.H.Q. (Grand Quartier Général).
A medical train arrived on 30 March at 2 p.m. and took away the sick and wounded at 4 p.m. An ordinary train then came at 7 p.m. to take away the nurses, nuns and officers, the Hospital was empty of medical personnel. The furniture, equipment, facilities,
were left in an indescribable mess. The employees of the Sanatorium immediately set to work washing the linen, disinfecting, cleaning, classifying all the equipment and putting all the rooms in order. The establishment remained empty until 23 April. On that day, the Chief Physician Micheleau returned with his group of 215 nurses, 17 lady nurses and 6 nuns. M. the director of the Health Service, gave communication of the higher orders prescribing to the Hospitals of Rosendaël and Zuydcoote to be ready to receive small wounded and gassed likely to land and be evacuated in 2 hours. The number of beds had to be raised to a maximum.
The hospital was re-opened on 24 April 1918. But the operations in the Mount Kemmel area where a lot higher than expected. Instead of small wounded, all kinds of wounded, even the most serious, arrived by special trains, lorries and ambulance cars. The operating theatres functioned intensively. Evacuations are carried out on a regular basis, by special train brought to the branch line. Since the reopening: 3.860 wounded have been registered.
the number on May 17, 1918 is 1166 sick and wounded, 55 officers of the Health Service 562 nurses and 57 female nurses. The Hospital was asked to increase the number of beds to 2,000. On 13 April, General Rouquerol had asked the Sanatorium if it would agree to receive Belgian schoolchildren who were part of the schools sponsored by Her Majesty the Queen of the Belgians and which had been violently bombed in Poperinge. About twenty children had been killed and the Queen requested the emergency evacuation of the other children to the available pavilions . The management immediately replied to General Rouquerol that they would welcome the children wholeheartedly.
By telephone, H.M. the Queen was informed. The convoys followed one another and 1.904 children arrived between 14 April to 6 May!
On 2 May, H.M. the Queen of the Belgians came to visit the children, the premises were quickly reviewed, the children were taken to the hospital. and when the Queen arrived in Zuydcoote at 2.45 pm, everything was ready to receive her. The children were lined up in front of their pavilions, under the supervision of the few nuns who had accompanied them.
Now that one Belgian soldier Buried between the commonwealth casualties is Philemon Van den Steen, from Moorsel (Aalst) 33 years old. Died on the 21 of October 1917 Earlier that day he was wounded in Nieuwpoort by a grenade explosion.
It was not clear in which of the two British CCS he ended up. Had a look in the wardiary for the 34th CCS and found they arrived in Zuydcoote on the 26th of August 1917. 36 lorry loads brought material .
over from St Idesbald ( Belgian coast town) RE material was brought down : two nissen huts it was a very wet day and extremely stormy.
The summary for the month of September was far from positive : an unsatisfactory month , camp construction not good, still without operating theatre, water supply, bath house and officers latrine. There is no mess or recreation room to patients and personnel.
For October in total 296 admissions , 2 dead, but no names.
For CCS 36 that arrived on the 14th of July 1917 : they took over 3 pavilions in the sanatorium in Zuydcoote, plus they put up 20 nissen huts and canvas for the accommodation for 1400 patients. Here names of officers that died were mentioned but no Belgian name. So I went into a Belgian archive and there was the answer he died in CCS 36
Sources :
La gazette zuydcootoise
Wardeadregister.be