This week Sabine’s battlefield guide Saturday is going to Boezinge
The first prisoners of war in the village
On Wednesday 14 October , one week before the infantry reached the Boezinge area, a German reconnaissance plane flew over Boezinge. English soldiers who were stationed in the meadows and around the farms between Brielen and Boezinge shot at it with their rifles. In those days it was still possible to get a reconnaissance plane out of the air in that way. nobody thought then about dog fights, which would become a war in itself from 1915 onwards. On 5 October 1914, the first plane was shot down by another plane. The French sergeant Joseph Frantz and corporal Guénault in their reconnaissance machine Voisin shot down a German Aviatik reconnaissance plane with a hotchkiss machine gun, hand-operated. Back to the plane that was shot down on 14 October, it came down in Brielen in a meadow near the Peerdebos, many planes came down on the ground in the beginning of the war still reasonably intact, they flew low and not really fast. The two occupants were able to escape unharmed towards the castle, they were spotted in the castle lane by Oscar Quaeghebeur, he noticed two figures in leather jackets sneaking through the lane, they hesitated to go between the houses of the village and finally ran away along the back gardens in the direction of Lizerne. They had been careless and had asked Arthur Blootacker for directions on how to get to Bruges. He immediately informed the mayor, who in turn informed the army command. A machine gun carriage rushed out and discovered the two Germans hidden in a thorny hedge close to the Sas. They were taken by the French to their Q.G., which was in the house of Father Georges for a first interrogation.
The crashed plane of course attracted a lot of attention; for the people in the neighbourhood, it was the sensation of their lives. Who had ever seen an aeroplane before? Some people were so angry that they wanted to destroy it, but the British soldiers were very quick and forbade everything. They would rather dismantle the plane for sovenirs, to calm the people down they handed out sovenirs, when there was nothing left to take the plane was set on fire.
Achille Van Wallegehm priest in Dikkebus wrote the following in his diary :
Around 10 o’clock we saw a German plane above the parish, we saw it flying towards Voormezele, suddenly it made a turn and came back, immediately heavy gunfire for minutes. The plane fled, but was soon hit and had to come down somewhere around Ypres and fell into British hands.
Gustaaf Delahaye :
The sky was misty, suddenly we saw a German aircraft flying very low over the Veurnseweg. It was shelled from all sides by the English, it turned over the city and landed in a meadow in Brielen.The two Germans, unhurt, hid themselves away and later asked Hector Storme for directions to Kortrijk. they were finally captured and taken away.
Sources : Boezinge 14-18 R. Baccarne, J. Steen
De oorlog te Dickebusch en omstreken A van Walleghem 1914-1918 eerste deel door Jozef Geldhof
Oorlogsdagboeken over Ieper eerste deel Jozef Geldhof