Tielt doctor collects painful testimonies about WWII in book

As a general practitioner, he regularly heard painful experiences and traumas that people told someone for the first time. The result is a book about the horror of war as experienced by ordinary people, such as the story of a mother during the German bombardment of Tielt. (Read more below the photo.)

“As the weather becomes dangerous, the mother flees home with the children. At that moment the house is bombed. The mother throws herself on one of the children. The mother has been killed. The child crawls out from under its mother and says, “Mama, you don’t want to come.” But mom had died. The lady who experienced that, who was lying under the mother, is still alive today,” says Jan Vandermeulen.

Six more alive

The book describes the period from the German invasion on 10 May to the capitulation of the Belgian army eighteen days later. Hendrik Vanhoutte was ten years old at the time and took shelter with his mother, brother and sister with the Waelkens family in Tielt: “Then we saw that the Hoogstraat was full of dead horses and cannons from the Belgian army. Well, an army in retreat. I’m not talking about psychological trauma, but it’s something you never forget,” he says.

Of the 106 authentic storytellers, such as Hendrik, six are still alive. ‘Tielt brandt’ reads like a collective diary. The book is published by De Roede van Tielt.