Adinkerke Military Cemetery

This cemetery was started alongside another major medical facility: the Cabour field hospital, which was the counterpart of L’Océan in De Panne. Adinkerke was a relatively safe distance behind the front and received casualties from different units, divisions and armies. Even so, in 1917 Cabour - like L’Océan - was moved to a safer location at Beveren-aan-de-IJzer.

The cemetery still has a number of the 'hero crosses', special headstones provided by the supporters of the cause of Flemish emancipation for the graves of Flemish student-soldiers. In 1925, however, 135 of these crosses were removed from the cemetery and used instead to line what is now the Heldenweg (the Heroes Road, leading past the church to military cemetery). This was highly unpopular with members of the old Front Movement, and led indirectly to the purchase by the IJzer Pilgrimage Committee of the ground in Kaaskerke (near Diksmuide), which would later become the Ijzer Pilgrimage Field of Honour.

The most well-known Fleming to be buried here was the writer, socialist and pacifist Emile Verhaeren, who was world famous in his day and was also (notwithstanding his political beliefs) a close associate of the king and queen. Verhaeren died in Rouen on 27 November 1917, when he tried to board a still moving train and fell under its wheels. King Albert, at the family's request, arranged for him to be buried here, which was made possible by virtue of his title as a Knight in the Leopold Order. When a German breakthrough seemed likely in the spring of 1918, his remains were removed and reburied in Wulveringem, before finally finding their last resting place after the Armistice on the banks of the River Schelde in Sint-Amands, his native town.

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