War violence Hoeve Derycke-Martens

Farm of Cyriel De Rycke

To the right of the road lived Cyriel De Rycke with his wife Rufina Demets and their four children. Cyriel had lived through the First World War there as a child. That is why he had decided to take refuge with his wife's family in Dentergem.

One son describes it as follows:

My father had bad memories of the first war. At the end of it, German soldiers were cooking in our house while we were in the basement. Then soldiers of the French army came and a battle began over our heads. Two French soldiers lost their lives. (...)

In order not to have to go through that a second time, my parents decided to flee to my mother's family in Dentergem. If we hadn't done that, we would certainly all have perished. When he returned, my father found his house burnt down. We didn't have any eating utensils. Everything was burned, there was only a usable cooking fire. We had to gather some soldiers' gamells to be able to eat. We also had nothing to sleep. There was a harrier hangar in the yard and in it were some baskets in which shells had been placed. We put them on top of each other to be able to sleep in that hangar.

Horror of war on the Martens farm

To the left was the avenue to the Martens farm, now out of use. The farmstead was located a stone's throw from the straightened new Lys, not far from the Neerhoek bridge.

Here we come face to face with the immense war drama that took place in this region for the first time. No less than seven members of the Martens family and a guest from Impe near Aalst were killed during the terrible days of May 1940.

The Germans had crossed the Old Lys at the Tannerie Moderne in Olsene. They thought they had crossed the Lys, but to their surprise they came back to a watercourse that was not mentioned on their maps. Behind the Nieuwe Leie was the Belgian 19th Line Regiment. The Belgian soldiers fired at the Germans, who had virtually no cover on these hay meadows. The Germans did not know what hit them, they were shot at in the back and from the side. They thought there were resistance fighters in the Neerhoek. That's why they killed all the residents they found there.

An eyewitness describes:

On the right side of the lane to the Martens farm are graves of German officers. On a wagon, the corpses of father Martens and his daughter Anna lay side by side on some bloody straw. The eldest son, Joseph, was lying next to the dead horses that had been harnessed. The mother and her sister lay lifeless a few meters away. Son Jules and a boy from Lede who was visiting the farm were found dead not far from a concrete drainage pipe. The youngest son Remi - previously missing - was later found lifeless under the rubble.

Two sons who fought in the Belgian army returned to the destroyed and burnt-out farm. They counted 530 shell craters in which they could bury their animals. Yet for months there was an almost unbearable stench in the Neerhoek.

ludwigvan