Historical farm "Ten Walle"

In May 1940, the Denolf family lived at the historic farm "Ten Walle". This farm was located along the old course of the Leie. In the land book of Oeselgem by Jean-Baptiste Van Huffef (1770), this farm is depicted with a main courtyard surrounded by a round wall, where the castle of the village lord of Oeselgem used to stand. By around 1600, this castle was already in a ruined state.

Just like the Vandaele farm, this farm was also in the line of fire, and the Denolf family decided to flee.

The Denolf family on the run

Leona Denolf, who was four years old at the time, recounts her story:

On the advice of the Belgian soldiers staying at our farm, father Maurice Denolf decided to flee. They arrived in the middle of the night at aunt Gusta's in Marialoop. Aunt Gusta immediately began to cry; it had only been about twenty years since World War I ended. Mother Denolf had not shed a tear, although she knew very well what war was and what it meant to leave everything behind.

After a few days, the shooting was over and it was time to go home. When they returned, everything was shot to pieces; it was a real wilderness and devastation. Fires had been set in three places, but they would not ignite. Many houses in the village and surrounding area had been destroyed; they had been bombed or set on fire.

On the farm and in the fields, rifles lay everywhere. Father had to remove two large carts, and according to him, a soldier does not throw away his rifle as long as he lives. There was also a great deal of damage to the crops in the fields, with many shell holes.

Hand-to-hand fighting at Heuvelhoek

Three hundred and fifty meters west of memorial point 15 lies Heuvelhoek, a higher-lying area of Oeselgem and thus strategically important. Here, there was hand-to-hand combat. Germans and Belgians charged at each other with their bayonets.

During the clearing of the battlefield, Maurice Carton separated a fighting Belgian and a German soldier here at the corner of Heuvelhoekstraat and Meuledreve, who had stabbed each other with their bayonets. Corpses were piled up near the chapel at the Vandaele farm and near the chapel at the Denolf farm. In total, seventy German soldiers were temporarily buried in field graves in various locations in the village. According to eyewitnesses, an unknown number of German fatalities were also taken away immediately. In 1942, those seventy field graves were transferred to the Ehrenfriedhof in Deinze. After the war, they were permanently interred at the German military cemetery in Lommel.

ludwigvan