Wevelgem
During the First World War, the Germans constructed an airport. The airport still exists and is now used for private purposes. Also remaining is the German Military cemetery, which is also partly situated in Menen. There are 47,864 soldiers buried there, who all died during WW1. This makes the cemetery the biggest German cemetery in Belgium. Across the cemetery, there used to be a (fake) airport, with wooden planes to mislead the enemy; there are still remains of the airport consisting of a big bunker and a small bunker near the railway. The bridge that connects Lauwe to Wevelgem was destroyed during the Second World War and was rebuilt later.
World War I prisoners of war in Germany
Cemeteries for deceased prisoners were gradually opened near the camps. It was a point of honour for the survivors to take care of their comrades’ final resting places. Most often, each nationality had its own reserved patch. In certain camps, such as Gardelegen, veritable monuments were erected. Roger Pelletier motivated his comrades: “Doesn’t it fall to us, who have known them, to all of us here who are their great family, to raise, in the cemetery where they rest, a monument of the French soul that, spreading above them like an aegis, will be above our dead, when we have left, as a memory and a goodbye?” Wilhelm Doegen estimates the number of dead in the camps at 118,159 but serious doubts surround this number, notably because Doegen failed to take certain diseases into account. Also according to Doegen, Russia suffered the heaviest losses (perhaps explained by the poorer nutrition of Russians, most of whom did not receive packages from their families) with a little over 70,000 dead, followed by France with 17,069 deaths, Romania with 12,512, and then Italy and the United Kingdom.