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.
British cavalry during the First World War
Although the trench warfare on the Western Front was dominated by the artillery and infantry, the cavalry still suffered 5,674 dead and 14,630 other casualties. For comparison, one infantry regiment—the Northumberland Fusiliers—had 16,000 casualties. Unlike the huge losses in the infantry regiments, only ten cavalry regiments suffered over 200 dead. The 3rd Dragoon Guards, with 333 dead, had the most killed, while the 7th Hussars had eighty dead, one less than the 21st Lancers, which had remained in India throughout the war. The dead included one major general, eleven brigadier generals, but only twenty-eight of the 1,161 lieutenant colonels killed during the war were from the cavalry, several of those after having assumed command of an infantry battalion.