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* Report: July 15th, 2023: The Belgians Parade to the London Cenotaph *

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Last update: 25/06/23


Elegy to
the Heroes of Silence


This site was conceived to facilitate historic research relating to the Allied air forces that were committed to the fight against Nazi Germany in Belgium between 1940-1945.

My country was directly involved in the efforts which the Royal Air Force developed during this period. In order to destroy the enemy’s strategic sites, aircrew had to overfly Belgium, with the permanent danger of being intercepted by German night fighters, both on the way out from the UK on their bombing missions and on their flight back home.

In common with many other Internet users looking for information regarding specific airman who fell to the ground in Belgium, I came to realize that no single website contains a complete list of the crash sites in Belgium, airmen implied in these tragedies, etc. There are many excellent databases which allow some research, but to get the most complete information, it is necessary to undertake significant and often risky research into the enormous mass of information which is available across the Internet. The family members of airmen killed in the fight know something about it, but it is often pure fate which brings the information looked for, often after years of searching.

The site "The Belgians Remember Them" was also created to pay tribute to the thousands of aircrew from the British Empire and their Allies: the British, the Canadians, the New Zealanders, the Australians, all those coming from the wider Commonwealth, the Poles, the Dutch, and, of course, my fellow Belgian countrymen who joined up to the R.A.F. and who are generally recorded in official files as having British nationality.

When I first thought about creating this website I always imagined it as a Memorial dedicated to the memory of those thousands of young men who gave their youth and their life, so that I may live in freedom, today.

I think of each of them, who at the time of boarding the plane, had the guts to realise that they had a 50% chance of not coming back, and if they had returned safely from a mission, had to see that many of their comrades-in-arms had not been so lucky …

I think also of the poor mothers and the wives of these men, for whom the world fell apart, when they received the telegram announcing that their son or their husband was declared missing in action, and that other information would follow …

It is for them that this site exists, so that we do not forget the sacrifice of thousands of young people, 75 years after it all happened.

When the current international situation is disturbed as never before and peace is so threatened, I do not want to forget them.

And with my compatriots, I say and will repeat:

The Belgians Remember Them

Wilfred Burie
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"The Belgians Remember Them" - Rue de Maulde, 2 - B/7830 HOVES (Silly), Belgique - Tel: +32/(0)479/245.148
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