Memorial Plaque Reinold Haesebrouck

There is a memorial information plaque for this war invalid in the Reinold Haesebrouck Park.

He was born in Sint-Michiels on October 5, 1892.
He worked at Jagers (later Bombardier) but was enlisted as a soldier on October 1, 1912 at the third Lansiers regiment in Beverlo.
When his military service was almost over, the First World War broke out.
His unit was located near Diksmuide. On October 24, 1917, he and his patrol reconnoitred some enemy positions. They ended up in a barrage of grenades.
Reinold crawled back to his position to report and then returned to help a wounded friend. Suddenly they were bombarded again and Reinold received shrapnel in the face, losing one eye - the other he later lost to a heavy inflammation.
Doctors would later remove 42 shards, a final shard from the head could not be removed because it was too dangerous.
He stayed in the military "Hospital of the Queen" in De Panne until the end of 1918.
After the war he married and the family settled in the Wantenstraat in Assebroek.
According to some sources, he was given this house by the royal family because he had thrown himself into the trenches against King Albert I when suddenly shots were fired.
When the National Association of War Invalids was founded, he was the first to be registered.

When in 1922 the Belgian government decided to bury an Unknown Soldier at the foot of the Congress Column in Brussels, Reinold Haesebrouck - at the request of King Albert I - was given the honor of designating the coffin of the Unknown Soldier.
A coffin of an unknown soldier was exhumed from five different cemeteries. These were taken to the station in Bruges, where Reinold - as a blind war invalid - indicated one coffin, the fourth from the left. It was no coincidence that it was the fourth coffin. After all, this symbolized the four divisions of the army at the time, namely the first lancers, the first division, the first squadron and the first section.

Reinold Haesebrouck died on August 25, 1951 in Assebroek, after which he was buried in Oostkamp with his parents.
A small park was named after him in Assebroek on June 11, 2020, near his former home.

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Source

• Text: TracesOfWar
• Photos: Marie-Christine Vinck