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The War Dead Register provides basic personal information (name, first name, date and place of birth, etc.) and does not contain military files (giving a complete overview of the military career). According to date of birth the files are kept either by the Royal Military Museum or by the Defence archives service. The files safeguarded at the Military Museum can be consulted on site (Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels). The files kept up till now by Defence are currently transferred to the General State Archives.
The date on which they will be once again available has not yet been determined.   

 

Archives of the Royal Military Museum 

Documentation Centre 
Parc du Cinquantenaire 3
1000 Brussels
E-mail : cdoc.klm-mra@warheritage.be   
Website: www.warheritage.be

Cemetery details

Where?
Kerkstraat 69, 8660 De Panne
 
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History

When Adinkerke military cemetery is almost filled to capacity by the end of 1917, the creation of a new graveyard becomes more urgent than ever. With the countless servicemen dying every day in the field hospitals L’Océan in De Panne and Cabour in Adinkerke in mind, the De Panne civilian authorities are compelled to ask military governor Andringa to establish a new cemetery on their territory. 
The first casualties are already buried in De Panne by December 1917, but the cemetery as such is only set up in the Duinhoek, a few kilometres from the village centre, in January 1918, with a civilian and a military section. Burials follow in quick succession. By the end of 1919, when the field hospitals are closed, the venue already counts 1,486 graves. 
In the 1920s De Panne, initially a hospital cemetery, becomes an assembly cemetery. Many dead are repatriated to their former places of residence, while others are transferred from smaller cemeteries in the area to De Panne. 
In 1924-1925 formatted Belgian headstones replace the large variety of personal tombstones, and the cemetery in that way gradually acquires its current appearance. Most graves date from the First World War, but the cemetery also contains 314 Second World War casualties. The site also is an open cemetery for casualties still found to this day and who are, for various reasons, not buried by their families.
 

Casualties

3,433 Belgians First World War (811 unidentified – 1 private grave) – 314 Belgians Second World War – 38 Frenchmen First World War

 

Description

The military section is situated behind the civilian section of the cemetery and can be reached by stairs. The 6.6-acre rectangle is divided into several plots, arranged around a central flagpole. The graves are arranged in parallel rows and the headstones stand back to back. 38 Frenchmen are buried together in five graves.