History
Troops not on daily frontline duty but possibly to be deployed again at short notice can come to Oeren, a few kilometres from the Yser Front, for a short rest. The hamlet is also designated as a solution when the nearby Alveringem cemetery is filled to capacity. An emergency graveyard is therefore created around the deconsecrated Saint Peter in Chains Church (commonly referred to as St. Apollonia by the inhabitants) in mid-1915.
The graves are laid out side by side according to date of death, but some soldiers fallen in 1914 are to be found here as well. The cemetery is redesigned around 1925. The dead are exhumed from the Alveringem municipal cemeteries and the surrounding area, and transferred to Oeren. Today 508 bodies are buried here, six of them unknown. Second Lieutenant Getteman’s grave is empty. He was transferred to his hometown of Maffle, but his headstone was not removed.
Casualties
508 First World War (6 unidentified)
Description
The cemetery circles the church. It has a low wall of typical West Flemish brick on the street side and a central entrance gate.
The graves are mainly arranged back to back in double rows, separated by flowerbeds. With the exception of five heldenhuldezerken (a Flemish word designating a Celtic cross with a Flemish motto, placed by the Heldenhulde committee and created during the First World War by Flemish intellectual circles to honour fallen Flemish soldiers, as a substitute for the official marking “Mort pour la patrie” (Fallen for the nation) in French), all the graves follow the typical Belgian bluestone model with bronze plaque.