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Attention: the War Dead Register only lists Belgian fallen soldiers.  
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

On 11 November 1918, the Armistice comes into effect. At 11 am, the guns fall silent.

The First World War comes to an end, yet 54 Belgian soldiers still lose their lives that day. They will never know peace. Some fall on the battlefield, while others die far from the front lines, in a hospital or far from home, in France or in a German prisoner-of-war camp. Some are killed by enemy fire, while others succumb to their wounds or to an illness caused by the war.

Adjutant August (Rochus) Smets is one of them. During the Liberation Offensive, from mid-October until 11 November 1918, he takes part in the Battle of the Lys and the fighting along the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal. Wounded by shell fragments, he dies on Armistice Day in a field hospital in Sint-Martens-Latem.

On 11 November, we remember August, one of the last Belgian soldiers to fall during the First World War, as well as the 38,702 Belgian soldiers who gave their lives for our freedom during the conflict.