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Picnic on the battlefield
12 december 2024

Extraordinary images in the family collections of Varlez and Pecher, preserved by Liberas, show how people tried to cope in the postwar years with the surreal heritage of four years of death and destruction.

11 November 1918 marked the end of the First World War. Yet four years of mostly static warfare had dramatically transformed the landscape in the frontline area, snaking from Nieuwpoort on the Channel through northern France all the way to the Swiss border. These devastated regions were in the wake of the war visited by thousands of people for a variety of reasons.

Picnic on the battlefield