Qualla: Battle of Buggenhout

Battle of Buggenhout: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Times, Public domain. On 22 September 1914, seven detachments of one hundred Belgian volunteers each climbed onto bicycles in Antwerp and rode out into the German rear. Their orders were to cut railway lines across Limburg, Brabant, and Hainault. Some of them succeeded - ten motorcyclists tore up the rails between Bilzen and Tongeren, and two hours later a German troop train derailed. Some of them did not return. The Germans found them, killed them, and burned the villages where they had been hidden. The Battle of Buggenhout, which gives this whole confused week its name, was the larger sortie that the cyclists were meant to support: a Belgian army of two divisions plus cavalry, sallying out of the National Redoubt at Antwerp from 25 to 29 September 1914, in a desperate effort to pull pressure off the French on the Marne.

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Image: The Times | Public domain

Battle of Buggenhout: Why the Sortie Happened

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Davidh820, CC BY-SA 3.0. King Albert I commanded the Belgian field army from the great ring of forts around Antwerp - the National Redoubt - while the Germans drove south into France. The French Grand Quartier General sent urgent requests to Antwerp: please attack, please cut their communications, please...

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Image: Davidh820 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Buggenhout: The Action of 26 September

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 26 September the 4th Division advanced on Dendermonde and found the town in ruins and the Germans pulling out. The Belgians moved through the wreckage along both banks of the Dender and engaged Landwehr Brigade 37 at Sint-Gillis, Oudegem, and Wieze. The 5th Division covered th...

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Image: Paul Hermans at Dutch Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Battle of Buggenhout: What Was Done in Aalst

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. The Belgian Wikipedia summary records, in the dry register that war histories adopt for atrocity, what German troops did in Aalst as they pulled back. An old weaver carrying a pail of water across the street was bayoneted. In the Binnen Straat, houses were set on fire and two men...

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Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Battle of Buggenhout: The Volunteers in the Campine

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. At the same time, in the Campine region in Limburg far to the east, the 4th Volunteer Regiment - young recruits, many of them students - was fighting its own scattered war. They held the camp at Leopoldsburg, cleared the countryside of German scouts, and stitched themselves into ...

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Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Battle of Buggenhout: The End of the Sortie, the Beginning of the Siege

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. On 28 September the siege of Antwerp began in earnest. German artillery opened on forts Waelhem and Sint-Katelijne-Waver, the southernmost of the great ring around the city. Belgian operations in Limburg ended. The sortie at Buggenhout had failed to destroy Landwehr Brigade 37, h...

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Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Battle of Buggenhout: The Ground Today

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer), CC BY 4.0. Buggenhout itself is a quiet municipality between Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussels, with about fifteen thousand inhabitants and a forest, the Buggenhoutbos, on its northern edge. Dendermonde was rebuilt after both World War I and World War II - the older was the more total destructio...

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Image: Trougnouf (Benoit Brummer) | CC BY 4.0