Zwijnestaarten van Ieper

Abstract

The book Zwijnestaarten van Ieper takes you to the former front areas of the First World War. Visual artist and photographer Geert Koevoets has been studying this poignant piece of history for many years. Two themes that particularly interest him are the devastated landscapes and the sickbays behind the front. After all, the landscape is a mirror of what happened there at the time and in the sickbays the soldiers were patched up again to return to the front. At the time, the landscape was intersected with trenches in which the most gruesome human dramas took place. It was a war that was completely locked and did not move forward or backward. For four years, this drama took place in the front area that stretched from Nieuwpoort to Basel. The Ypres Salient, a meandering ridge east of the West Flemish city of Ypres, is particularly known for the gruesome fighting that took place here. The warring parties were separated from each other by a narrow strip of no man's land. On either side of this, the soldiers had set up a line of barbed wire barriers as a last protection against an attack by the enemy. This barrier was made using iron rods twisted into the ground. The end, curled like a pig's tail, made it possible to screw these front pickets into the clay soil quickly and silently. Several loops were made in the above-ground part of the picket, through which the barbed wire was guided. The Belgians called them Zwinesteerten, the British Silent Pickets and the French Queues de Cochon. For Geert, the front pickets are striking artefacts that symbolise the intransigence of the armies and the senseless bloodshed of frontal warfare.