British occupy Namur

On 21 November 1918, according to the British chronology of the war, British troops occupied Namur. The city at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse had before the war been one of the two great fortresses defending Belgium from the east. The Germans took it in August 1914 with heavy siege artillery in five days, and on 25 August the last forts surrendered. After more than four years of occupation Allied soldiers entered the city, this time without a single shot.

The British did not capture Namur; they were following the withdrawing Germans. From 17 November two armies, General Herbert Plumer’s Second Army and General Henry Rawlinson’s Fourth Army, had been marching through Belgium in the advance to the Rhine. Under the terms of the armistice they were to advance in stages and keep roughly 10 kilometres behind the German rearguards. Field Marshal Douglas Haig wrote in his despatch of March 1919 that these stages were strictly observed, with one exception: cavalry detachments were sent ahead of the march to keep order in Charleroi and Namur. The local Belgian authorities had asked for this.

It was in the area of Namur that the march had to halt. The British railheads had been left far behind, 30–55 kilometres behind the leading troops, because in the last weeks of fighting the troops had advanced faster than the railways and bridges destroyed by the Germans could be repaired. On 18 November the quartermaster-general’s staff gave assurances that it would supply the troops up to the first designated halt line, but extending the railways further east took time. Since on 21 November the new railheads were not yet ready, the troops, instead of reaching the second line as scheduled, halted on an intermediate line running through Namur.

For the inhabitants it was a time of celebration. In the liberated towns the British were greeted with flags and triumphal arches. On 20 November General Rawlinson made a ceremonial entry into Charleroi. In Namur itself the first issue of the daily Vers l’Avenir appeared on 19 November, replacing the newspaper L’Ami de l’Ordre, published since 1839. After four years of occupation the local press could once again write without German censorship.

The halt did not last long. At the end of November the British cavalry reached the German border, and on 1 December the 1st Cavalry Division, which had passed through Namur on the way, crossed it. Only Plumer’s army entered Germany. Haig gradually withdrew the units of the Fourth Army to an area west of the border and around Namur.