Zwijnestaarten van Ieper

Zwijnestaarten van Ieper takes readers on a journey through the former battlefields of the First World War.
Visual artist and photographer Geert Koevoets has immersed himself for many years in this gripping chapter of history. Two themes that particularly fascinate him are the devastated landscapes and the field hospitals behind the front lines. After all, the landscape is a mirror of the horrors that took place there, and in the field hospitals, soldiers were patched up to return to the front.

At the time, the landscape was crisscrossed by trenches where the most harrowing human dramas unfolded. It was a war that was completely deadlocked, with neither side making progress. For four years, this tragedy played out across the front lines stretching from Nieuwpoort to Basel.

The Ypres Salient, a meandering ridge east of the West Flemish city of Ypres, is especially known for the horrific battles fought there. The warring sides were separated by a narrow strip of no-man’s-land. On either side, soldiers had erected lines of barbed wire fences as a final defence against enemy assaults. These barriers were constructed using iron stakes that were twisted into the ground. The curled ends, resembling pig tails, allowed these “silent pickets” to be quickly and quietly screwed into the clay soil. Loops in the stakes’ upper sections guided the barbed wire into place. The Belgians called them “Zwinesteerten”, the British “Silent Pickets”, and the French “Queues de Cochon”.

For Geert, these front pickets are striking artefacts that symbolise both the unyielding determination of the armies and the futile bloodshed of trench warfare