Chapter 11. Achille Eduard Saeij and Irma Sophia de Paepe, 1915 to 2002

Oostburg, 1915

Achille Eduard was born at half past two in the afternoon of 20 May 1915, at Sint Baafsgang number five, Oostburg, in the first spring of the wire of death. His father, a farmhand, registered him the next day and signed the act, as chapter 10 told.¹ The family trees give his birthday as the 21st. The birth act, his gravestone and his memorial card all say the 20th; the 21st was the day he was registered.²

He grew up in West Zeeuws-Vlaanderen between the wars, the grandson of a Belgian labourer who had never learned to write. By 1925 his father was working as a field labourer and living at Waterlandkerkje.³ Achille was twenty-five when the German occupation began, and twenty-nine when the Canadians fought their way through the Breskens pocket in the autumn of 1944 and Oostburg, the town of his birth, was largely destroyed.⁴

The Germans used the water. Every polder needs pumps to stay dry; they stopped them, and let the ground water rise until it stood at the surface. Few parts of the pocket went completely under, but the fields turned to bog, which was enough to stop vehicles and make the fighting terrible. Operation Switchback began at dawn on 6 October 1944 across the Leopold Canal and ran until 3 November; the Canadians lost 2,077 men taking the pocket and took 12,707 prisoners.⁵

Water came twice more in Achille's lifetime, and both times it spared this corner. In June 1952 the Braakman, the old inlet that had drowned so much of his ancestors' country, was dammed at last, shortening twenty-eight kilometres of sea defence to under three. Seven months later, in the night of 31 January 1953, the sea came over the dykes across Zeeland and drowned more than eighteen hundred people. A few dykes broke in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and the water came over at Cadzand, but the disaster fell on the islands. Achille and Irma, at Oostburg, were not flooded.⁶

After the war

In 1946 Achille married Irma Sophia de Paepe, who had been born at Schoondijke, in West Zeeuws-Vlaanderen, on 24 November 1921; the family trees place the wedding there too.⁷ At the time he was working as an opzichter bij de provinciale voedselcommissie, an inspector for the provincial food commission, in the years when food was still rationed after the liberation.⁸ He was the first of the direct line since Bernardus, the gin seller of Kaprijke, whose recorded work was not on the land. Achille and Irma's children were Freddy, Peter and Annie.¹⁶ By 1960 Achille kept a shop in Oostburg: when his father died that December, it was Achille, "winkelier", shopkeeper, who registered the death.¹⁷

Remembered in the newspaper

From the 1950s the family's milestones appear in the local paper, de Stem. On Friday 8 May 1959 a small notice announced that the next day "our dear parents P. J. Saeij-Lohman, Walstraat 5, Oostburg" hoped to celebrate their forty-fifth wedding anniversary. It was signed by their two sons and their families: "A. E. Saeij-de Paepe en kinderen", Achille and Irma with their children, and "H. Ch. Saeij-v. Belleghem en kind", Herman in Philippine.¹¹

A year and a half later the same paper carried Pieter Johannes's death notice. He had died on 8 December 1960 in the Catholic hospital at Oostburg, "having received the holy sacraments of the dying", a "dearly beloved husband, father and grandfather". The family still lived at Walstraat 5. The funeral mass was held on Saturday 10 December in the parish church of St Eligius at Oostburg, and the rosary was prayed there on the evening of his death.¹² The notice lists the family by name: under Oostburg, after Mathielde and "A. Saey-de Paepe", the three grandchildren Freddy, Peter and Annie. We have masked only the line naming Herman's children.

Mathielde died in 1968. Her death, the family wrote afterwards, had come "nog vrij plotseling", rather suddenly, and "the Saey family, Oostburg/Philippine" thanked everyone for their sympathy.¹³

No gravestone for Pieter Johannes and Mathielde has been found in the graftombe.nl index of the Oostburg cemeteries; the grave may have been cleared long ago.¹⁴ Printed memorial cards, bidprentjes, were made for Achille and for Irma: both are listed in the indexes of memorial-card collections, but no picture of either card is online.¹⁵

IJzendijke

Achille and Irma lived out their lives in this corner of Zeeland. Irma died at Terneuzen on 9 January 2000, aged seventy-eight, and was buried at IJzendijke four days later. Achille survived her by two and a half years. He died at IJzendijke on 13 June 2002, aged eighty-seven, and was buried on 17 June in the cemetery on the Mauritsweg.⁹ Their stone there reads simply: Achille E. Saeij, * 20-5-1915, † 13-6-2002, and below two linked rings, Irma S. de Paepe.¹⁰

IJzendijke was the town where his grandfather Eduardus, a labourer from Bassevelde, had married in the council chamber in 1878, and where Eduardus's first son was born in the house at ward B, number 27. From Sleidinge, where the first link of this chain was buried in 1699, to the cemetery on the Mauritsweg at IJzendijke is a little over twenty kilometres. The family took nine generations and three and a half centuries to cover it, and it crossed a frontier on the way.