1914 : Going to war

Mobilization

End July 1914: Reservist soldiers, their packs on their backs, cross Place Rogier in Schaerbeek, on their way to take the train to join their barracks. Contrary to what certain observers had feared, the mobilization decreed on 31 July was enacted without protest. The faces of the reservists displayed above all “resignation,” as reported by the press of the time. Most of them simply hoped that Belgium would stay out of the conflict, as had happened with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.