Reunion | 2014-18.brussels

A man in his uniform poses with his wife wearing her nurse costume. Alphonse Hauwaert, from Uccle, had spent the entire war at the Yser front. During those four years, his wife had cared for the wounded and the ill in the hospitals of Brussels. Men and wife were reunited only after the Armistice. This picture immortalizes their reunion.

A minor number of marriages had been celebrated during the war, but this trend was inversed after the Armistice, and the end of the war was followed by a great number of weddings. Many unions which had been prevented or reported could now be celebrated, since the men were back from the front, from deportation or from exile. As from Augustus 1919, there would also be an unprecedented increase in birth rate. Life could finally go on again.