As the German's ploughed through Belgium a century ago, overpowering the "plucky" Belgian army, occupying Brussels and laying waste to the countryside, many civilians fled to the UK. Clive White looks at how their arrival was reported in the Craven Herald.

WHEN Private William Boardman wrote home to his family in January 1915, much of his letter is taken up with his concern about the plight of the "plucky" Belgians.

The Duke of Wellington Regiment soldier had been in the thick of the fighting since he went out as a reservist in August 1914.

He had even had a miraculous escape from death. A bullet had been deflected by his Scout knife and tobacco tin and penetrated his thigh. Private Boardman was "fixed up" in hospital and sent back to the front.

So when he dropped a line to his relatives, it is significant to read that half of his letter is an appeal to his wife to show compassion and support for the Belgian refugees living in Craven.

He tells her their Belgian homes were being flattened by the Germans, who continued to shell them even though many were just piles of rubble.

"Please treat them well," he pleads. "Try and give even a trifle if there are collections. You will never be worse off than they are for their homes are razed to the ground. We go through villages where there is hardly a house standing."

Craven supported a large number of Belgian refugees throughout the four years of strife and the Craven Herald even carried some stories in Flemish.

Nationwide there were 250,000 who had fled to the UK to seek sanctuary, with most communities offering a helping hand.

A number of well-known national figures supported appeals to raise "relief funds" for the refugees, among themKing George V and Queen Mary, Winston Churchill and Lord Kitchener.

One of these refugees was a Monsieur Dubons, who had managed to flee his homeland in 1914, but had become separated from his wife and family who were still in Belgium. He ended up in Thornton-in-Craven.

By early 1915, he had set in motion a plan to go back and rescue them under the noses of the Germans. So he took a boat across the Channel, recalling later in the Craven Herald, that it was rough passage.

Eventually he reached Maastricht, in Holland, and sent a "courier" into Didou, his home town 20 miles away over the border and occupied by the Germans. The "courier" failed to reach his wife and child and other family members.

Monsieur Dubons tells the Craven Herald reporter there was no alternative but to chance it himself and he managed to sneak past German sentries guarding the frontier and reach his family.

He does not say what that was like, but it must have been a remarkably moving moment.

They packed up and began their return journey, but being such a large group it was obviously more difficult and dangerous, especially as Mr Dubons had to carry one of the children on his shoulders.

Several times they were challenged and turned back but they persisted and after creeping behind hedges and into woodland, they found a safe haven to await the arrival of nightfall.

Later with the aid of a friendly Dutchman, who acted as lookout and occupied a sentry in conversation, they managed to cross the frontier unscathed, apart from torn clothing as they struggled through barbed wire.

Mr Dubons managed to get back home to Thornton-in-Craven and, presumably, spent the rest of the war in this part of Yorkshire.

Belgian people were a familiar sight in towns stretching from Margate to Hull, some living in purpose-built villages supplied by electricity - many British houses of the time still relied on gas. There were special schools and shops and even small hospitals and a police force.

One of the most famous fictional detectives in British literature, Hercule Poirot, was inspired by a refugee who had settled in Torquay throughout the First World War and was an acquaintance of Agatha Christie.

Come the end of the war, the vast majority returned home following an appeal from the Belgian government to the country's diaspora to return home and help the country grow out of the ashes of the four-year-long confrontation. Within 12 months almost 90 had responded to the appeal.