The In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper receives donations on a very regular basis. But this time, the donation had made a trip around the world before it came back to Ieper.

Jules Geldhof was born in Izegem (Flanders) in 1892 and served as a volunteer during the Great War 1914-1918. He kept a diary during the war. He was wounded in 1917 and transported to Birmingham in the UK to a military hospital where he met Clara Carter, an English nurse. The relation between Clara Carter and Jules Geldhof remains still unclear. Clara Carter married Ernest Ray, an Australian soldier was also stayed at the military hospital in Birmingham. After the war, they immigrated to Australia and took the diary of Jules Geldhof with them. 

Jonathan Ray, grandson of Ernest Ray, recently contacted the Belgiam Embassy in Australia and asked them to search for relatives of Jules Geldhof as he wanted that the diary went back to Jules' family in Belgium. And so the diary came back to Flanders where the Geldhof family donated it to the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper on Saturday 4 March 2023.

Click here for a video on the diary on the Australian television: https://fb.watch/gz0W5ZwhTl









Stephen Lodewyck, director of the In Flanders Fields Museum







Jonathan Ray contacted Arnaud Dusaucy (picture below), former chargé d'affaires at the Belgian Embassy in Canberra.





Short address by Wing Commander Jesse Laroche on behalf of the Australian Embassy in Brussels.



Word of thanks by Dirk Vandromme on behalf of the Geldhof family.





Annick Vandenbilcke explained the importance of personal collections for the In Flanders Fields Museum.









Handing over the diary to the family



and to the Museum.








 
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