Canadian soldier returns to homeland in WWI and fights at Passchendaele
PASSCHENDAELE, Belgium — Richard Van Neste was 35-years-old, married and had six kids when he volunteered for the Canadian Army on Jan. 4, 1916.
As a native of Belgium, he no doubt wanted to help liberate his homeland, a neutral country that had been invaded by Germany at the outset of the First World War.
“Through his correspondence, Richard was well-acquainted with the situation in Belgium and this evidently played on his mind,” Van Neste’s grandson, Hubert Verbruggen, writes in a self-published biography of his grandfather.
Van Neste had left Belgium for North America in 1911 to look for better opportunities.