Latgalistikys kongresu materiali, III. 2011. - Latvijas Universitāte

this article (21 February 2009), he himself acknowledged that he had neglected
his own literary production which remained very often unpublished,
scattered as it was among an impressive amount of all kinds of
documents.
3. The circumstances and the “lost notebook”
Émile Lempereur did his military service in 1929 in the 18 th Mounted
Artillery Regiment. He was mobilized in 1940 nineteen forty when with
the rank of sergeant and took part in the “Eighteen days Campaign” which
began on the 10 th tenth may nineteen forty when the German troops invaded
Belgium, and ended on 28 th twenty eighth may when King Leopold
III the three decided the surrender of the Belgian army.
The soldiers of that quickly defeated army were taken away in captivity
to Germany, and so Émile Lempereur was locked up in the Stalag
II C in Greifswald. This Stalag had been first set up in Woldenberg (Dobiegnew,
at present in Poland) to “welcome” Polish soldiers who were
later transferred to Greifswald, where many Walloon, French and Czech
soldiers arrived after them. It must be reminded on this occasion that the
Belgian soldiers who could assert a “Flemish identity” had been granted
permission to go back home quickly.
As a non-commissioned officer, Émile Lempereur was not forced to
work. Therefore, he remained in the Stalag, dealing with the organization
of a wide range of cultural activities (conferences, language lessons), and
reading avidly all the French books he could find in the camp library.
He fell gravely ill and could enjoy a repatriation on medical grounds
in 1941. He then returned to his native town where he met up again with
his wife, Jeanne, and with his daughter, Jacqueline, who had been born little
before the mobilization of 1940. He was also back in his class at the local
school in the centre of Châtelet.
While he was in captivity, he wrote poems in Walloon, which he put
down in a 54 pages notebook covered with black leatherette; he translated
those texts, or more exactly adapted them in French, and could finally
bring them back in his poor luggage when he got back from the Stalag.
The said texts remained unpublished. It was only after his death in
2009 that his widow, Jeanne Fostier, found the notebook again and left it
in the care of the Walloon literary Association of Charleroi to be published.
It makes you wonder why the Greifswald “notebook” remained hidden
for such a long time and why Émile Lempereur did not have it pub-
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