Westkapelle

Westkapelle stands on the westernmost tip of Walcheren with the sea on three sides, a village of some 2,600 people in the municipality of Veere. Its history turns on a single autumn: on 3 October 1944 British bombers breached the dyke south of the town to flood the German garrison on Walcheren, an event still called simply ‘t Bombardement. A hundred and eighty inhabitants died and the village was all but erased. Commandos landed through the gap that November, and the breach was not closed until October 1945. A Sherman tank stands on the dyke as a memorial, and war graves lie in a semicircle behind the lighthouse, one of two still active here, the older built between 1458 and 1470.