At the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, Germany invaded Belgium on its way to France, sending hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees fleeing for their lives.

A quarter of a million Belgians managed to make it across the English Channel to Britain — the largest influx of refugees in the country’s history.

There, they were greeted warmly by the government and the public and received housing in specially-built communities and the homes of generous Britons. Refugees were put to work aiding the war effort, some of them in all-Belgian factories, such as London’s Belgian Munition Works, which employed 2000 displaced individuals.

The broad sense of hospitality was inspired by stories of German atrocities in Belgium as well as the prevailing expectation that the war would quickly be over and the refugees would return home.

As the war dragged on into a stalemate of unprecedented scale and horror, tensions and resentments rose between some Britons and their guests, whose stay had come to seem almost permanent.

When the war finally ended, both the British and Belgian governments implored the refugees to return home. Ninety percent of the refugees left within a year of the signing of the Armistice, leaving little footprint of their massive displacement.