While the Australians were baptised by fire in Fromelles with heavy losses, two catastrophes befell the city of Lille. In January 1916, the explosion of the Dix-Huit Ponts munitions depot ripped through the Lille-Moulins neighbourhood. In April 1916, the city hall was destroyed by a fire of accidental origin.

The occupied zone settled into the difficulties of day-to-day.

Women and children were the first to suffer from the war. They were also the symbolic stake in both camps’ propaganda.

Economic activity was organised as well as possible. There was a shortage of materials and unemployment reigned. Distribution networks were disrupted. For lack of production, malnutrition set in aggravated by the Allies’ blockade of Germany.

To be sure, the National Food Commission for Northern France distributed aide to all, picking up the aid brought in Belgium by the Commission for Relief in Belgium or the Hispano-American Committee.

The German authority was preoccupied by three problems.

First, the need to reduce the number of useless mouths to guarantee, in part, food for the army: this was the evacuation of children to The Netherlands, the evacuations to the countryside, or to Switzerland.

Then, it had to avoid the deterioration of the health situation by fighting both the typhoid epidemic and the venereal diseases which threatened the soldiers.

Finally, the notables who were held hostage to keep the population submissive. When negotiations for the liberation of the German prisoners of war failed with the French government, in 1916 and in 1918, the Germans decided the deportation of several hundreds of persons to Holzminden and then to Lithuania.