THE Germans lined up men from the town in the market place. They counted along the rows: One, two, three. Number three was shot, numbers one and two had to bury the body.

Joannes Peeters was a number three. His wife, Theresia, naturally gathered up what remained of her family and fled.

They all ended up, of all the places in all the world, in Witton Park, County Durham. Yesterday, Theresia's great-grandsons, Fredy and Frans, became the first of her descendants in nearly 90 years to come back.

Rather than being homeless and desperate for any sort of roof, they were guests of honour as they opened an exhibition of Witton Park's history, at Bishop Auckland Town Hall.

The Peeters family fled from Aarschot, in Belgium, in 1914 and were among 170 Belgian refugees who were sent to Witton Park. The village's Roman Catholic priest, Father Johannes Krajicek, from Newcastle, had arranged for the refugees to come because, as Witton Park's ironworks had closed in the 1890s, there were several terraces of empty houses available to them.

One of Theresia's daughters, Mathilde, is still alive in Belgium.

"She's now 92 but she told us the whole story," said Fredy. "They were extremely well-received in Witton Park.

"Our grandfather, Fransiscus, was living separately from the rest of the family because he was married. We know he helped construct a wooden village and worked in an ammunition factory, which we suspect was Birtley."

"He was a supervisor in the factory," said Frans. "He was working on a lathe driven by a belt and he told his colleague not to start it up until he said so, but it was started too quickly and his arm got caught and he lost it. It seems that they buried the arm somewhere up here."

While in County Durham, Fransiscus' wife gave birth to a son, Louis - Frans' father.

"Louis is 87 but he has no birth certificate or registration documents," said Fredy. "There is nothing. All we know is that he was called up into the British Army in the 1930s, so he must have been registered somewhere."

One of the great-grandsons' searches has already borne fruit. Fr Krajicek died in the influenza epidemic of 1918 and was buried in Escomb, near Bishop Auckland. Fredy and Frans found his grave on Sunday, but discovered that his crucifix headstone had fallen to the floor.

"He did so much for our ancestors that it would be a nice idea for Aarschot to help with its restoration," said Fredy.

"In fact, we would like to make some sort of a twinning arrangement between Aarschot and Witton Park and south Durham. It is astonishing that there has been no contact between the two areas since the refugees left in 1919, and I think we are the first ones to visit since."