Hi,
There is a piece of history of my home town that is still remembered by the locals, but forgotten by the world.
I live in a small village called As, it’s situated in the north east of Belgium, only 20 Km from the border to the Netherlands and 25 Km from the city center of Maastricht.
The geography of the area, is mainly flat lands.
The name of the town was written Asch at that time of WW1 and later changed into As.
The geographical features are more or less the same as those on the western front around Ieper.
Ideal for the Germans to test al kind of things, also the population concentration was very thin, so a reason the more why this location was so Ideal to them.
In the neighboring village of Genk, at a side that’s called Kelchterhoef, they did the test for the first gas attacks, before the deploy this terrible weapon at Ieper.
What they did, was to take sheep and dogs, put them on the planes , opened gas cilinders, and letting the gas drift with the wind over the plains where the animals where.
Same technique of Gas attack first deployed at Ieper.
But not only did they do these awful experiments, they also build military training camps.
In my town, As, there are buildings, that the locals know as „de kolonie” named to an orphanage, that closed down 2003
But the history of these building dates back to the German occupation years.
In 1916 the Germans decided to build a “Fliegerschießschule”, a school for pilot/gunners.
All the complexes, where build with confiscated building materials from the coal mine of Waterschei (Genk).
This coal mines was still in construction when the first WW broke out, and so, an ideale source on materials for the Germans.
Work force was found in deployment of local forced labor.
By 1917 the facility was ready.
There was an airfield with wooden hangars for the aircraft, there where barracks for the soldiers,
and a casino, which is the officers mess, a very big building that is still there more or less.
Also to be found on the premises, was a real gun site.
what they did, was to make a moon shaped earth wall, on that wall they put up several muck up wooden aircraft, and in front of the earth wall, there was a narrow gauge rail track.
On that track, was a cable puled gun in placement, that wiggled around in all directions, to imitate air battle.
A local historian, Jan Landmeeters provided some pictures to me me to put here on the forum, wherefore I thank him.
Jan just recently did a fabulous book on Léon de Brouckère, a Belgian engineer who was a pioneer in aviation history before WW1, who starred an aircraft factory and school.
Unfortunately for most of you, the book is written in Dutch, but it has so many pictures in it, that I think it’s still worth while of buying.
And a chance to learn Dutch
Anyway, the airfield was officially opened on the 26th of May 1917, when the first German aircraft took off.
Estimated cost at the time of the whole complex, 60-80 million Belgian Franks, which would be a huge some at the time.
but not always a succes as this photo shows.
After WW1 the Belgian Air Force took over the vicinity, until 1927 when most of the complex was broken down, and where the airfield was, is now a housing estate.
The beautiful officers mess, whit all it’s side buildings, was from 1927 up until 2003 used as an orphanage, called "kolonie de Beeckman” later in 1970 renamed to "De Stap”
The institute is now relocated to modern facilities.
But while the institute was located at the officers mess, they always had a shortage of money to maintain the building, so only the necessary repairs where done to the building.
And to some point, this is the luck of the site to survive up until now.
After 2003 the buildings where in a terrible state, and the issue of what to be done with them arise.
I guess when this issue came up in the 1970’s, you would have found nothing by now.
But thankfully, times have changed, and local historians, and all who where interested did their effort to keep the site.
Somewhere around 2010, the town council offered these building to people who where interested in re-using the complex, but keeping of it looks.
A re-employment work group, for disabled people, bought/rented the building.
But the state of the building, and the quality of the building materials them self, where in such a bad state.
The bricks just pulverized into sand, that the structure was just to unsafe to be used by anymore.
So architects measured up the hole thing, contractors tare the whole structure down, and starred to rebuild the complex, with new building materials, as is was in it' original state.
The rebuild building is almost finished now, and I have to say, that in my view, this is a well chosen alternative.
What is going to happen to the small side building is still unclear, and I fear these are going to disappear, but it’s not curtain jet.
Photos of the new complex I’ll publish later, as I will for new historic photos
Also I have to mention that there are remembrances planed for 2017, more to that later.
I hope this article can be an inspiration to some of you, I hope jou enjoyed it, and sorry If this is not all proper English as I’m Dutch speaking, but I try to do my best.
If there are any questions, I’ll do my best to answer.
Cheers,
Danny
