Kwartier Barbanson
THE ABANDONED MILITARY SITE IN BELGIUM
In 1982 the military site in Bevingen, part of the Brustem airfield, officially received the name ‘Kwartier Barbanson’. The Barbanson post was a military school of the Belgium air force.
The German occupiers built this military village during the Second World War. They used the site as a base to attack and destroy British bombers. After the Liberation, the domain retained its military purpose, but now it is home for the USA Army. Later it became the Air Force Enforcement Center, the military school of the Belgian Air Force.
Jean-Jacques Barbanson was born in Paris in 1918. On 1938, he joined the Belgian Air Force. In the early morning of 10 May 1940 he was working at the Goetsenhoven Airfield when the Luftwaffe attacked the airfield. A wounded Barbanson tried to fight a fire in one of the hangars. Sadly, he lost his life doing this. The General Staff decided to honor Barbanson, and they assigned the name ‘Kwartier Barbanson’ to the Air Force Enforcement Center.
The site has about 25 blocks of barracks. Besides the soldiers rooms, we found several bars and restaurants. Life didn’t look that bad for the upcoming soldiers. In 1996 the place is closed down, most of the site is used again as a shelter for asylum seekers. I visited ‘Kwartier Barbanson’ in 2006 and 2018.
