Last weekend, there was a militaria fair at Fort Liezele, the best preserved fortress of the forts around Antwerp. I am a volunteer of te organization that keeps Fort Liezele in good condition, and regularly act as guide for visitors. So if you're ever in the neighbourhood, you should think about visiting!
But anyway, collecting militaria is not really my hobby, but I was present anyway to lend some helping hands to the organization.Militaria fairs in this part of Europe are mostly dealing in WW2 artefacts. This is quite natural if you think about it ... lots of stuff from WW2 hasn't desintegrated yet, as opposed to WW1 or earlier conflicts. And there's simply heaps of it to be found. One should not visit such fairs in the hopes of finding an original Waterloo piece of equipment :-)
Nevertheless, I bought 2 items.
The first is a poster that was produced for the Belgian army pre-WW1, and was meant as a memento for conscripts who had served. This poster is for infantry line regiments, and from the drawings one can see the life of the soldiers: leaving the homestead and returning (watch the dog!). There is also room for writing down the names of the officers of the regiment one served in, as well as the dates of some exercises. The middle portion contains some battle honours of various infantry line regiments. Interestingly, some regiments have honours for Waterloo in 1815, while Belgium only gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1830 (according to Belgian lore, for the Dutch it's 1839 :-)).
This poster will be framed, and will be a nice addition to my wargaming room.
A second purchase is a cigarette-pictures album, from Waldorf Astoria (not the hotel, but the cigarette factory, although there is an obvious connection between both). This one is about the "Alten Armee", the German army pre-WW1.
Next year, I might go for an original pickelhaube!
