On the night of 14-15 February 1943, German guns brought down a Royal Air Force bomber over Meerhout. The HE164, a Vickers Wellington, was on its way to bomb Cologne. Three crew members were killed. Three others survived the crash thanks to their parachutes. The Germans took them prisoner.

The Germans cleaned up the debris. Some Meerhouten people hid a piece of the wreckage in a barn of a nearby farm. After the liberation, they made a memorial with it in De Donken, near the site of the crash. She called it The Wing, but it was actually a piece of the tail of the crashed bomber. The memorial fell into oblivion until hikers rediscovered it in the 1970s. Today, it remains a unique memorial.

Dancing and singing with the Scots

On the night of 12-13 September 1944, the Germans left Meerhout. The next morning, the Allies reached Zittaart. Residents rushed to meet the liberators, the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders. There followed a triumphal entry into Meerhout via the Zittaartsesteenweg (today the Liberation Avenue). Later in the day, transport troops, tanks and guns followed.

It was party time in the village. Allied soldiers played music and taught the residents songs and dances, such as the Hokey Cokey. That folk dance, with set steps, was very popular in the UK in the 1940s. The soldiers brought a bit of home with them to Meerhout.

You put your left arm in
your left arm out
in, out, in, out
you shake it all about.

You do the hokey cokey
and you turn around
that's what it's all about!

Tourist information

Cycling routes

Toerisme Provincie Antwerpen has created liberation routes along the cycling network. Cycle and walk past the places where it all happened, such as monuments, military cemeteries and crash sites. For the liberation routes, go to fietsroutes.provincieantwerpen.be