A ‘dragon station' in Daverlostraat

The aircraft made it first appearance as weapon of war. To defend themselves against it, the Germans experimented with smoke pots, ballons captifs or cable ballons, and even 'dragons'. It is the anglicised form of the German word Drachen, which means kite.

Villa Les Mésanges (Daverlostraat 184) accommodates such a 'dragon station'. Boys in the neighbourhood were instructed to send up huge kites, in the (vain) hope of ensnaring a plane in the metal wire.

Of the downed kites, the Bruges residents used to recycle the metal wire and cotton fabric. This irritated the Germans, so much so that they used to cover their cotton in tar in a bid to render it unusable.

In 1918, German defence was sharp. Most air attacks were at night, with a dozen planes at once. If a listening post picked something up, the sirens would go off, the searchlights would come on and the anti-aircraft artillery would be brought into play with machine guns and light guns. In the last year of war, this happened almost every night, sometimes even several times a night.

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