Yesterday I paid a visit to the ‘Kemmelberg bunker’, one of the relics of the Cold War. An ultrasecret bunker, initially intented as the command post for an international air defence system, but mainly used as a command post for excercise, crisis and conflict. For a long time this was an ultrasecret location, beneath a small house on the Kemmelberg, untill it was opened to the general public in 2009.
It is a travel through time… The old metal furniture. The phones with a disc. And also the ‘operations room’, with the maps and drawings of movements of military forces, for simulations of attacs by the Warsaw pact.
A few years ago, I’ve visited Kossa (former DDR), one of the command bunkers of the Warsaw pact. The difference is huge. Kemmelberg is spacious, high ceilings. Kossa is narrow, small rooms, low ceilings. A threatening atmosphere. Pictures of the bunker in Kossa are here.
BTW: if you wonder what IENA LILAS means (the last picture), that’s the threat level. And yesterday it was A, the lowest one (fortunately…). And the text on the phones warns that the lines of that telephone are not secure…
Eddy
