Tri-Service
Ex RAF Germany Base Houses Asylum Seekers
A former British military base in Germany has become part of the response to the mass migration crisis.
Housing at what was once RAF Wildenrath is being used to accommodate newly arrived asylum seekers.
The first few families have arrived and are now settling in.
The 115 residents are mainly from the Balkans and the Middle East. All are building new lives in what, until 2012, were British Army married quarters.
Since the last forces families left, the estate has been over-run by nature.
After all, this once was forest and the unused streets and pavements are buckling in the face of an onslaught from ever encroaching trees and undergrowth; signs warn the new inhabitants that wild boar roam free.
The residents themselves seem pleased with their new surroundings, if concerned that this is yet another temporary stop on their journey to a new life.
The official estimate is that people will be here for between two weeks and three months while their applications are assessed, although that target dates from before the sheer numbers of new arrivals to Germany and the EU escalated to current levels.
It's still too long for some. Ayas, a Syrian Kurd who fled here with his wife says he just wants to work. He is a civil engineer and wants to study too, to convert his qualification to a European standard.
For now though he and the other families must remain here, with little to help them pass the time.
A whole block of houses has been converted to act as makeshift community centre; three meals a day are served there, while upstairs are play rooms for different age groups.
It's all staffed by a combination of volunteers and professional social workers from aid organisation the Johanniter, the German Order of St John and far larger sister organisation to St John's Ambulance. The regional government is funding them to provide shelter to the vast numbers of new arrivals.
Social worker Jana Petervek is part of a team supporting the children and young people at Wildenrath. “They are patient”, she says when asked whether it complicates things for the residents not to know how long they may be there for.
The site is secured but the new inhabitants are free to come and go as they please. The gate and security guards are, the authorities say, to stop children wandering off or, ominously, anybody else getting in.
This housing estate, though, is in the middle of a forest and with only the main gate for access the nearest useful shop would be miles away on foot in the small town of Wegberg.
Mayor of that town Michael Stock is happy to see the site in use again. “A perfect place” he says, “for people who have fled war or terror to make their new home.”
So far the few families to be welcomed here, and they are all families, are sharing a handful of the larger houses on a short stretch of Harrier Way.
The problem is that, unused, many of the services have failed. New electricity supplies need installing, new water pipes too, and with the bitter german winter fast approaching another crisis is the heating.
In common with many UK bases in Germany, Wildenrath was heated from a central boiler house. The boilers themselves are fine, the problem lies in the kilometres of underground pipework connecting them to the houses.
Even so, work is underway on increasing the number of useable properties; by the middle of next year as many as 800 people could be living here.
Wildenrath is one of the first former UK military housing estates to be used, but it won't be the largest.
With the crisis coinciding with the British Army's withdrawal from Germany, other abandoned bases are likely to be pressed into service too.
Fallingbostel is expected to welcome up to three thousand asylum seekers later this month.
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