Magnet fisherman Koen Wijlaars (15) from Waalre caught his biggest catch ever on Saturday afternoon. He had a poison gas grenade from the First World War on the Beatrix Canal in Eindhoven. It sounds unlikely because the Netherlands was neutral between 1914 and 1918. How does that weaponry end up in Eindhoven?
Koen had returned to the bridge over Beatrix Canal on Saturday after his aunt, also fond of magnet fishing, had already found a bullet from the Second World War the day before. There in the bend at the Severijnpark where the Gender flows and crosses the Beatrix Canal, there could be more to get. That suspicion did not seem correct at first. “We already wanted to go home. The only thing we found was an old scooter,” says Koen.
When his aunt couldn’t get her magnet out of the water, the 15-year-old from Eindhoven threw his in to get everything on dry land. Instead, he pulled “a kind of bottle of sand” aside. “When it fell, I only saw that there was some kind of ignition at the top. We immediately called the police.”
A specialist from the police came to have a look and immediately called in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Service (EOD). Because the team had to move out from Soesterberg, Koen and his aunt had to wait two hours to find out exactly what they had caught. They had to watch from some distance as the EOD investigated. Koen: “These men realized within five minutes that it was a poison gas grenade from the First World War. It was not clear what poison gas it was, but it was a deadly projectile.”
Koen has spoken to the EOD and according to the clearance service, the projectile was probably dumped in the water by German, French or Belgian soldiers during the First World War. If that is indeed the case, then the poison gas shell may have made a long, wondrous journey of tens of kilometers in more than a century. It cannot be ruled out that the poison gas grenade was carried from the Belgian battlefield downstream in the Dommel to Eindhoven.
The grenade was removed in a special bomb case. “Those grenades do not detonate them, but are stored safely,” says Koen. After everyone went their separate ways around 2:30 p.m., the teen remembered that he also had a hockey game scheduled. “Yes, I was too late, but they thought it was cool at the club that it was because of that poison gas grenade.”
He was not afraid for a moment. “I think it’s cool and will definitely continue magnet fishing and I also have a metal detector. I like to find things.”