Landships II

I have received the following very kind reply from Johan Vanbesalaere:

It's indeed my intention to get it able to move by own power and to look
as realistic as we can.

Don't ask me when it will be ready, who will pay and how it all will be
done. I'm taking one step at a time, but with the above as our aim.
So far we do not get much support in our region, a big funding project
was turned down and our local council is not in favour of placing it
back again our market place too. But the more resistance we meet, the
stubborn and more determined we get

However we can use whatever support we can get and especially from abroad.

Let me also point out that the tank should be on the outside as realistic as
possible, but that we do not make it as it once was. We would like it to
be selfmobile, that would open a lot of possibilities with it, so
everything we do now is with that in our mind. Time will tell if we will
succeed.

Our project grew out of the fact that Poelcapelle was once very touristic but
isn't it at all anymore. We living at Poelkapelle see that other
villages in the surroundings do attract tourists and do invest in it. So
we took the intiative ourselves, older people telling us to put back again
a tank at the market. We searched to buy one, but soon found out this
was impossible, then we looked for one, fell upon Philippe near Cambrai
and so I started searching for relics around Ypres and I'm still am !!!
But although I did find out about some interesting places it's almost
impossible for me alone to get authorisation. But I keep on trying. It's
my dream to find one time such a relic around Ypres. And if there is 
one, I will.

In the meantime we decided,  my being a mechanical engineer, to build
one ourselves as they did in New Zealand ! (Presumably Peter Jackson's)

Researching the relics I gathered lots of information about all those
tanks around Ypres. At first concentrating on Poelkapelle, my old
schoolmaster who started this study already in the 80's wrote with my
help (he's more than 80 years old and in the meantime while writing his
wife died in an accident) a booklet. Have a look at :
http://www.tankmuseum.org/librarybookreview_0208.html

In a further step I would like to get it more detailed, I do have much
more information already and extend it to the whole salient. A work I
guess that will never be definitely completed, but fascinating to work
on. Let me tell you also there are only a few of us : myself the promotor
and doing a lot myself, and about 4 people helping me. All being
volunteers, working elsewhere and not getting paid for it, just in our
freetime. We're not at all commerical, just wanting to put again life in
our village as it once was the case. Some other non-tank projects are
also being  pursued.

Well, I hope this tells you already something. I would appreciate if you
could help us getting it known elsewhere so we can get whatever support
especially out of the UK. This would boost it here also locally, as now
everyone is not believing us we will succeed, telling us tanks were of
no use an are not an important subject around Ypres. So any interesting
contacts you can think of let me know !