Military with Bob Morrison
Bob uncovers a nicely restored Series I Minerva originally supplied for the Belgian military service
This month the focus is on a nicely-restored Series I Minerva originally supplied for Belgian military service
One of the joys of snapping military and exmilitary Land Rovers is that I get to meet some very interesting people who often have great stories to tell, either about themselves or their Land Rovers and, occasionally, both. Former Belgian soldier Eric Vervaeke, who I was introduced to at the War & Peace Revival living history show in Kent last summer, is one such person and even though he speaks little English and I speak no Dutch our common love of Land Rovers broke down the barriers.
In the 19 years that I have been writing on military Land Rover topics for this magazine I do not believe I have made much more than the odd passing reference to the Minerva and, even though the type was still in Belgian service with what was then the country’s Para- Commando Regiment when I first started penning monthly magazine features some 30 years ago, I have never actually photographed this type on exercise or deployment. I did once come very close to catching up with these intriguing little vehicles on an exercise in Germany in the late 1980s but, frustratingly, I kept missing them due to communications time lags in those days before mobile phones became commonplace.
My first encounter with the Minerva, in the metal so to speak, was on a trip to Sint-niklaas near Antwerp in the 1980s to participate in the military vehicle classes of an IPMS (International Plastic Modelling Society) Belgium competition. I seem to remember coming back home with a trophy but I do not recollect much more about the modelling side of the event as I spent much of the day out in the car park talking Land Rovers with a Belgian SAS enthusiast group who had brought along a couple of beautifully-restored Minerva sin addition to WWII Jeeps. Somewhere I have black and white snaps of these vehicles but sadly they have become mislaid in the course of several moves over the last three decades.
Back to Eric and his equally nicely-restored Belgian Series I, which was manufactured in 1952 and earmarked to serve with the roughly 950-strong Belgian contingent committed to the United Nations force fighting to defend South Korea from Chinese-backed invasion by North Korea. To equip their troops with modern light utility vehicles for Korea, the Belgian Ministry of Defence ordered several thousand Land Rovers through Antwerp-based Société Anonyme Minerva Motors, who prior to World War II had been a luxury car maker and a few years after the war had entered a licensing agreement with Rover to build what we now call the Series I.
The bulk of Minerva Land Rover production, which ended in 1956 following a contractual breakdown with the Rover Company Ltd, was on a Belgian-produced copy of the 80inch chassis and used a Rover engine and drivetrain, but the majority of the bodywork was hand-built in Antwerp with mostly locally-manufactured components and accessories being fitted. As the Belgian company did not have the facilities to press the compound curve front wings they opted for a simple folded sheet design, which gave the Minerva its distinctive sloping front.
In addition to the front wings, another design change that helps one differentiate between the Belgian vehicle and its British sibling of the same era is the lack of a drop tailgate. The Belgians opted for a tailboard and mounted the spare wheel on a swing-away carrier that doubled as a “door” to stop rear passengers or cargo falling out over the low tailboard. A spare jerrycan was normally carried on the left
rear, balancing up the spare wheel on the right, which gave the Minerva a rear profile more akin to a Jeep than a Land Rover. From the side, however, there was no confusing the two as, other than the sloping wings, the Belgian cousin was a dead ringer for the British vehicle it was based upon.
Although both the Solihull-built Series I and the Antwerpbuilt Minerva served on the United Nations side during the Korean War, which ran from June 1950 through to an armistice signed in July 1953, (although technically North and South Korea are still at war as no peace treaty has yet been signed), contemporary images of these vehicles are few and far between. As was often the case back then, few thought to document the ubiquitous utility vehicle as it went about its humble but vital and often onerous tasks.
We do not know much of the early history of Eric’s 1952 Minerva TT (Tout Terrain) but it survived its first mission in Korea and was brought back to the military barracks at Sijsele, just to the east of Bruges, where it was used in a utility role for a few years.
Eric believes that from 1960 to 1963 the vehicle was deployed to the newly-independent Belgian Congo, then in the throes of civil war, but after being damaged by a grenade it was returned to Belgium for repairs. It continued in military service for a few more years before being cast and sold off as one of a pair along with other surplus equipment.
Both cast Minervas were purchased by the Broeders van Don Bosco, the Belgian branch of the Salesian religious order, whose work includes a mission in the Congo. By coincidence both vehicles were taken to a garage in Inzegem, about ten kilometres from Eric’s home, where he spotted them. By 1996 they were no longer drivable, and had parts missing, so he made a successful bid to buy them with the intention of completely dismantling, sandblasting all of the sheet metal and chassis, then repainting with undercoat and a top layer in military colours before reassembling – after refurbishing all mechanical components that is.
Once registered for road use in 2002, the Minerva featured here undertook many foreign travels, including 14 camping trips to Kent and Dorset. Eric has also driven the Rover three times to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, clocking up around 4500 kilometres each time, and in 2013 he drove her to Lagos in Portugal, covering 7000 kilometres entirely on country roads over 30 days.
Describing this trip to the Algarve, Eric told me: “It goes without saying that we have visited the most beautiful sights, where we always camped and this was also the most beautiful ride.”
Some commentators, including Land Rover historian James Taylor, have stated that the Belgian MOD ordered 10,000 Minervas and this does not strike me as being an unreasonable total for that post-war period. In addition to tensions still being high in Europe, with large standing armies still being stationed in the divided Germany, various so-called bush wars were simmering in both Africa and the Far East as countries reclaimed independence from colonial masters impoverished by WWII and as the USSR and China attempted to further their communist cause.
The Minerva Land Rovers were not only deployed far and wide, but they also remained in service with Belgium’s armed forces for a remarkably long time until replaced by a combination of, mostly 88in Series III Land Rovers from the early 1980s and the Canadian-built version of the Volkswagen Iltis from the mid-80s. Few cast examples were seen outside of Belgium until well into the 90s, but since the early years of the new millennium these intriguing and relatively cheap Rovers, when compared with Series I examples from the same era, have become much more popular on the British side of the Channel. Indeed I spotted several examples, both well-restored and rolling wrecks, at W&PR 2017.
Despite being able to shoot this fine example on a lovely summer’s day in the Garden of England, I still regret that I was not able to snap them in the field before they were cast.