The destruction of the occupied houses around the bunker and bridge was especially intensive. According to the Abwehr, a number of them were used as billets for officers and men manning the trenches at Veldwezelt. One of them, Café Nicolaes, was only fifty metres from bunker N. On Belgian maps and in their reports it was noted as a command post for the Bossaert troop³⁵. Jan Nicolaes ran a guesthouse which also had a shop and bicycle repair business. There was no concern in the house when the alarm status was announced a few hours before the gliders landed. Everybody thought it was merely another drill. Jan Nicolaes remembered:

“My mother (Cornelia Roox, 64) woke me. Outside, all hell had been let loose. She said I had to get up, the war had begun. People were shouting. It was a nightmare. The sky was full of aircraft. We saw that several gliders had landed on a meadow behind our house. Suddenly we heard an explosion and shortly afterwards a cloud of dust filled the house. The first bombs fell as we were going down into the cellar. Everyone started running. My mother went back up after hearing somebody shouting for help. She thought it was my brother’s wife, Anna Clara Staeren, but it was the daughter of the Haesen-Roox family who lived opposite. Isabella Haesen was running to our house when she was killed.