During the second quarter of 1966, the atmosphere in the corridors at "Dauphine" was tense. As the victims of a situation for which they were not responsible, the French members of the International Staff kept their heads down. Their colleagues from other countries, meanwhile, made laudable efforts to hide any resentment they felt.
At the beginning of June, the NAC decided to transfer the military headquarters out of France, preferably to a location somewhere in the Benelux. In September, the 14 Allies on the Defence Planning Committee agreed that the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) should leave Voluceau-Rocquencourt near Versailles, France and be reconstituted at Chièvres-Casteau near Mons, Belgium as from 1 April 1967.
The deadline allowed for building the headquarters was very short, and hardly anyone believed that it could be met. However the building companies, most of them Belgian, achieved the amazing feat of completing the construction on time, and the inauguration of SHAPE took place on 31 March 1967.
The problem of the Alliance Headquarters remained. For several months of uncertainty rumours were rife. Rome was briefly put forward, but there was not enough accommodation in the Italian capital with its chronic housing shortage. The Netherlands was also mentioned, but here again, the limited housing available could not meet the requirements of the Headquarters staff. For a short while London, where the first headquarters of the Organisation had been, was offered up as the new heart of the Alliance, but was rapidly withdrawn when the Allies showed little enthusiasm.
After lengthy arguments between the countries which wished for the Alliance Headquarters to remain in Paris and those which wished for it to be moved elsewhere, on 26 October 1966, the decision was taken to set up house in Brussels.
The next question was that of a suitable site, with modern transport links and adequate telecommunications facilities - and all had to be up to NATO security standards. NATO paid what was then a substantial option fee for the Namur tower, but a feasibility study concluded that this building in the heart of town did not have sufficient space available, and that the security of the site and its surroundings was found to be lacking.
Time was pressing and a solution had to be found quickly. The Belgian government then proposed the Heysel area, which had housed the Expo '58 (the Brussels World Fair). Everything needed was there: a large area outside the town centre; good tram and bus connections; the telecommunications facilities of the Expo; good housing in sufficient quantity; etc. It was too good to be true!
The clock was ticking, and it was out of the question to keep the Paris headquarters going long enough to build something of equivalent quality. The Belgian government stepped into the breach with a two-stage solution - a temporary arrangement to be prepared very rapidly, and a permanent headquarters to be built at the Heysel within five years.
For the temporary headquarters, the old Brussels airport in the district of Haren met all the criteria. At the time this disused airfield was being considered as possible site for a military hospital. It was well situated between Zaventem airport and the centre of town.
There was just one little problem when it came to digging the foundations: the nearly indestructible concrete airstrips had been built during the Second World War by the Luftwaffe for its bombers, which took off from Haren to attack targets in Great Britain. In his book, The Big Show - which sold hundreds of thousands of copies after the war - the French RAF fighter ace Pierre Closterman described how the Luftwaffe later bombed the airfield they had built, after the Allies had taken it from them. On the night of 31 December 1944 to 1 January 1945, at the height of the Battle of the Bulge, the German air force carried out its last significant bombing raid on the site of the current Alliance Headquarters, destroying several dozen Allied aircraft grounded there by poor weather conditions and New Year’s celebrations.
The temporary headquarters at Haren was built as quickly as SHAPE had been, on a similar design free from any architectural extravagance, and the official inauguration was set for 16 October 1967.
The move from Paris to Brussels, which made the fortunes of many moving companies, went without any major hitches - apart from the collapse of the crane which had been brought in specially from Germany to lift the Turkish fresco now situated at the entrance to the Headquarters.
Of course the staff had been evacuated for this tricky operation. From an excellent vantage point on the Place Dauphine, they witnessed the jib failing, the operator fleeing headlong - luckily escaping with his life - and the crane crashing to the ground on the square. An unsolved enigma: the only picture of the falling crane was taken from the roof of the building by a photographer from the Communist newspaper L'Humanité. Nobody knows how he got there without authorisation - and without being noticed.
One of the Secretary General's major problems at the time was the widespread lack of enthusiasm among the International Staff for moving to and setting up house in Brussels. Less than half of staff members responded positively to his proposal.
Some of them - particularly the French, but also other nationalities - were well integrated into French society and had invested in real estate. Their children were being educated in the French school system, and in their view, the move held nothing but disadvantages for them.
Others had serious problems with the salaries. The Belgian scales were lower than the French ones.