For the Allies, the use of the port of Antwerp was crucial for the further course of the war. Hitler, too, was aware of this. Therefore, after the lost Battle of the Scheldt, the Germans bombarded the port city en masse with their retaliatory weapons V1 (unmanned flying bomb) and V2 (first ballistic missile).

These weapons were not too precise and regularly veered off course. A stray V2 came down in the Nieuwstraat in Koewacht on 24 February 1945, five months after the village had been liberated. The four victims lie in a collective grave in the Catholic cemetery. Their grave is flanked by the nozzle of the V2 engine, left behind after the explosion.