ARGONNE - Butte de Vauquois
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 16 May, 2019
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Year of visit: 2005
Via Varennes we return to the D 38, to the "Butte de Vauquois", (Vauquois Hill), where the front crossed the centre of the former village of Vauquois. Mine warfare destroyed the village and the craters formed a new No Man's Land.
We start at the rebuild village of Vauquois, south and below the former village. This memorial tells us:
Opposite this monument is the foot of the Butte de Vauquois.
Under the vegetation one can still see the entrances to an underground tunnel system of the French.
Another French dug-out, dug out in a slope of the hill. Nowadays the dug-out houses a Visitor's Centre, and an informative exposition with period photographs, and battlefield findings of the location.
The French troops used 60 cm mini railways (the Decauville system) to transport ammunition, explosives, and supplies inside the hill. Both belligerent parties carved out caves in the hill to house a military population of about 2.000 men; 800 French troops (150 of them engineers), and on the German side of the underground hill lived and fought 1,200 Germans (with 150 Engineers) .
This is one of the tunnel entrances. The height of the corridor is about only 1,5m.
We follow the path upward the hill via the French lines. We pass some elephant shelter boards.
The first French trench line was on the southern side of the top of what used to be the summit of the Vauquois hill.
The Memorial for the soldiers and the dead of Vauquois marks the extreme position of the French in February and March 1915.
The memorial marks also the location of the former main street of the "old" village of Vauquois.
The hill had been blown up by mine warfare. Four large mine craters is all that's left of the "old" village of Vauquois.
The Memorial oversees the 2 eastern craters. The crater lip between the two easten craters. The central one was caused after a German mine explosion of 60 tons of explosives at 14 May 1916.
The most eastern crater, caused by a German mine explosion on 27 February 1917.
We walk around the lip of the central western crater. On the north side of the crater lip the Germans created their own system of trenches: "Stronghold Petsch".
A view of the landscape northward from the "German" side of the crater lip.
Remains of the right observation post overseeing the eastern craters.
A last view from the German trenches at the western crater, over the mine craters to the French Memorial for the soldiers and the dead of Vauquois.
Inleiding: Franz Von Papen & Werner Horn; schaker en pion
Onlangs stuitte ik in een oud boek (1) van 1919 op een opmerkelijk verhaal over een Duitse Luitenant, die in begin februari 1915 een half geslaagde bomaanslag pleegt op een spoorbrug over een grensrivier tussen de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Ook al staat de bekentenis van de dader, Werner Horn, deels in het boek te lezen, de naam van zijn opdrachtgever zal Horn blijven verzwijgen. Na wat verder zoeken vond ik ook de naam van Horn’s opdrachtgever, Franz von Papen, een van de aangeklaagden van het latere Neurenberg Proces in 1946.
In een Grote Oorlog als de Eerste Wereldoorlog is Horn’s aanslag op de brug uiteraard slechts een bescheiden wapenfeit. Toch vermoed ik dat dit relatief onbekende verhaal, dat de geschiedenis is ingegaan als de “ Vanceboro International Bridge Bombing ”, nog interessante kanten kent. Het is onder andere een spionageverhaal over hoe in een groter plan een sluwe schaker zijn naïeve pion offert.
Beknopte situatieschets Canada en de Verenigde Staten in 1915
This trip we start at the Léomont near Vitrimont and we will with some exceptions concentrate on the Battle of Lorraine of August-September 1914 in the area, called, the “Trouée de Charmes”, the Gap of Charmes.
After the Léomont battlefield we continue our explorations to Friscati hill and its Nécropole Nationale. Next we pay a visit to the battlefield of la Tombe to go on to the Château de Lunéville. There we cross the Vezouze to move on southward to the Bayon Nécropole Nationale. At Bayon we cross the Moselle to pass Charmes for the panorama over the battlefield from the Haut du Mont. North-west of Charmes we will visit the British Military Cemetery containing 1918 war victims. From Charmes we go northward to the battlefield of the First French Victory of the Great War, the Battle of Rozelieures of 25 August 1914. North of Rozelieures we will visit the village of Gerbéviller. From there we make a jump northward to visit the ruins of Fort de Manonviller to finish with an interesting French Dressing Station bunker, west of Domjevin.
During this visit, we try to focus on the day that the momentum of the battle switched from the French side to the advantage of the Bavarian side: the day of 20 August 1914, when the Bavarians rapidly re-conquered the territory around Morhange , being also the day of the start of their rather successful “Schlacht in Lothringen”.
We will visit beautiful landscapes of the "Parc Naturel Régional de Lorraine", memorials, ossuaries, and cemeteries. Sometimes we will divert to other periods of the Great War, honouring Russian and Romanian soldiers, who died in this sector. We start our route at the border village of Manhoué, and via Frémery, Oron, Chicourt, Morhange, Riche, Conthil, Lidrezing, Dieuze, Vergaville, Bidestroff, Cutting, Bisping we will finish in Nomeny and Mailly-sur-Seille, where the Germans halted their advance on 20 August 1914, and where they constructed from 1915 some interesting bunkers.
