VERDUN - Etang de Vaux - Vaux Destroyed Village - Fort de Vaux - Ouvrage de la Laufée
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 23 Mar, 2019
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Years of visit: 1994, 2005, 2009


































































With these events in our mind we continue our exploration.



















IN THIS RUINED FORT 250 MEN RESISTED DURING 7 DAYS (1-7 JUNE 1916) THE FURIUOUS ASSAULTS OF THE GERMANS. TO ATTACKS WITH GAS AND FLAMABALE LIQUIDS, TO TORTURE AND THIRST.”
"To the Commander of the German forces, who attack Fort de Vaux,
Under the following conditions: with the honours of war, respectful treatment, the choice of officers respected to keep their personal care-takers, and personal objects left with their proprietors, I surrender the premises and parts of the stronghold, still under my command in Fort de Vaux, to the German troops.
Fort de Vaux June 7, 1916. Commander of the battalion, Commander of the fort, Raynal."
The Siege of Fort de Vaux






"I have no water anymore, despite the rationing of the last days. I should withdraw and I have to be supplied immediately with water. I believe that I have used the utmost of my forces. Under these conditions the troops, men and officers, have all done their duty to the utmost."
The telegram continues with mentioning the names of men nominated for a medal award, the names of the dead men, and the wounded, and then to end with:
"I hope that you will intervene with renewed vigor before the total exhaustion."
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A part of the interior of Fort de Vaux is open to the public. Photographing is allowed. We make a tour along some interesting sites in the fortress, important for the story of the Siege: the main corridor, the water tank, the barracks, the office of Raynal, the first aid post, the east corridor, the "lost" latrines, and backwards to the west, to the memorial chapel at corridor D, and the interior of the western Casemate de Bourges.
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24 Octobre - The French recapture the fort











The job of commanding the Ouvrage must have been stressful for the officers. On 31 March Captain Waltz of the 10me Regiment de Hussards takes over the command, sustained later by Captain Poirier and Captain Burthe d’ Arbriet, Commander of the 23me Escadron de Dragons. On 18 August 1916 Captain Rex, a Chasseur of the 4me Bataillon de Chasseurs à Pied, takes over the command of these morally and physically stressed officers.
Function of the Ouvrage

This stronghold contains several underground shelters. During some periods it even served as a Command Post for 2 batallions. There was a shaft to a source, connected to two water tanks. There were two exit caverns. A part of the redoubt served as a dressing station. During the end of October 1916 the French installed also a generator room to feed the stronghold with electricity. Beneath this concrete complex there were 530 tunnels and rooms, and 40 shafts. Much of the system is now filled in, or unstable, and very dangerous.
Daily Bombardments and infantry attacks.
The Ouvrage possessed a powerful 75 mm gun turret, which bombarded together with the guns of Fort de Moulainville and the nearby Batterie de Damloup, the Germans, occupying the Fort de Vaux. Only on one day, on 4 June 1916, it fired 294 grenades at the Germans! At 8 and 9 June however the superstructure of the Ouvrage received more than 400 impacts of German 210 mm and 380 mm shells. In the days before 23 June the German shells count 700 a day. On 23 June the Germans deploy an infantry attack at the Ouvrage and the Batterie de Damloup, which the garrison of the Ouvrage knows to withstand. In July the bombardments on the Ouvrage continue. On 11 July starts another series of German infantry attacks, with the German 126 I.R., 143 I.R., and the 99 I.R. conquering even the nearby Batterie de Damloup, but not the Ouvrage. The German artillery bombardments would continue until the end of August. From 24 October 1916, during the French counteroffensive, the 75 mm gun turret of the Ouvrage took part in the bombardments of the slopes around Fort de Vaux and the German trenches in Damloup and around the Batterie de Damloup, firing 545 grenades a day.
During December 1916 and January 1917 the Ouvrage suffered many more of these heavy German artillery bombardments. Later, during the Second World War, the Germans exploded the 75 mm gun turret. Main Source: A post war report of an unknown French author: "Monographie de l'Ouvrage de la Laufée".
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(Source: L'Est Républicain, 12-07-2009.)
I continue my exploration to find more of these deep shafts.





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.


