VERDUN - Fort de Douaumont
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 24 Mar, 2019
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Years of visit: 1986, 1994, 2005, 2009
















HAS CONQUERED WITH AN ADMIRABLE COURAGE THE FIRST GERMAN LINES, NEXT IT HAS PROGRESSED UNDER THE ENERGETIC COMMAND OF LIEUTENANT COLONEL REGNIER, BREAKING THE FOLLOWING RESISTANCES OF THE ENEMY OVER A DEPTH OF TWO KILOMETRES, HAS WRITTEN A GLORIOUS PAGE IN IT'S HISTORY, OVERPOWERING IN AN IRRESISTABLE ATTACK ON FORT DE DOUAUMONT AND HOLDING IT'S CONQUEST IN SPITE OF THE REPETITIVE COUNTER ATTACKS FROM THE ENEMY."































The Explosion Disaster of 8 May 1916

On 8 May 1916, around four o'clock in the morning, panic broke out under the German occupiers. "The Blacks are coming!", some soldiers shouted in confusion. They wrongly supposed they were attacked by Maroccan fierceless forces of the R.I.C.M.. A direct artillery hit reached some ammunition in a corridor and some ready to use grenades.

The ammunition depot is quickly sealed up and, to this day, remains as a mass grave within the fort. Nowadays there is a chapel to commemorate the more than 700 German deads, caused by this one explosion disaster. 679 Deceased of them are buried behind the wall in the back.
Source: the witness report of the German Stabarzt Dr. B. Hallauer






































On 24 October, the Army Corps of Général Mangin succeeded to recapture the Fort de Douaumont. As we have been reading on the bronze panels above the entrance, thanks to a large and decisive contribution of colonial troops, from Marocco, Somalia, Senegal, Tunesia, and Algeria. The operation in the whole sector ended on 15 December 1916.































This concise inscription tells a horrific event about the period of the German occupation of Fort de Douaumont and it's near surroundings from 25 February until 24 October 1916:





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.


