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So it's time for another Verdun fort report!
Following the declaration of peace after the Franco-Prussian war the French had to rapidly construct a ring of forts around the fortress town of Verdun to bolster their defences. The Prussians had annexed most of Alsace and Lorraine as conditions of their punitive settlement terms and this meant that the border between the two countries had effectively moved much, much closer to the city. With such a short distance to march before engaging the key French defence an invading German army could quickly over run Verdun and proceed along the shortest route to Paris with little in their way to stop them. The first forts built were rendered woefully inadequate almost overnight by the rapid evolution in German artillery and by the development of "Picric Acid" high explosive. The next huge blow to the French defence plans was an alliance between Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire and Italy, meaning that yet again the French would have to have a radical rethink and spend millions of Francs "bigging up" the Verdun ring of steel and concrete.
Their answer was to begin a second wave of fort construction employing several radically new design concepts. The main feature of the newer forts was the addition of self contained, heavily armoured gun emplacements in the form of retractable turrets carrying a variety of different calibre weapons. This design got rid of the reliance upon mobile artillery deployed within the confines of the fort such as was conceived with the "Panic Forts" in the first wave of construction after the peace of 1872. By far the most commonly encountered emplacements from this period are the double Hotchkiss machine gun turret and the twin 75mm fast firing artillery turret, but there are also several twin 155mm artillery turrets dotted amongst the forts providing a much heavier bombardment capability in support of the lighter artillery pieces. All the turrets worked in conjunction with a 7 inch thick armoured steel observation turret, each connected to the corresponding fighting turret by voice tube communication so that independent fire control commands could be given by the observation officer even in the event of a loss of power to the fort. At the same time the tendency to build fighting galleries in the inner moat walls to protect the fort from attack along the moat was abandoned in favour of the construction of caponnieres. These are hardened concrete emplacements jutting out into the moat in such a way that the defenders could pour enfilade fire into their enemy along the moat bottom. The caponnieres were also sited in such a way as to afford mutual support to adjacent caponnieres. The problem though with caponnieres is that despite their heavily armoured walls they are still very vulnerable to plunging artillery fire such as that from howitzers and mortars, so as a result their roofs had to be built ever thicker in order to withstand the likes of the 420mm Krupp siege gun. Increasingly the construction of caponnieres was abandoned in favour of the construction of counterscarp galleries instead which are built into the outer wall of the moat and accessed by tunnels travelling beneath the moat bottom from within the fort proper. This meant that instead of a roof made with 3 or 4 feet of concrete the soldiers defending the moat could now rely upon several feet of earth over their heads as well. Despite the efficacy of counterscarp galleries the forts were still built with, or retained during periods of modification, a double caponniere on the entrance elevation of the fort to protect the drawbridge entrance.
BELOW is a section of the map of the area in which Fort de Choisel is located. On the left bank of the River Meuse there are two prominent ridges along which a series of forts were built which effectively closed down the route around Verdun on that side of the river. Just outside the tiny village of Lombut the first fort in the chain is de Choisel and it operated with the close support of a smaller fort or "ouvrage", du Chana, on the opposite side of the valley. Forming the slightly offset point to the triangle of defences for this valley is the Ouvrage de Germonville to the south west, and the three acting in conjunction could stop a sizeable force from proceeding as far as Fromereville-les-Vallons, the village at the exit to the narrow valley. In addition de Choisel could act in support of Forts de Bois Bourrus and Marre on the ridge of the next valley to the north. These chains of mutually supporting forts effectively closed off any possibility of an enemy bypassing Verdun on that side of the River Meuse.
There is an oddity here though which we really cannot fathom for sure, and a glance at the map of the area will show you what I mean... given that the enemy the fort was designed to repulse would surely be coming from the east or the north east it is rather odd that Fort de Choisel appears to face in the opposite direction! I can only conclude that the nature of the terrain here abouts meant that there was a strong possibility of the enemy flanking the forts by heading west way up to the north and then turning back on itself to attempt access to the Meuse valley floor and ultimately Verdun itself along either of these valleys in a north easterly direction. Thus the direction de Choisel faces would then make sense.
As the twentieth century approached and the newly emerging German empire increased their sabre rattling the need to rapidly install cheap but effective additional fire power into all of the forts became apparent. Tests were carried out at the French Army Artillery proving grounds near Bourges, and the result - the "Bourges Casemate" - began to be added to the forts, each one armed with two quick firing 75mm artillery pieces. Fort de Choisel was no exception with two of these formidable emplacements sited on the top of the fort. At the outbreak of the Great War de Choisel was armed with no less than six QF 75mm artillery pieces and four turreted Hotchkiss machine guns. In addition the garrison infantry could man the ramparts, each section controlled by an officer standing in an armoured observation turret of a similar design to those which had been built to work with each of the armoured turrets. Moat protection was achieved with the placement of Hotchkiss Revolver canons and machine guns plus infantry deploying small arms and hand grenades. The peace time masonry barrack blocks were not used in time of conflict, the garrison was housed instead in subterranean barrack blocks deep within the armoured "red line" areas of the fort. Painted red lines on corridor walls within the fort denote the areas which were deemed to be bombardment proof.
Like forts du Regret [ame="http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=19365"](click here to see our report from last year)[/ame] and Vaucheraville the entrance to de Choisel is accessed from the moat bottom where there is also an eight feet deep secondary moat dug out right up against the fort walls in order to deny an enemy any chance of access by climbing through firing ports. Entrance to the moat itself is closed down with very high steel gates, though they are no longer in place today. A drawbridge immediately to the right of the gorge capponniere crossed the sub moat and afforded normal movement for the garrison but again the drawbridge has been removed or destroyed, presumably in the interests of isolating the fort from the attentions of the curious.
After the Battle of Verdun ground to a halt in December 1916 the lessons learnt during the fighting for Fort Vaux were analysed and a need for a series of interconnecting tunnels within all the forts was identified. This was in order to allow any fighting compartment to continue the battle even if the fort was partially occupied by the enemy. At Vaux the garrison had eventually capitulated not from lack of ammunition, nor by being overrun; rather they had to finally surrender simply because they ran out of drinking water. With the new tunnel systems that were ordered to be dug in the forts any fighting compartment could be re-supplied almost indefinitely through the tunnels, and the fort itself could also be accessed from the outside world by the same tunnel network in order to effect continued re-supply. The work began in 1917 and received the name "Travaux 17", which literally translates as "17 works". Many of the tunnels were never finished and very few were properly concrete lined, so it is common to find narrow tunnels dug into the rock with rotten pit props barely holding up the roofs, or huge areas of collapse only a few feet beyond the concrete walls proper of the fort.
To give a sense of the tactical reasons for the placement of this fort here's a view along the valley in question towards the woods where the supporting forts are located.
The bottom of the valley floor which the forts protected is to the left of the picture just before the valley rises up on the opposite side.
The gorge caponniere protects the fort drawbridge entrance, now bricked up.
Wandering along in the bottom of the moat it is obvious that if the enemy got this far they would be cut to ribbons.
Infantry manned these firing ports with machine guns, rifles and deadly Hotchkiss revolver canons.
Above the moat on the fort top is one of the two Bourges casemates, each packing TWO 75mm fast firing artillery pieces.
Our way in today will include a hairy climb up a near vertical banking made slick with several days of rain.
The peace time barrack blocks were constructed of plain masonry and brick and were not bombardment proof. Today they are semi-buried by years of heavy undergrowth.
And we're in!
This corridor was not bombardment proof. It serves the peace time barrack block.
In construction this part of the fort differs little from the time of the Normans.
Not so downstairs. The red line denotes that this sector is bombardment proof.
L'bog...
Inside the first Bourges Casemate now, the firing port for the left hand gun of the pair looks into woodland, so overgrown is the fort.
In it's day the view here would have been straight down the valley.
Here we see the remains of the 7" thick steel dome through which the officer in charge of the battery could spot and give fire control orders.
The Germans blew these emplacements up in WW2 and you can see the top of the dome has fallen down into the shaft.
This is the bottom compartment of one of the double Hotchkiss MG turrets. The fighting compartment is up the ladder.
And we're off even further down now, crossing underneath the moat and out to one of the counterscarp galleries.
In the counterscarp gallery there are a variety of firing ports.
The central port is for a Hotchkiss revolver canon which spat out 47mm rounds like a Gatling Gun.
To either side there are firing ports for riflemen or machine guns.
The semi circular bottom slots enabled the defenders to "post" hand grenades down an aimable chute...
...like this one infact!
An infantryman's view of the moat from inside the fort.
Transitting back beneath the moat and up to the fort proper once more.
A gratuitous corridor piccie just 'cos I can
A badly collapsed Travaux 17 tunnel.
TJ snapped me just as I was about to photograph what's left of the blown up 75mm turret installation.
Considering these turrets could take a direct hit from some very large ordnance it must have taken a very big demolition charge to destroy it
Tonto makes it back up into the real world once more
An observation cupola minus it's 7" thick steel dome.
And another one displaying the damage inflicted with a demo charge.
This is one of the infantry OP cupolas. It appears to have sustained a direct hit with an artillery shell in enfilade.
As the damage is to all intents and purposes from behind it's hard to see how this can have happened except with by the likes of a relatively modern shoulder launched anti-tank weapon or the like.
A large "slice" of the armoured skirt from the top of the 75mm artillery turret. Imagine the bang which split this
And here we are looking down into the remains of the emplacement which we had been inside a little earlier.
A counterscarp gallery in the far moat wall gives some idea of how high up we are on the top of the fort.
Time to go! So here's another view which should give you an idea of the difficulty involved in access
And that's your lot! Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for looking.
L'histoire...
Following the declaration of peace after the Franco-Prussian war the French had to rapidly construct a ring of forts around the fortress town of Verdun to bolster their defences. The Prussians had annexed most of Alsace and Lorraine as conditions of their punitive settlement terms and this meant that the border between the two countries had effectively moved much, much closer to the city. With such a short distance to march before engaging the key French defence an invading German army could quickly over run Verdun and proceed along the shortest route to Paris with little in their way to stop them. The first forts built were rendered woefully inadequate almost overnight by the rapid evolution in German artillery and by the development of "Picric Acid" high explosive. The next huge blow to the French defence plans was an alliance between Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire and Italy, meaning that yet again the French would have to have a radical rethink and spend millions of Francs "bigging up" the Verdun ring of steel and concrete.
Their answer was to begin a second wave of fort construction employing several radically new design concepts. The main feature of the newer forts was the addition of self contained, heavily armoured gun emplacements in the form of retractable turrets carrying a variety of different calibre weapons. This design got rid of the reliance upon mobile artillery deployed within the confines of the fort such as was conceived with the "Panic Forts" in the first wave of construction after the peace of 1872. By far the most commonly encountered emplacements from this period are the double Hotchkiss machine gun turret and the twin 75mm fast firing artillery turret, but there are also several twin 155mm artillery turrets dotted amongst the forts providing a much heavier bombardment capability in support of the lighter artillery pieces. All the turrets worked in conjunction with a 7 inch thick armoured steel observation turret, each connected to the corresponding fighting turret by voice tube communication so that independent fire control commands could be given by the observation officer even in the event of a loss of power to the fort. At the same time the tendency to build fighting galleries in the inner moat walls to protect the fort from attack along the moat was abandoned in favour of the construction of caponnieres. These are hardened concrete emplacements jutting out into the moat in such a way that the defenders could pour enfilade fire into their enemy along the moat bottom. The caponnieres were also sited in such a way as to afford mutual support to adjacent caponnieres. The problem though with caponnieres is that despite their heavily armoured walls they are still very vulnerable to plunging artillery fire such as that from howitzers and mortars, so as a result their roofs had to be built ever thicker in order to withstand the likes of the 420mm Krupp siege gun. Increasingly the construction of caponnieres was abandoned in favour of the construction of counterscarp galleries instead which are built into the outer wall of the moat and accessed by tunnels travelling beneath the moat bottom from within the fort proper. This meant that instead of a roof made with 3 or 4 feet of concrete the soldiers defending the moat could now rely upon several feet of earth over their heads as well. Despite the efficacy of counterscarp galleries the forts were still built with, or retained during periods of modification, a double caponniere on the entrance elevation of the fort to protect the drawbridge entrance.
BELOW is a section of the map of the area in which Fort de Choisel is located. On the left bank of the River Meuse there are two prominent ridges along which a series of forts were built which effectively closed down the route around Verdun on that side of the river. Just outside the tiny village of Lombut the first fort in the chain is de Choisel and it operated with the close support of a smaller fort or "ouvrage", du Chana, on the opposite side of the valley. Forming the slightly offset point to the triangle of defences for this valley is the Ouvrage de Germonville to the south west, and the three acting in conjunction could stop a sizeable force from proceeding as far as Fromereville-les-Vallons, the village at the exit to the narrow valley. In addition de Choisel could act in support of Forts de Bois Bourrus and Marre on the ridge of the next valley to the north. These chains of mutually supporting forts effectively closed off any possibility of an enemy bypassing Verdun on that side of the River Meuse.
There is an oddity here though which we really cannot fathom for sure, and a glance at the map of the area will show you what I mean... given that the enemy the fort was designed to repulse would surely be coming from the east or the north east it is rather odd that Fort de Choisel appears to face in the opposite direction! I can only conclude that the nature of the terrain here abouts meant that there was a strong possibility of the enemy flanking the forts by heading west way up to the north and then turning back on itself to attempt access to the Meuse valley floor and ultimately Verdun itself along either of these valleys in a north easterly direction. Thus the direction de Choisel faces would then make sense.
As the twentieth century approached and the newly emerging German empire increased their sabre rattling the need to rapidly install cheap but effective additional fire power into all of the forts became apparent. Tests were carried out at the French Army Artillery proving grounds near Bourges, and the result - the "Bourges Casemate" - began to be added to the forts, each one armed with two quick firing 75mm artillery pieces. Fort de Choisel was no exception with two of these formidable emplacements sited on the top of the fort. At the outbreak of the Great War de Choisel was armed with no less than six QF 75mm artillery pieces and four turreted Hotchkiss machine guns. In addition the garrison infantry could man the ramparts, each section controlled by an officer standing in an armoured observation turret of a similar design to those which had been built to work with each of the armoured turrets. Moat protection was achieved with the placement of Hotchkiss Revolver canons and machine guns plus infantry deploying small arms and hand grenades. The peace time masonry barrack blocks were not used in time of conflict, the garrison was housed instead in subterranean barrack blocks deep within the armoured "red line" areas of the fort. Painted red lines on corridor walls within the fort denote the areas which were deemed to be bombardment proof.
Like forts du Regret [ame="http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=19365"](click here to see our report from last year)[/ame] and Vaucheraville the entrance to de Choisel is accessed from the moat bottom where there is also an eight feet deep secondary moat dug out right up against the fort walls in order to deny an enemy any chance of access by climbing through firing ports. Entrance to the moat itself is closed down with very high steel gates, though they are no longer in place today. A drawbridge immediately to the right of the gorge capponniere crossed the sub moat and afforded normal movement for the garrison but again the drawbridge has been removed or destroyed, presumably in the interests of isolating the fort from the attentions of the curious.
After the Battle of Verdun ground to a halt in December 1916 the lessons learnt during the fighting for Fort Vaux were analysed and a need for a series of interconnecting tunnels within all the forts was identified. This was in order to allow any fighting compartment to continue the battle even if the fort was partially occupied by the enemy. At Vaux the garrison had eventually capitulated not from lack of ammunition, nor by being overrun; rather they had to finally surrender simply because they ran out of drinking water. With the new tunnel systems that were ordered to be dug in the forts any fighting compartment could be re-supplied almost indefinitely through the tunnels, and the fort itself could also be accessed from the outside world by the same tunnel network in order to effect continued re-supply. The work began in 1917 and received the name "Travaux 17", which literally translates as "17 works". Many of the tunnels were never finished and very few were properly concrete lined, so it is common to find narrow tunnels dug into the rock with rotten pit props barely holding up the roofs, or huge areas of collapse only a few feet beyond the concrete walls proper of the fort.
L'piccies...
To give a sense of the tactical reasons for the placement of this fort here's a view along the valley in question towards the woods where the supporting forts are located.
The bottom of the valley floor which the forts protected is to the left of the picture just before the valley rises up on the opposite side.
The gorge caponniere protects the fort drawbridge entrance, now bricked up.
Wandering along in the bottom of the moat it is obvious that if the enemy got this far they would be cut to ribbons.
Infantry manned these firing ports with machine guns, rifles and deadly Hotchkiss revolver canons.
Above the moat on the fort top is one of the two Bourges casemates, each packing TWO 75mm fast firing artillery pieces.
Our way in today will include a hairy climb up a near vertical banking made slick with several days of rain.
The peace time barrack blocks were constructed of plain masonry and brick and were not bombardment proof. Today they are semi-buried by years of heavy undergrowth.
And we're in!
This corridor was not bombardment proof. It serves the peace time barrack block.
In construction this part of the fort differs little from the time of the Normans.
Not so downstairs. The red line denotes that this sector is bombardment proof.
L'bog...
Inside the first Bourges Casemate now, the firing port for the left hand gun of the pair looks into woodland, so overgrown is the fort.
In it's day the view here would have been straight down the valley.
Here we see the remains of the 7" thick steel dome through which the officer in charge of the battery could spot and give fire control orders.
The Germans blew these emplacements up in WW2 and you can see the top of the dome has fallen down into the shaft.
This is the bottom compartment of one of the double Hotchkiss MG turrets. The fighting compartment is up the ladder.
And we're off even further down now, crossing underneath the moat and out to one of the counterscarp galleries.
In the counterscarp gallery there are a variety of firing ports.
The central port is for a Hotchkiss revolver canon which spat out 47mm rounds like a Gatling Gun.
To either side there are firing ports for riflemen or machine guns.
The semi circular bottom slots enabled the defenders to "post" hand grenades down an aimable chute...
...like this one infact!
An infantryman's view of the moat from inside the fort.
Transitting back beneath the moat and up to the fort proper once more.
A gratuitous corridor piccie just 'cos I can
A badly collapsed Travaux 17 tunnel.
TJ snapped me just as I was about to photograph what's left of the blown up 75mm turret installation.
Considering these turrets could take a direct hit from some very large ordnance it must have taken a very big demolition charge to destroy it
Tonto makes it back up into the real world once more
An observation cupola minus it's 7" thick steel dome.
And another one displaying the damage inflicted with a demo charge.
This is one of the infantry OP cupolas. It appears to have sustained a direct hit with an artillery shell in enfilade.
As the damage is to all intents and purposes from behind it's hard to see how this can have happened except with by the likes of a relatively modern shoulder launched anti-tank weapon or the like.
A large "slice" of the armoured skirt from the top of the 75mm artillery turret. Imagine the bang which split this
And here we are looking down into the remains of the emplacement which we had been inside a little earlier.
A counterscarp gallery in the far moat wall gives some idea of how high up we are on the top of the fort.
Time to go! So here's another view which should give you an idea of the difficulty involved in access
And that's your lot! Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for looking.
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