Concrete and Earth, Cold and Damp: A Visit to The Ww1 Fortifications of Verdun (Part 4: Froideterre Fort Turrets)

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This is part four of a multi-part article. To begin at the first part, click here.

My companion and I didn’t pause long to take in the view from the top of the fort – those fascinating-looking turrets beckoned.

Photo 5: Froideterre twin 75mm gun turret (photograph by Bruce Officer)

The first turret was maybe 8 feet across, with two stubby gun barrels barely poking out. From the way the mushroom-shaped cap matched the ring around the base it was obvious that it could be lowered so that all that would show would be the domed top. Further reading on returning home revealed some interesting facts. It was made of steel 9 to 12 inches thick (thickest on the top) and could withstand all but the heaviest hits. The guns within could fire out to almost 5km (just over 3 miles). The visible turret is only the top of a two-storey structure going down into one of the blocks of the fort, with a hand-cranked lift to carry ammunition up to the platform where the gun crew stood and a massive counterweight that balanced the mass of the turret so that it could be raised or lowered by a single man operating a hand crank.

Just how proof against hits the turret was became obvious when we walked around it and saw the gouges in the steel, none actually penetrating all the way through (though on doing further research I discovered these actually dated from a later war, from June 1940 when the fort briefly faced German invaders once more).

Photo 6: damage to main turret at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

One could almost put one’s fist in these shell hits but yet they hadn’t penetrated the armour!

Next we moved on to one of the smaller turrets, a machine gun turret. From a distance this looked crude, tinny almost, but the armour is actually almost as thick as the main turret. The two vertical slits are for a pair of machine guns, the horizontal ones for the crew to look out of. The reason for having two machine guns was less for the increased firepower and more that since machine guns firing continuously will overheat. Having two in a turret allowed one to fire while the other cooled down. Again, this turret could rotate and could be lowered when not needed, and as before it is only the top of a tall and complex mechanism below.

Photo 7: machine gun turret at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

It seemed surprising to me at the time that two pairs of machine guns would be considered enough to protect even a small fort like this from direct assault by enemy infantry, but on reflection I remembered that a machine gun can pin down large numbers of enemy unless the crew are themselves forced to duck down. Safe within armoured turrets, these machine gun crews would be able to keep up a withering fire regardless of whether they were being shot back at.

Having examined the armed turrets that just left the strange helmet-shaped dome, so we next walked over to that.

Continued in part five.