I think we’re all familiar with the terrible human loss which came out of the First World War but this loss could have been considerably higher if it hadn’t been for the “home front” workers.

Munitions production had always existed in some form or another, even in times of peace, and at the start of the Great War in 1914 this level of production continued but as the war progressed it became more and more important to increase production and keep the guns ablaze.

Unfortunately, by the time this greater demand for munitions came to the fore, most countries, both ally and enemy had some problem that had to be overcome.  In the UK we had a problem with manpower as well as a shortage of cordite which was required for making shells which, in turn, was brought about as there was a shortage of acetone.

In France they had a problem with most of their major industries as they were basically under German rule and obviously there was no way of getting the materials through. 

Germany couldn’t get hold of the raw materials to make cordite and explosives and Austria-Hungary had a major problem by way of railway systems and transport.

By the end of 1914, both sides were thoroughly entrenched and it became essential for additional artillery shells to get through to the troops so that they could push their way forward.  At that time the trench line stretched some 475 miles from Nieuport in Belgium right along to the Swiss border. 

The Battle of Neuve Chapelle 1915

During March 1915 at Neuve Chapelle it’s recorded that the British forces fired more shells in a 35 minute bombardment than they did during the WHOLE of the Boer War less than 20 years earlier.  They did have a good supply of guns but what use were the guns if there was no ammunition?

By May 1915 this problem had reached a crisis point and many of the guns had been reduced to firing just four shells a day.  It seemed that the allies were on the brink of losing the war and on the home front, this caused a major stir.  Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith’s Liberal party were eventually ousted from power and were replaced by a coalition and although Asquith remained, in name, the Prime Minister he had David Lloyd-George taking on the role of the head of the Ministry of Munitions.

British Ammunition Factory

Lloyd-George set about his task with great gusto. He began a plan for building new factories.  But one of his first major tasks was to produce more acetone to make the cordite which was the one vital element in shell production.  To this end he approached a Manchester chemist, Chaim Weizmann, and asked him to produce this acetone from readily available raw materials.  One of the main “ingredients” of this acetone had been a dry distillation of wood but most of the wood had, before the war, been imported from major timber growing countries such as the US.  Unfortunately this wasn’t going to work due to two factors.  Firstly, it would be difficult for the US to get the wood to us across hostile waters and secondly, as the US were pretty neutral at the time, it wouldn’t have been right for them to “take sides” and provide us with what we needed.

But Weizmann had done a bit of research and discovered that he could produce acetone from a fermentation process whereby he could convert 100 tons of grain into 12 tons of acetone.  To this end, the government commandeered brewing and distillery kit and built factories to process the acetone at Holton in Dorset and (very close to home for me!) King’s Lynn in Norfolk. 

Supplying the labour wasn’t a huge task either.  Women and men unfit for service were deployed to work in the factories, both producing the acetone and the ammunition. 

This new workforce was also put to work in mines, on the land and in transport.  At the time women didn’t have the vote but, in an effort to keep the enemy at bay and in order to help their loved ones overseas they willingly took up the cudgel and were an enormous help during the four years of the war.  The acetone factories miraculously produced almost 100,000 gallons of acetone a year, enough to supply the munitions factories demand for cordite which, again, in turn shell production rose from half a million by the end of 1914 to 16.4 million in 1915.

By 1917 the British Empire as a whole was producing and supplying more than 50 million shells a year to our boys on the front and by 1918 when the war ended, the British army alone had fired 170 million shells.

British Troops

Germany of course had started off the war on an industrial high.  It had a high production of steel and was at the forefront of chemical and engineering research and technology.  In 1914 it was able to produce over one and a quarter million shells, but by 1915 even they were beginning to flag a bit as they could no longer get hold of cotton, camphor, pyrites and saltpetre which had to be imported.  This meant that their shell production went down. 

In 1916 the Germans picked up a bit of momentum when their wartime raw material department commandeered stockpiles of the much needed ingredients and ensured they were distributed to the relevant factories as well as overseeing the chemical industry’s production of synthetic materials which could be utilised.  The result was that during 1916 their shell production increased significantly to 36 million.  Unfortunately for them, the “super powers” of Germany Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria couldn’t possibly compete with the allies financial and industrial power which was now in full flow!

In 1917 Germany tried to maintain its slowly depleting and massively under equipped troops on  the Western Front by following a new tack – submarines.   However, by that time the US had joined the allies which, of course, tipped the enemy over the edge which enabled the allies to take the upper hand and ultimately “win” the war – but as everyone knows, there are never any real winners.  At the end of the day all countries were losers, not only financially but in the mass slaughter of our sons, fathers, and other loved ones.  That’s one thing that we can guarantee will never change.

I don’t know whether my friends outside the UK know the old nursery rhyme that the majority of us kids, certainly of the 1960s, learned off by heart.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

I’d never considered it had any real meaning when I was a child; it was just one of those mantras that we all quoted during our childhood years, but I can now see, having looked into the munitions production of the First World War, just how relevant it is.

One thing that did come out of the war however, was the recognition by our government that women weren’t just uneducated, unintelligent, ill-informed and frivolous but could provide an impressive work force when the chips were down and so, in 1918 women were finally granted suffrage and were able to vote.

This article is a continuation from part three. For the start of the series, click here.

Poison gas shells are a particular problem. Identifying them takes experience as the coloured paint markings used to differentiate the different types of shell have long since corroded away. Until the 1970s the Belgian authorities encased identified unexploded gas shells in concrete and dumped them at sea, but concerns that the concrete will eventually decay meant they changed to stockpiling them on land until a purpose-built chemical shell dismantling facility was created a few years ago. Here, suspected gas shells are x-rayed to determine if that is what they are and if they still contain liquefied poison gas. An automatic cutter opens them in a sealed room and the contents are pumped away before the empty case is retrieved by a man in full chemical warfare protective gear.

The contents are still dangerous even today. As shell cases rust, the contents can leak – known as ‘sweating.’ Even tiny drops of liquid mustard gas can cause massive blistering. During the War, just touching the clothing of a soldier exposed to mustard gas even hours after his evacuation was enough to bring about serious blistering. Touching the case of a sweating gas shell nowadays will still cause blisters inches across. I have heard of two collectors being gassed to death in their car when they took away a live gas shell that was leaking, though I do not have references to verify the word-of-mouth story.

As well as artillery shells, other sorts of munitions are also sometimes found, along with rifles (basically the barrel and mechanism – all wooden parts long since perished) and very occasionally a machinegun. One of the star finds on Varlet Farm was a German machinegun in slightly rusty but still easily recognisable state. Then there are non-weaponry metal finds such as the steel posts used to hold barbed wire in place.

Charlotte interspersed her talk with several horror stories of groups visiting her bed and breakfast accommodation who had brought with them a ‘find’ that was still live and which could have gone off being bounced in their bus. Really, better safe than sorry – don’t pick up anything which has the slightest possibility of being live. First World War munitions can kill, even after over 90 years in the ground.

It was a fascinating talk and I hope I’ve given enough of a flavour of it to whet your appetite without stealing her thunder if you ever do get a chance to hear her talk. And if you do plan to visit the battlefields of Ypres, Varlet Farm is the perfect base to stay at. The website is here, with info on the accommodation, prices, and contact details for booking. Personally, I think she should consider writing a book as her experiences living with the legacy of the First World War are fascinating and she is very good at getting them across.

This article is a continuation from part two. For the start of the series, click here.

There are plenty of rifle and machinegun bullets too, but those are too small to be noticed when ploughing and anyway are solid metal so do not need to be disposed of. In previous decades, a common sight around ploughing time in the old combat zone of western Belgium was a rusty shell leaning against the bottom of an electricity pole at the side of a field (or even placed in the holes that run through a common type of concrete electricity pole!). The Belgian Army bomb disposal vans would simply drive around continuously to spot and collect them, with no reporting being necessary. This practice has since been banned, partly for fear of electricity blackouts if there was an explosion and partly because it was far too tempting for collectors who would take the shells and risk an explosion due to careless handling (or worse still, when attempting to make the shell safe with workshop tools in their garages!).

Once unexploded shells have been collected by the Belgian Army, they are taken to a workshop where they are identified and then stacked in boxes to be taken out onto an Army range and exploded. This is by the simple means of burying them with a modern explosive charge on top then detonating the charge from a safe distance. During ploughing and harvest times several of these disposal detonations per day can be heard coming from the Belgian Army bomb disposal ranges. It is done in batches so that individual explosions can be kept relatively small (90 kilos of high explosive being the current maximum).

Continued in part four…

This article is a continuation from part one.

The majority of intact shells are ones that were fired but never exploded – most often due to the fuse not detonating in the quagmire that the Ypres Salient battlefields became. Sometimes there can be unfired rounds, most likely if the field was the site of an artillery battery. Very occasionally a large dump of unfired shells is found: a shell storage dump built underground to protect it from aerial observation and attack then forgotten as the fighting moved on. Luckily none of these large dumps have been found on Varlet Farm.

One can tell a fired from an unfired shell by whether the copper driving band is smooth or gouged. The driving band is a ring near the base of the shell that grips the twisted rifling grooves in the gun barrel to make the shell spin. The width and positioning of the driving band also helps tell apart otherwise quite similar British, German and French light artillery shells.

The most common shell type found on Varlet Farm is the British 18-pounder artillery shell, with some German 77mm shells too. The 18-pounder artillery piece (named for the weight of its shell) was the standard light field artillery gun equipping batteries near the front line and millions upon millions of 18-pounder shells were fired during the war so although most did go off there are still many unexploded ones left.

The 18-pounder shell is around 3½ inches in diameter by around 12 inches long. There were versions filled with shrapnel (small balls that would scatter out in front of the shell when a time fuse made it explode in the air, turning it into a sort of giant shotgun shell), high explosive (HE), smoke (for screening attacks) and gas.

Continued in part three…

Varlet Farm is a working farm near the infamous village of Passchendaele in the Ypres Salient of Belgium, the half circle around the east of Ypres where fighting was almost continuous for the four years of the First World War. The farm also offers bed and breakfast accommodation for visitors, particularly those who are exploring the battlefields. The proprietor, Charlotte Descamps, has over the years developed a deep interest and expertise in the First World War munitions and debris which her husband (like all farmers in the area) digs up year after year when ploughing and harvesting the fields. This spring (2012) she is travelling to give talks on the subject to various groups, including the Worcester branch of the Western Front Association which she talked to on Friday 17th February. This article gives an overview of what she told us.

As well as many hundreds of tons of fragments, around 140 tons of intact, unexploded, and potentially dangerous First World War shells are still dug up every year on farms across Belgium, creating a heavy workload for the Belgian Army bomb disposal unit. Usually, shells are moved by the farmer to a small dump and then collected by the Army by van to be taken away to workshops to be identified and then disposed of safely. Very few are actually detonated in-situ – the number found means that cordoning off every single find would bring agriculture to a standstill – and although they can still go off they can usually be moved carefully. It is a risk those working the land on the old battlefields just have to take, though there are surprisingly few deaths or injuries among farmers: the majority of those killed are collectors who take greater risks by moving them further and keeping them longer. All in all there are two to three unexpected explosions across Belgium per year due to First World War munitions.

Continued in part two …

St Dunstan’s in a charity in the UK which aims to support and help rehabilitate veterans who have lost their eyesight either partially or completely. You can read more about them at their website here. They don’t get as much publicity as the larger veterans’ charities like the Royal British Legion, but they are a very worthy cause and I support them wholeheartedly.

As of 12th February I have 28 articles on Triond on aspects of the First World War. The flow of fractions of a cent from each view on these articles is slow, but adds up.

Here are links to my articles so far that I’m counting towards this challenge:

A Visit to the WW1 Fortifications at Verdun, parts one, two, three, four, five, six and note on sources

24 Hours in the Trenches – Notes from a Lecture, parts one and two

The Indian Army memorial at Neuve Chapelle, France, parts one, two, three, four, five and six

Scottish Memorials on the First World War Western Front, parts one, two, three, four, five and six

A review of the book ‘The British Expeditionary Force 1914-15′

A review of the book ‘Pill Boxes of the Western Front’

A review of the book ‘The Fortifications of Verdun 1874-1914’

A review of the book ‘Walking Verdun – a Guide to the Battlefield’

A review of the book ‘Scottish Divisions in the World Wars’

The earnings from viewers clicking on these articles and donated so far to St Dunstan’s are:

1 – 30 November 2011: £18.57

1 – 31 December 2011: £14.99 (running total £33.56)

1 – 31 January 2012: £4.09 (running total £37.65)

1 – 29 February 2012: £4.64 (running total £42.29)

Please, if you haven’t already done so, help me raise money for British veterans who have lost their sight by clicking on these articles and taking a look.

I set this out in the article here, giving myself the target of raising £50.

Many thanks to all who have read my articles and thus contributed. The grand total for November from these articles is $28.98, or £18.57 converted to UK currency. I donated that sum to St Dunstans online this evening (though they’ll actually get 25% more because as a UK taxpayer I marked the donation for Gift Aid, whereby St Dunstans can claim back the income tax I paid on the sum donated).

£18.57 is well short of the £50 I was aiming for, so I’ve decided to continue setting aside for St Dunstans any income from these articles through December too, along with that from any other First World War articles I add this month.

Again, many thanks to those who have supported me in this endeavour by reading my articles.

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

I hope that you have found this series of articles to be informative, and that they have given at least some idea of the complex nature of the forts and defences around Verdun, as well as the hellishness of the ten months of bitter fighting for them in 1916. It is right to remember the sacrifice of the thousands of men who died there, both for their sakes and also to remember the horrors of war thus making it a little less likely that we will resort to it lightly in the future. War is dreadful, and only to be taken up when the alternatives are even worse.

I thought that I should finish with a little note on the sources used in writing these articles and on my credentials. I do not claim to be a historian. All that I know of the First World War is gleaned from reading a good number of relatively popular books rather than diving into the primary sources. But I do like to understand the sites I visit properly and read up on them extensively before and after my visits as well as examining them thoroughly when I do visit, taking copious notes with lots of photographs. I would like to think of myself as a thoughtful and thorough history buff and history tourist, if not a proper historian, bringing my own thoughts to the places I visit and giving the reader some idea of the experience.

Information sources used in the creation of this series:

• Book ‘Walking Verdun’ by Christina Holstein – basically a series of walks across the battlefield taking in the main sites and defences, but including excellent explanations which make it a valuable reference in its own right, even for those not visiting the sites.
• Book ‘The Fortifications of Verdun 1874-1917’ by Clayton Donnell – a slim volume that gives a good introductory explanation of the forts and their components.
• Book ‘Major and Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide: the Western Front, South’ – the chapter on Verdun is an 88-mile driving tour which they optimistically claim might be squeezed into one long day. As with all Holt’s publications it is an excellent whistle-stop run through the main monuments and memorials (along with a selection of minor ones) at a battlefield, and makes a good starting point for planning what to see. Obviously since I was travelling by bicycle I could not use their tour route as written, but it was still a very useful resource and the more conventional car or bus tourist will undoubtedly find it invaluable.
• French IGN map 3112ET, 1:25000 (4cm to 1km) – a detailed modern map of the whole east bank area north of Verdun, showing paths, forts, monuments and the major bunkers. Invaluable if you intend to explore the area thoroughly.
• My own observations on visiting the sites personally in July 2011 and my photographs taken then.
• Explanatory panels at the main sites – most are in English as well as French but unfortunately many were hard to read due to damp and fungus getting in under the plastic covers and occasionally from vandalism (a sad indication of disrespect for those who fought and died there which I found very annoying).
• Fortiff Sere website, page on Froideterre (French language, but recommended for its photos of the interior of the fort and a clear map of the layout): http://www.fortiffsere.fr/verdun/index_fichiers/Page12509.htm.

The Osprey Fortifications series book on Fort Douaumont is probably worth a read, but unfortunately I cannot comment on it as my book fund has not yet stretched to buying a copy! There are also other books which go into considerable detail about the technicalities of the forts if the reader wants to concentrate on that (I only wanted to know enough to understand how they worked as defensive structures).

Thank you for following me on this journey around the forts of Verdun. I hope to write more articles based on my cycle tour of the Western Front, so look out for them!

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

Reading more about the fortlet of Froideterre on my return to the UK, one difference between it and the full forts became apparent, namely that Froideterre was a collection of unconnected blockhouses rather than a single structure. Not getting inside the main structures on my visit, I had assumed they were connected by galleries underground but that was not the case. There was the main barrack block with one machine gun turret atop it, an artillery block with the twin 75mm gun turret, a third block with the second machine gun turret on top and the Bourges casemate block. All four were built into the one horseshoe-shaped artificial hillock but the only way to get from one to the other was to exit and cross the courtyard in the open. Only after the Battle of Verdun was over, in 1917, did military engineers have the time to dig tunnels into the bedrock under the four blocks and connect them up.

So what combat did Froideterre see during the ten-month Battle of Verdun, and what was the outcome? The Germans had launched the Verdun offensive in February 1916 and Fort Douaumont, at the centre of the Thiaumont Ridge, had fallen soon after. A road led straight downhill from Douaumont, through Fleury village to the eastern edge of Verdun itself, but it was in plain view of Froideterre, with its observers and gun turret. The choice was therefore either to work west along the ridge to take Froideterre, or to ignore it and concentrate on Fort Vaux at the far east of the defences, the opposite end from Froideterre. That is what the Germans did and through April and May they worked closer to it and then launched an assault on 1st June that took the fort on 7th June after very bitter fighting.

The Germans were now in a position to sweep down towards Verdun on a broader front, from Douaumont in the centre to Vaux in the east, but the thrust from Douaumont would be in view of the guns of Froideterre so it could be ignored no longer. On 23rd June 1916 the Bavarian troops attacked eastwards along the Thiaumont Ridge, taking Thiaumont and then the command posts and troop shelters that will be covered in the next part of this article, before leading units attacked Froideterre itself.

Map 2: June 1916 attacks on Forts Vaux, Thiaumont and Froideterre (map by Bruce Officer)

The Bavarians expected Froideterre to be battered almost helpless but although one machine gun turret was jammed the other was working as was the artillery turret (firing canister shot – shell cases full of steel balls which effectively turned an artillery piece into a giant shotgun for close defence). The Germans got into the courtyard but were machine gunned and beat a hurried retreat up onto the top of the fort. There they were still under fire but could take cover in the shell craters atop the fort and started to throw grenades into the few holes that their bombardment in the days before had blasted through the earth and concrete roofs into the rooms of the fort below.

After one particular grenade, a cloud of thick smoke started to pour out from inside the fort. The grenade had set off a store of signalling rockets which threatened to create a fire. Knowing they would be blown to smithereens too if fire reached the main magazine, the Germans evacuated the top of the fort while the French rushed to put the fire out. But during the confusion they also managed to get the second machine gun turret working again so by the time the danger was over a renewed German attack was met by a hail of fire and repulsed.

The German spearhead here had been whittled down to a handful of men but a concerted attack by reinforcements might have taken the fort. The commander of the leading troops, only a lieutenant, sent for more men but by now the French artillery batteries in the valleys further back had recovered from the gas shell attack which had silenced them temporarily and were able to lay down a thick curtain of shellfire to stop German reinforcements getting through. Only 15 men remained of the German lead unit that had attacked the fort, now cut off by shellfire. They tried to get back to their lines after midnight, under cover of darkness, but ran into a French unit and were captured.

Froideterre had held out, and would now be an invaluable observation point to call down fire onto the road through Fleury as the Germans attacked there. It also acted as a front line command post, shelter for weary troops, communications centre and first aid post over the next weeks as the French started to push the Germans back.

This is how the forts around Verdun, and the lesser bunkers, often ended up being used in the fighting – a mix of roles and above all a harbour of relative safety amid the hellish landscape of a First World War battle, places that anchored the defence, supported and sustained the troops fighting in trenches and shell holes in between.

And a final macabre note: because of the fighting it saw, and its later use as a first aid post, a good number of French soldiers were buried under the courtyard of the fort. Whether they were later exhumed and moved to one of the main cemeteries, or whether they lie there still I know not.

That completed our visit to this small but important fort, so we mounted our bicycles again and rolled down to rejoin the road along the Thiaumont Ridge.

To be continued in part seven (still to be written), but for now please jump to the final part, about the sources used in writing these articles.

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

I had read of the non-rotating armoured observation posts on the forts at Verdun, and that is what the helmet-shaped dome proved to be.

Photo 8: observation dome at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

Pockmarked by bullet hits and surrounded by a concrete apron, this armoured observation post peers out across the front of the fort like the helmet of a medieval knight buried almost to his eyes. Within here, a single observer would have looked out to spot approaching enemy, or to direct the fire of the artillery or machine gun turrets. Generally, one observation dome was paired with one armed turret, the two connected by a speaking tube so that the observer could relay instructions.

The view from here is obscured by trees, but one must remember that the hills around Verdun were not nearly so wooded in 1914. The forests here are post-war plantations and when the fort was built the views from it were extensive, across open hillsides and the fields of farms and villages that were destroyed in the war and have never been rebuilt. When one visits Verdun, one has to constantly remind oneself of this, that the fighting was across muddy hills and ravines but with open views that allowed observers from hilltop forts to call down fire on anyone that moved in daylight on the slopes below. Only with a map or a good guide can one really get a feel for how dominating these hilltop positions were.

The map in part two of this series is marked with the main woods that existed in 1914 and from that one can see how commanding the view from here would have been.

The final part of the Froideterre fortlet that we visited was a strange-shaped concrete bunker attached to the west side of the main block.

In appearance this was like two bunkers joined side to side, but one stepped slightly back, both with gun ports for artillery pieces. A spur of concrete jutted out, blocking view from the front of the fort.

Diagram 2: Bourges casemate (diagram by Bruce Officer)

This is one of the ‘Bourges casemates’ that were added to many of the forts during pre-war modernisation. They housed a pair of 75mm guns that could rotate through a 60 degree arc and were aligned to cover gaps between the forts, to their sides. The solid concrete spur jutting from one corner protected the gun ports from shelling by an enemy in front of the fort, and thick steel shutters could close the ports if an enemy assaulted and tried to clamber through or throw grenades in.

Below the main gun floor was a basement with sleeping quarters for the crew and an ammunition store. Above was a pillbox-like structure that was actually an observation post to command the fire of the guns from.

The photos below show views from the outside (facing the gun ports) and inside (note that entering the block is not recommended due to structural damage during shelling and there are warning notices).

Photo 9: view of the Bourges casemate at Froideterre (photograph by author’s companion on the trip

Photo 10: interior of the Bourges casemate (photograph by Bruce Officer)

In the photograph above one can see the curved rails in the floor on which the gun pivoted. The rail attached for the ceiling is for a hoist to lift away a damaged gun barrel and bring in a new one.

Continued in part six.