The war at sea was very important however not as important as the western front. The highlights of the war at sea was that it brought America into the war as German U-boats sunk American ships. The coming of America brought 1 million infantry troops and equipment such as tanks and aeroplanes and morale for the British and French troops which played a decent role in breaching the Hindenburg line which was a key factor in the downfall of the German army. This is because it was a strategic defence point, in addition German morale was dead. Letters from home to the German troops stated that Germany was being starved out due to the blockade but now since most hope of winning the war was lost the German people were failing to find a reason to continue fighting and starving.  (A military disaster coincided with a food crisis at the time and by the summer of 1918 people were starving and were failing to find a reason for this sacrifice when victory was well out of the question).

The reason for this starvation was however because of the blockade and the war at sea by which point the Germans were losing. Proof of this is that near to the end of the war The German sailors refused to put to sea as ordered by the generals for the glory of the German army. This again relates to the war at sea as the German sailors believed such an action to be suicide and so mutinied. The German generals were failing to  find spare troops to stop the Mutiny. Not only did such defiance come from the sailors but also from the Admirals as they were indignant at having to call off submarine warfare, This was leading Germany to collapse and raised panic.  This was a very important role that was achieved through the war at sea because this than led Prince Max to try to bring the war to an end in order to stop the revolution. As seen from the examples above the War at sea played a key role in collapsing the German army which Haig believed was the way to destroy Germany.

The reasons why This was not as important as the crucial western front was because with America joining the war and bringing down German morale as they now knew that the small chance they had of winning the war was now completely lost. In addition despite aprox every 10 Americans dying for a single German and most casualties being caused by British troops the chances of Britain, France and America losing were extremely slim, especially with the extra equipment and a major boost in morale.

The war at sea was However the 2nd most important reason in the downfall of Germany due to e.g the blockade constantly decreasing Germany’s morale by starving them, furthermore their families wrote letters to them such as this one “We have nothing to eat, we are fed up with the war, come back as soon as possible” (Herbert Sulzbach 1918) This obviously helped to decrease the German army’s willingness to continue fighting.  Ludendorff described the blockade as “the strangling hunger” meaning it was surely strangling Germany to death through means of starvation.  In addition he also says that patriotism died and the germans were found in a receptive frame of mind” This once again shows the effectiveness of the blockade, furthermore since Ludendorff is admitting this disaster in one of his memoirs it is unlikely to be biased and based on my own knowledge seems pretty accurate, Another source by the German vice chancellor saying “all I see is starving people” backs up this one thus showing once again the importance of the fleet..

Overall it was a crucial factor in winning the world war and helped out the war at the western front which was the crucial and single most important factor for winning the war.

By Roman Korvyakov.   (Roman2011)

Britain had a strong navy because it was an island nation and because it had the world’s largest empire covering a sixth of the worlds land mass. Britain had territories all over the world and needed a large navy to protect them.

Germany’s Leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II, hoped to extend his empire and believed “Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that trade and her interests in even the most distant seas”.  He hoped that he could have the strongest navy as well as the strongest army. For the two empires a large navy would prevent opposing nations from invasion and to grow and protect their empires.

In 1906 Britain released an advanced battleship named the HMS Dreadnought and it was far superior to any ship preceding it such as the HMS Dominion built the year before in 1905. In 1908 the Germans launched an equivalent battleship, the Nassau however Britain had more ship building sites and believed they could out build the Germans.

Over the next few years competed against each other in the “race” to have the most Dreadnoughts which caused rivalry and tension. By 1909, Britain had 8 dread noughts and Germany had 7. In 1912 Britain redeployed their navy into the North Sea out ling how serious Britain took Germany’s naval threat. It now seemed inevitable that there would be a war due to the naval race.

Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce et Decorum est” displays the horrors of the First World War, which helps to illustrate the immorality of all conflict. Owen uses strong descriptions of battles taking place on the Western Front, clearly portraying his negative opinion. Gruesome descriptions in certain parts of the poem are some of the best examples of this. For example, in the second stanza, Owen describes the death of a fellow soldier by poison gas. First he speaks of the desperate struggle (”an ecstacy of fumbling”) that the soldiers take to quickly put on their protective masks in the wake of a gas attack. He graphically describes an unfortunate man drowning “under a green sea” without a mask, “floundering like a man in fire or lime”. This dual imagery is particlarly effective — the man, a symbol of all the casualities of the Great War, is both drowning, as though in the ocean, and burning to death, as though in “fire or lime”. Almost a microcosm for the war itself, the man lies in a poisoned ocean, just as the nations of the world battling off naval forces were at this time. As well as this, he is burning to death, as the countries of Europe were after extended conflict on their soil. What’s more, he was subjected to a harsh new technology — chemical warfare — which hadn’t been seen before this time. This is representative of much of the technology used in the First World War including, alongside chemical warfare, more powerful artillery, new kinds of trench warfare and, arguably the biggest advancement, the development of air-based conflict. The strong scene is further pushed into the reader’s mind with greater elaboration on the gruesome elements of the man’s death. As he dies, the man writhes on the ground with “froth corrupted lungs” until his dead body is “flung” onto a wagon with other dead soldiers. His face is captured in death “like a devil’s sick of sin”, while Owen later dreams of the “guttering, choking, drowning” dead man lunging at him “before [his] helpless sight”. This highlights not only the horrific nature of death in conflict, but also how helpless we are against it. In the poem, Owen is plagued by dreams of this particular dying man who he cannot help at all — the man who he watched die, “dim, through the misty panes and thick green light”. Owen suggests that, like him, we can all but only watch the unfolding of war from behind our own “misty panes” — protecting ourselves while remaining helpless to stop it. This is a clearly anti-war message. Far from just revealing graphic details of the death and destruction that he witnessed first hand, he questions the very nature of our being and our futility against widespread conflict. Since the First World War, there have been many other major conflicts. Most notably the Second World War, which took place twenty years later and involved nearly every country on the planet. This shows what Owen aimed to express alongside his anti-war sentiment — we could be powerless against the forces of conflict. Maybe, he suggests, war is inevitable. However, his dark conclusion to the poem quoting the “old lie: Dulce et decorum est, Pro patria Mori” (meaning “It is good and honourable to fight and die for one’s country”) clearly states his views — we cannot be naive; no matter its inevitability, war is terrible and should be avoided at all costs. 

On the other hand, Rupert Brooke glorified his version of the First World War in his poem “The Soldier“. Captured in this poem are old fashioned ideals such as the belief that fighting and dying for your country is honourable and desirable. In fact, through this poem, Brooke portrays this belief and justifies its validity, even to a twenty first century reader. Through the use of extreme personification of England as a mother, he claims that ’she’ needs protection. He begins by saying that “If [he] should die” he should only be thought of as a “part of England… in some foreign field”. This shows that he believes the cost of dying for one’s country is worth the protection acheived by it. He describes England as a kind and benevolent soul who “bore, shaped and made (him) aware” — in other words, ’she’ is his mother. As his mother, and the mother of all Britons, England is a metaphorical part of him so there is no cost involved in dying to protect ‘her’. As well as this, the use of positive language helps to sway the reader to a positive view point. For example, England is further described as a perfect land and Brooke speaks of being “washed by (England’s) rivers” and “blest” by ‘her’ suns. This gives the impression of a heaven-like nation, which helps to strengthen the idea that it should be protected at all costs, including one’s own life. In fact, any negative imagery of the war in this poem is non existent. However, this could be due to the fact that Brooke had not seen any actual fighting at the time of writing this poem. Even Wilfred Owen may have expressed similar sentiments before actually experiencing the horrors of the war first hand. Like other poets who lived further through the war, such as Sassoon and Rosenberg, Owen expressed what he had experienced. Brooke died of blood poisoning in the early days of the conflict. It has been suggested that it is unfair to catergorise Brooke’s works as sentimental and pro-war, as his opinions may have changed dramatically had he lived longer. Brooke is remembered as a war poet who inspired patriotism, but this is arguably a superficial judgement. 

The differences between the poetry of Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen are clearly evident in the poems “The Soldier” and “Dulce et Decorum est”. Both centred on the topic of the First World War, one poem (Owen’s “Dulce”) illustrates a horrific picture of fighting on the Western Front. It expresses a heavy anti-war sentiment and questions the morality of all conflict. The other poem, “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke, sheds positive light on the war and glorifies fighting and dying as honourable. Despite this, the differing war experiences of the two poets clearly had an effect on their work. As well as this, Brooke’s poems may be superficially judged as enthusiastically pro-war. Because of these things, it is difficult to judge the true standpoint of both of the poems. In any case, however, the differences between the two and their opinions on the First World War are clear. 

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.

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.

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

Continuing along the Thiaumont Ridge from the MF 3 battery site, my companion and I came to a turn off signed for Froideterre. By the junction we could also see a wall and entrance dug into the side of the hill, and on the other side of the road some intriguing metal cones on top of what looked like wells. Which to visit first? We chose to take the side road up to the fortlet of Froideterre, hoping that visiting it might put the other structures into context.

When you arrive at the infantry fortlet of Froidterre you find yourself in a courtyard (now the car park) facing a wall of concrete topped with earth and grass, with metal domes peeking out above.

Although it is an unmanned site and one cannot get inside, there is an explanatory panel at the entrance to the car park with a plan of the fort and the area around it. What we were looking at was the interior of the fort, the concrete wall being one face of the largest of a line of four bunkers, the face pointing away from the enemy, the face the garrison entered by.

Photo 3: interior face of the main blocks at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

As you can see from this photograph, at the end of the barrack block the earth and grass topping slopes down into the courtyard allowing one to easily get up onto the top.

So we did.

From up on top one can better understand how the fort worked as a defensive (and offensive) structure. We could see several turrets and a small dome poking up through the earth above the blocks of the main structure below, and each surrounded by concrete aprons. Standing with our backs to the courtyard, the earth topping of the fort sloped gently downhill towards what seemed to be a rather smoothed-out ditch.

Photo 4: view sideways along the fort from the top (photograph by Bruce Officer)

The larger turret housed two 75mm guns, the offensive armament of the fortlet (75mm, or 3 inches, being the diameter of the shells they fired). The smaller turrets were each for two machine guns, the defensive armament for repelling any attempts to storm the fort. An attacker coming from the north or northwest (the expected direction of attack) would not have seen the concrete main structure of the fort at all, just a low hillock topped by the turrets and surrounded by barbed wire, a ditch with a sturdy iron fence, and more barbed wire. All that earth of the front slope of the fort protected the concrete living quarters from shells as much as the concrete itself did. And that the fort had suffered heavy bombardment indeed was obvious from the dents of shell craters in the grass all over the top of the fort.

Continued in part four.

Setting off northwards one morning from the city of Verdun, along the east bank of the River Meuse, my companion and I soon entered the tree-clad hills that loom over the city, and climbed onto the Thiaumont Ridge that slopes eastwards in the direction of Fort Douaumont, the jewel of the Verdun defences. Almost as soon as we were amongst the trees we began to see the strongpoints that were such a feature of the Battle of Verdun: corners of earthworks and blocks of battered concrete peeking out through the trees and the gloom of a drizzly July day. For as well as the 12 major forts built in the hills here, there were hundreds of bunkers, troop shelters, command posts and ammunition magazines, the remains of which still lie silent within the forest that was planted after the war.

Photo 1: a command post bunker in the trees (photograph by Bruce Officer)

Verdun is a name that echoes in the French psyche the way that the Somme and Passchendaele do in the British. It was here in 1916 that the Germans launched a massive attack that began ten months of continuous fighting for these hills and the fortifications on and around them. The toll of dead and wounded easily equalled that on the Somme as the French poured in more and more units to hold the hills at all costs and the Germans likewise to take them. That the French did hold out at Verdun is one of their key contributions to the eventual Allied victory, and Verdun has become a symbol of French tenacity.

The city of Verdun sits on the northwards-flowing River Meuse, where the old main road cuts across the narrow river valley on its journey eastwards from Paris to Metz. It has been a strategic location for centuries and has endured many sieges, including one by Attila the Hun in AD 450. With the loss of the French border city of Metz to the Germans in the war of 1870, Verdun became a border city again and its defences had to be modernised. Modern long range artillery meant that it was now pointless to try to hold the edge of the city itself, so the new defences were created in the hills to the north and the east.

At first these defences consisted of a handful of forts and fortlets on the hilltops and ridges: heavy masonry barrack block complexes surrounded by broad ditches and covered with earth, topped with thick earth parapets behind which wheeled artillery pieces and riflemen would stand to defend the forts. It was assumed that the gaps between the forts would be protected by units of the mobile field army, throwing up earthworks and digging trenches as needed. As artillery grew in destructive power in the last decades of the 19th century the forts were improved – masonry was replaced with concrete and guns behind open ramparts on fort tops were replaced with fewer rotating steel-armoured artillery turrets, the extra guns being dispersed into batteries between the forts. The positions infantry would occupy between the forts were bolstered with concrete command posts and concrete shelters for troops to sit out bombardments in.

And on the route we cycled, it would be one of those smaller ‘interval’ positions we would encounter first.

Continued in part two.

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

In the first part I explained how the hills to the north of Verdun are full of First World War defences, from the large forts to smaller fortlets, bunkers and shelters. It was those smaller fortifications my companion and I encountered first as we cycled up the road along the Thiaumont Ridge.

Slogging up the incline we spotted some earth banks and glimpses of concrete through the trees. A hundred yards or so later there was a sign pointing up a path that gave away what it was we had seen, “Batteries et Magasins MF 3” – an outlying artillery battery position and ammunition magazine number 3 for the Froideterre fortlet.

The map below shows the layout of the major defences in the hills above Verdun, with the route we cycled in red and battery MF3 highlighted in red.

Map 1: fortifications in the hills above Verdun, with first part of cycle route in red (map by Bruce Officer)

At first glance it appeared a confusion of concrete blocks partly covered by earth.

Photo 2: interval artillery battery position (photograph by Bruce Officer)

Getting closer, we saw it was a series of four bays, separated by earth banks with concrete structures under them. If this was an artillery battery position as the sign said, then it seemed clear that the bays were where guns sat and the concrete bunkers between them were either crew shelters or ammunition stores. A bit of research on returning home showed that to be the case, as the plan below for a typical 4-gun battery position shows.

Diagram 1: concrete and earth 4-gun battery position of type built at Verdun before the war (diagram by Bruce Officer)

These batteries had no overhead cover. Their main protection was afforded by being sited behind a ridge, out of direct sight of the enemy. The earth banks would offer some protection against near misses or limit the damage from a direct hit to one single gun and its crew. The concrete shelters provided somewhere for the crews to sit out bombardments, men being much more vulnerable to shrapnel and fragments than the guns themselves were.

The majority of the artillery in the defences around Verdun would have been assigned to one of these open battery sites, the cost of steel gun turrets being so high that the forts themselves only had one or two gun turrets apiece.

Between the battery position itself and the road was a very flat path, running along the contour of the hill. This turned out to be the line of an old narrow-gauge railway. These light railways, carrying small engines and wagons, linked the main defensive sites to feed the voracious appetite for shells of the artillery.

These pre-war concrete and earth batteries weren’t the only artillery positions, however, as artillery units would dig gun pits wherever they had to deploy, and improvise whatever cover and protection they could.

Continued in part three.