To the Bridge at Arnhem

At 9am the Citroen CV3 scout car was poised on the Dutch/Belgian border ready for the advance on Arnhem.

According to Madame GPS it was 102km to the objective.  The advance was somewhat hampered by heavy unarmoured convoys, sappers on the roads, rain, an abundance of traffic lights, stops for pics and of course Dutch people prematurely celebrating their liberation.  It was 12.30 before the objective was reached.

The first obvious dominant feature of the terrain was the total absence of hills.  I didn't see a hill anywhere between Brugge & Arnhem and back (on another road).  But it was far from open country - lots of woods, rows of trees, crops hedges and towns to hide Germans in.

The second main terrain feature was what it was all about.  The rivers are huge and so are the canals.  This is the bridge at Nijmegan.  Not the original, but must be the same size.










The bridge at Arnhem.

The viaduct on the north side of the bridge.  The bridge & viaduct have been rebuilt as have all the houses on the battlefield.  So in some ways it's a disapointing battlefield - the ground is featureless apart from man-made stuff that has generally been replaced - no hills, basically only the rivers are original.   But it's the journey up the road past all those familar place names giving one a sense of the scale that makes it worthwhile.

And just up the road from the bridge is Spelkwartier - possibly the best located FOW shop on the planet.  The bloke there said they do a roaring trade in the Bridge Too Far book series.  I already had them, so I got a copy of Casino as my souvenier of Arnhem.

Verdun !!!

You can imagine my satisfaction when Carmel (with some subtle assistance) picked Stenay as a place to stay for a week.  Located inside the Sedan-Metz-Verdun triangle, it was perfect.

I saved Verdun for last.

Pic 1 is the biggest cemetary I have ever seen - and that's just some of the French soldiers they could identify.

The main Verdun battlefield is a range of hills NE of Verdun.  In 1914 the German border was (since 1871) not very far away.  Verdun was defended by a ring of fortresses on the hills.  The most famous being Fort Douamont & Fort Vaux.  Fighting also extended down the range of hills to the east of Verdun and on the other side of the Meuse in the Argonne.   The battle started in February 1916 and petered out in December 800,000 casualties later.  Pic 2 is poster of a map of the battlefield.

After the 1914 stalemate, Verdun was in a salient in the French line.  The great German attack on Verdun of 1916 started with an attack at the head of the salient.  I've often wondered why they didn't attack the flanks to try to pincer it off.   I think the reasons may have been:
1) Attacking the salient from the E required attacking the range of French hills from a plain - the build up and supply lines would have been in plain French view.
2) Attacking the salient down the west side of the Meuse was hampered by successive rows of hills (see Butt de Vauquois in an earlier post).

3) Attacking down the ridge from the N made it much easier to run supply lines out of French sight and the attacks were easier along the ridges rather than at them.

Pic 3 is a typical example of the shape of the ground.

Pic 4 is the remains of a reinforced communication trench.

In 1916, the hills were much less forested than now.  Certainly the fields of fire from the forts would have been cleared.  And once the artillery & MGs had been going for a while, the trees would have been stripped bare anyway.   There were several villages in the area villages in the area surrounded by farmland, but they were all destroyed in the fighting.  They were never rebuilt because of the dangers of UXB's, gas contamination, the decomposing bodies, and quite likely the ghosts of the dead.  It is an eerie place, not where you would choose to live.  The ground is now heavily forested, but even so the surface is completely hummocked by old shell holes and trench works.

The main features are well signposted and have interpretation signs in French, German & English, so it's easy to find your way and to appreciate the site.  At Fort Douaumont you get an excellent Ipod guide with the price of admission.  (E6.50 gets you into both Vaux & Douaumont).

As well as the main forts there are lesser ones all over the place.  Stop the car & wander into the scrub anywhere & you find probably find pillboxes, trenches, gun emplacement, and always the shell holes.

Pic 5 is the top of Fort Vaux.  Pic 6 is the French side of Fort Vaux - shot up by the French in taking it back.  Pic 7 is inside Fort Vaux.

Pic 8 is the French side of Fort Douaumont.  Pic 9 is the galcis of the fort.

Amazingly, before the German attacked the forts of Verdun had been partly decommisioned.  The French high command having decided in their wisdom that because the Germans took the Belgian forts, such forts were obsolete.  They had only just begun to undo the damage when the Germans attacked.  When the Germans attacked Fort Douaumont, the advance guard of pioneers found a door, walked in and rounded up the small garison without a shot.   It took untold rounds of heavy artillery and dead soldiers to get it back.

In some ways the Verdun Forts are not as good to see as the Maginot line.  The Maginot Forts are pretty well as they were left in 1940.  The Verdun Forts were generally repaired & upgunned in 1917 after the French took them back (the high command had realised the error of their ways re forts by then).  They have also been extensively cleaned up and sanitised to make them safe for public access.  But the overall effect of the Verdun battlefield is simply awesome in the true sense of the word.

Le Butt de Vauquois

In 1914 the village of Vauquois was perched on a hill top 32 km west of Verdun with a panoramic view to the north over the German held territory.  Over the next 3 years the Germans tried to take it over and over again, and of course the French defended it to the death.  Both sides dug deep tunnels and set of huge mines under the enemy.  By the time the Germans retreated under the US+French Argonne offensive in 1918 the village had been obliterated and the hill split into two ridges with a rugged ravine about 50m wide between.

I had already visited the site in 1980.  As I remember, it was then a tangle of scrub with a track to the top, but even so the craters were impressive.  I'd never forgotten it and was keen to revisit it. 

Today there is an interp centre with a carpark below the hill and the main site has had the scrub cleared up.  An extensive network of tracks lets you get all around the site.  Some of the trenches have been excavated and cleaned out so you can see so much more.   There are no massive bunkers like at Verdun, but the destruction on the hill and the remaining trenches make an instructive lesson in WWI.

The pics really don't do it justice, but the best i can do in the rain.

Pic 1: From the German side of the centre crater.  A party of German school kids are being told of the exploits of their forefathers.

Pic 2: The view to the north the fight was all about.

Pic 3: Exploring German 2nd line trenches in the rain.

Pic 4: More German trenches - they are better preserved than the French ones, but the Germans always did build better trenches.

Pic 5: A view over the big German made crater at the west end.

Pics 6 & 7:  Photos of the information board.
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Visit to Mars-La-Tour & St Privat/Gravelotte

At Mars-la-Tour (also known as Rezonville), the main French army was moving west from Metz towards Verdun attempting to join up with Napoleon II's army when they ran into some Prussian opposition that had force marched around their southern flank.  The Prussians initially had only 2 Corps & were outnumbered about 5 to 1, but such was the stupidity of the Prussian command that they attacked immediately.  The French assumed that this meant that there had to be shirtloads more Prussians coming and fought a defensive action.  There were more Prussians coming, but only 1 Corps, not enough to redress the balance of numbers.   But by nightfall, the French command had convinced itself that their retreat was cut off and withdrew to a defensive position closer to Metz.

This brilliant manoeuvre gave the Prussians time to bring up the rest of their army to actually acheive the numerical superiority the French thought they had.

Two days later the Prussians attacked the French deployed between St Privat in the north and Gravelotte in the south.  The Prussians attacked relentlessly and unnecesarily at both ends of the line with horrendous casulties.   A counterattack by the French reserve could well have routed their depleted force, but alas, the French command exceeded the Prussian in stupidity and missed the opportunity.  The army which had held its ground while inflicting two times their own losses retreated into Metz to be bottled up and eventually surrended.

There can be few better examples of battles won & lost in the heads of the generals than these two.

It isn't easy to take informative photos of such battlefields.  The country is generally open and gently rolling, except for some very steep ravines in the rear of the French position at St Privat/Gravelotte.  There are clumps of woods all over.  Nowadays they are very dense though clear enough at ground level to walk through (with some difficulty), but it could have been different in 1870.  The battles were in August, it is now late July, so the state of the crops should be similar.   Now, the hay has been harvested leaving a lot of bare fields, but the corn is as high as an elephant's eye.

Pic 1:  The battlefields are dottted with monuments.  Every regiment seems to have installed one on the scene of their biggest pile of bodies.  There are also mass graves marked all over the place, often inscribed "Les soldats Francais et Allemande"...all thrown in together.

Pic 2:  Your intrepid correspondant with maps and scout car Citroen Mk CV3.  In the background the clear ground is the scene of the great Prussian cavalry charge of Mars-la-Tour that subsequently encouraged great waste of resources in maintaining cavalry regiments long after they were rendered useless by improved weaponry.

Pic 3: An example of the open ground the Prussians had to cross to get at the French positions at St Privat/Gravelotte.  This is in front of Moskow Farm.

Fort Ferte on the Maginot Line

Fort Ferte was the fort on the west end of the Maginot line.  It was a second rank fort, just 2 bunkers linked by a 350m tunnel.  The Germany Infantry Corps covering Guderian's left flank after he crossed Meuse at Sedan, about 20km west, attacked it and took it.  It was the only serious Maginot fort to fall before the campaign was decided elsewhere.

I was fortunate to arrive there in nice time to join up with some Dutch visitors for an English langauge tour.  The guide really knew his stuff and made it a great tour.  Fort Ferte lacked the size of Fort Fermont, but more than made up for it by informative commentrary and serious battle damage.

The German commander made a text book attack...a demoralising continuous bombardment for a couple of days while getting ready.  30 mins of every heavy gun Corps would give him.  30 mins of direct fire by 88's and anything else he had on the observation cupolas.  Send in the pioneers under a smoke barrage.   Take out the observation cupolas first.  Blow holes with placed charges, then drop grenades inside.  The poor frogs mostly died of asphixiation as the consequent fires sucked up the oxygen while the isolation doors were either blasted open by the explosions or left open by shell shocked troops.

Pic 2 is the rear entrance to one of the bunkers.

Pic 3 is inside a main firing camber.  There are 2 guns a 47mm and a twin HMG.  The 47 can be quickly swapped for a second twin HMG.

Pic 4 is inside showing a dividing wall blasted away by the blasted of explosives the German pioneers dropped down a breached cupolla.

Pic 5 is a twin 47mm pop-up turret.  It had been hit while being raised or lowered & jammed half-way up by a shell hit, then the pioneers finished the job.  You see the marks of charges impressed into the steel on the LH side.

Pic 6 is my fav.  The deep holes are 88mm.  The shallow ones are probably heavy artillery.  The square hole on the left is an observation slot blasted by an attached charge.

Fort Fermont on the Maginot Line

Fort Fermont was the westernmost major fort on the Maginot line.  It had a garrison of 600 men, with 7 fighting blockhouses connected underground to a support base, with the entrance protected by 2 more blockhouses.  It's about 50km north of Verdun & being well signposted is easy to find.

In 1940, the Germans tried to take it by pounding the crap out of it with artillery & an 88 then sending in the storm troopers.  They failed, losing 80 casualties.  The French lost only Pvt Piton who was in a cupola that took a direct hit from something big.

The fort was taken over as a flooded wreck by volunteers in 1977.  They have substantially restored the infrastructure of lifts & railways and conduct guided tours in groups of up to about 50 every afternoon in the high season.  The commentary is only in French, though you can buy a photocopied English guide that eventually makes some sense if you work on it.

The tour starts at the ammo supply entrance bunker.  The ammo lift drops the group 30m down to the main level.  After a walk around the ammo store, you pile onto a train (original ammo train, but with seats & safety cages welded on top).  You then rattle along endless tunnels to the base of a main turret & are shuffled up a lift to the turret.  From there they take you out on top to see what the Germans could see.  Then back down the lift & on the train back to the accomodation area.  After a tour of the amenities it's back up the lift to the entrance.  It takes about 2.5 hours, it's cold and exhausing, but fascinating. 

Driving to & from the fort, smaller bunkers were to be seen in the fields beside the road at regular intervals - still there after all these years, though you have to look hard for them - they tend to merge into the landscape among the windfarms. 

The perceived wisdom is that the Maginot line was a white elephant because the Germans went round it.  But the Germans went round it because they feared it.  Where they tried to break through it they failed.  (Only one minor fort was taken - the one at the end of the line they could surround).  The problem wasn't the Maginot line, it was the French command's failure to recognise its strength and to use it as a shield freeing troops for the rest of the line.  In 1940 much of the French army was left unused in reserve behind the Maginot line when it should have been supporting the Ardenne & Belgian fronts.  The French were all set up to fight WW1.2, while the Germans had upgraded to WW2.1

The pics are pretty self explanatory.  The first pic is one of the main encasements viewed from a distance.  The last is one of the little infill forts I saw beside the road.  There's an 88 the Germans abandoned in 1944 out the front of the entry bunker - relevant because one of them almost got through a bunker by firing at one spot for a morning.  They gave up only a few cm short.

Montmedy Fortress

My holiday in France has moved on to fertile pastures in Lorraine.  This morning I discovered the fortress of Montmedy only 13 km from our digs on my way to the Maginot line. 

It is on a lump of rock in a valley contolling a main route from Luxemburg into Lorraine. 

It's big seige was in 1657 when Louis XIV took it from the Hapsburgs.  The French attacked with about 12,000 men v. a garrison of 736.  It cost them 4,000 casualties. 

Subsequently Vauban repaired & strengthened it into what has survived remarkably intact today.

Nick in Launceston

Flames of War game -- 1750 pts Late war -- Nick (US) vs Darren (German).  Breakout scenario.

Nick was smashed by Darren.  At the end the Germans had lost 4 tanks, the US had lost 9 tanks, 1 artillery battery, and two infantry platoons, and everything else was close to morale failure.  Darren did nothing wrong, except maybe for the final assault against some infantry in the woods, but even that worked when his pre-assault MG fire killed both bazookas, and caused the infantry to take a morale check (that failed).