VERDUN - City and its Citadel
duda-wsm • 26 March 2019
Years of visit: 1986, 1991, 1994, 1998, 2005, 2006, and 2009
Verdun is situated along the banks of the river Meuse.
The city with its Citadel formed an important strategic position along the road from Reims to Metz.
In February 1916 Verdun and its sourrounding forts would be the objective of an offensive of General von Falkenhayn "to bleed the French to death at Verdun".
In 1986 we were on our way back home from a holiday in the French Alps, looking for a hotel. By accident we arrived at dusk in the town of Verdun. My curiosity for this period of time in France and my interest in the Great War was awakened during this stay in Verdun.
Nowadays Verdun is a typical northern French town, a busy and a rather pleasant place to stay over for some nights.
The quays of the Meuse are bordered with cosy terraces with parasols and fine restaurants.
Verdun during the war
Verdun has been under fire of heavy artillery bombardments during the whole war period. The Meuse quays and a large part of the centre were totally destroyed by the end of the war.
During the war Verdun was an important logistic station for transport of troops and supplies to the 12 forts, that surround the vicinity of the town. The city was the German target of the Battle of Verdun in 1916.
You will find all kinds of memorials in the town, like this one: the Memorial for the fallen French soldiers of the Great War.
The " Monument à la Victoire
", the Victory Memorial
, is towering over the town and visible from any spot in Verdun.
The ancient city gate of Verdun, the Porte Chaussée.
Along the former remparts stands Rodin's statue, " La Défense
", a post war gift to Verdun from "friendly Holland".
The eastern city gate, the Porte St. Paul There is an inscription on the wall commemorating the ill fate of Verdun.
"VERDUN
BESIEGED, DESTROYED, OR DAMAGED.
450 - 485 - 984 - 984 - 1047 - 1246 - 1338 - 1562 - 1792 - 1870
HAS BEEN DESTROYED IN
450 - 485 - 984 - 984 - 1047 - 1246 - 1338 - 1562 - 1792 - 1870
HAS BEEN DESTROYED IN
TEN MONTHS
FEBRUARY - DECEMBER 1916
FEBRUARY - DECEMBER 1916
HAS BEEN REBUILT IN TEN YEARS
1919-1929
ON 23 JUNE 1929 UNVEILED BY ….
ON 23 JUNE 1929 UNVEILED BY ….
(Followed by a list of a company with illustrious names of among others: President Doumergue, Poincaré, Maginot, Pétain, and Painlevé.)
ON 26 FEBRUARY 1926 THE FRENCH STATE HAS RETURNED TO THE CITY OF VERDUN 54 HECTARES OF TERRAIN OCCUPIED BY THE OLD REMPARTS, ERECTED BY VAUBAN. -
THE CITY OF VERDUN IS NOW ABLE TO PLAN NEW ROADS, EXPEND THE OLD QUARTERS, OPEN NEW ACCESSES, DEPLOY NEW ENTERPRISES, CONSTRUCT HOUSES.
ON THIS DAY A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN FOR DISMANTLED VERDUN."
THE CITY OF VERDUN IS NOW ABLE TO PLAN NEW ROADS, EXPEND THE OLD QUARTERS, OPEN NEW ACCESSES, DEPLOY NEW ENTERPRISES, CONSTRUCT HOUSES.
ON THIS DAY A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN FOR DISMANTLED VERDUN."
Along the Quai des Londres on the east bank of the Meuse still stands the building of the former officers mess.
On the west bank of the Meuse we enter the street leading directly to the entrance of the Citadel of Verdun: the Rue du Rû.
La Citadelle de Verdun - The Citadel
The military heart of Verdun is the Citadelle de Verdun, an underground base, giving shelter to 6,000 troops. This is the entrance to the underground base nowadays.
During the war the Citadelle was almost an underground city, sheltering 6,000 men in 4 kilometres of underground corridors and tunnels with its own power supply room, 6 gunpowder-stores, 7 ammunition depots, a mill, a water pump station, a bakery, a hospital, a church, and an underground mini rail road for transports.
The Citadel tries to revive it's past by showing life size window-figures of soldiers and officers in the corridors
and rooms of the underground base. It looks a bit tricky, but on the other hand the presentation gives a rather reasonable 3D-impression of the daily life of the soldiers in the Citadel. I made this photo above in one of the kitchens and the officers messes.
Life in the dormitories of the soldiers.
The communications room. In those times radio-telegraphy and field-telephones (all wired!) were a rather new technological invention, and it was not yet a very reliable communication system.
Officers supervising the traffic of messages and of encoded battle orders to the trenches and forts.
The exhibition in the Citadelle of 1986 showed a large element of patriotism and nationalism. The exhibition payed much attention to the proces of the election of the "The Unknown Soldier", now buried under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
The Election of "The Unknown Soldier" - 1920
The French army collected 8 nameless soldiers from 8 different battlefields in France. The veteran officer of Verdun, the Minister André Maginot
(left), supervised the election. The ordinary soldier, Auguste Thin, had the honour to select at random from these 8 coffins "The Unknown Soldier".
After this ceremony the coffin of the Unknown Soldier was transported from Verdun to Paris. The artillery prolonge with the coffin leaves the Citadel.
The procession passed through the streets of Verdun.
The coffin with "The Unknown Soldier" arrives at the Arc de Triomphe, Paris.
The photo impressions of the remains on the battlefield just outside Verdun and some concise information about the 1916 Battle of Verdun will be shown on my next photo pages.
Continue
to the next chapter: " Thiaumont - Trench of Bayonets - Ouvrage de Thiaumont - Command Posts 118, 119 - Abris 320, Adalbert - Boyau de Londres - Abri 2408
"
Inleiding: Franz Von Papen & Werner Horn; schaker en pion Onlangs stuitte ik in een oud boek (1) van 1919 op een opmerkelijk verhaal over een Duitse Luitenant, die in begin februari 1915 een half geslaagde bomaanslag pleegt op een spoorbrug over een grensrivier tussen de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Ook al staat de bekentenis van de dader, Werner Horn, deels in het boek te lezen, de naam van zijn opdrachtgever zal Horn blijven verzwijgen. Na wat verder zoeken vond ik ook de naam van Horn’s opdrachtgever, Franz von Papen, een van de aangeklaagden van het latere Neurenberg Proces in 1946. In een Grote Oorlog als de Eerste Wereldoorlog is Horn’s aanslag op de brug uiteraard slechts een bescheiden wapenfeit. Toch vermoed ik dat dit relatief onbekende verhaal, dat de geschiedenis is ingegaan als de “ Vanceboro International Bridge Bombing ”, nog interessante kanten kent. Het is onder andere een spionageverhaal over hoe in een groter plan een sluwe schaker zijn naïeve pion offert. Beknopte situatieschets Canada en de Verenigde Staten in 1915
This trip we start at the Léomont near Vitrimont and we will with some exceptions concentrate on the Battle of Lorraine of August-September 1914 in the area, called, the “Trouée de Charmes”, the Gap of Charmes. After the Léomont battlefield we continue our explorations to Friscati hill and its Nécropole Nationale. Next we pay a visit to the battlefield of la Tombe to go on to the Château de Lunéville. There we cross the Vezouze to move on southward to the Bayon Nécropole Nationale. At Bayon we cross the Moselle to pass Charmes for the panorama over the battlefield from the Haut du Mont. North-west of Charmes we will visit the British Military Cemetery containing 1918 war victims. From Charmes we go northward to the battlefield of the First French Victory of the Great War, the Battle of Rozelieures of 25 August 1914. North of Rozelieures we will visit the village of Gerbéviller. From there we make a jump northward to visit the ruins of Fort de Manonviller to finish with an interesting French Dressing Station bunker, west of Domjevin.
Though we depart from Badonviller in the Northern Vosges , we make a jump northward to the east of Lunéville and Manonviller . We start at Avricourt on the border of Alsace and Lorraine. From the Avricourt Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof we explore the southern Lorraine battlefields ; the mine craters of Leintrey , the Franco- German war cemetery and Côte 303 at Reillon , and some German bunkers near Gondrexon , Montreux , and Parux .
We depart from Raon-l’Etape to drive northward via Badonviller to Montreux to visit the " Circuit du Front Allemand 14-18", the Montreux German Front Walk 14-18, with its trenches , breastworks , and at least twenty bunkers.
North-east of Nancy, east of Pont-à-Mousson, and south-east of Metz we visit the battlefields of the Battle of Morhange of 14 until 20 August 1914. We follow mainly topographically the route of the French advance eastward over the Franco-German border of 1871-1918. During this visit, we try to focus on the day that the momentum of the battle switched from the French side to the advantage of the Bavarian side: the day of 20 August 1914, when the Bavarians rapidly re-conquered the territory around Morhange , being also the day of the start of their rather successful “Schlacht in Lothringen”. We will visit beautiful landscapes of the "Parc Naturel Régional de Lorraine", memorials, ossuaries, and cemeteries. Sometimes we will divert to other periods of the Great War, honouring Russian and Romanian soldiers, who died in this sector. We start our route at the border village of Manhoué, and via Frémery, Oron, Chicourt, Morhange, Riche, Conthil, Lidrezing, Dieuze, Vergaville, Bidestroff, Cutting, Bisping we will finish in Nomeny and Mailly-sur-Seille, where the Germans halted their advance on 20 August 1914, and where they constructed from 1915 some interesting bunkers.
South of Manhoué we start this trip at Lanfroicourt along the French side of the Franco-German 1871-1918 border, marked by the meandering Seille river. We visit some French bunkers in Lanfroicourt, near Array-et-Han and in Moivrons. From there we go northward to the outskirts of Nomeny and the hamlet of Brionne to visit the ( second ) memorial, commemorating the events in Nomeny of 20 August 1914. We continue westward to finish at the Monument du Grand Couronné at the Côte de Géneviève, a former French artillery base, which offers several panoramic views over the battlefield.
North of Pont-à-Mousson and south of Metz, we explore the relics of German bunkers and fortifications along the Franco-German 1871-1918 border. We start at Bouxières-sous-Froidmont to visit the nearby height of the Froidmont on the front line. This time we will show only a part of the Froidmont, focusing on its military significance. From the Froidmont we continue via Longeville-lès-Cheminot and Sillegny to the “Forêt Domaniale de Sillegny” to explore some artillery ammunition bunkers. Next we continue to Marieulles for its three interesting bunkers and to Vezon for its line of ammunition depot bunkers. From Vezon we continue to the “Deutscher Kriegsgräberstätte Fey – Buch”. From Fey we go eastward, passing 6 bunkers near Coin-lès-Cuvry to finish our trip at the top construction of the “Feste Wagner” or “Fort Verny”, north of Verny.
From Badonviller or the Col du Donon we continue north-eastward for a visit to an extraordinarily well restored sample of German fortifications: the Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II, or Fort de Mutzig, lying on a height, some 8 km. away from the 1871-1918 Franco-German Border.
We concentrate on the German side of the front around "Markirch", Sainte Marie-aux-Mines, the so-called "Leber" front sector . We first pay a visit to the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof, and next to the southern side of the Col de Ste. Marie for the many interesting bunkers of the German positions at the Bernhardstein, at the north-eastern slopes of the Tête du Violu. On the next photo page about the Haut de Faîte we will continue with a visit to the northern side of the pass and the "Leber" sector.