VOSGES - Mutzig - Fort de Mutzig - Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
- •
- 25 Aug, 2019
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SPECIAL Photo Impression - Year of visit: 2010
French Operations in August 1914
At the
beginning of the Great War General Joffre launched Plan XVII, a kind of
pre-emptive strike to re-conquer the lost Alsace Lorraine sector.
From 6 August Joffre launched 3 Armies in Alsace Lorraine; General
Ruffey and his 3rd Army near Metz,
General
Castelnau and this 2nd Army near
Nancy, and General
Dubail and his 1st Army
near
Epinal and the "Crêtes",
the summits of the Vosges.
They were opposed by the Bavarian 6th Army of
Crownprinz
Rupprecht von Bayern, and the 7th Army of
General von
Heeringen.
German Counteroffensives - 20 August - 11 September 1914
Also on 24 August General Von Heeringen's 7th Army launched, south of the Trouée des Charmes, the Battle of the Haute Meurthe - Mortange, at three mountain passes in the Northern Vosges, at the left flank of General Dubail's 1st Army.
(Read for more details about the Battle of the Haute Meurthe - Mortange and the Battle for the Grand Couronné my pages about Col du Bonhomme and La Chipotte - La Chapelotte .)
... about the Fort de Mutzig - Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II, for better understanding this complex and it's purpose.
The fortress formed a forward component of the German "Breusch-Stellung". (la Bruche-river means in German “Breusch”).
The construction of the Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II
During peacetime the Feste formed the garrison of the III. Bataillon des 4. Unter-Elsässischen Infanterie-Regiments Nr. 143 from Mutzig. Every year during four weeks the Badische Fuss-Artillerie Regiment 14 exercised in the Feste.
Early in the war, around 12 August 1914, 3 battalions of the Reserve Infanterie Regiment 60 with components of the Badische Fußartillerie Regiments 14 from Strasbourg, and the 8. Kompanie of the Hohenzollernschen Fußartillerie-Regiment 13 from Breisach am Rhein took over the fortress. Together with artillery teams, maintenance and communication troops, during the war some 6.500 men were stationed in the fortress.
During the Great War the Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II never endured an attack or a siege. The only feat of the Feste happened on 18 August 1914, when the 105 mm. guns fired 291 salvo’s on approaching French troops near Urmatt, some 7,5 km. away to the west, in the Valley of the Bruche.
The Guided Tour
The main part of the height is still French military terrain and not accessible to the public. Only some 10 percent of the fortress complex, the northern site, is open to the public under guidance of well informed, bilingual guides of "Der Förderverein Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II". The visit to the Feste lasts 2,5 hours! We will have to walk at a steady pace for about 3.5 km., much of it underground, and we will have to climb many stairs. We will find original equipment like kitchens, power generator rooms, a bakery, etc. The inner temperature level underground is constant at 12-14° Celsius.
At the entrance of the Feste you have the option for a French spoken tour or a German spoken tour. To get in the right mood for this German fortress we choose of course for the German tour. In a group of about 35 persons we follow this guided tour, which makes it difficult for me to shoot photo’s without other tourists. But anyhow, as you will see later on this page, I know to overcome this problem!
Route
The tour will lead us from the dry moat to the entrance at MG Grabenwehr GrWr1, to lead us via a tunnel undergound into Infanterieraum JR1, next underground to Infanterieraum JR 16, to visit again above ground Schützengraben S16, a Beobachtungspanzer, Schützengraben S1, Infanterieraum JR1 outdoors, and Batterie 1.
(Period photo's of Landsturm Infanterie Bataillon Wasserburg, fieldpostcards send from Mutzig; courtesy of my Australian friend, Brett Butterworth.)
... which the French call a "coffre de contre-escarpe", or a counterscarp gallery.
The counterscarp gallery controlled with machine guns the dry moat against invaders.
We enter the fortress via this Maschinen-Gewehr Kasematte GrWr1.
This counterscarp gallery is connected to the fortress via a tunnel, running beneath the moat.
We descend some 20 m. underground, and we follow a tunnel southward to...
In a corner of the dormitory is a modest exhibition of various types of rifle shields, used on the parapets of the trenches.
Anywhere on the walls you may read (restored) German inscriptions, like this one:
... with exception of the rust, the kettles look like these have been left only yesterday.
Infanterieraum JR16 - Infantry Barracks 16 (1913)
In JR16 we arrive at the bakery.
Being a grandson of a baker I was particularly interested in this 100-years old, German dough mixer, ...
We enter the maintenance workshop of the electricity power station.
Diesel oil containers 1 and 2 are connected to generators 1 and 2 in the next generator room. The colour code of the pipelines seems rather important.
These 100-years old installations are extraordinarily and beautifully restored.
In the next room German, 1918-style "intensive care".
Back in the corridor we find some interesting electricity relay stations, ...
Another bare necessity of life: Latrines.
Notice: In contrary to their French opponents, who traditionally had to squat above a hole in the ground, the German soldiers enjoyed the luxury of hygienic chamber pots with a lid.
From the observation post we enter Schützengraben 1 (1900-1915), Trench 1, passing one of the many tunnel exits.
From JR1 we approach our last site of our visit to the complex of the Feste Kaiser Wilhelm II: Batterie 1 - Battery 1 (1899).
These guns were only one time engaged in a battle: on 18 August 1914, firing 291 salvo's at the Bruche Valley.
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.
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.
