Forgotten History: The Underground Hell of Fort Vaux

like do Elmo and and the other forts and this network around for done for at Voe had a big dry moat around the outside and it actually had galleries machine-gun emplacements on the inside of that moat so that if enemy troops Germans naturally got into the moat they were able they were still going to take machine-gun fire they weren't protected from the fort here are a couple seven French 75 1897 patterns 75 millimeter gun emplacements and see the steel doors on the outside those guns are on swiveling emplacements on the inside can be turned to and fro now let's go up on top so this doesn't look like a whole lot from up here because these forts were dug into the ground and then covered with the earth the the earth on top made for a really good protection against shell fire the walls are several meters thick of concrete and then covered by dirt on top of that not everything was underground though we have observation and machine-gun firing ports like this one down here we have a more substantial gun turret now there was one large primary gun emplacement here at Voe and it was destroyed very early in the battle long story there had actually been a tentative plan to demolish this fort and abandon it for a while the French thought that having learned the lessons from the occupation of Belgium forts like this simply weren't sustainable in modern warfare and their plan was to blow it up so at least the Germans couldn't use it as a you know it's a strong point themselves and then evacuate however they ended up Manning the place anyway during the Battle of Verdun and when that happened see there's a little gun port inside there at any rate initially when they were thinking they were going to blow this place up and and evacuate it they set demolition charges and then someone forgot to take the demolition charges out of the main gun turret and it was hit by a French or by a German 420 millimeter shell which is no no small piece of work to begin with that's probably a piece of the turret itself that German shell actually not only did it of course detonate on impact it also detonated the demolition charges that were still unfortunately in place and that took that main gun turret thoroughly out of service however the rest of the fort remained intact with a number of 75 millimeter gun emplacements and machine guns now the Battle of Verdun began in late February of 1917 here's another piece of that main main gun cupola or turret that's just an amazing amount of steel right here let me put this in perspective there's there's my hand this thing is in places over a foot thick and of course the top of this for it was originally nice and smooth and well contoured and was cratered to a moonscape by six months of battle here like I was saying the battle began in late February of 1917 the Fort Duomo was captured there almost immediately that's a story for a separate video and then the fort here though would be a linchpin of the French lines until June and in June the Germans got close enough to actually threaten the fort so let's go back down and let's actually go inside fort fo was the site of a tremendous firefight in June of 1917 this was one of the the French forts that anchored the French line at Verdun and it was not until June that it was actually taken on June 2nd the Germans cut off the fort and isolated it and from there six days of protracted combat would would continue until the garrison eventually had to surrender so for the first couple days they were able to man the outer defenses of the fort but by the last few days the Germans were actually able to force entry into the fort and hand hand basically combat continued inside the fort here so these fortifications these walls built inside the fort's galleries these were not original these were thrown up hastily by the French garrison as an emergency measure and believe it or not combat was going on in here with hand grenades with machine guns eventually with flamethrowers this was absolutely a hellacious fire fight you can see large chunks taken out of the walls in some places we have another set of emergency barricades here and this hole on top is a grenade hole so it's sloped you can throw grenades down there but people can't come back up through it see gunfire pitting the walls here here some of the original outside positions and here's a kind of nerve-wracking sort of thing the ceilings of these tunnels are smooth and well finished with a few exceptions in places like this I don't know that the camera gives it a really good perspective but this is a place where the ceiling has caved in as the result of artillery fire up on top of the fort it didn't actually break through the roof but it caused basically concrete's falling on the inside and so we have these big sections where the roof is is blown out here inside that gives you a little better perspective there the electrical wiring of course has been added as this is obviously a museum now but looking at this wall from this side you can see we have a rifle or machine gun firing port here we have a grenade hole here then we have another gun firing port down at the bottom fort vote in addition to these upper galleries also had a whole network of lower galleries as well here's another section where the roof has been blown in by artillery fire from the outside the troops here ultimately lasted until June the 7th of 1917 at that point they were completely out of water you can see that there's water on the floor here there's a lot of condensation inside and troops were licking the walls literally drinking urine because they were completely out of water and the the commander of the garrison surrendered on the seventh of June his surrender was actually personally taken by the Crown Prince Wilhelm and he was he was treated with a significant amount of honor by the Germans for the incredibly tenacious fight that they put up here in fort vote if you are ever in the Verdun area in France I would strongly encourage you to visit both fort veau and fort Duomo the museums here are absolutely worth your time these are incredible sights and for my part I'd like to thank MHT military history tours for making it possible for me to come here thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Forgotten Weapons

Views: 431,630

Keywords: forgotten history, Forgotten Weapons, fort vaux, vaux, douaumont, verdun, ww1, world war, great war, fort douaumont, bf1, fort, fight, german, french, france, germany, battle of verdun, 75mm, trench, bombardment, shelling, grenade, reynal, army, french army, gallery, tunnel, casement, siege, history, mccollum, inrange, inrangetv, kasarda, tour, virtual tour, museum, memorial

Id: o9Gc4D4gV10

Length: 10min 53sec (653 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018