Верден қамалының Дуамон фортының тарихы

Historic fort outside Verdun, France, built in the late 19th century

Fort Douaumont was the largest and highest fort on the ring of 19 large defensive works which had protected the city of Verdun, France, since the 1890s. By 1915, the French General Staff had concluded that even the best protected forts of Verdun could not withstand bombardments from the German 420 mm (16.5 in) Gamma guns. These new super heavy howitzers had easily taken several large Belgian forts out of action in August 1914. Fort Douaumont and other Verdun forts were judged ineffective and had been partly disarmed and left virtually undefended since 1915. On 25 February 1916, Fort Douaumont was entered and occupied without a fight by a small German raiding party comprising only 19 officers and 79 men, entering via an open window by the moat. The easy fall of Fort Douaumont, only three days after the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, shocked the French Army. It set the stage for the rest of a battle which lasted nine months, at enormous human cost. Douaumont was finally recaptured by three infantry divisions of the Second Army, during the First Offensive Battle of Verdun on 24 October 1916. This event brought closure to the battle in 1916.

Construction work started in 1885 near the village of Douaumont, on some of the highest ground in the area and the fort was continually reinforced until 1913. It has a total surface area of and is approximately long, with two subterranean levels protected by a steel reinforced concrete roof thick resting on a sand cushion. These improvements had been completed by 1903. The entrance to the fort was at the rear. Two main tunnels ran east–west, one above the other, with barrack rooms and corridors to outlying parts of the fort branched off of the main tunnels. The fort was equipped with numerous armed posts, a 155 mm rotating/retractable gun turret, a 75 mm gun rotating/retractable gun turret, four other 75 mm guns in flanking "Bourges Casemates" that swept the intervals and several machine gun turrets. He wandered around the empty tunnels until he found the artillery team, captured them and locked them up. Douaumont's easy fall was a disaster for the French and a glaring example of the lack of judgment prevailing in the General Staff at the time, under General Joffre. The French General Staff had decided in August 1915 to partially disarm all the Verdun forts, acting under the erroneous assumption that the forts could not resist the effects of modern heavy artillery. After its capture, Douaumont became an invulnerable shelter and operational base for German forces just behind their front line. The German soldiers at Verdun came to refer to the place as "Old Uncle Douaumont". Their remains were gathered inside the fort at the time and placed into a casemate which was walled off. The site is underground, inside the fort and has long been an official German war grave. A commemorative plaque in German and a cross stand at the foot of the grave's sealing wall. The memorial is open to visitors. A French offensive involving three infantry divisions began on 24 October 1916, to recapture the fort. This took place on the same day and was carried out by the elite Régiment d'infanterie chars de marine (At that time designated the Régiment d'infanterie coloniale du Maroc, R. I. C. M (Regiment of Colonial Infantry of Morocco)). Douaumont had been pounded for days by two super heavy long range French railway guns named "Alsace" and "Lorraine", emplaced at Baleycourt, south west of Verdun. Douaumont had become untenable under their fire and was in the process of being evacuated when it was recaptured. Millions of smaller shells had been fired at the fort since its capture by the Germans to little avail and tens of thousands of men had died in attempts to recapture it.