Fort Bois Bourrus July 22

[Newage]

Hi All
Day 11

This is fort Bois Boussus in the Verdun defense region, it was built between 1884 and 1886 and was to house 290 personnel these would later be increased.
This fort also features 1917 tunnel additions, they were started but never finished so just slope shafts remain (Thank f***)
As with most forts of this time it has a double ditch caponniere and 2 single ditch caponniere`s, it does have lifting and turning artillery turrets and
observation turrets (more of these later), the fort was again attacked by the German army in WW2 and took even more damage.

Pictures time..........

One of the underground and hardened barracks still with the bed frames in place.

Very sketchy metal staircase. (we found another way down)

A hand crank air ventilation system.

Going up to a fighting artillery turret.

Looking at the destroyed turret chamber.

The remains of the bread oven in part of the barracks area.

Right good people that will do, not a whole to see in this place, thanks for looking any and all comments are most welcome.
There are more pictures on my FlickR site so whizz on over to -

Fort Bois Bourrus

Cheers Newage

 

[night crawler]

That turret really took a hit

 

[Newage]

That turret really took a hit

One of the forts we did had so much internal damage, it sort of brings it all home to you, just can’t imagine what it would of been like under weeks of heavy bombardment.

 

[HistoryBuff]

I wonder how the main entrance survived the bombardments?

 

[Newage]

I wonder how the main entrance survived the bombardments?

It’s the main entrance to the barracks not the main entrance to the fort.

 

[TeeJF]

That turret really took a hit

As I understand it several turrets of this type in these forts were salvaged. It's not at all uncommon to see this - we went into lots of these Verdun forts and also close by in St. Mihiel where many forts had gaping holes where turrets had been. Conversely there's a huge turret on part of Fort Douamont which has scarring from shells where you can see an actual imprint of the shell's shape following impact but little other damage. They built them of some seriously thick steel. The only place I ever saw a turret damaged by explosives was an observation turret at Fort Bois Bourrus. In that instance it had been demolished with a big charge placed inside it and all the charge managed to achieve was to split the steel dome into three or four pieces.