Fort Tavannes

Following the Franco-Prussian war immediate work began on a ring of fortresses to protect Verdun and the road to Paris from future attacks by the Germans. The annexation of large parts of Alsace and Lorraine following the war meant that the border was now only a few tens of miles away instead of in excess of a hundred.

One of the first forts to be built was Tavannes along with it's close neighbour Souville. Where Souville deviates from the most common fort designs seen around Verdun, Tavannes is a fairly standard pentagonal construction with a double moat caponnier at the apex of the fort, two further caponniers protecting the moat flanks, and a gorge caponnier protecting the fort entrance area of the moat. Unlike a good proportion of the other forts Tavannes had no armoured artillery turrets or armoured MG turrets apart from one Pamart cloche cast steel machine gun casemate externally, relying instead upon field guns placed in the fort confines together with heavy mortars. In this sense Tavannes has much more in common with Belleville. The ditches were protected by "revolver canons", a kind of fast firing, small calibre artillery piece sited within the caponniers, and riflemen completed the defence.

Following the development of much higher explosive by the Germans together with shells fired from breech loading guns which could penetrate far deeper, the original concrete of all the existing Verdun forts was found to be severely lacking and a program of upgrading the concrete with special reinforced concrete was undertaken. At Tavannes though there was not much of this reinforcement carried out other than to the magazine and a small area at the front left of the fort. In addition to the main fortress buildings and the exterior Pamart cloche emplacement, there is a reinforced concrete shelter for infantry quite close to the fort, and several artillery emplacements within the woods much as can be found behind Fort Landrecourt.

A sketch plan of the fort as it appeared in 1914 can be seen -  above right  - courtesy of Cedric and Julie Vaubourg, and we would like to extend our thanks to them for letting us use these sketch plans. Their amazing site detailing this and many, many other forts in France can be accessed via the photo link at the bottom of this page.

During the terrible fighting of 1916 the Germans pushed so far forward that following the fall of Fort Vaux and Douamont to the north, Souville came under direct threat, however they did not quite reach the fort itself, being held back at the nearby Froideterre. Tavannes was not reached directly but it suffered terribly from the artillery bombardments and as a result of the poor degree of reinforcement it is in quite a sorry state today. As with all the other Verdun forts a program of works to build deep connecting tunnels from all fighting compartments to the heart of the fort and to the exterior, was carried out in 1917 - the so called Travaux 17 tunnels. These tunnels have never been finished and are extremely unsafe because the old wooden pit props have long since rotted away.

The landscape all around Verdun is still cut through with trenches.   The Pamart Cloche machine gun emplacement.   This picture was taken by pushing the camera into the Pamart through the gun slit so it's hard to know exactly what we are looking at!   The reinforced concrete infantry shelter in the woods close by the fort.   Inside the shelter.   There is a tunnel leading down beneath the floor of the shelter, probably part of the Travaux 17 system.   More trenches. This is a communication trench leading towards the firing line.   This is part of the firing line as can be clearly seen by the zig zag pattern of the trench fire bays.   An artillery shelter.   Inside the artillery shelter.   The metal dome on top of a concrete blockhouse is an armoured observation turret.   The view from inside the turret.   Another view of the observation turret.   Firing ports in the moat front caponier walls.   An artillery shelter for an external emplacement situated within the fort confines.   The red painted lines on the wall reveal this to be a corridor within the reinforced area of the fort at the front left. A brick wall affords a cut off to protect from fire directed down the tunnel by attackers.   A damaged moat caponier.   Within part of the fort now where the construction is none reinforced masonry.   Click above to navigate to Cedric & Julie Vaubourg's excellent and informative site on the forts of France... This shaft drops down into part of the Travaux 17 system.   Looking up one of the tunnels which allowed the garrison to access the artillery emplacements from the fort's main buildings.   Click above to navigate back to the Verdun forts main page once more...