Inside the Butte de Vauquois

I never tire of looking at the Vauquois monument on the French side of the hill. It apparently has a red beacon light that shines in response to the Douaumont Ossuary’s own red beacon several kilometers away. I have never seen the light at work, so a future evening trip is in order. The detail in the sculpture though is startling–in the trench lies a corpse, already incorporated into the trench wall while the living guard remains at the alert.

Getting into the tunnels was something truly remarkable. Through Randy Gaulke of meuse-argonne.com I connected with the Les Amis group and got into a tour in the summer of 2018 with my stepson Lee of the Viking Age Podcast, my Army brother Chuck, and my good friend Michiel.

Getting inside Vauquois was one extraordinary afternoon in a trip of extraordinary days. It was an experience that I will never forget, and it’s right up there with being at LTC Driant’s command post at the Bois des Caures at the exact minute of the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun, and it’s up there with being able to stand in the foxholes of the Lost Battalion near Charlevaux Mill.

We entered the tunnels through a small 4ft by 4ft doorway at the end of one of the German trenches, and you had to enter hunched down and backwards in order to step down into a damp passageway.

Once inside this first tunnel we entered a dimly-lit world of hand-hewn tunnels that had wiring along the walls for lights and German street names at the corners.

Monsieur Guy Bigorgne led us through a tour of tunnels and rooms where bunks and tables sat, along with equipment and gear collected. In some of the rooms it looked like the bottles and tools were as the French and Germans had left them a century before.

What it must have been like for the men who had to live in that hill. At regular temperature the tunnels were about fifty degrees Fahrenheit; a little chilly for just a t-shirt and fishing shirt. During the war, the air inside the underground complexes would have been the same chilly norm with pockets of hot air in rooms where pumps and other machinery worked. The air would have been stale with earth, exhaust fumes, sweat, and human waste. The air must have been nauseating at times. The French tunnels featured wooden supports, along with low tunnels that supported a light railway cart system for the removal of earth and rock from the mine galleries. On either side of the hill though, the accommodations shed light on the dark troglodyte world these men endured for years on end.

It was a wonderful tour, and Guy Bigorgne said himself that he is a talker and thus his tours are generally longer than those of the other guides. I could have listened to him for days, he has a remarkable wealth of knowledge and his passion for the subject of Vauquois is evident.

From left: Chuck, Lee, Michiel, myself, and Guy Bigorgne.

If you ever visit the Verdun and Meuse-Argonne battlefields, do make a stop at Vauquois. This is a site left largely untouched since the end of the Great War, and the ground stands in silent agony there. Even a walk across the tortured summit is well worth it. You’ll feel the war up close.

So…the only way to finish this post is with my man Chuck’s words down in the tunnels:

“Man, you go through all this shit and still lose?”

3 thoughts on “Inside the Butte de Vauquois”

  1. The Butte de Vauquois is far more than just an old battlefield. It is a shocking example of how modern warfare creates a terrifying world through the destruction it wreaks. It marks the end of battles that were fought on an open field for not much longer than a day.

  2. le frere de mon grand pére…repose au cimetiere militaire de vauquois…..facile a trouver sur la liste a l entreé du cimetiere…..nassiet justin

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