Ouvrage dit du Kaiser-Tunnel (également sur commune de Boureuilles)

English translation

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History

It was especially during the first year of war, from October 1914 to September 1915, that the struggle in the Argonne forest took on a character of fierce determination, the German effort aiming to cut the railway line from Sainte-Ménehould to Verdun. Since then, it was a war of mines which continued in the sector, which became calmer from the middle of 1916 to September 1918, the period of reconquest. The Kaiser Tunnel is representative of the dense underground network characterizing the Haute-Chevauchée sector, formed of a series of wooded ridges. The German command having decided to regroup its reserve troops in the northern ravine of the Meurissons stream, the excavation of this tunnel was ordered to allow their transport under cover towards the front. The work was carried out by the 9th Infantry Regiment of Lorraine, no. 173 formed in 1897. This unit of the 16th German Army Corps was stationed in 1914 in Saint-Avold and its 3rd battalion in Metz. Begun in November 1915 by the 3rd battalion and continued in December by the 2nd battalion, they were completed at the end of February 1916. On 1 March, the 1st battalion took over the sector and began the extension of the tunnel towards the second line to the south by a second tunnel - the Battalion Tunnel - completed on 29 July 1916. At the end of 1916 the Ortlieb Tunnel was added to it. 350 metres long, the gallery and its annexes sheltered to the north a hospital with operating theatre and to the south an electrical power station with two generator sets to supply 23 ventilators, 5 drills and several water pumps. On the eve before the American offensive of 26 September 1918 the bulk of the equipment had been removed from the work whose entrances were destroyed by explosive. On the reconstituted lintel of the main northern entrance was replaced the truncated pyramid concrete block identifying the work: under an iron cross reads the inscription Kaiser Tunnel with the date 1915-1916. The two main northern and southern accesses having been reopened, the tunnel is now completely cleared. The Kaiser-Tunnel is part of a "memory trail", over an area of 40 hectares, a classified site. (There were 350,000 deaths in Argonne).