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, 8.1 miles (13km) 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. ==Gallery==