Tranchée des Baïonnettes
  
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Location in the Meuse department (green dot) |
The Tranchée des Baïonnettes , in English bayonet trench , is a memorial to the memory of the Battle of Verdun in Douaumont-Vaux . It was classified as an official monument on May 6, 1922.
background
The moat was part of the rift system around Verdun. The 137th Infantry Regiment was stationed there to strengthen the defensive. The position was nevertheless taken between July 10 and 12 by German soldiers with the support of the artillery, with the regiment losing 37 officers, 133 NCOs and 1,387 ordinary soldiers.
Discovery and Myth
In December 1918, the priest Louis Ratier, a member of the regiment in 1916, found a trench in which several bayonets protruded from the ground, which he immediately reported to the authorities. Authorities suspected that these weapons belonged to soldiers who were hit by a grenade. A little later, a commission of inquiry discovered the remains of 21 soldiers, 14 of them identifiable, who were buried in the Douaumont ossuary . The unidentifiable were buried again in the same place.
Impressed by this, the American banker George T. Rand donated 500,000 French francs for a monument that was built by the French architect André Ventre and inaugurated by the President Alexandre Millerand . The monument was restored between 1972 and 1976.
Above the front door, which was built by Edgar Brandt , it read:
«À la mémoire des soldat français qui dorment debout le fusil en main dans cette tranchée. »
"In memory of the French soldiers who sleep upright in this trench with rifles in hand."
However, early on there were doubts about the correctness of the story: one veteran said no one would be passively buried, and historians noted that a grenade would have scattered the deceased and that the regiment was attacked, so it made no sense to them to plant the bayonet - an assault weapon.
In the 1930s, Lieutenant Louis Polimann finally testified that he had surrendered with his regiment and laid down his arms. They would have placed the bayonets next to their fallen comrades as a homage . The trench was probably buried by German soldiers because they had to bury the bodies after the attack and because the section was of no use to them. Polimann later claimed that the story was far too good not to become a legend.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b bayonet trench. French Ministry of Culture, accessed April 9, 2020 (French).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h The legend of the bayonet trench. Retrieved April 9, 2020 (French).
- ↑ Memorial plaque on site
- ↑ The bayonet trench. Retrieved April 9, 2020 (French).
- ↑ [Verdun 2016] The legend of the “bayonet trench”. Retrieved April 9, 2020 (French).
- ^ Pierre Nora (ed.): Places of remembrance of France . S. 263 .