Immortal Meals #20: The Breakfast That Killed Seven Hundred February 12, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
Let us, first, introduce Fort Douaumont. The mightiest of the Verdun forts, Douaumont was captured by the Germans early in the battle for Verdun, 25 February 1915, just four days after fighting had begun. The fort was taken (with hardly a shot being fired) because of unbelievable French carelessness in garrisoning the jewel in their Verdun crown with fewer than a hundred troops, most artillery men. Ten Germans sneaked down into the moat around the fort and then infiltrated it and, what is more, managed not to kill a single occupant. German Douaumont would cost, meanwhile, tens of thousands of French lives in the months that came.
The French finally clawed back Douaumont, 24 October 1915 as the battle of Verdun was winding down: it had become the talisman on top of the totem of Verdun. However, the breakfast incident advertised at the head of the post took place 8 May of that year, in the middle of the German occupation. It cost the lives of 700-800 German soldiers: 679 of the victims are sealed in the ammunition depot to this day. There are no eye-witness accounts because no eye-witnesses survived, but we have the record of a German doctor who was far below in the fort and who heard and felt the killing events: Dr B Hallauer.
Hallauer was working on the sick at 0530 when there were panicked shouts above, these included the words ‘the blacks are coming’ (die Schwarzen kommen). There was, then, a very strong explosion in the fort, much stronger than the French artillery attacks he was used to. Indeed, so strong was the explosion that, even in the relative safety of the clinic where the doctor was, he was thrown against the wall and the fort was felt to shake. The doctor immediately had to return to the care of his charges, but, as he did so, he noted an ominous silence in the levels above.
Hallauer later attempted to reconstruct what had happened. There had been, he believed, some kind of explosion, Beach will return to the cause in a moment. This explosion, though not great in itself, had left several Germans with sooty, blackened faces. Other German soldiers seeing these ‘black men’ assumed that they were French colonial troops, the bogey men of the German army, famous for not taking prisoners and for prolonging death. These German soldiers had, horrified to find their worst nightmare in the fort just as they were waking, begun to throw grenades and a series of flame thrower containers blew up, which in turn set off a full magazine of 155 shells.
This is all speculation, of course, apart from the final explosion, but it sounds credible. The corridors in question were full of explosives of various kinds. On the upper levels some German occupants were incinerated (the final casualty numbers are complicated by this), many were killed as their lungs burst, while at a distance some died from a poison smoke that leaked through the fort and that almost did for Hallauer and his patients. As to the initial ‘black face’ explosion Hallauer was convinced that a collection of sleepy German soldiers had been nonchalantly cooking in the area. Alaistair Horne is inaccurate in elements of his account of 8 May but the image he creates is a memorable one.
there is reason to believe that it all began with some Bavarian soldiers brewing up coffee – in a delightfully careless South German way – on upturned cordite cases, using explosives scooped out of hand grenades as fuel! (219)
Such cooking techniques are probably never a good idea but with Hans leaning against a flame thrower and Johann sitting on a pile of grenades… Well, Beach would stick to salad.
Other deadly meals: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
