World War I: How was the World War I-era "tunnel of death" discovered in France?

 

Since World War I, no important discoveries have been prepared in France since 1970.

 

The bodies of more than 270 German warriors have been lying in woodland on a mount just outside the city of Reims for more than a century. These warriors underwent the most painful deaths.

 

Due to the chaos and fright of the war, their true locations were still a secret, and neither the French nor the German establishments were in a hurry to resolve the problem. But a team of local historian fathers and sons have found the entry to the Winterberg Tunnel on the battleground of Shaman Day Dams.

The first question is what to do now? Should the bodies be instantly removed and suppressed in a German military graveyard? Should there be a huge dig so that we can get info about this war and the people? Should a monument or museum be constructed?

Both governments are still bearing in mind these questions, but time is running out. And if we undertake that the site of this tunnel is still anonymous, it is a mystery that has not been concealed at all.

 

When I stayed this place a few days ago, I found out that there were people there the night before in search of ancient times. A three-meter-deep hole was excavated near the entry, and period of war items such as axes, shovels, beams supportive the tunnel gable and even unexploded bombs were left in a mound.

 

The robbers were powerless to enter the tunnel because it was even profounder. What they found was remains of what had come up from the bomb that shut the tunnel.

But everyone knows that the robbers will reappear because whoever arrives the Winterberg tunnel first will find the wealth.

 

In the spring of 1917, France hurled a failed aggressive to retake the hills along the east-west line, a few miles north of the Nile.

 

These hills, along with the de Dames, were engaged by the Germans for more than two years and had a multifaceted subversive defense system.

 

The Winterberg Tunnel started near the village of Crayon and ran 300 meters to the north of the hill and combined the first row of German tunnels on the southern slope. The tunnel was concealed from French warriors.

On May 4, 1917, France bombarded both ends of the tunnel with weaponry and sent inflate into the air to view the grade to the north.

 

A naval artillery shell landed at the entry, producing further bangs in the ammunition stored there and toxic vapors in the tunnel. Another shell blasted, closing the outer mouth.

 

Inside were soldiers from the 10th and 11th companies of the 111th Reserve Regiment. Over the next six days, as oxygen was slowly running out, some stifled, others committed suicide. Some told others to kill them.

It is now lucky that three people lived so long that rescue workers rescued the mountain just a day before it was taken by France. One of them, Carl Fisher, described the situation as follows:

 

"Everyone was requesting for water but it was unusable. Death was upright here laughing and death was also upright guard on the edge, so no one could escape. Some people were running for help, some for water. A coworker was lying on the ground with me and he asked someone in a wrecked voice to load his pistol for him.

 

When France took over the hill, the scenery outside would be one of unusual obliteration and chaos. Digging a tunnel would not be a primacy so they left it. The Germans later evoked the Shaman de Dames, but they will not have time to search for the remains.

 

By the end of the war, no one identified for sure the location of the Winterberg Tunnel. Since there were no French bodies inside the tunnel, it was decided to leave them lying around, as there are still uncountable bodies on the Western Front waiting to be exposed.

 

The trees grown again and the bottomless pits formed by the shells endured only a small roughness. Today this place is a favorite place for dogs to wander.

 

But a local, Elaine Melinaowski, could not wobble the idea of ​​the tunnel. He was sure it was somewhere on the hill.

 

Working on the Paris Metro in the 1990s, he voyaged daily to the capital and expended his spare time discovering military records at Chateau de Vincennes. For fifteen years they composed details about the place, maps and cross-examinations of the inmates, but to no avail. The whole place was so exaggerated by the bombing that no meaningful contrast could be made between the documents of that time and the situation today.

 

Then, in 2009, he came across a map of the current era, showing not only the tunnel but also the connection of the two routes that had endured so far. With great care they planned the angles and distances and reached the place which is now an unnamed part of the woodland.

 

"I felt it," Elaine Melinaowski told Le Monde. I knew I was close. I knew the tunnel was somewhere below my feet. '

For the next ten years, nothing occurred. He informed the authorities about the discovery, but they did not show much attention.

 

It is not clear if this was because they did not trust him, or because they did not like to dig the common tombs of those killed during World War II.

 

But then come the section of his son, Pierre Malinowski, himself a 34-year-old former soldier, who is now probing for the remains of those killed in the Napoleonic War in Moscow.

 

After the government's lack of interest, Pierre supposed of forcing the governments of France and Germany to take an attention, and he began digging the tunnel himself. It was illegal, but they supposed it might be a good idea.

In January last year, he came with a squad and carried with him a tunnel digging machine to the place designated by his father.

 

After digging only four meters, they found a place to move in the tunnel.

 

From there they found a bell, which was used to sound the alarm. There were a large number of gas masks, ammunition, two machine guns, a rifle, a dagger and the remains of two human bodies.

 

Pierre Malinowski hid the dug part, sendoff it in precisely the same disorder as he had found it, and again he died to the authorities. But when he was not caught after another ten months, he went to the Le Monde newspaper and told him the entire story.

 

It is safe to say that Pierre Malinowski is not well-known among archaeologists and historians.

 

They believe that not only did Pierre Malinowski halt the law, but he also dishonored the point that men should not be battered, and by his actions he forced the government to take act. Worse still, he set an example for those who want to do this alone, but their purposes are flawed.

 

Authorities are unwilling to investigate. Diane Temple Barnett, a spokeswoman for the German War Graves Commission, told German radio: "Honestly, we are not happy about this detection. On the conflicting, we consider it unlucky.

 

Remember that the First World War in Germany is considered a 'forgotten war'.

However, the search for the families of those killed in the tunnel has now started.

 

The 111th Regiment was located in the Baden area of the Swiss Alps at the time, and nine of those murdered in the May 4 and 5, 1917 smash have been identified.

 

"If I could reunify a single family with their ancestors who died in the tunnel, it would be inordinate for me," said Mark Bernard, a researcher on the Great War. I want them to come out of this tunnel and entomb them morally and bury these entire companions together.

 

When the remnants of more than 400 German soldiers were exposed in a like event in 1973 in the Mont Cornell it area of ​​Reims, they were suppressed together.

 

Pierre Malinowski also says that these soldiers should be privileged.

 

"Some of them were farmers, some were stylists, some were bank clerks, but they all came to fight on their particular, and they ended up in a way we can't even visualize."

 

They are fully conscious of the dignity and admiration of human remnants and they are forbidden to take pictures of these bodies.

 

"These bodies are as prudently be concerned for as mummies are kept in Egypt. Remember, the soldiers spent their days and nights in this tunnel, and all their daily use tools is there. Every soldier will have a story. It will be one of the largest survivors of World War I.