Cities Below The Trenches...

[Hauksbee]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/beneath-the-trenches--the-secret-world-of-the-great-war-revealed-221659798.html

 

Strange as  it may seem, there were vast underground spaces beneath the trenches. Often they were abandoned stone quarries that had been created to build castles. Here's a snippet from the text (but check out the link for the video)

 

“Modern underground cities beneath the trenches, loaded with art, loaded with the infrastructure of modern cities, tens of thousands of men occupying these places at any given time throughout the war,” Gusky said.”

 

“Very often stairways went directly to the trenches, and then they would descend back into safety,” Gusky said. “And there was one place where Americans were where [it] actually wasn't a stairway, it was a slide, and you'd come in and you see not ‘Welcome In,’ but ‘Hell, Come In.’”

 

The underground network of cities, which extended 18 miles long in one place, was constructed from ancient stone quarries that had once been hollowed out to build castles and cathedrals.

 

It was with the stone that soldiers found a means of self-expression, from sketching messages to loved ones to carving complex masterpieces of art. “You see their soul in the art, in the inscriptions,” said Gusky.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Hauksbee

[Olham]

Touching, and a bit spooky. Saw it on German TV too.

There were some real good art works down there, which still existed.

[Hauksbee]

Touching, and a bit spooky.

I was stunned by the size of these chambers. Especially the one that went for 18 miles. 'Amazing that they don't get flooded like the trenches themselves. I especially liked the news that the French have carefully preserved them.

[Capitaine Vengeur]

Not everywhere alas... One of the key German strongholds of the 2nd Battle of the Aisne in April-May 17, The Dragon's Lair (La Caverne du Dragon/ Die Drachenhöhle), a network of quarries linked together by tunnels, close to Craonne, went through many transformations; the last one is a disaster. This once memorial site, full of emotion, has been turned into a gallery dedicated, not to the glory of the soldiers of WW1, but to the fame of some fashionable "artists" with suitable connections. The ordeal of the poor chaps who fought there in complete darkness is now but the pretext to flatter some disputable vandals, self-called "artists", lacking any respect for the site and its overwhelming history.

 

I liked the place when I was a kid, you had to use ladders, be careful on poorly lighted uneven ground, you had the feeling of being some speleologist. Now I'll never go back there, to keep these good memories and not spoil them with this former memorial site turned into a levelled underground parking for lazybones and fashionable yuppies. What a damned waste! And more and more memorial sites seem doomed to be turned into such Disneylands...

 

[Hauksbee]

Are these people "artists" who bring the work down there to be shown, or are they working on the walls themselves? "Graffiti artists?

[Olham]

I liked the place when I was a kid, you had to use ladders, be careful on poorly lighted uneven ground, you had the feeling of being some speleologist.

Now I'll never go back there, to keep these good memories and not spoil them with this former memorial site turned into a levelled underground parking

for lazybones and fashionable yuppies. What a damned waste! And more and more memorial sites seem doomed to be turned into such Disneylands...

 

That must have been the right adventure for a kid! Wow, what a location to sneak in to.

 

I hope these Yuppies will not change any of the wall inscriptions and art works done by soldiers.

Cause then it could perhaps one day be changed back into a memorial site.

Edited November 13, 2014 by Olham

[Capitaine Vengeur]

No graffiti that I could remember, but there was an interesting German altar patiently carved in local stone. The black crosses on the wall behind marked the graves of those dead at the nearby first-aid post. This comes from a set of old pictures, when the ground was not levelled and the light kept limited.

 

[Olham]

You'll find a psalm for EVERY occasion when you search the bible long enough - even for killing each other.

You see, I'm not a religious man, but it is touching to see the devotion of the stone carver.

Edited November 15, 2014 by Olham

[Hauksbee]

No graffiti that I could remember, but there was an interesting German altar patiently carved in local stone.

On the Allied side of the lines?

[Capitaine Vengeur]

On the Allied side of the lines?

The place was actually German for most of the War. One explanation I've heard for the name Dragon's Lair was after a Germanic mythological beast with seven heads, as the caves network had seven entrances (on both sides of the ridge, which was a pain in the back for the attacking French in 1917). The place became German in January 1915, the French could not capture it back before June 1917 after terrible fights in complete darkness with grenades and knifes. The Dragon's Lair was once again German for additional short time after the 3rd Battle of the Aisne (27 May 1918), but the front had moved far away South at that time, and the subterran citadel was not garrisoned. No graffiti that I can remember, but there were many traffic markings in German written with black paint on the walls.