ARTICLE: Inside the Maginot Line, 1940

To go with the photo album at the weekend, I thought I’d stick with the theme of what it was like inside the Maginot Line in 1940, but this time from a different perspective. Villy-La Ferté, which you had a “tour” of, was the only fort to go down in flames. For the others, Blitzkrieg was a very different experience. The “concrete men” inside were cut off and surrounded by mid-June. As the rest of the French forces fought rearguard actions to get away, they had no further orders. They still had food, water and ammunition, and so aside from fending off some enemy probing attacks, they waited. Were they supposed to surrender? Let themselves be taken prisoner?

Inside one of the forts was Robert Reignier, an Olympic gymnast from Troyes. He’d just turned 25, and was recently married with a small child. On the 18th June, he sat down and wrote down not only what his current situation was, but also what he was feeling, and what he observed of the others making up his garrison. I’ve translated it for you:

‘We are surrounded; the Germans are two kilometres ahead of us, twelve kilometres behind. Resupply is becoming increasingly difficult. We're eating three-week-old bread, a pittance, hard as stone. Wine is scarce, but all that's nothing compared to what happened the day before yesterday.’