The main gallery
The main gallery :
It connects the Ammunition Entrance
to the around one mile away Combat Blocks. Along it runs a 60 cm
wide track for loco-tractor drawn carriages, fed by overhead wire
carrying 600 volts. This small train was solely used for
conveyance purposes between the front and the rear.
On this gallery are : a secret
emergency exit, the drain water outlet and the morgue, drilled
intake points for electric and telephone cables, the Command
Post, the front sub-station and a water cistern, for fire
emergency.
The emergency exit was meant to
enable such men as were blocked in the gallery to be able to
leave the bunker. A ladder within a shaft, whose upper part was
filled with gravel to deny the enemy the way down, could take
them up and out into a wood. In the lower part of the shaft, two
pits run parallel for the gravel to fall down into one of them
and the men to climb further up the ladder in the other, on
opening the trap half-way up.
The two ends of the main gallery
gently slope down to their middle, where a sewer collects the
water flowing along a gutter. The sewer opens into a 240 m long
gangway, from which the water drains out into the open, then down
a woody slope. This channel could also be used as an emergency
exit.
The morgue was meant to hold some
coffins, in the heat of a battle, pending their removal. As it
was deemed vital to keep up liaison with the outside, telephone
and electricity wire intake points were dug into the wall of the
gallery, where they could but hardly be spotted out.
- Continuation