1-218-376 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Vauquois', 29th August 1915, (1926). The hill of the Butte de Vauquois in the Argonne occupied a strategic position as an observation point. The Germans captured the hill in 1914 and heavily fortified it. After a series of counter-attacks the French established themselves on the southern slopes in 1915, with the Germans holding the northern flank of the hill. For the remaining three years of the war both sides turned the Butte de Vauquois into a warren of tunnels and caves as they sought to plant mines beneath each other's positions. The largest of these, detonated by the Germans in May 1916, used 60,000 kg of explosive and left a crater 80 metres across and 20 metres deep, killing 108 French soldiers. Bizarrely, the two sides met at one point in 1917 and mutually agreed to only detonate mines between the hours of 4 and 7 pm, a pact which lasted for two months. By the time the Germans withdrew from the hill in 1918, 8000 men had been killed and the village that stood on its top before the war had been completely obliterated.