of fortification in war. The Belgian forts had been quickly destroyed by German artillery and easily overrun. In August 1915, General Joseph Joffre approved the reduction of the garrison at Douaumont and at other Verdun forts. Douaumont was stripped of all its weaponry except for the two turreted guns that were too difficult to remove: a 155 mm and a 75 mm gun. The two "Casemates de Bourges" bunkers, one on each side of the fort, were disarmed of their four 75s. The garrison was mostly middle-aged reservists, under the command of the city's military governor and not the field army. Capture On 21 February 1916, the German 5th Army began an offensive which started the Battle of Verdun. Douaumont was the largest and highest fort on the two concentric rings of forts protecting the city and thus the keystone to the city defenses. The German offensive was already four days old and progressing rapidly from the north when, on 24 February, it came within reach of Fort Douaumont. Fort Douaumont was still only manned by a maintenance crew of only 56 troops and a few gunners. The highest-ranked soldier in the fort was an NCO named Chenot. On 25 February, elements of the German 24th Brandenburg Regiment (6 Infanterie-Division, III Armeekorps) approached Fort Douaumont from the north, as a reconnaissance or raiding party. Most of the French garrison had already gone to the lower levels of the fort to escape the incessant German shelling with large-calibre guns. A battery of super-heavy 420 mm M-Gerät howitzers was intermittently pounding the fort, damaging the 75 mm gun turret. The occupants had been without communication with the outside world for some time. The observation cupolas were unoccupied. Only a small gunnery team was manning the 155 mm gun turret which was firing at distant targets. The dry moats which could have been swept by French machine-gun fire from the wall "casemates" or "coffres" had been left undefended. About 10 combat engineers from the Brandenburg regiment, led by Pioneer-Sergeant Kunze, managed to approach the fort unopposed. Visibility was poor due to bad weather, and French machine gunners in the village of Douaumont thought the Germans were French colonial troops returning from a patrol. Kunze and his men reached the moat and found that the wall casemates (coffres) defending the moat were unoccupied. Kunze managed to climb inside one of them to open a