By 14 September the mission had definitely become a defensive one. The heavily armed ancient
fortresses of Metz were strongly manned. Two platoons of Company C and one platoon of Company A
were attached to task force Randolph. The mission was to hold the center of an enemy salient in the
Foret de Jaumont and during the ensuing action the battalion suffered eleven casualties from mortar and
artillery fire. The engineer mortar platoon was again brought into action and, from a quarry near
Malancourt la Montagne, round for round was traded with the kraut.
The major portion of the battalion moved into the Bois de Fleury near Beaumont on 15
September and the next day the rains came. For twelve days without stop the downpour continued. An
early fall had come to the Moselle and with it had come a stalemate.
Strong patrols probed the fortress outposts. In slugging matches, while in support of the 359th,
Company C suffered 10 casualties at Gravelotte on the 26-27 September. On 3 October a jeep and trailer
load of mines exploded near Pierrevillers killing seven men of Company A.
Continuing rains and the heavy traffic turned roads and trails into ribbons of mud and turned the
battalion bivouac, in Bois de Fleury, into a wooded bog. For almost two months the engineer battle was
conducted from this – "Fort Quagmire".
Road work was of first importance but other projects quickly developed. A mock up of a portion
of Fort Jeanne d'Arc was constructed for practice assault work. Then a tank transported moat bridge was
fabricated. Experiments with the conger, the snake and large shaped charges were conducted in a
captured Maginot Line section west of Thionville.
As the cool rains of autumn gave way to the cold rain and wind of winter the battalion
dismantled a large number of prefabricated hutments in the Maginot area. After hauling them into the
regimental zones they were erected behind the front lines near Doncourt and St Marcel for use by the
infantry and in "Fort Quagmire", the prefabs rapidly replaced the rain soaked pup tents.
Camouflage of the huts built for the infantry was a difficult problem. In "Fort Quagmire” the
falling leaves left bare the rooftops and the vehicle parks. The garnished nets had been the old standby
against aerial observation but here the problem was much greater. Again materials from the Maginot
Line were employed. Various types of wire netting with clay and metal garnishings were effectively
used. Furnishings such as beds, tales and chairs and even items from Hitler's own suite in the vast
underground Maginot city were brought up and moved to complete the barracks of "Quagmire".
One particular, much traveled, section of a road south of Gravelotte was subject to clear
observation by the Germans in one of the casemates of the Metz fortress system. The krauts seemed to
have enough ammunition to shoot at any vehicle which ventured down the racetrack during daylight but
not enough to shoot indiscriminately without a clear target. So, to deny this perfect observation
Company B turned itself into a forestry company and cut hundreds of evergreens from the Bois de
Ognons. Then, under the cover of darkness, the engineers replanted the trees, with guy wire supports,
forming a screen all along the road. It would be good to have known the surprise of those German
gunners when they looked across their field of fire the next morning and saw a new forest that had
"grown" overnight.
Except for a violent 27 day battle for Maizieres-les-Metz the division zone was a stalemate of
mud punctuated by the exchange of fire by combat patrols and the occasional duel of artillery and
mortars. But on 1 November a relief of the 90th began. By the 3rd all units of the battalion had moved
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