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To prevent high velocity direct fire weapons from destroying the gun emplacements, the Metz
forts generally were underground with their large caliber guns firing from rounded, revolving, steel
turrets that protruded slightly from the surface. Underground passages linked the various forts so that
counterbattery artillery fire was ineffective. Only a direct hit on a turret by an aerial bomb of 1,000
pounds or more could cause material damage.
An assault by the American 5th Infantry Division on Fort Driant proved that it was of no avail to
overrun the surface of the position by infantry. The enemy merely retired to the subterranean security of
the forts while the pre-registered heavy artillery concentrations from adjoining forts made the position
untenable on top of the particular fort attacked. Complete surprise was impossible, for the German
infantry was deployed far out from the forts themselves. Shells of the American 8-inch gun caused only
temporary cessation of fire in the forts. When the American fire lifted, the Germans would resume
firing.
Each fort in the outer ring was composed of a main or center fort with two or three smaller
reserve forts, batteries or casemates. Each fort or group accommodated 2,000 or 3,000 men and a crew
of 150 or 200 men was required for each battery. Communications were excellent. Each fort
communicated either directly with others or indirectly through a central exchange in Metz.
The string of seven minor forts, called by XX Corps assault units “The Seven Dwarfs,”
connected the fortified group of Jeanne D’Arc and Driant. These were intended by the French only as
infantry positions, but the Germans had placed one 150mm howitzer in fort Marival and had numerous
88mm anti-tank batteries around and in the “Seven Dwarfs”.
A line of four forts southeast of Metz and east of the Moselle River, plus a bunker belt around
the outer circuit facing the German border, had no occupied artillery emplacements. However there
were self-propelled guns of 105mm caliber and 88mm anti-tank guns much in evidence before and
during the American attack on Metz.
Fort Guentrange was northwest of Thionville and was actually a part of a fortifications of
Thionville.
There were two other fortified groups east of the Moselle and 20 to 25 miles north of Metz, Forts
Koenigsmacher and D’Illange in the vicinity of towns of the same names. Similar in construction to the
forts in the outer belt around Metz, they commanded the banks of the Moselle from the controlling
terrain in the northern portion of the XX Corps zone of action. Each resembled in design a three leaf
clover and had a battery of four 100mm guns. Another fort, Fort Yutz, on the eastern bank of the
Moselle in Thionville, was very old and in disrepair. It had no artillery emplacements but was useful to
the German defenders of Thionville because it commanded the excellent road network leading east from
the river.
The 19 fortified groups that composed the Maginot Line fortifications in the XX Corps zone
were situated on a rugged ridge that started at Koenigsmacher and extended in a southeasterly direction
toward Boulay. They were so constructed that gun turrets swung in a complete circle. The exposed
sides of the casemate were defended by machine gun emplacements that generally fired west and south.
Sufficient traverse in width, however, enabled the automatic weapons of each casemate to interlock with
those of the adjoining casemates, and so destroy small squads of infantry infiltrating on the flanks or
rear.
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