Casemate

The casemate indicates a room of a Fortification or a Fort which the enemy shooting proof, is often partially buried. One can classify the casemates in two categories: the passive casemates intended to shelter the troop or of the material, such as for example, in a quartering of fort Séré de Rivières or active thus protecting from the bodies of shooting (casemate of Artillery or Infantry).

By extension, in the Line Maginot and the fortifications of the XXe century, a casemate can be a construction isolated but from rather important size.

Other names

Blockhouse

Blockhaus is the German alternative of the English word which indicates in the beginning a strong house, a fort generally builds with wood piled up, rough or faces, with the manner of the Fuste S. It is typically the English fort of North America.

The term passed to the buried cuttings off of countryside, initially armor-plated with large trunks, then out of reinforced concrete, used massively by the German army during the First World War. The Poilus which sheltered in infamous cagnas adopted the mot.

The German language always employs the word blockhouse to indicate a house in log, a fuste.

In French, blockhouse became a generic term like bunker or casemate and indicates from now on any type of concreted fortification, a priori insulated or low-size. Its strict equivalent is quite simply block, employed for the Maginot Line.

Bunker

The casemate is called bunker mainly in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Bunker is an English word which indicated a trunk, a compartment (with coal) of ship then a shelter the shell proof or bombs. It would seem that he has took this last direction during the world inter-war period. In French, it makes dual employment with blockhouse and can practically always be returned by casemate or fort.

See too

External bonds

  • Site of the line Maginot

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