Secret Underground Telephone Booth 'Z' Liège

This is underground phone booth 'Z'

In itself, you would pass right by here. An ordinary dead-end street, with an ordinary manhole cover.

Unfortunately, this phone booth was filled with earth and trash. Today's residents will probably not know that they live next to a defense work of La Posistion Fortifiée de Liège (PFL). The phone booth is right next to the garage. The entrance is on top via the manhole cover. In the years before the war, this would have been finished with 'cobblestones'. See telephone booth at Vaux-sous-Chèvremont.

However, this manhole cover is not the cover of a sewer, but of an underground phone booth. About 200 of these were constructed. In these cells, a soldier could connect with his field phone to one of the 34 telephone exchanges ( Centraux telefonique) after which one could be connected to one of the bunkers or forts within the network of the defense lines of the city of Liège, la Position Fortifiée de Liège.

All of these manhole covers bear the name of manufacturer Elkington. The manhole covers are numbered 1509. With a special key/ tool, the lid could be opened.

The cell is about 1.80 to 2.20 deep, and one could descend and connect his field phone by means of climbing brackets fixed in the wall.

How many remain?

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Source

• Text: Ed Lewandowski
• Photos: Ed Lewandowski