Bunker MM 305 Chaineux

Hautregard 2, 4650 Chaineux

Belgium Liège Chaineux

This is bunker MM305 of the PFL 1, the 1st defense line of the Position Fortifiée de Liège.

MM here refers to the Les Margarins-Manaihant line and 305 to the bunker's altitude position. 305 meters above the 0-meter line of the Second General Aquifer of Belgium.

The bunker is one of 2 observation bunkers outside the Battice fortress. The other observation bunker was bunker MM 12 at Thimister-Clermon. The bunker is located on private property. With the owner's permission and guidance, I was allowed to visit the bunker. It was located in the farm's chicken yard and was covered with a heavy steel plate to prevent chickens from falling into the hole. Reason for this was that the dome had been removed, as the photos show.

This bunker was attacked several times during the early days of World War II, and finally had to give up due to destruction of the turret on May 18th, 1940. During the capture, Guardsman Xhonneux and Private Libert were wounded and taken prisoner. Private Deltour and Brigadier Bonvoisin were killed in this action.

The slightly distant monument indicates that the dome was dynamited. However, this seems unlikely to me. The other bunkers in the area that were equipped with a turret, bunker MN 29 and bunker MN18 were destroyed with a 50 kg hollow charge. But it cannot be ruled out. The turret is no longer there. It is unclear whether it was removed during the war, or after. The removal was not done with brute force, as in most other bunkers, where the dome was, as it were, demolished from the bunker. In this case, the dome was removed with cutting torches at the level of the bunker shell. These traces are still visible.

As general information can be mentioned that this bunker like most bunkers of the PFL are made of reinforced concrete and were built in the early 1930s. The walls and ceiling are 1.30 m thick. Only the walls at the rear are slightly less thick, because in principle it was not exposed to enemy fire. The turret is of type Guet, is 1.5 m high and has 20 cm armor. The bunkers was resistant to shelling with 150mm shells.

When the bunkers lost their strategic value for the defense of Belgium after the war, the metal of the hatches and doors was sold as scrap metal. Also, most of the plots on which they stood were sold, so many bunkers today are located on private plots. Such as bunker MM305.

The cast iron dome was either already removed by the Germans during the war. (These turrets were then either melted down or housed in the bunkers of the atlantikwal). Or sold as scrap after the war, when the line was dismantled.

Today the bunker is still partly visible. Over the years, the ground around the bunker has become higher and higher. The stairs that gave access to the bunker have disappeared underground. According to the residents, the stairwell was bricked up by the army after the war. The chickenyard was built over it later on.

The bunker had a central room. The entrance to the cupoula was closed with a steel door. Communication took place with a telephone connection to the fort. This allowed the observation bunker to pass on which positions were to be fired on.

Bunker 305 can be compared in design to bunker MN29 allowing one to get a better idea of what this bunker looked like. The layout was almost the same.