The Trou023 site is split into two locations over 600 metres apart and features some of the largest personnel bunkers built on the Atlantikwall in France.
The largest is a R608 type bunker - a huge structure with 13 rooms which formed the headquarters for the battalion stationed in this area. Today it stands hidden an inaccessible in the grounds of a private housing complex and is off limits to the public.
To the south west – on Avenue du Parc Cordier – you can see the huge outer concrete wall of a rare M159 bunker – a Kriegsmarine building labelled as a first aid ‘dressing station’ but featured an operating theatre, doctor’s room, and rooms for heating and ventilation equipment.
Only nine of this type of building were ever built, five of them in the area containing northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, the other four on the west coast of France down to the border with Spain.
They used a lot of material too, with around 1,000 cubic metres of steel-reinforced concrete used in its construction – the part of the building you can see from the road belies its overall size!
The now sealed entrance to the M159 stands in a private garden and we were kindly granted permission to access the garden to take our pictures. Just a few metres away from the M159 stands a Vf57a bunker, a building obscured from public view by a large hedge.
This is a much smaller building in comparison to the M159, using just over 200 cubic metres of concrete and were used both as smaller HQ buildings and first aid stations.
The owner told us that that despite the bunkers standing in the middle of their land they are sealed up and even the landowners are forbidden from entering them as they are under the control of the local town authorities.