Picture: The camouflaged opening for a 10.5cm artillery cannon in the Swiss mountains.
For Swiss generals, defending Switzerland always was a problem. In a country with only 7 millions inhabitants Switzerland is surrounded by big weapon totting nations like France, Germany and Italy. In World War II the threat increased exponentially and the Swiss generals decided to fortify the mountains even more in order to create a “Réduit”, a mountain fortress that would give shelter to the army (but not the inhabitants). The Réduit would have been the base for attacks against enemy invaders, very similar to what Al Qaeda did in Afghanistan. For over 50 years thousands of such bunkers and forts were built and most of them are nowadays open to the public. I recently visited such a bunker by the name of Crestawald, high up in the Graubünden Mountains near the San Bernardino Pass. The bunker is home to two 10.5cm artillery cannons that could fire as far as 20km up to the Flüela Pass. The bunker is cleverly camouflaged and almost 10,000 rounds were fired from its cannon- for exercise that is. The bunker is very well maintained and sits in a beautiful valley. My travel-companion remarked in awe: the Swiss were really sneaky!
For more pictures of the mountain fort click here: http://easteatswest.typepad.com/photos/swiss_army/index.html
For more information on the fort, click here: http://www.festung-gr.ch/
Picture: One of the artillery cannons from the inside. 
So ein Anblick lässt eines Artillerie-Offiziers Herz natürlich höher schlagen... :-)
Posted by: MMM | August 19, 2008 at 11:59 PM