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Stp Berthold & Stp Brunhilde

Twin bunker sites in Zuydcoote dune system

Stp Berthold & tp Brunhilde site overview

What to see

One of the largest buildings in the village of Zuydcoote is the military hospital/sanitorium which is an extensive site standing behind a low set of dunes near the beach front.
This site is still in use today by the French military and so is difficult to access from the main roads inland but can be reached with a short walk along the beach after parking near the tourism office in Zuydcoote to the north east of the hospital.
To the west of the hospital just into the dunes you can find Strongpoint Berthold, although the remaining buildings are difficult to find in the dune scrub vegetation.
Stp Berthold featured a Tobruk for a mortar, a concrete and brick pillbox-type building for a machine gun, a R607 ammunition storage bunker, and a R134 kitchen building – the latter two now almost completely buried and no longer visible without accessing some difficult, and thorny, terrain.
Following one of the walking routes inland of Berthold via an undulating sandy path brings you to its sister site Stp Brunhilde where you can see a concrete and brick casemate standing prominently on top of a small hill.
Overlooking the scrubland is a casemate for a LAG heavy gun which is supported by a defensive machine gun Tobruk, a small garage, and a now overgrown machinery/workshop bunker.
Due to the shifting landscape this casemate has fragmented over time and the two front concrete and brick walls which protected and hid the gun from attack are slowly sliding away from the main building.
You can access the LAG gun schartenstand with great care and inside you can see it is almost completely brick lined with a reinforced concrete roof and side walls. There’s a small ammo niche to the right rear of the building and, sadly, a lot of graffiti and litter.

Gallery

Directions to bunker sites in this area...

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