Sidi Brahim Barracks (french: Caserne Sidi Brahim) is a former army barracks in Étain, France, just off highway N3 to

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand Est ...

. The name

Sidi Brahim Sidi Brahim is a small commune of Sidi Bel Abbès Province, Algeria. It gives its name to Sidi Brahim wine and was the location of the Battle of Sidi Brahim in 1845 during the French conquest of Algeria. During the Roman Empire Sidi Brahim was ...

comes from a tomb located in western

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near the Moroccan frontier. On September 21, 1845, a detachment of men from the 8th Chasseurs d'Orléans and some attached individuals fought a large force of Berber tribesmen twenty times their number near that location. The fight lasted 3 days as the French struggled to escape. In the end only a handful survived. The battle lent its name to their marching song and later to a French veterans' organization that sprung up. A barracks named after Sidi Brahim was located just blocks from the center of Étain. It was given this name in honor of the French ''Chasseurs à pied'' (french: light infantry) that were stationed there in 1913 and 1914 until shortly before the Germans arrived. In 1916 the battalion was commanded by one of the great heroes of the

Battle of Verdun The Battle of Verdun (french: Bataille de Verdun ; german: Schlacht um Verdun ) was fought from 21 February to 18 December 1916 on the Western Front in France. The battle was the longest of the First World War and took place on the hills north ...

, Lieutenant Colonel Driant. When the German attack began they were located at Cavres near Fort Douaumont and received the first onslaught. Within days the unit was annihilated and the commander killed, but the delay helped save the French army. Their name is legend in France. The barracks was rebuilt after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

for the French 6th military district and served in that capacity until the Germans returned in 1940. The premises were badly damaged when the

U.S. 3rd Army The United States Army Central, formerly the Third United States Army, commonly referred to as the Third Army and as ARCENT, is a military formation of the United States Army which saw service in World War I and World War II, in the 1991 Gulf Wa ...

under

General Patton George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France ...

was pinned down here for some months in 1944 after running out of fuel nearby. They were fiercely attacked by the retreating German army and were immobilised in and around Sidi Brahim until the

Battle of the Bulge The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in ...

three months later. For a while after the war the base was home for the French Army’s 702nd Material Company. In 1950 it was transferred to the U.S. Army and was occupied by various small units as the Cold War developed. In 1957 the 55th Transportation Company was transferred here from Busac France to haul jet fuel and gasoline to bases in France and Germany. In 1961 it was the home of the 82nd Transportation Company when two companies from the 97th Engineer Battalion (Construction) were relocated there at the beginning of the Berlin Wall Crisis. The base remained in American hands until 1967, when it reverted to French control. Sidi Brahim Barracks is no longer an active military base and is being used as a civilian industrial area (See 2004 photo of portion of base).

References

{{Coord, 49.2067, 5.6466, display=title French Army installations Buildings and structures in Meuse (department) Barracks in France

See also

References