,Le Quesnoy is a town built on high walls called ramparts made out of bricks and earth that were about 12 meters wide, and so big that NZ's ladders couldn't reach the top. So people couldn't blow the ramparts up with cannons and they had ditches of water around the ramparts so nobody could tunnel under. Here is a pic of the set out of the town.
The blue bits on the map are water in a moat (sorry about the random letters the pic was just a pic of a map we have). Since it was world war one all the young men had gone of to war so the town was very undefended and just after the men left the Germans came. The Germans took all their food and any thing else of value. They also shut down all the shops so the people of Le Quesnoy couldn't buy food/resources.
and then the NZ rifle brigade came and the Germans had closed of the gate so NZ couldn't attack that way, they also couldn't attack them with all there heavy artillery because that would defeat the point of saving Le Quesnoy because that would be killing Le Quesnoy. so that left them with one option which was quite risky. they had to climb the walls...
but the thing is, the Germans had already thought of that, and they had set up machine-gun posts all around the walls to fend off the New Zealanders who where trying to find walls that were small enough to climb with there ladders finally they climbed the walls and when the Germans realized that they got over Le Quensnoy's walls they surrendered.
My great great uncle got a medal for attacking a machine-gun post and we went to Le Quensnoy.
Forrest.
