the soldier of the devil's passage

The world can be a spectacular place above ground, and just as facinating down below, on the hill tops of dover an impressive and vast fortification lays in rest, with a deep history behind its walls
The western heights site dates back to the 18th century when a series of forts, strong points and dry moats were designed to defend the country from a French
In the time spanning 1804 to 1859 around for miles of deep moats and defensive positions were sunk into the soft chalk of the dover area and used up until the 1960s, creating an impenetrable fortress
Action here was never seen and the firt never saw combat now laying like a dormant volcano in the hills of dover waiting for an eruption that would never come this abandoned site of fortifications has many-a-secret to tell, with a range of explorers myself including uncovering and exploring the history and the vast series of tunnels, casemate and carponiers that once stood to defend the port of dover from French attack and in the 1940s the western heights drop redoubt was used to house a squad of sas soldiers who's job as to destroy the port of dover incase of german attack and the town was over ran

It was a warm summers everning and me and my mate was heading up to the western heights to see if we could find the entrance to the centre bastion was just going to be a little explore as the sun would soon be setting , a part of the fort which was used for some of the larger casemates housing six 24 pounder guns which would fire down the dry moats incase of enemy invasion, quite a scary thought when you find yourself down in the dry moats yourself looking up towards the centre bastion, picturing the sheer scale of the operation that was going on here over a century ago, 80 foot brick walls towering above each side gun emplacements round every corner and caponiers and casemates pointing out from every wall from every direction that could tear the enemy apart ruthlessly as we through everything we had at them, but if they had come that close that they was in the dry moats, something had gone seriously wrong already.

Scaling up a separation wall in the moat separating a lower patt of the moat and higher area of the moat, we slowely made our way towards the bastion, rummaging through the undergrowth and shrubbery which at this point was very over grown with thorn bushes, wild privet and hogweed everywhere.

emergering from the under growth now covered in scrapes, cuts and god knows what else we found ourselves in a clearing, just wide enough that you could walk through without touching the bushes but not wide enough to see the extensive walls on each side, wandering onward we noticed the walls started to widen out about and the undergrowth started to clear off to the point you could see the firing slits in the wall walking on a little further we started to see a wall that went across the moat dividing two sections of the moat, this was what we was looking for, used as a carponier for the two sections of moat there was about 30 firing slits in each and two 32 pound casemates on each side of the wall.

Glazing up at the wall we spotted one of the casemates had been smashed open to the size where a person could slide through if they managed to pull themselves up, we had thought about thus however and had packed a rope ladder my grandfather had made us for this kinda reason, stepping down on my knee so I could push my mate up the wall to hook the ladder up we shot up the wall, dove in the hole and woosh, down came the ladder, he's abit if an idiot sometimws but I will say he is very efficient at scaling walls.

Wobbling up the ladder I latched onto a metal bar in the wall and pulled myself through the hole and well, we was inside, excited but also a little nervous I looked left and then to my right, each way was a long dark hallway with little rooms almost going all the way down with two firing slits in each one

Deciding to take a left we wandered up the passage eventually leading us to a large tall room with two floors and a slate walk way around the second floor with firing slits all round the walls and the casemates for the 24 pounders, this was the North centre bastion, one of the strongest defensive points in the fort, taking a few pictures and videos of the bastion we moved onto the rest of the tunnels, moving down the passage the tunnel went on and on and on it felt like we was walking for minutes to reach the end, on the way down we walked past this stair well with a hole in the floor infront where a drawbridge would have sat blocking the way over, we looked up the stairs well towards the top, there was day light so it must have come out ontop of the bastion somewhere, either way my mate decided to hop over the gap, it was a good six feet across so it wasn't an easy jump and he fell flat on his face when he landed on the other side which I found quite to my amusement

After getting up from his up close and personal meeting with the bottom step he wobbled his way up to the top of the stairs which were no half covered in mud and chalk, as soon as he reached the top shouted back down the tunnel that the door was open and wasn't locked off by a gate, hearing this news I got excited as i didnt know about this part of the area. I called him back down so we could get the rest of the tunnels out the way aso we could go up to the top, stumbling down the stair way he reached the bottom where he was just about to jump back over the drawbridge and at that moment just as he was about to jump, he paused, and just stared, shaking like he had a gun to his head, it felt like he was looking straight through me, Under his breath he uttered
"The walls...."
At that moment the whole room went as cold as ice as a strong draft wafted up the tunnel and as strange as it sounds a very strong smell of tobacco followed soon after making it's way up towards the bastion.

After getting my nerves back I managed to calm my friend down enough for him to make it across the drawbridge safely, still shaking he jumped off the bottom step and just about landing on the ledge of the other side where he stumbled back and I had to grab him by the collar to pull him back as to not let him fall into the hole, getting back on his feet I asked him what he had saw and he stuttered, looked up at the walls and said "everything went red all i could smell was cigarettes, and the walls were covered in a black liquid and it felt like someone had punched me directly in the lungs and I couldn't breath"

After about 5 minutes I managed to calm him down to the point we could safely walk, we found a ledge to sit down on and have a drink, i handed the flask to him and he golped the whole bottle down in one, thankfully i brought a spare bottle of water for this kinda occation, talking for a little bit about what had happened, we had experienced things like this before but never had it ever shocked one of us this badly...