>>64432753
Capture of Fort Douaumont. This was like three days into the Battle of Verdun. The old fort was undermanned and expected to get smashed by german siege artillery, so the small garrisson was already preparing to evacuate it. A german reconaissance party had closed in on it, one NCO decided to try and go in after it seemed deserted. Guy found part of the garrisson crew having breakfast, locked them all into a side room and then just sat down and ate their food.
IN the end, the fort was seized withotu a shot fired, which turned out to have been a real problem for the french because it turned out the thing was way less vulnerable to heavy artillery than they had expected. All in all, it took the French something like 100,000 casualties across various attempts to finally take it back.
