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THE FORGOTTEN FRONT
PONT A MOUSSON - ST DIE EN VOSGES |
The battlefields of Ypres, the Somme and Verdun are familiar to many people. But what of the Western Front's least known sector, between Pont a Mousson and St Die? I discovered an intriguing, little known part of the Western Front where the ghosts of 1914 are rarely disturbed by the footsteps of battlefield visitors... |
Probably the least well-known part of the Western Front is the sector extending between Pont a Mousson and the Vosges. This stretch of front-line extended for about sixty miles, following closely the line of the River Meurthe as far as Luneville, before angling towards St Die. It may have been ‘quiet’ for most of the war, and largely forgotten nowadays, but in 19 14 at least this sector was as deadly as most. The key position was the massif or height running between Pont a Mousson and Luneville, known as the Grand Couronne. Grand Couronne In an otherwise low-lying and thickly wooded countryside command of this ridge was crucial. After their ill-fated counter-offensive into Alsace and Lorraine, the French 2nd Army under the Franco-Prussian War veteran General de Castelnau fell back to the ridge to defend Nancy and Luneville . They faced the VIth Army of Kronprinz Rupprecht of Bavaria, one of the Kaiser’s more able generals who had repelled the French attack into Lorraine and now aimed to turn the tables.
A short hop across the A31 Metz - Nancy motorway is the tiny hilltop village of St Genevieve, where a monument remembers the fallen of the Battle of the Grand Couronne (effectively the battle for Nancy) between August – September 1914. This was one of the earliest exchanges of the war and a forerunner of the Marne engagement. Memorial to French troops at Nomeny Just along the road from St Genevieve is Nomeny, a pretty little town where an old stone monument recalls the bravery of four French Infantry Regiments who between them lost over 1,000 men in barring the German route to Nancy. More sinister, the reference to 70 inhabitants of the town who were shot during the German occupancy. Several villages in the area can tell of a similar story; the local population brutalised, taken hostage, deported and sometimes killed. At Gerbeviller, just south-east of Luneville for example, there is a memorial surrounded by several dozen crosses representing civilians who were murdered during the small town’s brief occupation. The attractive little villages spread out along the D70 were the front-line positions for which thousands died on either side for little or no gain. On 5th September, the Germans took Maixe and Remerville, while battle raged around St Genevieve, Champenoux, Courbessaux and Vitrimont. The following day, the French launched a counter-attack to the south-east of Pont a Mousson and retook the crest of St Genevieve. Amid furious fighting, attack and counter-attack, the French slowly retook the villages and surrounding hills lost in the previous days. Here and there, a memorial will tell of the devastation these communities faced in the fighting, descriptions that are confirmed by the recollections of veterans such as Victor Guillermin who was wounded in the fighting at Courbessaux. In his diary entry for September 17th he wrote of the:
‘infinite horror of the battlefield…dantaesque visions, groups of men isolated in various positions, the skin no longer flesh coloured, the faces absolutely unrecognisable. Courbessaux, Remereville are not any more than heaps of ashes. It is dreadful to cross these sorry villages where the windows are smashed and the walls rocked to their foundations.’
French Cemetery & Memorial, Champenoux
Guillermin’s description reminds us of Verdun and the large French cemetery at Champenoux containing 2861 corpses is further proof of the intensity of fighting here. It is noticeable that almost all the dead are from the period August – October 1914 along with a few dating from the spring and autumn offensives of 1918. Within the cemetery is an impressive monument ‘Aux Heros du Grand Couronne’ inaugurated in 1924. It is a similar story at neighbouring Remerville and Courbesseaux; situated between the two villages, another cemetery has 2679 French war dead and monuments commemorating the fallen.
But the most impressive location is at Vitrimont; here the National Necropolis gathers together the remains of 3751 soldiers from the battlefields around nearby Luneville making a total of almost 10,000 French burials in a supposedly quiet stretch of front line just a few miles long. Several regimental and individual memorials mark the site but the centrepiece is a beautiful little memorial chapel, the interior decorated with colourful murals depicting dramatic or moving war scenes. fresco inside the Memorial Chapel, Vitrimont At one time, the chapel must have been a splendid place to visit; now it has fallen into a sad state of disrepair with the plaster crumbling fast. The wooden box for donations towards the chapel’s upkeep had a hollow sound to it when I dropped in my small contribution.
The countryside between the Meurthe and the Moselle is one of the most pleasant landscapes the Western front has to offer. The lush farmland here is less rugged than Picardy, more varied than Champagne with its numerous small lakes, varied inclines, thickly-wooded copses, narrow little bridges crossing and recrossing over the Canal de la Marne au Rhin and villages among the most picturesque outwith Alsace. One of these, Lagarde, was at the very centre of the French Lorraine offensive.
In the so-called Battle of the Frontiers, the French troops of Castelnau and  Dubail went into battle dressed in the symbols of a colonial past against the well-equipped, well-armed Bavarian Infantry. The traditional ‘elan’ and the point of a sharpened bayonette were no match for devastating artillery and machine gun fire. The French were forced to beat a humiliating retreat to the line of the Meurthe. Lagarde Church & Memorial The French cemetery is at one end of the village, the German at the other; each containing some of the war’s earliest casualties. In front of the church, a simple white memorial which states simply ‘Lagarde 1914’ We need know little more.
Near Reillon, a few kilometres south-east of Lagarde, thousands of French and German graves lie side by side in a huge and symbolic war cemetery. The traditional French crosses are offset by German graves with a much more recent look about them. French & German Military Cemetery, Reillon  Closer inspection of the white stone tablets reveals them to date from World War 2 and the Nazi invasion of 1940. In the centre, between the French and German plots, is a Franco-Prussian War Memorial. Here in the heart of the Lorraine countryside, a region that epitomises rural tranquility, three wars converge. Three times in less than a century, the local populace faced ruined crops, damaged homes, loss of liberty and in some cases loss of life; a region afflicted time and again by the political wranglings of power-mad dictators.
Heading towards St Die, the terrain becomes significantly steeper as the ascent of the Vosges foothills begins. Further memorials are passed: just north of Baccarat (yes, the Baccarat) is the ‘Monument des Bras de Chemises’ erected in memory of the combatants of the 217th Infantry Regiment who took Hill 303 in June 1915, losing 332 men killed and wounded. At Badonviller – scene of the first Zeppelin to be shot down – there is a large monument to the 358th Regiment and at Pierre Percee, another to the 363rd, carved dramatically out of red granite from the base of the old chateau perched high upon the Col de la Chapelotte. Rising to a height of 583 metres, the Col de la Chapelotte is the first of the Vosges mountains proper. With its ruined chateau, steep, fir-covered inclines and the deep blue  lake of Pierre Percee and its awesome dam this heralds the start of the stunning mountain scenery that characterises the Western Front between St Die and Belfort.
Col de la Chapelotte
Perhaps the most striking testament to the scale of fighting in this sector is to be found a little further south near Fontenelle, a remote hillside village between Senones and St Die. Fontenelle was at the centre of fighting in August and September 1914 as both sides attacked and counter-attacked key positions between Luneville and St Die. On August 27th, the Germans crossed the Meurthe and took St Die, occupying it for two weeks. The French were determined to retake the city, and on 6th September began a massive counter-offensive. The Germans were thrown back by the intensity of the assault and St Die was relinquished on the 11th. In the following days fierce fighting continued in the heights above the town, at the Col du Bonhomme and Fontenelle. On 14th September, French troops fought their way through the Bois de Laitre and took the key position of Hill 627 overlooking the village. This did not signal the end of hostilities. By the following year, mine warfare had developed: all the worst elements – wire, grenades, gas, flame-throwers – were thrown into the fray. The hill would change hands several times more by the summer of 1915. Georges Curien, a former sawmill worker from the Vosges region serving with the 43rd Territorial Infantry Regiment, described a German attack at Fontenelle on 22nd June:
‘…the Boches hold the top and start getting into the first houses…bullets come whizzing past our ears. Everything collapses. Houses catch fire close to us and light up our trenches. All we can do is lie down for, if we were seen, the whole platoon would be dead and gone.’
Eventually, the fighting diminished in intensity as both sides settled into a routine of minor skirmishes and patrols. The trench lines established at such bloody cost in the first months of fighting thereafter failed to budge an inch one way or the other. Monument ‘Aux Vaillants Defenseurs Du Sol Vosgien’ In 1918, the Americans took over the line and used the sector as a training ground. A total of 2244 French soldiers and probably a similar number of Germans lost their lives at Fontenelle by 1915. The remains of 1382 Frenchmen lie in the war cemetery near the village; the enormous monument that stands within the cemetery ‘Aux Vaillants Defenseurs Du Sol Vosgien’ ensures their sacrifice will not be forgotten easily. |
The battlefield sites between Pont a Mousson and St Die are accessable to the public at all times. |
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