"ST MIHIEL" Saint-Mihiel by mtncorg

St Mihiel is small town of slightly over 5,000 on the east bank of the Meuse River lying at a point where parallel-arranged rows of hills from the east and west converge on the river. A Benedictine abbey was first established here in 709 and the town grew up alongside. Abbey buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries are still being used by the town in one form or another. Tourists know St Mihiel mostly for the two sculptures left behind by native-son, Ligier Richier - “The Virgin Swooning” and “The Entombment of Christ”. Richier was probably the finest sculptor to come from medieval Lorraine - his works in other nearby towns can be visited on a specially-devised tourist route known as the Route de Richier.

During World War I, St Mihiel was the focus of three major offensives - one German, one French and one Franco-American. The German offensive in late 1914 from the east actually captured St Mihiel and established a small bridgehead over the Meuse River. The swath of territory won to the east of town became known as the St Mihiel Salient and stood as an ever-present threat to the slender lines of communication and supply that ran northwards to the French strongholds of Verdun. To attempt to reduce the Salient and that threat, repeated French attacks ground away in the woods to the south of the town - Bois d’Ailly among others - where little was gained, but over 60,000 French soldiers died in 1915 alone. The front would go from boil to simmer until September 1918 when in the span of a couple days the American Expeditionary Force, along with 35,000 French troops, reduced the salient in the span of only a couple of days - helped by the fact that the Germans had decided to withdraw in the eye of the storm about to unfold. Even at that, they left behind over 16,000 prisoners - one of the two Austrian divisions which saw action after being sent north in the summer of 1918 to try and make good the horrible losses of the German Spring Offensives was caught in the Salient and reduced to half strength. The other division would suffer a similar fate on the east bank of the Meuse north of Verdun against other American troops a month later. The St Mihiel Offensive was the first time the American army had conducted an offensive on its own. Some American commanders - Douglas MacArthur, for one - hoped to continue the drive on towards Metz, but bigger plans were in store to the north and west in the Meuse-Argonne.