"LES EPARGES – LA MORTE" Les Éparges by mtncorg

At 346 meters high, Les Eparges serves as a counterpoint to the Vauquois. Both hills serve as eastern and western ends to the Verdun sector of the Western Front. Both were the scene for intensive mine warfare and both were initially given up by the French for very little and a whole lot more was expended in trying to get them back.

Les Eparges is a pretty forested hill, an outlier to the Meuse Heights rising over the Woevre Plain to the east. The upper reaches of the Longeau Valley seek to make Les Eparges a true island, but not succeeding, the hillock maintains a connection to the Heights to the south and is thus but a peninsula of forested highlands. The Germans attacked across the Woevre following the failure of the French offensives in the Ardennes and Lorraine – especially aided by a weakening of French forces in the region to try and reinforce units fighting the strong German right flank in the Paris area during the Battle of the First Marne. The hill was taken in late September 1914 – the little town of Les Eparges to the west fell, as well – as a part of the offensive that created the St Mihiel Salient. To be able to launch any sort of offensive out onto the Woevre Plain to the east, the French needed to reclaim possession of Les Eparges to deny the Germans the remarkable observation qualities of the position. The first attack orders went out and in late February 1915, the French went forward. They captured the first trench lines of the Bavarian defenders, but the Bavarians already had their artillery registered on those positions so the French were pulverized. The 106th regiment, in three days, had 300 killed, another 300 missing and 1000 wounded – half of its prewar strength, which it was not up to at the time. The French continued to attack and eventually got all the way to Point X on 27 March. German counterattacks left them with only 80 meters of the crest line here, however. Attacks followed counterattacks until the German attack of 24 April 1915 ended the French hopes of regaining the Woevre. The attacks absorbed the attention of the entire French 1st Army and they lost the equivalent of an entire division – almost 18,000 men. Maurice Genevoix, a famous French novelist, entitled his narrative of the battle, “La Morte.”

To visit the area you get an idea that the French won the battle. Such is the strength of post war monuments and propaganda. It was only with the success of the reduction of the St Mihiel Salient by Franco-American forces in mid September 1918 that the Germans finally retreated off the crests of Les Eparges.