Montfaucon-d'Argonne

Montfaucon was a hilltop village 280 meters [= 900 feet] above sea level, Department of Meuse, Region of Lorraine, France. It was once the site of a Benedictine monastery (founded in the 6th Century), and although it was destroyed in the First World War there is now an American battle monument on the hilltop, and there is a village at the base of the hill where about 300 people now live.

"The Ruins of Montfaucon"
The Official History of the 315th Infantry U.S.A. (p. 58)

Opposite the 315th Infantry on the morning of 26 September 1918 lay one of the most formidable positions on the entire Western front: five hundred meters beyond the Regiment's most advanced posts of the outpost line, across the waste of rusted wire and shell-torn ground that marked "No Man's Land", lay the German front line. The German Army had held this position for nearly four years and had reinforced it with four successive lines of defense, the first of these was the prolongation of the famous Hindenburg Line, which at this point lay three kilometers south of Montfaucon. Beyond the nearly obliterated villages of Haucourt and Malancourt the country rolled to the north in hills and valleys dotted with small clumps of woods and underbrush, and traversed by band after band of barbed wire entanglements. Beyond all, far back on the northern horizon, rose the dominating heights of Montfaucon [altitude: 280 meters = 900 feet], which the German High Command had said would never be taken by the Allies. (The Official History of the 315th Infantry U.S.A. (Philadelphia, 1920), p. 46-47)

"The Shell Shattered Church in Montfaucon"
The Official History of the 315th Infantry U.S.A. (p. 59)

Related page: The Montfaucon Monument and ruins of Montfaucon-d'Argonne, photographs from April 2013.

The URL of this Web page: https://www.roangelo.net/angelo/mtfaucon.html
Last revised: 22 March 2005 : 2005-03-22 by Robert [Wesley] Angelo.

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