The American soldiers who were killed in this sector are buried in the World War I St. Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial located in Thiaucourt-Regniéville (Meurthe-et-Moselle), the first town liberated by the Americans.

Within the walls of the fort located close to the Troyon cemetery, a small obelisk was inaugurated on 3 May 1916 in memory of the defenders of the fort. A second obelisk was erected after the Second World War.

 Nearby there is a German cemetery of 5,590 German soldiers who died in the area's hospitals, between Combres and Saint-Mihiel.

Among them lies Henri-Alban Fournier, one of 403 writers killed during the 1914-1918 war. Born in 1886, he published many stories, essays and poems under the pseudonym Alain Fournier. His only novel, Le Grand Meaulnes, was published in 1913 Mobilised in August 1914, Fournier joined the 288th Infantry Regiment, where he was made Lieutenant (Reserve). Involved in the first battles that took place in the Verdun region, he died on 22 September 1914, while on reconnaissance in the Tranchée de Calonne sector. He was believed to have been wounded or taken prisoner. Like so many other soldiers, he was classified as Missing, presumed dead and, in 1920, officially declared dead. In 1991, the exact location of his grave was found in a clearing in the forest of Saint-Remy. Alongside his men, also from southwest France, he had been buried in a mass grave dug by the German army. Following archaeological excavations and meticulous research, all these soldiers were solemnly reburied in this national cemetery.

In the first row on the right, as you enter the necropolis, lies Robert Porchon, friend and brother-in-arms of Maurice Genevoix. At the beginning of the war, this man, born in 1894 in the Loiret, was made Second Lieutenant of the 106th Infantry Regiment, where he met up with an old school friend, Maurice Genevoix. He was killed on 19 (or 20) February 1915 after being hit by shrapnel. Immortalised in Maurice Genevoix' novel, Ceux de 14, Robert Porchon, in his letters and in the diary he kept, also gives us the most fascinating insight on the war.

The incredible brutality of the battles that took place in this area and in which both the French and the Germans suffered similar losses (10,000 killed or missing in action) prefigured the violence of the offensives into Verdun and the Somme in 1916 and the supremacy of artillery fire.

Genevoix, who became a novelist, was to write later, in Ceux de 14: "What we did, it was more than should ever be asked of any man, and yet we did it."

The fighting in Hauts de Meuse

Due to the French push across the Marne and the resistance of Fort Troyon, on 13 September 1914 the German Fifth Army retreated. It fell back onto the marshy plain of the Woëvre, where it took up positions prepared in advance. On 20 September, the Germans attacked from Étain to Pont-à-Mousson and succeeded in reaching the Meuse at Saint-Mihiel. Within a few days, they had carved out a salient in the French front, but were stopped by the 16th Army Corps. The Germans dug themselves solidly into their positions. Lying between Verdun and Saint-Mihiel, this sector was the scene of bloody fighting in 1915. At the Calonne Trench, Bois des Chevaliers, Bois d’Ailly and Bois Brûlé, the infantry were severely put to the test. Throughout the war, these sectors, to the south of Saint-Mihiel, were among the most active.

Dominating the plain, the Les Éparges ridge was at the centre of fierce fighting, in which thousands died. The summit of the hill was blown up by underground mines dug by sappers on both sides. Between 5 and 14 April 1915, the French 1st Army attacked in Woëvre and Hauts de Meuse. Faced with strong enemy resistance, it was unable to seize the ridge.

From 22 to 26 February 1916, in view of the German pressure on Verdun, the French evacuated Woëvre to fall back around Fort Moulainville, which had been bombed for weeks by the Germans. In 1917, due to a shortage of troops, the front came to a standstill until the Franco-American offensive against the Saint-Mihiel salient. Launched on 12 September 1918, the offensive was brought by nine American and four French divisions, supported by 3 000 guns, 1 500 aircraft and 200 tanks. It succeeded in driving the enemy back to the border, taking 16 000 prisoners. The front then stabilised until the armistice of November 1918.

Dieue, a nearby village of medical facilities

During the operations of 1915, many troops were stationed in Dieue, along with two headquarters. Declared a military hospital, the village received large numbers of wounded, in particular those of the 68th and 28th divisions. The 2/14 field ambulance was divided between several houses in the village, one of which (on Place du Jeu-de-Quilles) still bears a red cross on its façade. Having gone through triage by the divisional ambulances at Calonne, the seriously wounded underwent surgery and treatment here, before being taken to Petit-Monthairon evacuation hospital, then on to the hospital of Queue-de-Mala. Lastly, they were evacuated by train or ambulance car to the hospitals of Bar-le-Duc.

The soldiers who died in 1915 belonged to the 8th, 11th, 51st, 67th, 106th, 110th, 128th and 132nd Infantry Regiments (IR) and the 25th Battalion of Chasseurs Portés (BCP), whose divisions fought at Les Éparges or the Calonne Trench. In Petit-Monthairon, there still stands a burial stone bearing the numbers of the units that were buried there and are today buried at Dieue. Just after the war, a memorial was erected to the 284 soldiers then buried on this site. It lists the names of the units of all the soldiers buried here, who came from across France and its colonies.