St-Mihiel had been in German hands throughout the war until the St-Mihiel offensive which was started by the American Army on September 12 1918. In the center of St-Mihiel, on the Cote les Capucins, they constructed a cemetery, Soldatenfriedhof in German. Photographs show that almost every grave had a beautiful headstone. At the top was a large monument with the German Cross cisseled into it.
Unfortunately there are no remains of this cemetery left as houses have been build on this site. The remains of the soldiers have been reburied in the 1920’s at the Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof Troyon near the village of Vaux les Palameix. So not really a WW1 Relic but there are still many photographs of what must have been a beautiful cemetery.
Not only soldiers from the St-Mihiel cemetery were reburied in Troyon, also soldiers who were buried in temporary graves during the fighting around St-Mihiel and the Meuse Heights, or those who died in hospitals were reburied there.
In October 2015 I made a trip to Troyon and visited the graves of Ernst Holscher and Johan Lederer. Photo’s of their graves (see above) are in my collection.
