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Origin and history

The French necropolis of the Trottoir, located in Les Éparges in the Meuse, is a military cemetery created in 1915 during the First World War, at the heart of the fighting for the control of the Éparges ridge. First a front cemetery, it was rebuilt after the war to gather the exhumed bodies of the surrounding area, including those of the woods of Marquanterre and the High Wood. The site, nestled in the ravine of Hadimel, became a national necropolis, now home to 2,108 graves, including 10 Muslim, and an ossuary containing 852 remains. The war there was particularly violent, opposing French and Germans on the surface, then, from April 1915, by an underground mine war.

The central monument, a stone stele of Euville rebuilt between 2005 and 2007, bears the names of the main combat places: Fragaoule ravine, Monville Point wood, or Calonne trench. Four ossuary are arranged there, symbolizing the extent of the losses. The necropolis was also marked by the literary memory of Maurice Genevoix, who honoured his "war brother", Lieutenant Robert Porchon, killed in February 1915 and buried there. The latter, like other personalities such as journalist Maurice Desclers or MP Frédéric Chevillon, embodies the sacrifices of this unknown but murderous battle.

In 1958, the necropolis was completely renovated and its entrance renovated in 2013. Close to Verdun, it is part of a memory landscape, alongside the Engineering Memorial and the monument to the 106th Infantry Regiment, all dedicated to the mine war. Its inscription in UNESCO World Heritage in September 2023, among 139 sites of the Great War, devotes its historical role. President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute in 2018, highlighting his link with Genevoix's work and the French collective memory.

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