French retake Mézières

A British chronology of the war records under 10 November 1918 the recovery by the French of Mézières, an old fortress town on the Meuse in the Ardennes department. Mézières and neighbouring Charleville now form a single town, Charleville-Mézières. Local accounts state that the occupation of the two towns, which began at the end of August 1914, ended on 9 November and lasted 2,013 days.

Mézières was one of the most important places in occupied France. In the autumn of 1914 the German Great Headquarters (PL) was moved here. Kaiser Wilhelm II lived in Charleville at the time, and the German command occupied, among other buildings, the prefecture. The town’s location was even more important. Through Mézières ran the railway linking the German armies in France: east through Sedan to Metz, west through Hirson towards Belgium and northern France. As early as August 1918 Marshal Ferdinand Foch was planning a great “battle for Mézières”, in which the Americans and French were to strike at the town along both banks of the Meuse. According to his memoirs, French intelligence judged in October that once the Hirson–Mézières railway was lost, the Germans would no longer be able to move troops from one side of the Ardennes to the other.

After the front was broken on the Aisne and at Rethel, the Germans fell back towards the Meuse from 5 November, with the French Fourth and Fifth Armies following them. The capture of Mézières did not, however, end the fighting. In the following days the town came under heavy fire and was badly damaged, and the Germans were still holding out on the Meuse. About ten kilometres to the south-east, near the village of Vrigne-Meuse, the 163rd Infantry Division reached the Meuse on the evening of 8 November and was ordered to cross at any cost. During the night of 9–10 November soldiers of the 415th Infantry Regiment, with the help of engineers, crossed the river. On 10 November the units that had reached the far bank were pinned down in the fog by German machine-gun fire. According to local accounts the French lost 57 killed and 133 wounded there. Fighting on the bridgehead continued until the morning of 11 November. One of the dead, Private Augustin Trébuchon, was killed at about 10.50 a.m., a few minutes before the armistice came into force. He is regarded as the last French soldier killed in action in this war.

After the war much of the devastated Mézières had to be rebuilt. In 1920 the English city of Manchester became its “godmother” and supported the reconstruction financially. One of the districts of Charleville-Mézières bears its name today.