Military History | La Grande Tombe de Villeroy — The Grave Left in the Field

On 7 and 8 September 1914 the bodies of officers and men who had fallen along the road from Villeroy to Chauconin were put into a single trench in the field beside it. They had been killed two days before, when the French Sixth Army attacked toward Monthyon against the flank of the German First Army and opened the battle of the Ourcq. The French state's UNESCO nomination dossier records that the trench ran twenty-two metres and had been dug to store beet.

Nothing about that was irregular. The defence ministry's account of the site notes that other ranks were generally buried in collective pits at this stage of the war, and that the practice held until 1915; the law of 29 December 1915 then established perpetual graves for soldiers who died for France, laid out and maintained by the state. Almost every French burial ground on this front was afterwards concentrated, emptied or rebuilt. This one stayed in the field where it was dug.

The stele behind the slab went up in 1932, by the Meaux architect Henri Faucheur with mosaic work by Louis Barillet; the dossier dates the concrete cross above it to 1951. Four officers run across the top line, Guerin, Huguin, de la Cornilliere and Peguy, then ninety-five names in five columns of nineteen, and a mosaic line reading CETTE TOMBE RENFERME EGALEMENT LES RESTES DE 2 SERGENTS ET 32 SOLDATS INCONNUS. Cut into the base: AUX COMBATTANTS DES 231e - 246e - 276e R.I. ET DES 55e ET 56e D.I. Ten of the dead are soldiers of the Moroccan Brigade.

Not everyone counts the grave the same way. The dossier and the commune of Villeroy give 133 buried there; the ministry's memorial portal gives 127 French, 32 of them unknown, and 95 identified names.

Today the site is a hedged strip of about thirty metres by twelve on the RD 129, wheat on three sides. The plaque at the gate reads NECROPOLE NATIONALE, CHAUCONIN-NEUFMONTIERS, "La Grande Tombe de Villeroy" — the grave lies in one commune and is named for the other.

📸 Cover: the 1932 stele from the gravel slab, its mosaic name panel and the cross above it — Benoît Prieur, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the state plaque at the entrance — Benoît Prieur, CC0.