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Updated: June 13, 2025
They are these: Flanders, the first sector, stretches from the North Sea to beyond Ypres; the Artois sector surrounds Arras; the centre of Picardie is Amiens; Santerre follows the valley of the Oise; Soissonais is the sector that extends from Soissons on the Aisne to the Champagne sector, which begins with Rheims and extends southwest to include Chalons; Argonne is the forest of Argonne; the Hauts de Meuse, the district around Verdun; Woevre lies between the heights of the Meuse and the River Moselle; then come Lorraine, the Vosges, all hills and forests, and last, Alsace, the territory won back from the enemy.
With no industries of any importance, and becoming less and less of an economic center as the depopulation of the Woevre continued, Verdun lived for its garrison. A fortress since Roman days, the city could not escape its historic destiny.
The height of Les Eparges dominated the Woevre district, and its capture by the French was one of the most heroic feats of the war. The Germans placed as high a value on the height for military purposes as the French. They had spent the winter in adding to what nature had made nearly perfect the impregnability of the entire sector.
In close relation to this advanced line, but not directly concerned with the battles of the Marne, were the armies of the Bavarian Crown Prince, encamped in the plateau of the Woevre, engaged largely in the task of holding open the various lines of communication, while far to the south, in the vicinity of the much battered little town of Mulhouse, lay the remains of the decimated army or the Alsace campaigns under General von Heeringen.
Yet never were the trenches without a sinister line of crouching men, whether British, Belgian, or French, and ever was there another sinister, remorseless gang holding the German trenches opposite. Round about the city of Reims there had raged at times most furious fighting. In the Vosges, French riflemen and Germans contended for the mastery without cessation; while in the Woevre, before St.
Mihiel, twenty miles to the south, where the Germans had broken through the Meuse Hills and reached the river. The German attack came south along the crest of this ridge because the German heavy artillery could not be brought over the Woevre.
On the west it rises very sharply from the Meuse and on the east it breaks down quite as abruptly into the Woevre Plain. It cannot be effectively approached from the Woevre, because the Woevre is an exceedingly marshy plain, with much sub-surface water and in spring a mass of liquid clay.
The Teutons had the better position in the chalky region along the Aisne, though the chalk formation did not add to the comfort of the men. In the northern part of Champagne trench life was more bearable. The forests in the Argonne, the Woevre, and the Vosges made the trenches the best of all on the western front.
Pivoting on The Wood, the lines turn sharply inland, cross the desolate plateau of La Woevre, attain the Meuse at Saint-Mihiel, turn again, and ascend the river to the Verdunois. The salient, as dangerous for the Germans as it is troublesome for the French, represents the limit of a German offensive directed against Toul in October, 1914.
Early in April the French carried the heights of Les Eparges, which commanded the main communications of the Woevre, an action that led to a general belief that the Allies' summer offensive would be aimed at Metz.
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