LE MONUMENT AUX MORTS

Like most municipalities in France, Bar-le-Duc erected a monument to the memory of its children who died during the war. It called on the sculptor Emile Peynot, a professor at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, to do this. The monument was created on site, as shown in the photo, and inaugurated in March 1925. It takes the form of a truncated pyramid, decorated with two main motifs. At the top, a standing woman, draped in mourning clothes, personifies Remembrance. She leans on a bundle of laurels for the victors and holds a wreath of flowers for those who did not return. In front, seven combatants of all ages and conditions symbolize the Nation defending its native soil. One of them has already fallen. The others (a young conscript, an old territorial, a bourgeois, a worker, a peasant...) are ready to go on the attack. The names of the victims (35 civilians and 591 soldiers) are not inscribed on the monument itself but on an imposing plaque on the wall on the first floor of the town hall. The monument is to be dismantled during 2016 to be installed near the railway station. Another monument honours the dead of the 94th Infantry Regiment "La Garde", the unit that was, before the war, garrisoned in Bar-le-Duc. It stands in the courtyard of the current administrative city, the former barracks of this regiment.