Le Pétant Montauville National Cemetery

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Montauville National Cemetery, known as "Le Pétant", is the burial ground for 13,519 French soldiers who died for France during the two world wars. Established in 1914, during the fighting in Bois le Prêtre, it was extended between 1920 and 1936 to accommodate the remains of other soldiers exhumed from isolated graves and temporary military cemeteries in the Pont-à-Mousson sector. Until 1949, it held 5,340 bodies, 1,015 of which were buried in an ossuary, together with the remains of one Serbian soldier. After the Second World War, the site was redeveloped between 1963-1965, to become the cemetery for prisoners of war from the 1939-1945 war whose remains were repatriated from Germany and Austria. Since 1968, other bodies have been transferred to the cemetery, including 107 who remain unclaimed by their relatives and were previously buried in the disciplinary camp in the Ukrainian town of Rava-Ruska. The cemetery is divided into two sections. The upper section holds the mortal remains of victims of the First World War. OverB,000 French, 105 Soviet and 12 Polish soldiers killed during the Second World War are buried in the lower section. The mortal remains of 4,438 French people who died in captivity are held in three ossuaries. Today, a memorial designed by the sculptor, Maurice Saulo, stands in Montauville Cemetery commemorating the Prisoners of War who died in captivity, symbolising the French prisoners leaving for the German camps in June 1940.