Mina Fischer

It was several weeks since he’d answered her letters. Her last letter, of 18 March 1915, had been returned to her marked “Return to sender” and “Addressee could not be reached in good time”.

Mina Fischer was sick with worry but she didn’t want to think the worst. The young nurse started investigating to try to find out what had happened to her sweetheart, Lieutenant René Tronquoy, reported missing on Éparges Ridge on 20 February 1915. She sent letters to his regiment, the 67th (Soissons) Infantry Regiment. An answer attempted to explain to her that he had been killed during the terrible attack. But Mina refused to believe it. Was he being held in a German prison camp?

After the Armistice, she sought out information about the various convoys bringing the prisoners of war home. He wasn’t among of them. She went around the various military hospitals where men with amnesia waited to be identified by their loved ones. In vain. Eventually, she accepted the terrible truth: René Tronquoy had indeed fallen on 20 February 1915 and his body still lay on Éparges Ridge.

Mina decided to sculpt a bas-relief set in a monument erected on the hill in 1925. Lieutenant Tronquoy can be seen in the centre of the sculpture, head bare, revolver in hand, surrounded by his men. Through him, she honoured all “Those who have no tomb”, as the inscription on the sculpture reads.

Mina was later Countess of Cugnac. Her work still looks down on the Woëvre Plain from the eastern side of the hill, a reminder visible from all around over many kilometres of the people who were killed in this part of the Hauts de Meuse.

For more information, a brochure produced by the L'Esparge Association entitled “L'émouvante histoire du monument du Point X” (The moving story of the Point X monument) is available, in French, via the link http://lesparge.fr/index.php/lemouvante-histoire-du-monument-du-point-x/