Ian Sumner - The French Army in the First World War

IMAGES OF WAR

THE FRENCH ARMY

IN THE

FIRST WORLD WAR

Saint-Thomas-en-Argonne (Marne), 25 July 1915. Resting on a copy of Le Petit Parisien , a popular national daily, a Provenal soldier from 255th Infantry writes a letter.

IMAGES OF WAR

RARE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM WARTIME ARCHIVES

Ian Sumner

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

PEN & SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street,

Barnsley,

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Text copyright Pen & Sword, 2016

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright of all the photographs.

If there are unintentional omissions, please contact the publisher in writing, who will correct all subsequent editions.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 147385 619 6

eISBN 978 147385 620 2

Mobi ISBN 978 147385 621 9

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T he First World War demanded an enormous effort of France and its people. During the course of the fighting, eight-and-a-half million Frenchmen were mobilized 40 per cent of all males and 60 per cent of those of working age to serve alongside 260,000 North Africans and 215,000 colonials. One-and-a-half million men were killed on average 890 a day and three million wounded, including 800,000 left disabled for life. At the same time French industry and agriculture was damaged by invasion and subsequent manpower shortages. Yet still the nation rallied. Food supplies were maintained, industry was transformed into a machine capable of supporting a vast ongoing military endeavour, and a fierce determination to drive the invader from French soil eventually produced a bitter victory. France shouldered the heaviest burden of all the Allies, and the legacy of the conflict continued to affect its politics and society for years to come.

This book is not an illustrated chronology of the conflict. Instead, it concentrates on the experience of the French soldier, in the trenches and behind the lines, forming a graphic companion to my earlier work They Shall Not Pass: the French Army on the Western Front, 19141918 (Pen & Sword, 2012). We follow the soldier into the front line and out again. ends with a view of the armistice and demobilization a time of celebration, of readjustment to civilian life and, for many, an uncertain future.

Wherever possible, these eloquent images are supported by extracts translated by the author from contemporary diaries, letters and newspapers the immediate, first-hand testimony, uncoloured by hindsight or lapses of memory, previously highlighted in They Shall Not Pass .

I would like to thank all who have helped in the writing of The French Army in the First World War , particularly my wife Margaret, for her translating and editing skills, but also the staffs of the Service Historique de la Dfense at Vincennes, the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris, the municipal libraries of Albi, Dijon, Meaux and Tours, and the British Library. As in my previous title in the Images of War series, The French Army at Verdun (Pen & Sword, 2016), the photographs used are drawn from the exceptionally rich archive of French official photographs at the Bibliothque de Documentation Internationale et Contemporaine, Universit de Paris-Nanterre.