Posted on 09/08/2023 7:05:12 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
One hundred years ago today, during the Battle of the Marne, seven French soldiers were shot without trial for retreating. Most of the resources about this Gallic tragedy are in French, and so are most of the links in today’s post.
All were enlistees of France’s 327th Infantry Regiment. On the night of September 6, German shelling panicked their sister 270th Regiment into a disorderly retreat away from the front lines. That rout ran right into the 327th, behind them, and panicked that regiment too.
Further in the army’s rear, the hubbub awoke from his farmhouse bivouac division commander Gen. Rene Boutegourd. Boutegard had a simple solution, and ordered seven of the soldiers caught away from their posts to be executed the next morning by way of example. While the war’s later years would feature notoriously unfair courts-martial with predetermined sentences, Gen. Boutegourd didn’t even see the need to pay that much tribute to procedural regularity in this case.
The Battle of the Marne was still ongoing, and the situation in the field, pre-trench warfare, was fluid. Shoot them out of hand and be done with it! Then, the rest of the division will understand the consequences of unauthorized retreat.....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
For Sale: French WWI infantry rifle. Never fired, dropped once.
The 3rd Infantry Division (3ID) (nicknamed Rock of the Marne) My dad’s unit in WW2.
I really don’t see the humor. The trenches of WWI were horrific, and the slaughter unimaginable. Really easy to laugh at these poor sods from the luxury of your house.
Paths of Glory - Execution Scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt37sGBqtEg
16 years old
When I went to the war
To fight for a land fit for heroes
God on my side
And a gun in my hand
Chasing my days down to zero
And I marched
And I fought
And I bled
And I died
And I never did get
Any older
But I knew at the time
That a year in the line
Was a long enough life
For a soldier
We all volunteered
And we wrote down our names
And we added two years to our ages
Eager for life
And ahead of the game
Ready for history’s pages
And we brawled
And we fought
And we whored ‘til we stood
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder
A thirst for the Hun
We were food for the gun
And that’s what you are
When you are soldiers
I heard my friend cry
And he sank to his knees
Coughing blood as he screamed
For his mother
And I fell by his side
And that’s how we died
Clinging like kids to each other
And I lay in the mud
And the guts and the blood
And I wept as his body grew colder
And I called for my mother
And she never came
Though it wasn’t my fault
And I wasn’t to blame
And the day’s not half over
And ten thousand slain
And now there’s nobody
Remembers our names
And that’s how it is for a soldier
1916 - Motorhead
And what the hell for?
My father in law never saw his grandfather he died at Verdun
Europe died in WWI.
Exactly. Total waste. And they did the whole thing again 25 years later. War is a racket.
I mean there’s nothing wrong with being strong militarily, weakness and pacifism are not virtues neither.
But this was just stupid. Everybody thinking it will be all over by Christmas. Yeah, they were right, Christmas 1918.
Great movie—the actors could have done a better job of sounding like French soldiers. Then again it was made in 1957 and Kubrick directed it.
> The trenches of WWI were horrific, and the slaughter unimaginable. <
Yes, indeed. The average French soldier performed heroically in WW 1.
But he was poorly lead.
The average French soldier performed heroically in WW 2.
But again, he was poorly lead.
The unfortunate (and false) narrative of French cowardice comes from France’s quick collapse in 1940. That had nothing to do with the average French soldier. France was simply beat by superior German strategy.
As strange as it sounds, thank god they did, or all of Europe would have been under the Soviet boot.
Horrific event.
Horrific tactics.
Horrific casualties.
Horrific conditions.
Horrific shelling.
Horrific disregard for life.
These WWI soldiers who left the trenches to fight are some of the bravest people in history. I find it hard, from the privacy of my computer terminal in a temperature controlled room without rats and roaches, to judge any of these people harshly.
Agree!
I remember reading a WWI account of French reinforcements moving forward it might have been for Marne or Verdun. An officer watching the scene wrote about a strange sound being made by these men. He listened more closely and realizing they were making the sound of bleating sheep. They were protesting to their officers that they were- sheep for the slaughter! Still they were going forward!
I lot of people here routinely make fun of French courage. If you read anything about WWI you wouldn’t! Not just brave but crazy brave, even in WWII! The reality is the French have always been individually good soldiers, they are usually failed by their leadership with one very notable exception!
I used to work for this VP at a consulting firm. Really good guy. He jumped to one of the big defense contractors. He’s worth $50M now in stock options, etc.
The big defense contractors need war to justify their existence. They need us shoveling weapons and money to the Ukraine. They needed us in Afghanistan for 20 years. One hand feeds the other. Eisenhower was right on the money.
Thing is when you see so much death, and knowing most of the leaders 20 years later fought in it, mass deaths really wasn’t a big deal to them.
Hitler cited the Armenian Genocide, when talking about his plans for the Jews, it wasn’t a big deal to him.
That would’ve been true if the 1914 truce had held
People who make that "joke" reveal their catastrophic ignorance of The Great War.
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