Posted on 12/04/2021 4:09:39 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
An event horribly underscoring the heartlessness of the brass against frail flesh in their ghastly war of machines, this shooting succeeded a surprise German attack on November 27 whose short-lived push into the French line momentarily drove part of the 298th Regiment to fall back out of their forward trench, before the French rallied and retook their own position to restore the status quo ante. The whole back-and-forth spanned mere minutes — just another snapshot of the trench war stalemate that would become so grindingly familiar to all belligerents in the years ahead.
French commanders in the earliest months of the war had shown a notable lack of empathy for any vexation of plans arising from the fog of war; indeed, exemplary executions became policy for enforcing military discipline to an unrealistic expectation. So, as punishment for their units’ “unauthorized* retreat,” six were selected for execution as an example to their fellows.
Some heartbreaking (or blood-boiling) last letters of the doomed survive.
Corporal Henri Floch (to his wife) My darling Lucie,
By the time you receive this letter I shall be dead by firing squad. This is why: on 27th November, around 5pm, after 2 hours of heavy shelling in a trench on the front line, just as we were finishing our supper, Germans got into the trench. They captured me and two others. In the confusion I was able to escape from the Germans. I followed my comrades and then I was accused of dereliction of duty in the face of the enemy.
Twenty-four of us went before the War Council last night. Six were condemned to death and one of them was me...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
It’s the French way; if the enemy doesn’t shoot you, we will.
Was “Paths of Glory” based on this?
I think that this incident, amongst others, was a seed for the 1957 movie, “Paths of Glory” Kirk Douglas d:Stanley Kubrick. We, here and now, forget how strongly Europe was class ruled. In France this was made clear in the Dreyfus Scandal of the 1890s. Germany had its ‘von’ Prussian & other aristocrats as did Austro-Hungary. Ditto for Britain but apparently not as bad.
“Was “Paths of Glory” based on this?”
No I believe it was based on the French Army Mutiny in 1917.
https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/French_Army_Mutinies
Today, the church is surrounded by the graves of about 20,000 French soldiers who died taking the ridge.
The French brass had the mindset that all you needed was sufficient elan to break through any resistance, as if will alone could protect flesh and bone against bullets and shrapnel. By 1917 les poilus had had enough of suicidal assaults that yielded almost no advance.
BTW, my great-grandfather had joined as an enlisted man before WWI, was commissioned a lieutenant in 1906 and finished the war a captain. My grandfather was born in Verdun in 1910. My great-grandfather is mentioned in dispatches on 4 November 1918. I can only wonder, what the heck was he doing fighting a week before the armistice went into effect?
It is SUCH a great movie. I need to watch it again, but I know it’s going to upset me more if I’m really paying attention.
RIP to these poor men! And payers for all who serve and who are served so poorly by their commanders.
You are mistaken. It was based on the Souain corporals affair of 1915.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souain_corporals_affair
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