This was calculating without taking into consideration General Foch’s might and the fierce courage of the French soldiers:

« They mustn’t penetrate! »

General Foch, with the assistance of General Joffre and General Gallieni, backed by British and Belgian troops, successfully stopped the German offensive on the Aisne and the Marne.

An immense 750-kilometre long front, stretching from Switzerland to the North Sea was then established. Attempts of counter attacks were made in Champagne and Artois, which only inflicted heavy casualties on the French troops.

The face of the war changed into one of attrition: with enthusiasm, the soldiers left for a "fresh and joyful" war but before long were digging trenches to bury themselves one after the other. In mud and cold they lived the daily horrible scenes of war. French and British counter attacks were once again launched in various areas: on the Somme, at Ypres and Cambrai. Breaking through turned out to be impossible and every attempt ended up in great loss in human lives. Several American divisions came in to back up the French-British operation.

While various campaigns of this global conflict were going on in different regions of the world, in France, names like Douaumont, Fort de Vaux, Chemin des Dames, Tranchée des Baïonnettes, Hartmannwillerskopf, Somme, Hazebrouck, Argonne, Flandres, and many others, represented meccas, where the death knell for a whole generation of young Frenchmen was sounded, where shells scattered them into pieces, where bullets mowed them down, and symbolized the sacrifice of young American, Canadian, English and Anzac volunteers as well as many others worldwide, who all came to France never to return alive..

A courageous officer (volunteer, of course),
commanding his reluctant troops

Fort de Douaumont trenches

However, the areas above equally marked the end of the German expansionist scheme to the East, the « Drang nach Osten », as the brave resistance put up against their troops made them to concentrate most of their forces on the West front.

Finally, she had to be fighting and retreating. The war ended up with the victory of French-allied forces and the liberation of Alsace and Lorraine, which had been under German occupation since 1871. The French flag was once more flying in Metz and Strasbourg.

Considering her less than 40 000 000 population, France paid the highest price for victory: she alone lost 1 400 000 men, had 2 800 000 injured including 1 000 000 disabled persons, war cripples, gas victims and persons with ‘’severe facial injuries’’. If on the whole, France mobilized over 8 000 000 men, just 5 000 000 were her combatants. This means that 28 % of them were killed and over 50% wounded, half of them, twice….

With respect to population, it took France over 30 years to recover from this massive loss of life. Morally, no one can reasonably deny that twenty years later, at the beginning of World War II, she was still considerably battered and haunted by the previous dreadful conflict.

« Never must this happen again »

This conflict was supposed to be the « war to end all wars ».

It was at the end of the 1914-1918 war that the Croix du Combattant Volontaire (the volunteer combatant cross) was instituted to honour volunteers who, without having been subjected to any service-related obligation, opted to enter an extremely bloody war, which ended up with just a minute fraction of them returning

home uninjured.

The number of victims was so high that it took several months and sometimes years for survivors to regain the psychological equilibrium of free civilians, able to afford a smile and live normally. They will forever live to remember their long terrible ordeal.

Little could they imagine that in the fold of the army, which was fighting and retreating towards Germany, was a certain Adolf Hitler, an obscure thirty-year old ‘’gefreiter’’, or let alone think that just twenty years later, this vengeful caporal, having become the Great Chancellor of Reich, would cause yet another war in which their children like them would take up arms to defend their Fatherland, once more invaded….

• L'essentiel sur la Grande Guerre
  Les dates, les campagnes...
• 14-18 la Der des Ders
• Les Morts pour la France de la guerre 1914 – 1918
• Troupes de marine
• La campagne des Dardanelles en 1915
• La bataille des frontières
  Les volontaires de la 3e D.I.C. - Aout 1914

• The story of Verdun's Bayonet    
  La Tranchée des baionnettes : site en anglais
• World War 1    
  Site en langue anglaise
• First World War   
  Site en langue anglaise

• Les Morts pour la France de la guerre 1914 – 1918
• Les taxis de la Marne
• Australiens et des Néo-zélandais (ANZAC)

Renforts français arrivant au front, à Passy sur Marne