The Poilu and His War

The French played a central role in the First World War (1914-1918), also known as the Great War, with roughly 8.5 million men mobilized during the war. This number represents more than the total number of American, British, Canadian and Commonwealth forces combined. Over half of all French soldiers became casualties: more than 1.5 million killed and 3 million wounded. In the first three months of the war, the French suffered 350,000 dead alone. The infantry, being the most exposed branch, suffered a death rate of roughly 25% with the wounded adding another 40% on top of this -- a 65% total casualty rate. Plagued throughout the 52 months of war by antiquated, inflexible leadership, the French army continued to fight on despite hardships and death unparalleled in the annals of war. Battles often dragged on for months, resulting in only minimal gains with losses for both sides in the hundreds of thousands. The Marne, Artois, Champagne, Verdun, the Somme and the Aisne: these rank among the bloodiest battles in history. Soldiers were slaughtered by machine-guns and artillery fire often for a gain of only few meters of ground.

Included among the horrors in the trenches were poison gas, mine warfare, and massive aerial and artillery bombardments lasting for days on end, ravaging the land with millions of shells. Tens of thousands were mutilated, turned into pulp or buried alive by these cataclysmic onslaughts that transformed the earth into a lunar-landscape. Death was a daily part of life that took tangible form at the front, always hovering over the combatants with its crushing presence. In the face of such devastating weaponry, such tremendous violence, soldiers had never felt so utterly defenseless or so utterly cut-off. The isolation and alienation of life at the front only added to the soldiers' miseries. So too did the sheer brutalization of the war. They were not simply witnesses seeing their friends ripped to shreds or drowned in mud. They were also participants who took an active part in the killing. They shot, bombed and stabbed the enemy, many times in very close quarters. This was the first, true modern war; a "total" war that changed the very foundation of the world.

The front became a world radically different from that of the civilian one less than 50 miles away. Death was a daily part of life that took tangible form at the front, always hovering over the combatants with its crushing presence. In the trenches, corpses often went unburied or were re-interred from the constant shelling. Putrefying human flesh mixed with defecation and urine in trenches often flooded knee or even waist-deep in water. Rats and blow-flies feasted on these by the thousands, becoming unusually large as a result. Mud was a constant nuisance for the men and was actually quite dangerous as well. It not only swallowed men up physically but emotionally too. Shelter from the elements was meager and sometimes nonexistent. Nothing like it had ever been seen. For the vast majority of French soldiers, the war was far from being glorious and heroic; it was a common experience of suffering. It is no wonder then why la Grande Guerre was referred to at the time as "la der des ders" by the French soldiers --"the last of the last."

For more information about the French army and its experience in the Great War, please see the "History" section