The French Army and the First World War

Abstract

As Elizabeth Greenhalgh alludes to in the introduction of her well-researched and constructed monograph, The French Army and the First World War, common perceptions of France’s military experience between 1914 and 1918 have tended to be reduced to mere flashpoints of interest. Obvious examples would naturally include the Miracle of the Marne, Verdun and the 1917 mutinies. Indeed, for British readers these are likely to have weathered the test of time respectively through association with the opening engagements of the BEF; the sheer weight of tragedy (accessible both visually and emotionally through visits to its renowned ossuary and surrounding sites of remembrance); as well as being indelibly etched into popular culture by Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of events in Paths of Glory (1957). Yet acceptance of such a limited view means missing the essential impact, over a sustained and continuous period of time, of the Allied Forces’ largest and most influential contributor. It is this scale, a theme returned to in many different guises throughout the ostensibly chronological account, which Greenhalgh manages to convey with immense clarity. Not only did it affect the French Army’s operational undertakings across numerous theatres; or its materiel, and by extension economic, output to support these and her allies’ campaigns, but it also proved to be a dislocating and subsequently a unifying influence on the relationship between army and society.