Reading the published personal experience accounts of French soldiers in the First World War, I often came across references to a card game, manille. In this post I’ve tried to introduce those who aren’t familiar with the game to what it’s all about and to explain how incredibly popular it was amongst French troops during the war.
This is the second part of a two-parter on traces of la Grande Guerre in the cemeteries of Paris. In the first part, it was all about how those vestiges in Paris (but also, indeed, in any French community’s cemetery) have been shaped by people, by the Army and the State and by wealth, influence and status. Now, … Continue reading Traces of La Grande Guerre in the Cemeteries of Paris: (2) Meeting the Dead
Or, how to give up romantic notions of Paris and move the focus to Death and Loss … In September 2024, I had the opportunity for a stay of almost a week in Paris and, without the need to consider the interests and tastes of anyone else, a chance to take in a range of … Continue reading Traces of La Grande Guerre in the Cemeteries of Paris: (1) Introduction
Introduction It’s common to see the terms Nécropole nationale, Cimetière militaire and carré militaire used seemingly without any underpinning logic for what the French refer to as lieux de sépultures de militaires français – military burial sites. This post looks at the differences and some of the key characteristics of these places of memory and … Continue reading « Nécropoles nationales», « Cimetières » and « carrés militaires »
During a visit to Paris, I took advantage of the Île-de-France’s extensive public transport network to get out to the eastern suburbs and what were once separate communities. From Noisy-le-Sec to Le Raincy and on to Gagny.
(I was thinking that maybe if I wrote nice things about them, they might give me free travel next time. This is, of course, a joke).
« C’EST LA MANILLE QU’ILS PRÉFÈRENT À TOUT ». Illustration taken from Charles Guyon, Nos poilus dans les tranchées, (Larousse (Paris), 1916).
« … surtout la manille qu’ils préfèrent à tout. Ils s’y appliquent si bien qu’une bombe ne les dérange pas. »
“…especially Manille, which they prefer above all else. They apply themselves to it so well that even a bomb doesn’t bother them.” Charles Guyon, Nos poilus dans les tranchées, p. 28.
Some things only permeate gradually into my mind and my awareness. That’s been the case with la Manille. Only when reading what’s now become perhaps the most celebrated poilu account of the war, Les carnets de guerre de Louis Barthas, tonnelier, did the pieces fall into place. Some checking of digital sources and internet searches confirmed the impression and, although some translations rendered une partie de Manille as “a game of cards”, it was clear that la Manille was actually a specific card game, and an incredibly popular one amongst French soldiers in the First World War.
« Les obus des Allemands ne viennent pas jusqu’à ce châteaufort. Artilleurs, fantassins, brancardiers au repos s’y promènent, ce dimanche, 29 novembre [1914], et en prennent des photos, pendant que d’autres font, dans les estaminets, l’éternelle et passionnante partie de manille. »
Raffin, Léonce, Les carnets de guerre d’un prêtre-soldat, 1914-1918.
« Les gourbis sont étroits, encombrés de munitions; l’eau y coule les jours de pluie, des claies pourries y recouvrent le sol, les rats y foisonnent, mais on y goûte un bonheur réel. Sans bruit, l’escouade s’y groupe et y joue d’interminables parties de manille, indifférente aux explosions qui secouent le sol. »
Gabriel-Tristan Franconi, Un Tel de l’Armée Française.
“That evening, despite our limbs being worn out with fatigue, my friend V… . and I went out to buy a couple of bottles of good Meuse beer, and we looked for a quiet corner in which to enjoy them in an interminable game of manille, of which we were fanatical players.”
“The most terrible accident had befallen my former section. Three of my old pals, fooled by either a moment of calm or their own bravado, decided to make up a game of manille, without finding a fourth hand. No sooner had the cards been dealt than a 105mm shell fell right in their midst, blasting them to bits.”
“It was a lousy shelter, a simple staircase with a dozen steps around which stretcher-bearers and orderlies were already crowded. At the bottom, a little square of ground where four crazy cardplayers were busy in a game of manille.”
Louis Barthas, Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker, 1914 – 1918
“Four poilus join in a game of manille that will last until night blacks out the cards.”
Henri Barbusse, Under Fire: The Story of a Squad
Frequently, in memoirs, diaries or more fictional accounts based on lived experience, like the ones quoted above, there are references to the game. And, as these references indicate, there’s often an almost obsessional dedication to the game by the players – under shot and shell, by roadsides or in shell holes, amidst carnage and disorder, from first light till last.
So, what is la manille, how is it played and why was it so popular?
What’s in a game?
La manille is a trick-taking game played with a 32-card piquet set. A piquet set of playing cards has suites of trèfles (clovers or clubs ♣), carreaux (tiles or diamonds ♦), cœurs (hearts ♥), and piques (pikes or spades ♠). A piquet pack is like a standard 52-card French pack with the Twos (or Deuces), Threes, Fours, Fives and Sixes removed. Here’s a lithograph from the period showing the cards. It’s of particular interest because it seems it was intended to be cut up to make a piquet pack.
Title : Le piquet des tranchées : jeu à découper : [jeu de cartes, estampe] Publication date : 1915 Publication : Imp. Eug. Verneau H. Chachoin succ.r 108, r. Folie-Méricourt, PARIS, [ca 1915] Imprimeur / Fabricant : Imprimerie H. Chachoin. Imprimeur
It’s also worth noting that the cards in this set have been ‘themed’ to represent aspects of the Entente and key Allied personalities.
Meanwhile, in the collection of the museum at Fort de la Pompelle, there’s this well-used set of cards in a storage pouch in horizon blue wool cloth with service button to fasten it. Time and trouble taken to create something portable and accessible – a real sign that the owner was an enthusiast of piquet card games.
Jeu de 32 cartes à jouer accompagné de leur pochette de rangement en drap de laine bleu horizon / Set of 32 playing cards accompanied by their storage pouch in horizon blue wool cloth. Musée du fort de la Pompelle(inv. P.SN.42) Manufacturer (cards): FERD. PIATNIK ET FILS S.A. (Vienna) Propriétaire / Owner: Ville de Reims
NOT the Rules of the Game
La manille can be played by 2 or more individuals depending on the variant, but playing as 2 teams each of two players seems most favoured and can add a particular dimension to the game, as we’ll see. The objective is to be the first player (or team) to win the most tricks at the end of each round. Points are then awarded for the hands won. Confusingly, the card values are defined in this order: 10, Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 9, 8, and 7!
The highest card, the 10, is called the manille. The second highest card, the Ace, is called the manillon. Thus, the deck consists of four manilles and four manillons. The game is also played with trumps (atout). This means that the suit of the cards is taken into account, depending on whether it is the trump or not.
It’s the kind of game you could quickly and easily start (or, indeed, stop) virtually anywhere. One reason, I think, for its popularity. It’s actually even quicker to start because the cards are generally dealt in two lots of four to each player, after an initial shuffle and cut.
In the collection of ecpad, there’s what I think is a good representation of the spirit of the game (sadly, a black and white photograph of an original artwork).
[Veuillez consulter la note sur la page Contact de ce site concernant l’utilisation des documents provenant des musées et archives français. Please see the note on my Contact page regarding use of material from museums and archives].
It’s the socialising aspect of the game that I think is captured so well here. The game is the means to draw a group of comrades together (notice there are others looking on with the main players as the centre of attention). To me, it feels like the focus is on the skill of the play, rather than how the cards fall. And that also connects with the aspect of the game that encourages ‘teamwork’.
In one version of the game at least, what’s asked by each player of their partner concerning the hand the latter may be holding is where the cunning of a player can mislead (or help) other players. Because that’s the idea. Questioning of one’s partner by the player who leads off each hand is allowed. There needs to be skill in eliciting clues as to your partner’s hand and not giving information to your opponents, and the interrogating needs to be done quickly.
As with most card games, you can read the rules of the game (many of which are arcane and, in some cases, dreadfully convoluted – as in many other games), but there’s really only one way to learn how to play and that’s by having a go. Watching a few hands of the game beforehand can help considerably. Even sets of rules for the game tell you that “you have to devote a few days to observation, and the skill of la manille will come naturally. You will then really like this game…”.1 The following advice from the same rule book is also relevant to getting a feel for what the game involves: “With questions and answers as short and dry as a drum roll, the calculation of probabilities, and the science of the game, the details and application of which will come to you quickly, you will make an excellent player of spoken manille, and you will be amazed when you remember the time when you threw down your cards almost at random.” The question of probability (of what cards each player is holding and likely to play) is important and gives the game some of the characteristics of Bridge.
What I’ve described is only one variant of the game: “Spoken manille” with four players. In other options (muette or ‘silent’, or with three players – manille à trois avec un mort, or even two players – manille à deux avec deux morts, etc), the game play is somewhat different. With the ‘silent’ version, the rules and advice on how to play Whist are almost all applicable and the player who leads has to try to indicate to his partner, by his attack, the strong and weak aspects of his hand. In manille à l’envers, as the name suggests, the aim is to win as few points and tricks as possible. There are lots of other variants.
LES BONS MOMENTS. UNE PARTIE DE MANILLE. A GAME OF CARDS – 15FI784 – Lot 1 – Média 1 – Archives de la Somme
Final Thoughts.
The purpose of this post isn’t to teach anyone how to actually play the game. Having read the rules in various versions, I’ve still no better idea of how a game might look and the questioning element in ‘spoken manille‘ is absolutely opaque to me! I doubt, however, that in the war it was ever played on a cloth covered card table in an open trench in the manner illustrated by this carte postale from les Archives de la Somme. Rather than as something genteel, sources indicate this was a game played in any possible circumstance, at any and every possible opportunity. And one final observation: in all the references to the game I’ve found, it’s never been suggested the game was played for money. Of course, it may have been, but it doesn’t seem primarily to have been a gambling game. By all means, however, prove me wrong!
La Manille‘s still played to this day. So, if you’re a card buff and know how to play this game or one similar, do please share your thoughts in the comments section. Or, if you have anything else that comes to mind from reading this post or the blog generally, do get in touch.
And in my mind’s eye, somewhere (perhaps in a ruined village or a trench dugout or shelter) there’s a group of men watching the shuffle, cut and deal of the cards and listening to the back and forth of the question and answers of the lead player and partner, ignorant to the occasional earth-shattering explosion from a shell not so very far from where they are gathered. But all eyes and minds are occupied with THE GAME.
Renaudet, Benjamin, La manille : règles complètes et séparées de tous les jeux de manille avec le calcul des probabilités et l’étude des coups difficiles..(A. Michel (Paris), 1951) ↩︎
This is the second part of a two-parter on traces of la Grande Guerre in the cemeteries of Paris. In the first part, it was all about how those vestiges in Paris (but also, indeed, in any French community’s cemetery) have been shaped by people, by the Army and the State and by wealth, influence and status. Now, through real encounters in the cemeteries of Père-Lachaise, Montparnasse and Passy, what’s been shared so far helps explain the discoveries waiting for you.
Père-Lachaise
Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise is on the western edge of the eastern 20e arrondissement and we’ve got a useful guide waiting for us. With this blog, there seems little point in re-writing existing resources available online unless they need it because they contain errors of fact, obvious gaps or there’s no comparable resource available that can be drawn on. The usual criteria to go on is ‘English-language resource’ but, sometimes, the information is so readily available and intended as helpful that it’s wilful stupidity not to draw on it. Such is the case with le site des Amis et Passionnés du Père Lachaise (APPL) and its pages on la Grande Guerre 1914-1918, which is where many of the links in the next few paragraphs will lead you.
Père-Lachaise is reassuringly full of familiar names for the British and Americans. You can find all manner of celebrities you actually know (like Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison) are buried there and if anyone mentions other ‘famous names’, there’s a chance you’ve heard of them (Frédéric Chopin, Edith Piaf, Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Camille Pisarro, Georges Seurat, Marcel Proust, Olivia de Havilland and blah blah blah). Get the idea? It’s where you would want to be seen dead.
It’s the same for ‘celebs’ of la grande guerre. There’s Guillaume Apollinaire and Henri Barbusse and the politician Joseph Caillaux, whose attempts to find a peaceful way out of the war for France found him cast as “l’homme de la défaite” and tried and found guilty of treason. All this after his second wife, Henriette, had escaped the guillotine after shooting dead the editor of Le Figaro newspaper in what the jury decided was a crime passionel.
Barbusse’s grave carries a tribute « À la mémoire de notre camarade, pour nos années de combat commun » from fellow members of l’Association républicaine des anciens combattants (A.R.A.C.) (of which he was co-founder and president) – one of a number of French old comrade associations – in this case closely linked to the French Communist Party. The complicated array of associations des anciens combattants and their connections to the politics of the 1920s and 1930s deserve a whole blog post of its own.
Outside of writers and politicians, two of those who might be thought as ‘greats’ of the war buried in the cemetery are Gustave-Auguste Ferrié and Hyacinthe Jean Vincent. In both cases, their work had an impact that went far beyond their war work. Vincent features prominently in this blog post. In the slide show below, you can see his grave and the plaque that honours his memory and achievements. Ferrié’s grave features perhaps the most understated acknowledgement of his incredibly important work – the tribute from the lycée named in his honour: « en Hommage au Général et Savant ». Gustave-Auguste Ferrié’s contribution to France’s war effort through his work on wireless technologies and radiotelegraphy is another thing that deserves a blog post of its own – something for the future. An important engineer whose général rank came from his hugely important technological work.
There are other Great War generals here: Pierre Guignabaudet and Paul François Grossetti both died during the war – one of wounds received from a shell burst, the other from dysentery. Guignabaudet’s grave features a fine relief portrait of him in Adrian helmet. On the other hand, Joseph Louis Andlauer, Étienne André Bapst, Charles Théodore Brécard, Gustave Paul Lacapelle and Raymond Sabattier all survived the war and were buried in family plots. But Père-Lachaise is, as previously indicated, the last resting place of the great and the good and its diverse population reflects the breadth of experiences of the war. There are officers from well-to-do families, non-commissioned officers and ‘ordinary’ soldiers to support this.
Among them is Sergent Henri Ernest Sevalle, a reservist who rejoined the colours of the 37e Régiment d’infanterie on 12 August 1914 and who was killed on 11 or 12 October 1914 in the fighting at Foncquevillers (Somme) – a place many will know for associations with the British fighting on the Somme in 1916. Sevalle’s matricule militaire details that his remains were “buried in the garden behind the Gendarmerie 20 metres from the house at Foncquevillers”. His body’s here because, either during or after the war, his was one of the bereaved families that pressed the authorities to allow them to recover the remains of their loved one and bury them in the family vault.
The bodies of brothers Marcel and Maurice Dupont (Maréchal des Logis, 7e Dragons and Sergent, 154e Régiment d’infanterie respectively) lie beneath a headstone showing the two in Adrian helmets in profile. Marcel died in April 1917 from wounds received in an accident while taking part in a training course for bombers in the use of grenades. His younger brother had died almost two years previously (18 July 1915) in fighting at Bois de la Gruerie (known as « le Bois de la Tuerie » in 1915 a deadly location). Beside both names are croix de guerre – each with an étoile of worn and indeterminate colour. Maurice’s service record mentions the posthumous award of the médaille militaire, but no CdeG. In Marcel’s case, however, it’s clear his star is silver having received a citation à l’ordre de la division in July 1916 for taking charge of a group of men dispersed by an enemy bombardment and leading them to a support position, though under intense fire.
Henri Barbusse’s grave (Division 97, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
Barbusse’s grave has a tribute « À la mémoire de notre camarade, pour nos années de combat commun » from fellow members of l’Association républicaine des anciens combattants (A.R.A.C.)
The grave of Général de Division Paul François Grossetti (Division 94, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
Detail from the grave of le général Grossetti
More detail from Grossetti’s grave listing key battles he participated in – Marne, Champagne, Verdun, Orient.
The grave of Général de Division Pierre Amable Guignabaudet (Division 94, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
Detail from the grave of Général de Division Pierre Amable Guignabaudet (Division 94, Cimetière du Père-Lachaise)
“Ici repose Jean-Hyacinthe Vincent… ” – a board in Père-Lachaise recording detail of Vincent’s many achievements.
« en Hommage au Général et Savant » The grave of Gustave Ferrié
The tomb that holds the remains of Sergent Henri Ernest Sevalle
The tomb with profile portraits of the brothers Marcel and Maurice Dupont
The memorial to the victims of a German artillery shell that caused the church roof to collapse on Vendredi-Saint (Good Friday), 29 March 1918 in l’Église de Saint-Gervais Saint-Protais in the Marais in Paris.
Civilian Casualties of War
All the cemeteries featured in this post are primarily non-military in nature. So far, regarding Père-Lachaise, the focus has been on those who served in the military who are buried and remembered there. However, Père-Lachaise also has reminders that the war produced many civilian casualties. On Good Friday (« le Vendredi Saint »), 1918 (29 March), the church of Saint-Gervais Saint-Protais in the rue des Barres in the 4ème Arrondissement (the Marais) was struck by a German long-range artillery shell whilst a Mass was in progress. There were 91 dead and 68 injured among the congregation. Many were women. Among those victims of this incident buried at Père-Lachaise are Héloïse Strehler, Marie Thérèse Brisset de Morcour, Claudine Martin, Julie Marie Sophie Mouchet and her husband, Léonce. In this case, most are family tombs.
Also, in Division 89 of the cemetery are the graves provided by the City of Paris for the victims of two further catastrophes of war involving civilian casualties – the explosion of the grenade factory on rue de Tolbiac (October 20, 1915) in which 46 dead and 97 injured (again there were many women among the casualties), and victims of the attack by a German Zeppelin on the quartier de Ménilmontant on the night of January 29, 1916, resulting in an estimated 64 victims: 26 dead and 32 to 38 injured.
Montparnasse Cemetery – something tangible?
At this point, let’s switch attention to Montparnasse in the south of the city. Montparnasse, too, has its share of ‘names’: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Man Ray, Samuel Beckett, Jacques Chirac, the composer Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles Baudelaire, Susan Sontag, Jane Birkin, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy de Maupassant … (I’m trying to score hits across the board here). Here, there’s another guide we can draw upon waiting to help us in the form of « Héros de la Grande Guerre au cimetière du Montparnasse » available as a PDF from the website of the author, Philippe Landru. Landru has also produced a similar guide for Père-Lachaise. Having one of these guides with you is useful, but don’t just follow them. You’ll deny yourself the opportunity of making your own discoveries.
For example, one of the most significant individuals buried at Montparnasse, and a veteran of the Great War, Alfred Dreyfus isn’t mentioned in this guide. The man at the centre of the political scandal that divided the French Third Republic between 1894 and 1906: « L’Affaire Dreyfus ». A man arrested for crimes he didn’t commit and degraded as an army officer in front of his former comrades. A man who many in the army insisted was guilty and who denied the possibility of his innocence – in many cases because he was a Jew. A man who spent over four years imprisoned on l’île du Diable in French Guiana and, ultimately, survived to have his innocence proved and to recover his honour and position and continue his career. The same Alfred Dreyfus who, in the First World War, was a reservist artillery officer and saw action on the Chemin des Dames in Spring 1917.
While my photographs fail to do justice to the monument to Adolphe Pégoud, the first French ‘ace’ of the war who’d brought down six aircraft before he was shot down himself on the last day of August 1915 by one of his former pupils, Unteroffizier Walter Kandulski, I’ve included the ones I did take because they give me a reason to post a picture of his (seemingly not-lucky-enough) mascot1 now on display in the musée de l’Armée. His monument also tells us he completed « le premier looping de l’histoire de l’aviation ».
The grave of one of the most significant individuals buried at Montparnasse, and a veteran of the Great War, Alfred Dreyfus – buried with other members of his family and his descendants.
A not very good photograph of the memorial to Adolphe Pégoud
An even worse photo of the same monument to Adolphe Pégoud
« L’aviateur qui le premier osa faire une looping, Pégoud a sa part posthume dans toutes nos victoires aériennes ». Detail from Pégoud’s memorial in Montparnasse cemetery
The penguin mascot of Adolphe Pégoud now in musée de l’Armée, Paris. An innocent witness to a tragedy?
Memorial including a photograph to Geneviève Hennet de Goutel
Geneviève Hennet de Goutel memorial plaque and photograph
The grave of Louis Verlhac, aspirant of 162e RI, mort pour la France (mplf) in March 1918
Photograph of the deceased on the grave of l’aspirant Louis Verlhac.
Representations of the médaille militaire (left) and croix de guerre avec étoile en vermeil et palme. They are discoloured and have leached verdigris.
A cemetery visitor might not be drawn to the memorial plaque and, therefore, the story of Geneviève Hennet de Goutel without Landru’s guide. Describing her as « Une infirmière de talent… », we learn details that are on her grave marker, but more too. Infirmière-major (Staff Nurse) at la Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires (the Relief Society for Wounded Soldiers), hers is a story of France’s involvement in the war in the Balkans against the Central Powers. She was awarded the French croix de guerre and the Romanian Crucea Regina Maria (Queen Mary’s Cross, which rewarded those who contributed to the care of the wounded and the sick and those who distinguished themselves through their sanitary activity and service in time of war or epidemic), as well as the médaille d’honneur des épidémies – a French distinction for service in the fight against disease and epidemics. She herself fell victim to typhus in March 1917 while at Jassy in Romania, where she had established a hospital. There’s a good deal more in the guide.
The grave of (Fernand) Louis Verlhac, aspirant of 162e RI, MPLF in March 1918 represents one of the sadder aspects of an already-sad situation. As you can see from the photographs I’ve posted, his grave has his portrait photograph and representations of his médaille militaire and croix de guerre (notice the latter has a star and palm – a citation at corps level (« une étoile vermeille » according to his matricule militaire) and an army citation (the palm). But there’s clearly no one now taking care of this grave. Verlhac’s body was exhumed from a grave in what may be “Minorville”^ (I’d originally thought Lironville) – presumably at the request of his family. A dreadful irony then that in a nécropole nationale near the old front line his grave would be maintained by the state. Now, it seems there’s no one who cares enough to tend it.
Equally sad is the shattered stone recording the death of Jean Rambach « sous Verdun »* on 8 May 1916. The upper half of the stone is (perhaps irreparably) damaged but an enamel plaque bearing Jean’s name and dates of birth and death survives. And from this we learn that maréchal des logis Jean (Isaac Edmond) Rambach of 12e Régiment d’artillerie died a day short of his 20th birthday.
Shattered stone recording the death of Jean Rambach « sous Verdun » 8 May 1916. The upper half of the stone is broken in pieces but an enamel plaque bearing Jean’s name and dates of birth and death survives. Jean Rambach died a day short of his 20th birthday.
The tomb ‘Lazare – Lion – Famille Alfred Cahen’ with lifelike marble bust of Armand Cahen.
Red stained-glass illuminates the incredibly detailed and lifelike marble bust of le sous-lieutenant Armand Cahen
The entrance to the family vault of la famille Olchanski
A stained-glass image shows le capitaine Jacques Olchanski killed as he leads his unit against a trench full of Germans
Small portrait of Jacques Olchanski in the corner of the larger image
Slate (?) inscribed with details of Olchanski’s war service and with one of his citations.
Individual tomb dedicated to le sous-lieutenant (Jacob) Marcel Suss – a former pupil of the elite school for engineers, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures de Paris. MPLF 9 September 1914.
vitraux patriotiques features as part of the individual tomb dedicated to le sous-lieutenant (Jacob) Marcel Suss
The grave of le général Augustin Dubail – veteran of the War of 1870, former chief of staff of the Army, army and then army group commander and military governor of Paris
The grave of le général Ridoux at Montparnasse.
The cross that marked the grave of général de division Eugène Bridoux with its metal rosette or cocarde in red, white and blue and the MPLF inscription below the general’s name.
The original grave marker of le lieutenant Léon Bernard of 102e Régiment d’infanterie, – in the family vault. portico
However, even more obvious connections to the war are what inevitably draw the eye, and there are two things Montparnasse has particular examples of: stained glass and wooden crosses.
The stained or coloured glass of the tomb ‘Lazare – Lion – Famille Alfred Cahen’ illuminates the incredibly detailed and lifelike marble bust of le sous-lieutenant Armand Cahen (as shown in the header image for this article), which shows his regiment’s number on his collar tabs, the étoile on the ribbon of his croix de guerre and the fourragère on his left shoulder. The latter was awarded to Armand’s unit, 59e Régiment d’artillerie de campagne, in December 1918. Armand Cahen died at Maule (78), south-west of Paris in 1920. He’s likely, then, shown in his uniform from that date. His likeness is an example of an aspect of the cemeteries that I also saw. The tribute to the héro sometimes dominates the family history of the tomb or vault. I think this says something of the significance attached to loss in the cataclysmic conflict that was the First World War.
It’s also evident with the Olchanski vault. Here a stained-glass window imagines the moment on 6 June 1918 when le capitaine Jacques Olchanski of the 99e RI was killed leading his unit in the attack (cleverly, the German defenders of the trench being attacked are almost devoid of colour, except grey). One corner of the image is a portrait of Olchanski. Inside the entrance is a sort of framed slate engraved with details of Olchanski’s service and one of his citations (he gained 5). I’ve never seen anything similar and wonder if anyone else has. A marble plaque (not posted) also provides more detail.
Another of these vitraux patriotiques features as part of the individual tomb dedicated to le sous-lieutenant (Jacob) Marcel Suss – a former pupil of the elite school for engineers and scientists, the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures de Paris. Suss (‘Süss’ in his matricule militaire) was an officer with 14e régiment d’artillerie during the First Battle of the Marne when he was killed on 9 September 1914.
There are generals buried in Montparnasse just as there are at Père-Lachaise. Augustin Dubail was a former Chief of Staff of the Army and, under Joffre, commander of le Groupe d’armées de l’Est, sacked as a consequence of the German attack on Verdun in February 1916, although he’d expressed repeated concerns over the state of the defences there. He was later Military Governor of le camp retranché de Paris. His status at Montparnasse as a general who held high office and who served during both the War of 1870 and the First World War is undermined by a général whose early death in the war and its circumstances and commemoration have a far greater visual impact. And it’s a cross that achieves this.
That general was (Marie Joseph) Eugène Bridoux, commander of the 5e division de cavalerie on the outbreak of war who, on 17 September 1914, was shot and killed by men of a German cyclist unit while reconnoitring by car in an area of fighting. His grave at Montparnasse remarkably still bears the remains of the cross that marked his original place of burial. It’s exposed to the elements and in a ragged condition – a remarkable survivor. For now.
However, Montparnasse can surpass even itself with another wooden cross – the original grave marker – in the family vault entrance (and, so, more protected from the elements) of le lieutenant Léon André Louis Bernard of the 7ème compagnie of the 102e Régiment d’infanterie, where one can still read, traced in black ink on the wood, his name and the number of the ambulance (6/4) where he died of his injuries at Verdun on 17 September 1916.
Finally, if you think these wooden crosses are a ‘Great War thing’, take time at Montparnasse to find the memorial to Aspirant Jean-Pierre Crémieux-Bach and Pierre Pupin.
The cemetery at Passy – Under the eye of la Tour Eiffel
But now time to move on to le Cimetière de Passy which is on a raised level behind the rather-ignored Monument à la Gloire des armées françaises designed by Paul Landowski (who’s buried in the cemetery) is in a district described as ‘chic’. It’s definitely a cemetery with cachet – although why anyone needs that when they are dead is something I don’t understand. The names are sometimes more obscure but include Bảo Đại, the last Emperor of Vietnam, Alexandre Millerand – ministre de la Guerre on the outbreak of the First World War and later Président du Conseil des ministres and, ultimately, Président de la République française, the painter Édouard Manet, the composers Claude Debussy and Gabriel Fauré, Marcel Renault (of the motor company), There are actresses (actors if you prefer) and anarchists, and socialites and socialists, industrialists and novelists. Regarding other Great War connections, this was where Maurice Genevoix was buried until he was panthéonisé in 2020. I missed the grave of Maurice Gamelin – probably better known for his role in the Second World War but a member of Joffre’s staff and, subsequently, a divisional commander in the Great War. Philippe Bunau-Varilla is also buried here, as is Henry Farman, the aviation pioneer. Le général Charles Huntziger, known as a Vichy general and the man who signed the 22 June 1940 Armistice with Nazi Germany in the name of France in the same railway carriage where the Armistice of 11 Novmber 1918 had been signed, is also buried here. In the 1914-1918 war he was chef du bureau d’opérations at the headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force on the Front d’Orient (the Salonika Front).
At Passy, the monument to the Wessbecher brothers, André and Henry is simple but demands a closer look. A cross with the date ‘1918’ and short inscription « Pour Toi France ». But, beneath it are the two deceased men’s ‘biographies’. In the case of André, there’s much more here than in his matricule militaire: the award of médaille militaire and croix de guerre, his service in the air service and even the manner of his death in June 1918 while flying low attacking enemy troops on the ground. In Henry’s case, death came in September 1918, although he’d previously been wounded and gassed. The monument records he was a chevalier de la légion d’honneur and had been awarded the croix de guerre. It seems from the cemetery records (digitised and available via the Geneanet website), that both brothers were originally buried elsewhere, before being re-buried in January 1921 at Passy.
Sometimes, the traces of les morts de la grande guerre are quite ephemeral. Digging deeper can reveal hidden histories. The family tomb inscription for bank employee and maréchal des logis Paul (Louis Fernand) Marcoux, tells us he was mort pour la France at Flaucourt on the Somme on 7 July 1916, but makes no mention of his brigade citation or the posthumous award of the médaille militaire in December 1920.
I photographed the headstone of (Georges) Robert Nivelle – the man who was généralissime and commandant en chef des armées françaises on the Western Front from December 1916 to May 1917 and the man most notably remembered for the military operation on the Chemin des Dames that began in April 1917 that’s usually given his name and that failed so badly to achieve its aims. Nivelle died in 1924. I should have realised, however, that Nivelle’s body was exhumed and re-interred at Les Invalides in 1931.
« Pour Toi France » – At Passy, the monument to the Wessbecher brothers, André and Henry
Biographies from the detail of the monument to the Wessbecher brothers, André and Henry
Page from Cimetière de Passy (Paris, France) – Registres journaliers d’inhumation | 13/01/1919 – 02/05/1921 featuring the names of the brothers, André Marcel and Henry Pierre Wessbecher. Link: https://www.geneanet.org/registres/view/214802/23
The Famille Guibaudet – Marcoux monument with factual and understated mention of Paul Marcoux MPLF 7 July 1916.
Page from the Registres journaliers d’inhumation Cimetière de Passy (Paris, France) | 04/09/1923 – 02/03/1926. This records both Nivelle’s burial and that his body was taken to Les Invalides in 1931. Documents conservés aux archives départementales de Paris. Link: https://www.geneanet.org/registres/view/214779/9
The Family Petit le Roy vault memorial that hints at the stories across two World Wars of two Lieutenants, both called Jacques Petit Le Roy.
The Bluzet Memorial – a father and son who died for France in la Grande Guerre
Detail from the Bluzet memorial concerning e colonel René Bluzet, Commandant, la 117e Brigade, Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, croix de guerre MPLF October 1915
Throughout these cemetery visits, I was often struck by stories that went across the years, wars and even centuries. At Passy, there’s an example in the stories of two Lieutenants, both called Jacques Petit Le Roy. One being the uncle of the other. The first, (Albert Marie) Jacques, was an officer in 155e RI, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and croix de guerre when, on 29 January 1915, he was killed by a bullet whilst in the front line « environ 500 m à droite de la route de Binarville à Vienne-le-Château » – another victim of « le Bois de la Tuerie ». His body was never recovered. His nephew, Jacques (Albert André Serge), was a 28-year-old member of the Forces Françaises de l’Interieur (FFI) – the combined military forces of various elements of the Second World War ‘French Resistance’ – who had fought in 1939-40. In August 1944, he was killed by a German patrol as he returned from delivering a message from le général Jacques Chaban-Delmas, responsible for military co-ordination between the FFI and Inter-Allied high command, to le général Philippe Leclerc, whose armoured columns were pushing into the suburbs of Paris while an armed uprising was struggling against the Germans occupying the city. There’s a road, Rue du Lieutenant Petit le Roy, named in his honour at Chevilly-Larue, where he was killed. It joins Rue de l’Adjudant-Chef Dericbourg, named after the member of Leclerc’s staff who was killed alongside Petit le Roy.
The last encounter with the dead of Passy Cemetery I want to mention is with Aspirant Jean (Ernest Claude) Bluzet of 232e RI, who was already the holder of the médaille militaire and the croix de guerre when he died of wounds at Ambulance 9/10, Villers-Marmery (51) at the age of 19 on 27 May 1917, and, more specifically, with his father, le colonel René(-Marie-Philippe) Bluzet, Commandant, la 117e Brigade, Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, croix de guerre, who pre-deceased Jean, dying of his wounds at Ambulance 1/59, Morville-sur-Seille (54) on 11 October 1915 at the age of 44.
I’d intended including the Bluzets as an example of father and son service and sacrifice, but also because of the attractive memorial with its Latin “Manibus Date Lauros Plenis” (“Give me armfuls of laurels”, perhaps). However, while putting together this post, I started reading Henry Morel-Journel’s Journal d’un officier de la 74e Division d’infanterie et de l’armée française d’Italie (1914-1918) and, by an amazing coincidence, after adding the Bluzets to the list of stories to cover, the next time I read Morel-Journel’s Journal, it was this I read:
Gelant dans la tranchée, nous nous retirons dans un abri souterrain en forme de tramway. Assis face à face sur des banquettes de terre, nous composons un groupe pittoresque ; dans le fond, deux de mes camarades qui ont passé une nuit blanche, sommeillent ; en face d’eux, le colonel de notre artillerie et un de ses chefs d’escadron, enveloppés dans leurs grands manteaux, semblent des figures hiératiques. Le général, lui, la bouche souriante, la cigarette à la main, est assis dans ce trou avec des attitudes de confortable élégance, comme dans un fauteuil de fumoir. Il écoute le lieutenant-colonel Bluzet, commandant notre 223e régiment — fin, blond, la figure d’un capitaine — nous raconter ses campagnes.
Morel-Journel, Henry. Journal d’un officier de la 74e Division d’infanterie et de l’armée française d’Italie (1914-1918) (French Edition) (p. 111). FeniXX réédition numérique. Kindle Edition.
« fin, blond, la figure d’un capitaine. » This was November 1914. Eagerly, I read on:
Le colonel Bluzet, au sortir de Saint-Cyr, a passé douze ans dans l’infanterie coloniale ; il faisait partie de la colonne Joffre qui a pris Tombouctou. Il nous parle des Touaregs, de leurs femmes aux traits purs qui ont le visage découvert tandis que les hommes sont voilés, parce qu’une fois les femmes d’une tribu repoussèrent un ennemi devant lequel les hommes avaient fui.
Reading back, I found this was the « fou » Bluzet (according to his divisional commander, général Louis Bigot), whose telegram had sent news of the German withdrawal from Lunéville on 12 September 1914 – a sure indicator of French victory in la Bataille du Grand-Couronné:
« Suis à Chauffontaine, dans une heure serai avec mon régiment dans Lunéville ».
Morel-Journel, Journal (p. 79).
And here he was, distracting those with him sheltering in an inadequate abri from a German bombardment with stories of his pre-war Saharan experiences. Memorialised in print and, after death, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
I hope these two blog posts (together with my recent post on « Nécropoles nationales», « Cimetières » and « carrés militaires ») will encourage anyone who reads them to explore the cemeteries of Paris and those of any French city or commune with a better understanding of what stories there are to discover there, and that I’ve done something to pay tribute to those who served and died for France in la Grande Guerre.
* Here I think with the meaning ‘in the shadow of’ rather than more literally ‘under’. Rambach died at Montzéville (55) in the Argonne and was originally buried at Dombasle-en-Argonne.
^ Thanks to @nbuchon.me on BlueSky for their help in trying to interpret the handwriting!
The subject, without foundation, of recent internet speculation. ↩︎
Or, how to give up romantic notions of Paris and move the focus to Death and Loss …
In September 2024, I had the opportunity for a stay of almost a week in Paris and, without the need to consider the interests and tastes of anyone else, a chance to take in a range of historical sites relating to the First World War, as well as the siege of Paris during the War of 1870 and the Paris Commune. In this and a follow-on post, I want to focus on my time during that visit spent in the cities of the dead: the traces of la Grande Guerre in some of the cemeteries of Paris.
I’ve posted on BlueSky about one aspect of this before. The incredible memorial now to be found on the walls of probably the best known of the Paris municipal cemeteries, Père Lachaise:
This is the Paris memorial to those from the city who died during the Great War. It was erected on the wall of Père Lachaise cemetery in 2018. A view from a bus travelling one stop can’t fail to make you ponder the loss in that conflict #1GM#fwwhist#WW1
What you’re seeing on the short video are panels like these.
These are the names of 94,415 dead and 8,000 missing Parisians from the Great War. The entire length of the memorial is 280 metres, and each panel is 1.30 metres high. It’s quite remarkable.
This is a recent commemorative response from the centenary period. Yet within the cemeteries of Paris, there’s evidence of France’s distinct approach to the scale of loss in the war and to the grief of families of the nation’s citizens in the immediate aftermath of the war. In the follow on to this post, we’ll look at what stories you can find in some of the Parisian cemeteries and the useful information that’s there to help and inspire you. First of all, however, a post to help with understanding why you may see what you see. How the French state and people’s responses to the enormity of the cost in terms of lives lost in the war bring us to where things are today.
A Rising and Inexorable Tide of Grief
From the outbreak of the war, bereaved families pressed the civil and military authorities to allow them to recover the remains of their loved ones and bury them closer to home. Responses to these requests fluctuated between authorization and refusal. In order to clear up the confusion, on 19 November 1914, Joffre formally prohibited any transfer of bodies from within the zone des armées (In a future blog post, I plan to share more detail on the significance of this division of the war front into zones). Only the bodies of deceased soldiers buried in the zone de l’intérieur could be returned, and there was a fee to be paid for doing so (as was the case in certain civilian circumstances).
Meanwhile, the French authorities wanted to bring soldiers’ graves in the zone des armées (which moved as the war front moved eastwards or westwards) together in official cemeteries. In some ways, the reasons for this are still there to this day: ease, and reduced cost, of maintenance; a desire to return land to agricultural or other use as soon as possible; and reduced ‘friction’ with local populations – the graves of whose loved ones, if known, might be altogether elsewhere. This was to be an exercise in doomed ambition. Isolated individual graves were elusive and often inaccessible – there being no zone of ‘current’ conflict separate from sites of previous fighting. In some cases, this is why they survive to this day. In others, the site of the grave was the scene of the action in which the deceased had fought – their surviving comrades or family wishing to commemorate their courage and sacrifice on the spot. During and after the war, the state tried to deny access to the devastated areas to families seeking to retrieve the bodies of their kin from battlefield graves. An unseemly struggle between the Republic and grieving relatives developed.
This article (in French) opens with an account of one grieving mother’s response:
“It is my duty to bring to your attention the following case. There is a military cemetery in the commune of St-Gilles. On May 29, Ascension Day, Madame Descoutis, director of the school in Montluçon (Allier) had the body of her son exhumed in the said cemetery and after placing it in a leaded coffin transported it to Montluçon by car. All this was done naturally without any authorization, as the law does not allow for the exhumation or transfer of military bodies.” 1
Under sustained pressure, and on the advice of a commission established under the presidency of général Édouard de Castelnau (who himself had lost three sons – Gérald (1879-1914), Xavier (1893-1914) and Hugues (1895-1915) – to the war), the government backed down and the law of 31 July 1920 finally allowed for the transfer of bodies from the war-zone.
As mentioned in the previous blog post, this marked a significant difference from the British Empire and Dominion experience where the Imperial War Graves Commission lobbied largely successfully for the bodies of those who had died abroad not to be repatriated, and for bodies scattered in isolated graves and makeshift burial grounds to be exhumed and ‘concentrated’ into larger cemeteries.
In the case of France, to keep control of the operations and treat all families equally, the government organized and funded the transfer of soldiers’ bodies. A department responsible for returning bodies (the Service de restitution des corps) was created within what became the Ministry of Pensions, headed by the war veteran and very important (for more than one reason) André Maginot as Ministre des Pensions, Primes et Allocations de guerre. From 1922 onwards, 240,000 coffins were returned to family graves, which represented one-third of identified bodies: considerably more than in the case of other nations.
An organisation that walked a difficult path during the immediate post-war controversy over l’inhumation des « Mort pour la France » was le Souvenir Français, which had been in existence since 1877 and which, before the war had grown rapidly. The organisation created monuments, steles, and plaques paying homage to French combatants in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1870. By 1900, it had 80,000 members in 854 local committees and had designated an estimated 2,000 sites of memory. During five years of conflict, the Souvenir Français was unable to access the graves of combatants on the battlefields, instead organising ceremonies in municipal cemeteries around All Saints’ Day and trying to help bereaved families, as well as laying flowers on the graves of soldiers who died in hospitals behind the lines. The organisation had to be mindful that it was considered important in enforcing the Republican message, but that it also depended on the families of those who had fought to deliver its work.
Image: La cocarde du souvenir | fac-similé de la Cocarde aux couleurs françaises apposée sur les tombes des soldats français morts pour la France – AFF17788 – Lot 1 – Média 1 – L’Argonnaute – Bibliothèque numérique de La contemporaine
A pause here to add what I hope is thought-provoking additional information. The artillery of the war could and did blow men out of existence, such that no physical elements remained to be interred anywhere. Beyond these cases, nearly half of the dead were given no grave other than the ossuaires. The largest of these is at Douaumont and contains the remains of 130,000 French and German soldiers. This huge figure might lead to thoughts of exceptionalism if the nature of the fighting here (concentrated over a long period in a relatively small area and with the very real intention on the part of the Germans to inflict unsustainable losses on the French through attrition) is considered. However, in the largest cemetery on the Western Front at Notre-Dame de Lorette there are 20,058 bodies in graves and an estimated 20,000 in the ossuary. Almost equal numbers of unidentifiable fragments of men as bodies capable of being buried in a grave – a situation that can be found closely echoed in plenty of other places, large or small (examples chosen at random): Cerny-en-Laonnois : 5.150 bodies, of which 2.386 are en ossuaire; Dannemarie : 250 in individual graves and 139 ‘distributed’ in two ossuaires; Col de la Chipotte : 1,899 bodies, 1,006 buried in graves, 893 in an ossuary; Auberive : nearly 7,000 bodies, of which nearly 2,900 are buried in three ossuaries.2 Then, as noted in my post on war cemeteries, there are the individual ‘smaller’ (it’s all relative) ossuaires in many nécropoles with perhaps the remains of a hundred and sometimes as many as 3-4,000 bodies.
My posts on military graves and cemeteries and this one are intended to draw attention to how ‘hidden’ from understanding the true cost of the war to France in terms of lives really is. We don’t, by any means, have a true picture of the losses from the grave markers in a French nécropole. They only tell a part of the story. Although this is true of the British and German cemeteries as well, it’s especially so in the case of the French and Germans.
In summary, then, what anyone looking for traces of the First World War in the cemeteries of Paris (or indeed any French city, town or commune that was not under German control during the war) will encounter has been shaped by decisions made by the army and the state, and by communities and the bereaved families of dead soldiers – as well as by the level of wealth and influence and status of the individual or their family and networks. The influence of the zone des armées / zone de l’intérieur split can be seen and is often indirectly referenced as we’ll see and for which we’ll look at possible reasons. We’ll see the beauty and poignancy of tributes from families and others, and we’ll see endless opportunities to look deeper into aspects of the French military experience with connections to combat on land, sea and in the air. It’s a worthwhile experience for anyone interested in la Grande Guerre and a starting point to many other aspects of the huge subject of France and its people at war.
Note: This post has been influenced and shaped by the work of Professeure Béatrix Pau. a historian specialising in the First World War and particularly in death, the management of corpses and the ‘demobilisation of the dead’3.
Archives Départementales de la Marne, 2 R 212, letter from the mayor of Saint-Gilles to the préfet de la Marne, 14 June 1919 quoted in Béatrix Pau, « La violation des sépultures militaires, 1919-1920 », Revue Historique des armées [En ligne], 259 | 2010, mis en ligne le 06 mai 2010, consulté le 15 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/rha/6980. ↩︎
There are exceptions such as Le Mont Frenet à La Cheppe – created in 1915 to bury those soldiers who died of wounds at ambulance 3/65, which operated from this site. A site, as a consequence, with no ossuary and most graves ‘known’. ↩︎
In addition to the work cited above, see Béatrix Pau-Heyriès. « Le marché des cercueils après-guerre, 1918-1924 », Revue Historique des Armées [En ligne], 224 | 2001. consulté 16 mars 2025. pp. 65-80., URL : www.persee.fr/doc/rharm_0035-3299_2001_num_224_3_5035 and Béatrix Pau, “Des familles divisées dans le deuil : laisser les corps dans les cimetières militaires ou demander leur restitution”. In Un siècle de sites funéraires de la Grande Guerre, edited by Annette Becker and Stéphane Tison. Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2018. URL : https://books.openedition.org/pupo/22662↩︎
It’s common to see the terms Nécropole nationale, Cimetièremilitaire and carré militaire used seemingly without any underpinning logic for what the French refer to as lieux de sépultures de militaires français – military burial sites. This post looks at the differences and some of the key characteristics of these places of memory and mourning.
Carré militaire – ‘military square’
Not, as the English translation would seem to imply, a parade ground, but definitely a space intended to evoke the discipline, structure and order of military formations. A carré militaire is a section of a civilian cemetery dedicated exclusively to grouping together the graves of military personnel to create a solemn space where their memory can be collectively honoured. While, in Paris within the cimetière de Vaugirard, a carré militaire was created in 1882 for the soldats pensionnaires of l’Hôtel des Invalides – as the name implies, originally intended as a hospital and hospice for army veterans (as well as, in reality, a barracks, convent, and factory) – there’s a more ‘everyday’ example in the Cimetière municipal de Fontenay-sous-Bois (see images below). Here the headstones are of a design I’ve not encountered before, whilst the grave of Charles Guillemont is an example of an exhumé – a subject touched on in a future blog post, but briefly here a deceased soldier whose body is recovered (almost always by the family) and brought to be re-buried in another location – usually closer to ‘home’.
A general view of the carré militaire in the municipal cemetery of Fontenay-sous-Bois (94 – Val-de-Marne (ex Seine et Seine-et-Oise))
Graves of three soldats of the First World War in the carré militaire at Fontenay-sous-Bois (94)
Grave of soldat de 2e classe Charles Ernest GUILLEMONT, 217e régiment d’infanterie, mplf 18 May 1917
To be buried in a carré militaire, generally, the deceased has to have served in the armed forces and died in service, or after a period of ‘honourable service’. There has to be a formal request made by the family. This is important as it can connect to the exhumation of the deceased from a battlefield burial site previously mentioned. Proof of military service is required. There is a cost for the burial (although sometimes this is met by a body such as a veteran’s association or a local authority). The maintenance of the site is often under the care of local government organisations, Le Souvenir français or associations de bénévoles or other specialist groups, but the ministère des Armées (Ministry of the Armed Forces) has overall responsibility for the conservation of all the burial sites of French military personnel.
Cimetièremilitaire or nécropole nationale
The definition between these two is much more blurred and the terms are used to an extent interchangeably. For example, the enormous cimetière de regroupement (concentration cemetery) at Sillery in the Marne is frequently referred to as the « Cimetière militaire de Sillery » but is officially la nécropole nationale de Sillery. A nécropole nationale is, after all, a cemetery, but the distinction is sometimes made between a cemetery as a grouping of graves still in use, in which the dead continue to be buried, whereas a nécropole is a grouping of graves from past historical events. The latter is also associated with something old, large, and architecturally notable, whereas a cemetery implies something more ordinary.
The clearest official clarification is that of the ministère des Armées which speaks of « les nécropoles nationales [et] les carrés militaires en France métropolitaine et les cimetières militaires à l’étranger». Cemeteries overseas, nécropoles and carrés in France. However, my impression is that often the ‘cemetery name’ is the ‘heritage name’ for a burial site – a name with some period of usage before the official nomenclature is applied, [possibly going as far back as wartime origins. That’s not to say that an ‘official’ name can’t have heritage as well, just that the intention to create a consistent official nomenclature for sights of burial and mourning is what visitors encounter on cemetery information panels – as well as in other situations (such as the IGN maps).
Planned Égalité ?
In layout, French war cemeteries (whether carrés militaires, cimetières or nécropoles françaises) may seem more uniform and plainer than those of other nations. In part, this is because no architects were involved to give individual character to their construction – a significant contrast to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites, for example. The entrances uniformly have laurel leaves and croix de guerre like this one at Cormicy.
Rules for their basic form mean rows (often of double graves) are separated by a central aisle leading to a pole where the French national flag flies. Individual decoration of graves is prohibited. Variations for religious reasons are what usually draw the eye – (although I intend to present, in a future post, evidence of just how much variety there actually is in the grave markers still present in French cemeteries). Large unit memorials may be present, and sometimes modern commemorations created during the Centenary. The most deceptive elements, however, are the seemingly innocuous mass grave markers for ossuaries like this.
The cemetery’s size can, therefore, be misleading as to how many casualties are actually buried there. It’s not always the case that an ossuary contains ‘unknown’ dead – as the previous photo and these of the 3 « ossuaires » at the Nécropole nationale de Friscati show. However, only a close look at the numbers actually buried beneath these markers really brings home their meaning. You may find similar markers in German war cemeteries. Don’t fail to look at each one and take a moment to absorb the scale of loss they represent.
Returning to the layout, regulations say the ground should be covered with grass – but a closer look shows there’s often a lot of variety. These tiny flowers at Cormicy in June 2022, for example, brought to mind those that grew on the graves of Theoden’s ancestors in The Lord of the Rings.
Sometimes, where issues of climate and location present specific issues, there are variations such as low hedges which are planted on each terraced level of the cemetery. as at Chêne Millet (68) – which features as the header image for this post – they’re probably intended to prevent erosion by snow or heavy rain.
Of course, all these elements add order to what was initially a much more varied arrangement of graves. I’ll end this post with a photograph from 1915 of a military burial site that has now ceased to exist. This was the ‘Upper Cemetery’ at Vieux-Thann in Alsace. The bodies of those buried in this cemetery were subsequently moved to the Nécropole Nationale de Cernay or the military cemetery at Colmar. There’s a good deal less uniformity about the graves and the markers and, obviously, the latter are wood and temporary. There’s a very republican approach to the uniformity of the modern lieux de sépultures de militaires français but, in that uniformity, something also of a European nation with a long history of loss and conflict. For someone French (or German, or indeed, from a host of other continental European nations) there’s an understanding of what such sites are and their characteristics. For me (and I suspect many others), inhabiting a small island off the coast of mainland Europe, somewhat insulated from the ravages of continental warfare until the 20th Century, there’s undoubtedly a moment of awe and horror when ‘among the crosses, row on row’ you encounter effectively the burial pits of the Napoleonic Wars and le Colonel Chabert – hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies mostly unable to be identified and flung into mass graves – an aspect of ‘the French experience of the First World War’ that perhaps we will never truly understand.
IWM (Q 80085): French war graves and monument in the Upper Cemetery at Vieux-Thann (Alsace), 30 October 1915.
At a conveniently short distance via the RER public transport network and buses to the east of Paris, there’s a host of First World War sites to visit. Of course, Paris has plenty of attractions: the very high tower, the other (even-higher) tower, the religious building up the hill, the other religious building that’s down by the river, the railway stations that are museums, the railway stations that are … railway stations. More museums. Art galleries. Restaurants. Cafés. Les grand magasins … no need for me to tell YOU. You’re sophisticated, you’ve been to them all. You’re a seasoned independent traveller.
But, if this is all you go to Paris to see, you’re missing out on the delights* of les banlieues and the commuter towns that have untasted treats waiting for you to enjoy. From Beauvais and Chantilly in the north through an arc to Melun in the south-east, there’s plenty to discover. Here are museums too: the Musée de la Grande Guerre at Meaux, the Musée de la Gendarmerie nationale at Melun. On the ‘P’ line you can get as far as Château-Thierry with the option of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre on the way. Visiting the Musée des Spahis at Senlis, however, seems to be beyond ambition without a car. Chantilly and Compiègne I have planned for a future trip. Of course, there are places to go, things to see, to the west. But for now, it’s time for to Look East.
This post’s not about museums or restaurants (although it does feature one charming encounter with a boulangerie). Everything in it is free to see and taken together they amount to … A Grand Day Out.
Things really begin at la gare de Noisy-le-Sec. Here it is around 1914 as seen in a carte postale:
It’s not really like that at all now. For one thing, this building’s buried behind a later portico and the sightlines are really obscured. For another, a lot of this site was bombed by the Allies in 1944. What’s important is that the same portico bears a couple of plaques that explain the significance of this place:
Aside from the intriguing fact that in 1897, a meeting between Queen Victoria and President Félix Faure took place at Noisy station (What?! Why?!), we learn that this was a famousgare régulatrice – a supply centre at the interface between the zone de l’intérieur under the authority of the civil government and the zone des armées under military control. Under joint civil-military control men, supplies, horses, mail, etc from the interior were sorted and despatched to the destinations that the military deemed they were needed. It wasn’t just a station. On the eve of the First World War, 2,300 people worked at Noisy-le-Sec for the Compagnie des chemins de fer de l’Est but this place became, during the conflict, one of the most important regulatory centres in France for the transport of troops. It was certainly the biggest. In everyday military parlance from what I can understand (and I may well be wrong), a gare régulatrice operated at the army level, but Noisy-le-Sec was a sort of ‘super-regulatory station’ through which huge volumes of men and matériel passed on the way to various of the armies in the north and east of France.
The station and marshalling yards were guarded throughout the war by 3 companies of the 2e bataillon of the 20e Régiment Territorial d’Infanterie and the regiment’s brief war history captures their essential work really well:
« Là, les 3e, 7e et 8e compagnies resteront jusqu’à la fin de la campagne à fournir une garde nombreuse à la gare de Noisy-le-Sec, des corvées de ravitaillement et des convoyeurs. Rôle ingrat et pénible par excellence. Là, pas d’actions héroïques, pas de citations, pas de gloire, pas d’honneurs, mais un labeur régulier, dur, fatigant pour nos vieux « Pépères »1 qui, d’un œil vigilant et par tous les temps, regardent passer les trains qui inlassablement filent vers le front et emportent dans leurs flancs, dans la nuit, là-bas, tout ce qui peut, tout ce qui doit faire la guerre. »
“… no heroic actions, no citations, no glory, no honours, but regular, hard, tiring work for our old “Pépères” who, with a vigilant eye and in all weathers, watch the trains pass by as they tirelessly rush towards the front and carry in their flanks, in the night, over there, everything that can, everything that must make war”.
These men were employed with the Gardes des Voies de Communication (GVC). In the book L’Argot des Poilus, published in 1918 (pp. 116-117) these are described like this:
Les GVC sont des réservistes de l’armée territoriale. Ce sont les barbes grises qui gardent avec conscience et mélancolie les voies ferrées et les ponts. Ils ne sont souvent pas bien dégourdis, presque toujours fagotés dans des capotes de couleur bizarres qui ne sont guère à leur mesure, armés de fusils Gras et de baïonnettes antiques qui s’adaptent mal à leur fusil. Ils ont dû faire allonger leur ceinturon pour pouvoir le boucler et ils portent les derniers pantalons rouges. Ils ne sont pas élégants, mais qu’importe? Ce sont de braves gens et si utiles, quoi qu’il en paraisse.
Auguste Lepère (1849–1918) Le G. V. C. (Gardes des voies de communications), from La Guerre de 1914, first series, no. 9. The Yale University Art Gallery Accession number: 1985.76.1.14
It’s then a train to Le Raincy or, more properly, to give the station its full name, Raincy Villemomble Montfermeil. Here’s where the history comes in reverse chronological order. You can fit the pieces together in the ‘proper’ order in your own time. Up the hill along the main road from the station for about 10 minutes, pausing only at a mini roundabout. Suddenly, from a fair distance away the sweetest, cheeriest « Coucou ! » stopped me in my tracks. It’s from a young woman behind the counter in L’Atelier de Warren and all I can say to Warren, the owner of this boulangerie, is that it’s a winning sales approach – although the young lady was probably equally surprised to find that her customer wasn’t French, but British as I mangled the words of her native tongue. If you want people to feel welcome in your town, more random salutations will work wonders. You’ll sell more croissants as well.
A little further is the first stop in Le Raincy: l’Église Notre-Dame de Consolation. Superficially, it’s misleading. Made of concrete with a tower that aspires to be spire-like but isn’t, its secrets are its foundation story and its windows. The commune of Le Raincy had a growing population on the eve of the Grande Guerre and in 1918 the curé of the parish, Abbé Félix Négre, with a very limited budget, chose as the architects, Auguste and Gustave Perret, specialists in reinforced concrete, a material that allowed for low-cost construction. The church was built in a few months, and inaugurated and consecrated in June 1923. It immediately generated considerable interest in architectural circles – dubbed « la Sainte-Chapelle du béton armé » by Le Corbusier, it’s been a Classified Monument Historique since 1966.
But the church was also always intended as a memorial to France’s victory on the Marne (and more specifically in the Battle of the Ourcq which was fought nearby) in September 1914, and there’s a stained-glass window, called « La Vierge aux Taxis », which depicts taxis, one or more piou-piou,2 a zouave of l’armée d’Afrique, l’abbé Félix Nègre himself, and generals in their red and gold-braided képis – more of them shortly. These depictions, it’s suggested by those of Le Raincy, were intended to evoke memories of the victory at the Ourcq and the departure from the town, in September 1914, of one of the columns of taxis for the Marne battle3.
Click on any of the images below to enlarge them:
Regarding the généraux depicted, I’m fairly sure the two whose faces are visible are meant to be the pince-nez wearing Joseph-Simon Gallieni, gouverneur militaire of Paris – the man who, drawing on his pre-war experience in the 1912 autumn manoeuvres of the use of motor cars to move a battalion of men to a key operational point, acted to requisition Paris taxis to carry around 4,000 men from the 103e and 104e Régiments d’Infanterie to Nanteuil-le-Haudouin on the flank of the advancing German forces – and Michel-Joseph Maunoury, commander of the 6e armée, who was then responsible for the deployment and successful use of these troops in the battle.
It’s Maunoury who we follow to the next points of interest – just around 5 minutes’ walk further up l’avenue de la Résistance.
Slightly set back from the road in a garden with topiarised hedges and tall palm trees, stands theMairie of Le Raincy – which served as Maunoury’s headquarters during the opening of the battle. There’s no plaque to record this as far as I could tell, but the area behind the building is Parc Maunoury.
No matter, because across the road and a little way back toward the railway station at a crossroads and, again, slightly back from the road is the town’s war memorial which takes its opportunity to commemorate the role of the town hall in the events of September 1914.
Although rather worn in places, it should be possible to read below the figure with outstretched arms and the names of the fallen the words :
« DU 2 AU 10 SEPTEMBRE 1914 LE GÉNÉRAL MAUNOURY AVAIT SON QUARTIER GÉNÉRAL AU RAINCY »
carved beneath a bas relief showing the general stood in front of the mairie ordering forward a body of men with rifles on their shoulders with a gesture of his arm. Other officers (one perhaps a dragon) and men look on. One of the latter stands in front of what is presumably a ‘Marne taxi’ and wears the gauntlets of a conducteur. A stooped and bent man (one of the ‘walking wounded’) heads in the other direction. A man with rifle at rest stands in front of the car and a horse. It’s inevitable, but sad, that pollution has somewhat effaced the details of the figures.
Back to the railway station, pausing only briefly to admire l’ancienne Poste in allée Théophile Binet with its art déco façade, which I think was built in 1915 (suggesting an unfortunate fate for its predecessor), before taking another RER train just one stop to Gagny to meet a surviving veteran of the battle of the Ourcq – «un authentique taxi de la Marne, sur la nouvelle place Foch de Gagny ».
The commune of Gagny is rather less keen to acknowledge Le Raincy having been (as is claimed in connection with l’Église Notre-Dame de Consolation) the place of departure of one of the columns of taxis for the Marne battle. In fact, it doesn’t. At all. What Gagny has to say is this:
Environ 600 taxis parisiens sont déployés pour transporter les soldats. Rassemblés aux Invalides, les taxis partent au cours de la nuit, en direction de Tremblay-Lès-Gonesse (aujourd’hui Tremblay-en-France) puis du Mesnil-Amelot. Dans la journée du 7 septembre, pour des questions de logistique, ce convoi redescend sur Sevran-Livry. Pendant ce temps un second convoi d’un millier de véhicules quitte les Invalides pour rejoindre Gagny. Pour charger les troupes et organiser les convois, les taxis sont rassemblés à Livry-Gargan et à Gagny, sur la grande place (actuelle place Foch) où se rendra le Général Gallieni pour s’assurer du bon fonctionnement du dispositif.4
Keeping it factual. La commune de Gagny‘s big draw then is to say “come and see an authentic taxi de la Marneon the site from where the taxis left for the battle carrying their soldiers.” You can see a taxi de la Marne at le musée de l’Armée in Paris. You can see one in le musée de la Grande Guerre at Meaux. I’ve seen both. But there’s one that’s come back to where it was a witness to war.
Sure enough, there it was.
Front view of a taxi de la Marne on Place Foch in GagnyView of the taxi in profile Another profile view showing the case that protects the taxi
By the way, when you trace the route taken by the taxis, you immediately realise that they went right by where Charles de Gaulle Airport now is. Now, I don’t fly to Paris (Eurostar into the heart of Paris for me), but if you do from wherever, think about that when you’re taxiing along one of the 4 runways.
That takes us to the end of the morning part of a one-day excursion. After this I had a convoluted journey in the valley of the Marne that included visiting a military cemetery with a lot to prompt a future blog post, a ‘drive by’ (OK, rapid walk-by) of Fort de Nogent– one of the forts that encircle Paris and the base of la Légion étrangère (so I was very careful not to get too close), a place with memorials to some of France’s truly forgotten Great War troops and a little-known (unless you’re an American in Paris) sporting venue with a great history. Probably all the subject of future posts on the blog or other social media. You can follow me on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/vingtfrong.bsky.social and debout_les_morts on Instagram. I hope this one’s inspired you to go suburban if you’re ever in the Île-de-France.
Postscript: You couldn’t call Gagny attractive, but when I researched this visit, it had two attractions that I really looked forward to seeing. The taxi was the main one and didn’t disappoint (well, apart from whether it was sufficiently protected in the ‘glass’ case it’s housed in from damage by the effects of the sun and heat). The other (spotted on Google Street View) was the massive floral ‘dinosaur’ in the green space nearby! Incroyable ! Sadly, I’d failed to notice that the view was from 2012 and, although there have been other floral creations there since (for example, a lion and a zebra, I seem to think), the dinosaur is long gone. Which I can’t help feeling is a missed opportunity by the local authorities. I mean I’d go and see them together like a shot. Wouldn’t you?
*I will not be called to account for the use of this phrase.
« Pépère » = ‘Grandad’. Interestingly, also used for a ‘quiet sector’ in the war, it’s now sometimes used for something ‘cushy’ or easy. ↩︎
In September 1914, this term was more commonly used for les soldats in 1914, poilus (‘hairy men’) really referring to the appearance of the soldiers after periods of trench warfare. ↩︎
The First Battle of the Marne took place from 5-12 September 1914. The fighting took place along a curved line of c.225 km from the camp retranché de Paris through Champagne and Argonne to the fortified city of Verdun. This combat zone can be subdivided into several sections of more or less important battles: to the West, the battles of the Ourcq and the two Morins (5-9 Sep); in the centre, the battles of the marshes of Saint-Gond (5-9 Sep) and Vitry (6-9 Sep), and, to the East, the battle of Revigny (6-10 Sep). ↩︎
This blog post originated in an exchange of social media posts with Alex Lyons (https://315-204-6regiments.com/). What started with some statistics has developed into something much larger in scope and in terms of questions it raises…
There were 112,315 cases of typhoid in the French Army in 1914-1915. Despite a law of 28 March 1914 imposing a requirement for vaccination, the epidemic would kill around 10,400 soldiers. This was all in a climate where, as with vaccination in other circumstances, there was vaccination scepticism and even fear.
The water supplied to the soldiers at the front was a breeding ground for many pathogenic micro-organisms that caused dysentery and typhoid. (“A pathogen, in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease”). Meanwhile, after the first gas attacks in early 1915, the army through the Service de Santé formally forbade drinking the water at the front because the gases poisoned stagnant water.
Problems also came from the infantry’s small capacity water bottle; the Bidon d’infanterie Mle. 1877.
Contemporary catalogue image of the Bidon d’infanterie Mle. 1877. The French infantryman’s water bottle. [Source: Gallica BNF]
At the beginning of the Great War, in 1914, two models of different capacity equipped the French army: a one-litre can for metropolitan troops (below left) and a two-litre can (right) for troops stationed in hot countries (the infanterie coloniale of l’armée d’Afrique). During 1915, due to the water supply problems of the men in the front line, the two-litre model was gradually distributed to the entire army.
However, enhancing the individual’s ability to carry more water was one thing; providing enough of it that was safe to drink was another.
Chloration de l’eau andHypochlorite ion treatment
At the same time there was valuable work accomplished in purification of water. The methods evolved to become more efficient during the conflict. They differed depending on whether the water was available in containers or supplied directly and continuously by pipeline. From the outset of the war the method of purifying drinking water described by the pharmacist Auguste Georges and the physician Louis Vaillard in the July 1902 in the « Revue de médecine et de pharmacie militaire » was employed for water in containers.
This method of treatment was with iodine using 3 tablets: 1 blue, 1 white and 1 red:
A blue tablet contained potassium iodide and iodate as well as methylene blue
A white tablet contained sodium thiosulphate (or “sodium hyposulphite”)
A red tablet which contained tannic acid.
The instructions for use were as follows: « Dissoudre 1 comprimé rouge avec 1 comprimé bleu dans ½ verre d’eau. Verser le liquide obtenu dans 10 L d’eau à traiter. Agiter. Attendre 10 min. Dissoudre 1 comprimé blanc dans un ½ verre d’eau. Verser cette solution dans les 10 L d’eau traités ».
White, blue and red tablets used in combination to purify water using the iodine-based method. [The photo shows items from the collection of the Musée du Service de Santé des Armées at Val-de-Grâce].
The blue and red tablets in the water produced iodine, which is bactericidal and viricidal. After letting it act, the white tablet eliminated the excess iodine. In tablet form, it seemed that this ‘patriotic purification’ could help protect the soldiers of the nation. Cue hymn of praise for « les comprimés de la Patrie … »
The other approach was the much larger-scale process of chloration intended for use “en campagne“. The method was called Javellisation as it used l’eau de javel.
L’eau de Javel takes its name from the then-village of Javel, west of Paris (now a stop on the RER and on the Metro line 10), where it was manufactured from 1784 to 1889. It was first used for its laundry bleaching properties and then for its disinfectant properties in diluted solution. Whether L’eau de Javel or (as we may know it) bleach, it’s effective in combating the spread of diseases such as typhoid and cholera spread by contaminated water. Bleach is both bactericidal and a virucide.
The method of Javellisation saw 1 to 4 milligrams of chlorine added per litre of water, before it was treated with sodium hyposulphite to eliminate the excess chlorine and make the water drinkable. But this second treatment was considered unfeasible in war and the high command eliminated it. The poilus would have to accept the inconvenience of their drinking water tasting of the disinfectant. But, although the water was free of pathogenic microorganisms, its strong chlorine taste made it very unpleasant to drink. So, many men still continued to drink contaminated water from unreliable sources.
Meanwhile, in August 1914, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, Polytechnicien and famous for championing the construction of the Panama Canal and as a railway engineer, resumed his military service (which had ended in 1902) with the grade of Capitaine in the Engineers. He moved to the Génie de la 2e Armée in April 1915, using his engineering knowledge and expertise to supply water for the army’s horses from the Suippe river using centrifugal pumps powered by steam engines. He was then promoted to be commander of the service des eaux of Philippe Pétain’s 2e Armée for the September 1915 Champagne offensive.
The story (as told by Bunau-Varilla) of his work over 15 days to ensure 2e Armée had adequate water supplies for the attack has many similar features to those of the inventors and innovators who, from late 1914, produced new technological responses to the stalemate of trench warfare and the problems it caused. Those like Adrian (the protective helmet and barracks accommodation), Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne (tanks) and Marie Curie (mobile x-ray machines) are examples from among the French, Ernest Swinton (tanks again), John Norton Griffiths (military mining), William H Livens (gas and the Livens Projector) from the British. Bunau-Varilla bought pumps, pipes and demi-muids (large oak barrels that hold 600 litres) in Paris; he bent regulations to get the equipment transported; water distribution devices, capable of supplying eight trucks each carrying 3 demi-muids, were installed along the front near hastily dug wells. On 25 September, 2,000,000 litres of water were ready to flow daily and follow the Army’s advance.
The extent to which these innovative entrepreneurs in the First World War could realise their aims without some form of support has been the subject of analysis (cf. Aimée Fox’s Learning to Fight as a very good example). Clearly, Bunau-Varilla was the beneficiary of patronage from Philippe Pétain and his staff with a rapid rise to a position of authority in his field.
What interests me (and connects to my broader subject interest in liaison and co-operation between the British and the French) is whether these two major combatant nations, and the most important ones in the Allied cause, did enough to share innovations that could have shortened the war, or reduced casualties, or improved medial support for their armies. From my own research, the British actively worked to keep their development of the tank secret from their ally. Was this an extension of pre-war cautiousness over giving a long-standing ancien ennemi and potential rival information that might offer them an advantage in a future conflict between the nations? It seems likely.
Whatever the reasons (and I’ll be looking for further examples and consider the factors at play as this blog goes forward), it was paralleled in a non-military context, including medicine, as in the development of an anti-typhoid vaccine – as we’ll see. In the 21st Century, campaigns against disease through bodies such as the World Health Organisation treat such things as a global problem – to eradicate the disease is for the benefit of all mankind. Other historians will have tracked how this development came about. Please feel free to use the contact form and recommend any who you feel do this particularly well.
According to Bunau-Varilla’s own account, in Champagne in September 1915 and at the start of the Battle of Verdun in February 1916, water sanitation was not a huge problem, as he stated in his book From Panama to Verdun: “I never paid attention to the purification of the water because the whole army had been vaccinated against typhoid during the first part of 1915”. (We will see the extent to which this was not, in fact, the case later). What Bunau-Varilla believed changed matters was that around July 1916 large contingents of labourers from what was then termed ‘Indochine’ arrived on the Western Front, brought from the region of modern Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia because of the growing problem of manpower shortages caused by the Army’s mounting casualty lists. Among these men were carriers of two new intestinal diseases not previously encountered on the Western Front (amoebic dysentery and bacillary dysentery). Antityphoid vaccinations had no effect on these and these diseases could be spread by contaminated water. It was necessary to find a solution to this problem.
In 1916 at Verdun, Buneau-Varilla managed to capture and transport water from the Meuse using wells, pumps and pipes to the trenches. He developed an automatic process for making this water potable by injecting diluted bleach just at the entrance to the centrifugal pumps. This process required doses of bleach ten to fifty times lower than javellisation (around 0.1 mg of active chlorine per litre). This water had a much better taste than water that had undergone javellisation.
The difference in effectiveness came from the methodology: in this process, the addition of bleach was carried out slowly with vigorous and prolonged stirring. These conditions promoted the dissolution of carbon dioxide in the air, which lowered the pH and promoted the change of the hypochlorite ion to a more bactericidal form. Bunau-Varilla gave the name « Auto-Javellisation Imperceptible » to his process and in the postwar years it became increasingly used by local governments across France and greatly improved the quality of drinking water for the citizens of these communities.
The tomb of Philippe Bunau-Varilla in le cimetière de Passy (Division 9), Paris 16eA bust of Philippe Bunau-Varilla stands on the floor within the open doors of his tomb.
Bunau-Varilla himself lost a leg after suffering severe wounds in an air attack at Souilly in September 1917, but he survived and live until 1940. But let’s return to his contention that “the whole army had been vaccinated against typhoid during the first part of 1915”.
Vaccination: An unmitigated triumph?
A systematic campaign of inoculation by the Army authorities against typhoid on the Western Front from the spring of 1915 definitely produced results: from 118 deaths per 100,000 men in the workforce at the end of 1914, there was a near-disappearance of typhoid mortality in the French army as early as 1917 (0.3 deaths per 100,000 soldiers). Morbidity fell from 26 ‰ in early 1915 to 0.28 ‰ in 1918. Between 1915 and 1917, according to médecin général inspecteur Jean Hyacinthe Vincent*: “cases of typhoid diseases observed in the armies at the front are nearly seven times fewer and deaths eight and a half times rarer than in peacetime”. Plaudits came from academia and the press. The 1915 Osiris prize “for the work of typhoid vaccination” was shared between André Chantemesse, Georges-Fernand Widal and Vincent, its three “inventors” and chief architects in France. The popular press celebrated “Vincent, the great saviour of the Army” and « les vainqueurs de la fièvre typhoïde ». The message from all parts was clear: vaccination had triumphed over a disease that, as much as combat, put bodies at risk.
Although not specifically concerned with the anti-typhoid vaccine, which it had an important role in development and deployment, in Institut Pasteur et la Grande Guerre : le vaccin et les poilus a collection of photographs depicts the work of the Institut Pasteur during la Grande Guerre, particularly focusing on the development and administration of vaccines to soldiers. This historical visual record provides insights into the medical efforts and conditions during the war and indicates the extent to which animals were used in the development of the serum to combat diseases such as cholera, smallpox, rabies, etc.
WARNING: Some people may find some of the images here distressing.
* Jean Hyacinthe Vincent was an associate professor at Val-de-Grâce and the Collège de France, and he held the chair of epidemiology in 1912. He worked with Georges-Fernand Widal who had developed a diagnostic technique in 1896; the Widal test. Together they developed a vaccination against typhoid fever, that was first applied to humans by Vincent in 1910. It should be noted that, in England, Sir Almoth Wright had already separately developed a vaccine and applied it to humans in 1896.
In France, typhoid vaccination was permitted by the Académie Nationale de Médecine from 1911. In 1912, the vaccine was made available to the French army’s troops, and in that year more than 62,000 men volunteered for the operation. Vincent successfully vaccinated the French contingent in North Africa against typhoid using his entero-vaccine.
Early in 1914 (as previously mentioned), the French Senate passed a bill making it compulsory in the French army. At this time, it was described as “incontestably effective,” and it was beginning to play a lead role in the struggle against typhoid fever.
There was, however, among the PCDF « Pauvres cons du front » – the ordinary soldiers – a strong and growing mistrust of vaccination and there was much reluctance and even refusal. The concern was in some part based on the at-that-time unfamiliar process (as Anne Rasmussen puts it) through which “inoculating a healthy body puts it at risk, for an uncertain benefit.” The argument was mainly based on the adverse reactions assigned to vaccination, increased by multiple injections that only increased risks and inconveniences. Complete inoculation effectively required four injections spaced 7 to 10 days apart. A repeat dose was required every year.
There was resistance to the High Command in some quarters which, in turn, led the army’s military and medical leaders to push even harder for the vaccination programme to be enacted. Doctors who did not carry out their vaccination mission with enough zeal and showed reluctance to inoculate were disciplined. Hyacinthe Vincent, during the course of the war, developed the TAB vaccination (a combined vaccine used to produce immunity against the diseases typhoid, paratyphoid A, and paratyphoid B). However, he talked of “the incredible resistance” that his TAB vaccine encountered “almost everywhere”.
Meanwhile, the phenomenon of the “falsely vaccinated” appeared. Men who, during the questionnaire preceding vaccination, either claimed they had already been vaccinated, or that they had previously developed typhoid fever. These reasons would mean they escaped inoculation: “Some vaccinations have been recorded on the simple declaration of men. Many military personnel say or claim to have been vaccinated and cannot provide any evidence of this. Their booklets do not mention this vaccination and they do answers when they are questioned. Suspicious and contradictory. There are serious reasons to think that these men claim to have been vaccinated to avoid injections […]”.
A Subjective Case Study: le 72e Régiment d’Infanterie, August 1914 – December 1916
The issue of consistently ensuring the required programme of multiple injections was followed is illustrated by a few extracts from the JMO (Journal de marches et opérations – the ‘war diary’) of the medical service of a single infantry regiment (72e RI – notionally from the Somme region) chosen solely on the basis of easily available information in a transcribed form.
In the JMO, it’s only in December 1914 that we first read of any issues with typhoid: 8 au 11 décembre 1914 Le Régiment occupe des tranchées au N.O. de Vienne-le-Château. Très peu de blessés, par contre, beaucoup de maladies pour diarrhée, dysenterie et embarras gastrique fébrile, début indéniable de fièvre typhoïde[my emphasis]. and of how 11 au 16 décembre 1914 En raison de son mauvais état sanitaire, le régiment est mis au repos. … … It might reasonably be assumed that at this stage of the war, because of the pressure of adaptation to the very different character of the war as encountered and the pressure of events, there’s a period in which pre-war preparation dissolves into a second phase where there’s an absence of control and resource.
There’s an inevitable attempt to re-establish control and good practice at the beginning of the new year. This would be part of the wider systematic campaign of inoculation by the Army authorities against typhoid: 14 janvier 1915 1250 vaccinations anti-typhoïdiques sont pratiquées. Of course, the situation for any regiment depended always on whether they were in the line or not. At this stage, 72e RI as part of 3e division d’infanterie, was under 2e corps d’armée in the Argonne. This vaccination en masse seems to coincide with a withdrawal to rest and an imminent review by Joffre.
In February 1915, the regiment took part in offensive operations on the Champagne front. Possibly in preparation for active operations, we see a real example of the problems of delivering a full vaccination problem: 1er au 8 février 1915 … Des vaccinations anti-typhoïdiques sont continuées sur tous les hommes n’ayant pas encore reçu dans les Dépôts au moins deux injections de vaccin. 8 au 17 février 1915 … Les vaccinations anti-typhoïdiques ont été continuées. Depuis la mise au rafraîchissement du régiment, les opérations de vaccinations sont ainsi réparties : Hommes ayant reçu 3 injections = 929 2 = 473 1= 531 Certains hommes n’ont pas reçu la 2ème ou la 3ème injection parce qu’ils étaient indisponibles lors de l’une de ces opérations ou parce que n’étaient pas arrivés au Corps qu’avec les 5 ou 6 derniers renforts. During the next few months, we can probably assume that a vaccination programme continues as there’s no mention until July: 12 juillet 1915 La vaccination antityphoïdique est continuée pour tous les hommes non vaccinés ou incomplètement vaccinés. while August provided a reminder of the connection of the vaccination programme to the maintenance of unit effectiveness: 25 août 1915 … L’état sanitaire se maintient satisfaisant. Les diarrhées diverses constituent les affections prédominantes, un certain nombre d’hommes sont évacuées pour courbatures et embarras gastriques fébriles. Les vaccinations antithyphoïdiques sont continuées chez tous les hommes. Les renforts non vaccinés. En somme, le nombre des cas d’infections gastrointestinales est très peu élevé pour la saison. The next entry concerning typhoid and vaccination suggests a reactive programme of re-vaccination in response to circumstances; but there’s an interesting qualifying remark: 21 décembre 1915 … Les vaccinations antityphoïdiques et antiparatyphoïdiques étendues à tout le régiment ont été reprises le 16 décembre. Le besoin s’en faisait sentir, car malgré le très petit nombre des malades, le nombre des fièvres typhoïdes s’est élevé à une cinquantaine depuis un mois. Les malades ont été évacués de très bonne heure, au 1er et au second jour de la fièvre. Ils ne présentaient pas le mauvais aspect des typhoïdiques de l’hiver 1914-1915. In January 1916, the JMO’s author is moved to speculate on whether there’s a decline in effectiveness of the vaccine or an increased vulnerability to ill-effects from the vaccine amongst men fatigued by trench warfare: 25 janvier 1916 … La fièvre typhoïde donne toujours un certain nombre d’atteintes. Souvent, il s’agit de paratyphoïdes. Les malades sont évacués de façon très précoce et la mortalité est peu élevée. Les vaccinations antityphoïdiques et antiparatyphoïdiques sont activement poursuivies. Est-ce la qualité du vaccin, les hommes fatigués par la guerre sont-ils moins résistants ? toujours est-il que les réactions paraissent plus vives que celles que nous avons a observées l’an dernier à pareille époque, alors que nous avons vacciné tout le Régiment. Il y a lieu d’ajouter qu’il est resté au repos complet pendant un mois. – Tous les hommes qui ont eu antérieurement la fièvre typhoïde sont spécialement examinés au point de vue cœur et urines. Une assez forte proportion de ces militaires ont de l’albumine dans leurs urines et ne sont pas soumis à la vaccination. Jusqu’à ce jour, 6000 injections de vaccin environ ont été pratiquées avec du vaccin de Vincent. Grâce aux éliminations de suspects, nous n’avons pas encore eu à déplorer d’accidents. But it’s only when the subject next appears in the diary in August that we get mention of the specifics of an adverse reaction to the vaccine: 15 août 1916 Continuation des vaccinations anti-typhoïdiques. 174 ont reçu la 1ère injection, 41 : la seconde, 4 : la troisième. Une réaction violente chez un s/officier a motivé son évacuation. soon followed by 23 août 1916 Continuation des vaccinations antityphoïdiques. 18 ont reçu la 1ère injection, 133 la 2ème, 77 la 3ème, 4 la 4ème, total 232. Une réaction assez intense a motivé l’entrée à l’infirmerie. and again, even sooner after that 26 août 1916 Continuation des vaccinations antityphoïdiques. 37 ont reçu la 1ère injection, 258 la 2ème, 34 la 3ème, 5 la 4ème, total 334. Une réaction assez intense a motivé l’entrée à l’infirmerie. From this point forward, the recording of how many men have received what number of injections becomes the ‘standard’ format whenever the subject of typhoid vaccination is mentioned, as in this case: 5 septembre 1916 Continuation des vaccinations antityphoïdiques. 47 ont reçu la 1ère injection, 110 la 2ème, 326 la 3ème, 105 la 4ème, total 588
Conclusion
The subjective recording of episodes in one unit’s first years of war can’t be taken as the definitive experience of typhoid and anti-typhoid vaccination in the French Army in the same period, but it does enable some insight from an operational unit perspective.
One weapon in the French Army’s propaganda war to convince vaccination sceptics of the value of the vaccine was the deployment of statistics like those on this poster showing the benefits of vaccination among the civilian population in various localities in the period prior to the outbreak of war. (Credit: Quelques exemples de vaccinations antityphoïdiques dans la population civile en France en 1912 et 1913 / Laboratoire de Vaccination Antityphoïdique et de Sérothérapie de l’Armée, Val-de-Grâce, Paris. In copyright. [Source: Wellcome Collection]).
As the war progressed, in order to overcome vaccination reluctance, the army’s high command ultimately had to adjust its approach from disciplinary coercion to one that acknowledged the soldiers as citizens of the Republic who participated in a relationship with authority. This resulted in orders published on 5th April 1915 announcing and setting the limits for the rights of the individual to refuse treatment when injured or sick, but which also aimed to convince people of the advantages of medical treatment rather than to force or punish them, in an attempt to preserve collective health in the military without sacrificing individual choice. Citizens had a right over their own body, reflected in the concept of consent to any medical treatment (including preventative measures, like vaccination), but this freedom was necessarily limited given refusal of the vaccine, in the context of fighting an epidemic, was not an individual right, as it endangered the collective body of the nation.
Persuasion and education were now used in combination – beginning with the medical personnel administering the vaccine. They were required to convince the soldiers by developing trust based on their training and education, maintain confidentiality and adapt their approach to individual cases. It’s important, therefore, to acknowledge the important role played by those actually delivering medical care in the armed forces in making sure that the programme of vaccination was the success it undoubtedly was.
Note: The featured image for this post is ‘Gallic Cock’ (1916) by the sculptor and artist, Raymond Duchamp-Villon (born Pierre Maurice Raymond DUCHAMP) (5 November 1876 – 9 October 1918). This was part of the design by Duchamp-Villon for a temporary theatre on the French front. In late 1916, Duchamp-Villon contracted typhoid fever while serving as a médecin aide-major de 2e classe in Champagne. He died on 7 October 1918 at the Cannes – Hôpital complémentaire N°75, 06 – Alpes-Maritimes, France. André Chantemesse, whose work with Georges-Fernand Widal on the causes of typhoid and an experimental antityphoid inoculation were foundations on which Vincent and Widal’s work was developed, died in February 1919 as a result of another deadly infectious disease – the Spanish Flu influenza pandemic.
Several articles were referenced in preparing this blog post and helped me explain the science of water purification and the vaccination controversy, as well as the experience of vaccination for a single unit. On occasion, I have found no better way of explaining than through the words of these authors themselves. This is intended as an overview of the subject to encourage interest in, and inspire further reading around, aspects of the French experience of the First World War. For that reason, I encourage you to read any or all of the following: * Traiter l’eau dans les tranchées durant la guerre de 14-18 (accessed 31 August 2024). * Rasmussen Anne, « À corps défendant : vacciner les troupes contre la typhoïde pendant la grande guerre », Corps, 2008/2 n° 5, pp. 41-48. * M. Mura, R. Haus-Cheymol, J.-N. Tournier, Immunization on the French Armed Forces: Impact, organization, limits and perspectives, Infectious Diseases Now, Volume 51, Issue 7, 2021, Pages 583-589. * Smith L.V., Between Mutiny and Obedience. The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division during World War I (Princeton University Press, 1994). * JMO du Service de santé du 72ème Régiment d’Infanterie 5 Août 1914 au 18 Décembre 1916 (Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre (SHAT): 26 N 659/18: https://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr/fr/ark:/40699/e00527b82eaba107/527b82eabd785 helpfully available in ts. here: https://argonne1418.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/service-sante-ri072.pdf * Bunau-Varilla, Philippe, From Panama to Verdun (Dorrance and Co. [c1940]) is available here: ark:/13960/t9476bd73
During a first visit to the battlefields of Alsace in May 2024, the inscription on a memorial in the heart of the Vosges Mountains prompted some research about garde généralLieutenant E.L. Renaud and lots of new learning about (for me, at least) an unknown unit described as one of the « troupes d’élite » of the French Army.
As the road west out of the village of Mittlach in Haut-Rhin runs alongside la Grande Fecht (a fast-flowing rocky stream of probably ice-cold water given that even in mid-May there’s snow still on the lee slopes of some of the higher reaches of the surrounding ridges of the Vosges), it runs past the intriguingly named Rocher du Kiwi and turns south-west into the Vallée du Langenwasen. At the road and stream’s bend stands a memorial bearing the traditional hunting horn emblem of the Chasseurs.
This is one of those occasions when my photography has let us all down, so you’ll have to take on trust that these are the words on the memorial1:
À LA MEMOIRE DU GARDE GÉNÉRAL E.L. RENAUD LT AU 68E BATAILLON DE CHASSEURS ALPINS, MORT POUR LA FRANCE LE 15 JUIN 1915.
IN MEMORY OF GARDE GENERAL E.L. RENAUD LT OF THE 68TH BATTALION OF CHASSEURS ALPINS, WHO DIED FOR FRANCE ON 15 JUNE 1915
1 There are also other web sites that have information on this memorial – but more of that later
It’s important to point out here that a garde général is not a General! To explain, we need to learn more about E.L. Renaud.
Louis Étienne Renaud (so, not ‘E.L.’, but ‘L.E.’) was born on 16 August 1888 in the 16e Arrondissement of Paris. This is a little surprising, given the recruitment centre for the 68e Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins was in Grenoble in the Isère département. His service records, however, show he was a student at an agricultural science institute. An important fact we’ll return to shortly. His military service was notionally with the 41e RI (which recruited from the Rennes area). He was contracted at the mairie of the 16e Arrondissement for a voluntary engagement of four years with the regiment under “article 23 of the law of 21 March 1905”. This article set the parameters for military service for those who were entering any of the specialist schools – the « grandes écoles ». Here’s the relevant section:
These schools offer an alternative educational system alongside the French public universities, and are institutes dedicated to teaching, research and professional training in either natural or social sciences, or applied sciences such as engineering, architecture, business administration, or public policy and administration. They include l’école polytechnique (also known as « l’X ») where the likes of Joffre, Foch, Fayolle, Estienne, Nivelle and Alfred Dreyfus were educated, l’École normale supérieure – its students, who are called normaliens, included politicians like Jean Jaurès, Léon Blum, Paul Painlevé as well as writers (Charles Péguy), historians (Marc Bloch) and philosophers (Henri Bergson), and those such as the former École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures (École Centrale Paris) and the École nationale supérieure des mines de Saint-Étienne. The École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr is also considered a grande école. Admission to a grandes école was, and still is, extremely selective. As Renaud’s military service makes clear, he was to be a student at one of the applied science schools – l’École Nationale des Eaux et Forêts – the école forestière in the above section of the 21 March 1905 law – and this also meant something special and distinct about his military career.
Alongside their training to manage and develop France’s huge forests as a national resource, students at l’École Nationale des Eaux et Forêts also received military instruction before, during and after their time at the school. If they were admitted to the school, they became a part of the cadre of an elite military unit – the Chasseurs Forestiers under an officer designated by the Minister of War. Upon leaving school, and if they were admitted to l’Administration des forêts, they were appointed sous-lieutenants de réserve d’infanterie and completed the planned training course in this capacity in the corps to which they were assigned. The director of l’École Nationale des Eaux et Forêts provided the recruiting offices with the names of the school’s students. The commanders of these recruitment offices would not assign to any unit of the active or territorial army officers who had not had at least 6 months of service in the l’Administration as « garde général stagiaire ». From his military service record, we learn that after his arrival on 8 October 1910, Renaud was a soldat de 2e classe and, in February 1911, he was promoted to caporal. He was nominated (which I take to mean admitted) to the school in October 1911 and in 1913-14 he accomplished a year of training as a sous-lieutenant.
But here we encounter an issue with the matricule militaire, because at no point does it mention that this service was with the Chasseurs Forestiers. Did Renaud, therefore, never serve in the cadre militaire of this corps ? Given that both the memorial near Mittlach and his matricule militaire state that he was a lieutenant with the 68e Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins, was he indeed ever a part of the Chasseurs Forestiers?
To answer that question, first, we need to know more about the rather elusive Chasseurs Forestiers.
More on the Chasseurs Forestiers.
The creation of a military formation, les Chasseurs Forestiers, composed of regionalized companies was a direct product of France’s defeat in the War of 1870. France’s forests had been the subject of state control since medieval times. Increased regulation and ‘usage rights’ brought significant income to the Kingdom. By the late 17th century, royal forests were such significant sources of income that they were closed to most people and the royal administration responsible for forests had assigned the surveillance and policing of the forest to sergents and gardes, with officers of the royal forest administration service overseeing forest management.
By the time of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe (1830-1848) these gardes forestiers acted as guides for the military assisting them in navigating the forests in times when France was under attack. Meanwhile, from 1838, l’administration des Eaux et Forêts was established in colonial Algeria where an extension of the approach to forestry in métropolitaine France gave rise to numerous conflicts.
After the defeat of France by Prussia, the entire French nation went through an agonising self-examination in a vast range of military and civil functions in an endeavour to learn from the disasters of the war. In forestry administration, the situation was no different. Many of the forestiers themselves had suffered from the disorganization, and even chaos which had deeply marked them, and wanted to avoid the repetition of similar situations. Because of this, they lobbied for real “military status”.
A decree of April 2, 1875 incorporated forestry personnel into the composition of the country’s military forces by creating “companies, sections and detachments of chasseurs forestiers”. Military training thus made its debut at what was then the École nationale forestière at Nancy. The administration des Eaux et Forêts was integrated into the French military forces and its personnel attached in times of war to chasseurs forestiers companies. In peacetime, its personnel ensured the continuity of the forest service and carried out forestry surveillance and other administrative functions. In times of war, its mission was to facilitate the progress of troops in the countryside and to support the army’s Engineer units in the supply of wood.
But there was no clear “employment doctrine” (doctrine d’emploi) for the chasseurs forestiers. They were simply distributed throughout France in 48 companies (including 2 fortress), 36 sections (including 18 fortress) and 15 detachments. In Algeria, three squadrons of mounted infantry were organized, one per unit.
The decree of 1875 was modified and supplemented in 1882, in 1883 and especially by that of November 18, 1890, after which the corps de chasseurs forestiers comprised 6,500 men (6,000 in mainland France and 500 in Algeria) and 280 officers (260 in mainland France and 20 in Algeria).
As for uniforms and weapons, these were provided by the army as well as equipment (bags, cartridge belts, gaiters, shoes) and camp materials. The uniform was that of l’Administration des forêts. The Chasseurs Forestiers, being classified among the « troupes d’élite » bore distinctive signs.
Chef de bataillon chasseur forestier, inspecteur des Eaux et Forêts, 1909-1918.
Képi of a Garde Général Stagiaire des Eaux et Forêts / Sous-Lieutenant des Chasseurs Forestiers, 1914.
Other ranks’ Chasseur Forestier uniform with leather gaiters and chevrons showing length of service on the upper left arm.
Chasseurs Forestiers at the Camp de Saint-Maur, 1914.
Chef de bataillon chasseur forestier, inspecteur des Eaux et Forêts, 1909-1918. Note the collar insignia, the dark green of the tunic (drap vert foncé). [Source: Aussie Oc, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
Képi with silver piping and the hunting horn (cor de chasse) of the chasseurs of the type that Louis Renaud would have been issued as a Garde Général Stagiaire / Sous-Lieutenant of the Chasseurs Forestiers in 1914. [Source: Aussie Oc, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
Uniforme forestier with trousers in a dark blue-grey (pantalon gris-de-fer bleuté) with daffodil piping (passepoil jonquille) and the coat (manteau) in ‘finance green’ (vert finance). There are leather gaiters and chevrons showing length of service on the upper left arm.
Group of ten Chasseurs Forestiers other ranks with an NCO in two ranks (front rank kneeling). They are armed with rifles and are wearing equipment harness. The photograph shows how the collar insignia of other ranks was darker than that of officers, warrant officers and NCOs. None of the men appear young. [Source: Aussie Oc, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons]
Étienne Renaud’s Brief, But Eventful, War
All these details concerning uniforms and the organisation of the unit in relation to the Administration des Eaux et Forêts are important when used alongside other sources. Renaud’s matricule militaire is rather sparse on detail aside from what’s already been provided. Luckily, useful information is available to draw on via the web. Of course, research in the archives of the Service Historique de la Défense (SHAD) at Vincennes in Paris would be the optimum. But, given such a trip needs careful planning and is best when a decent quantity of potential historical sources to consult on a variety of topics has been identified, I’m at the stage at present of seeing what’s available online and in digitized form.
The usual route to follow for me is to do an initial web search, then look at the individual’s matricule militaire, before moving on to look at the digitized unit histories that were published after the war and have been the subject of an extensive digitisation programme by the Bibliothéque Nationale de France (BNF). From there, it would be Les Journaux des marches et opérations (JMO) of the relevant military unit(s) – the rough equivalent of the War Diary of anglophone units.
In the case of our man, Étienne Louis, there was a wealth of information on the web and in the unit history of the 68e Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins for us to learn a good deal about this officer’s impressive war service. Despite it being tragically short in length, it was filled with incident.
Renaud merits several mentions in the unit history of the battalion. In the first of these, we’re told how in November 1914:
« Soutenue par la section de mitrailleuses du bataillon, la 9e compagnie progresse sur les crêtes boisées d’Ebeneck, en chasse instantanément les défenseurs et s’installe aux lisières du bois. De là elle peut couvrir sur la gauche l’opération de Rimbach à laquelle prennent part la 7e compagnie et un peloton de la 10e. Les mitrailleuses du lieutenant RENAUD entrent en action dès leur installation et brisent dans l’œuf une contre-attaque importante. Rimbach est occupé pendant trois heures au bout desquelles on procède à l’évacuation volontaire, ordonnée par le commandement. »
This is interesting since command of a machine-gun section suggests an officer already assessed as capable and brave and seemingly established with the battalion. But more than that. On the same page, there’s a photo of a group of officers and among them is Renaud. Here it is:
From left to right: Rear row : Cap. DUPONT, lieut. DESBENOIT. Middle row : Cap. LAVAUDEN, aide-major GUILLAUME, Cap. BALLON, sous-lieut. RENAUD. Front row : Médecin-auxiliaire PINARD, lieut. SABATTIER.
The other officers can be identified as part of 68e Bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins because they all wear the Modèle 1889 béret and have the number ’68’ as collar insignia. Étienne Renaud’s pantalon are clearly different to those worn by the others and so is his ‘cor de chasse‘ collar insignia. He has a single inverted V indicating his rank as sous-lieutenant on his lower left sleeve. Until November 1915 when the chasseurs alpins adopted hunting horn collar insignia, these differences in collar insignia are a good pointer for identifying chasseurs forestiers. It’s less easy to be definitive based on the differences in shade of his tunic and breeches (uniforms wore out rapidly during war service and standard issue replacements were not readily available until after the introduction of the horizon bleu uniform towards the end of 1915). However, uniform regulations by 1914 prescribed they were to be made of a cloth close in colour to blue-grey with daffodil yellow piping for sous-officiers and chasseurs forestiers, but with a double band of finance green either side (« de part et d’autre ») of the piping for officers. I think this is enough to confirm the unit of service for Étienne Renaud.2
We next find lieutenant Renaud mentioned for his part in the fighting around Steinbach where French attempts to take the village and then the town of Cernay saw fighting sway back and forth over the last days of December 1914 and the first of January 1915:
« Le 30 décembre, à l’exception de la 10e compagnie … les 7e, 8e et 9e compagnies montent en ligne devant Uffholtz, le centre du bataillon sur la croupe de la chapelle Saint-Antoine, la droite en liaison avec le 152e régiment d’infanterie, qui, depuis une semaine, vient de s’illustrer dans l’opération hardie de la prise de Steinbach. … Dans la nuit du 1er au 2 janvier, attaqué après de sérieux bombardements, le bataillon repousse victorieusement trois fortes tentatives de l’ennemi en vue de la reprise de la croupe Saint-Antoine. Installés dans des trous d’obus, les mitrailleurs du bataillon font merveille et sous l’impulsion de leur chef de section, le lieutenant RENAUD des chasseurs forestiers*, coopèrent dans une très large mesure à l’échec de l’ennemi. »
* my emphasis
Renaud, it seems, was a chasseur forestier officer serving with a battalion of chasseurs alpins but preserving his rank, uniform and distinctions. This may explain why, of the 48 forestier companies in France at the outbreak of war, there are very few JMOs (4 – those for 9e, 14e, 16e and 18e) or unit histories (1 – 1ère Compagnie de Chasseurs Forestiers) for the companies. From another useful source of information, the Forum PAGES 14-18, a useful post explains that in May 1914, the Minister of War specified that in the event of mobilization for war, only those under the age of 48 were called upon to join chasseur forestier companies that would form on the outbreak of war. These units would then be attached to large formations of the army. Other officers would stay in their peacetime posts to ensure the continuity of the forestry service, avoid the pillaging of the forests and fulfil the information and guide missions that the military authority would entrust to them locally. Furthermore, only gardes généraux and les inspecteurs adjoints (deputy inspectors) were for front-line service – a fact that explains why on the war memorial of the we can see on the monument aux morts of l’Ecole forestière de Nancy there are the names of 96 former students who were killed between 1914 to 1918. Many more were wounded or taken prisoner.
[If anyone can provide a photograph of this memorial or a link to a web site with more detail, by the way, please get in touch.]
Casualties among the forestiers were such that in 1916 they were withdrawn from front-line service (along with many engineers and specialists essential to the continuation of the industrial war effort). This avoided the “total eradication” of the 25/40 age group, but the gaps created could not be filled after the war until around 1930. Away from the trenches, the forestiers were assigned to supplying the armies with wood in the forward zone as part of la service forestier des armée or to guard duties at the headquarters of senior commanders like Joffre. (I’m looking for photographs of visits by the likes of Kitchener, French and Haig to see if I can spot men in this role).
Lieutenant Étienne Louis Renaud was one of those who did not survive the war. On 15 June 1915, 68e bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins (among them capitaine Robert Dubarle, who I hope will be the subject of a future blog post), was to participate in the French offensive that aimed to seize the small town of Metzeral in the valley of the Grande Fecht.
To capture Metzeral in the valley, the French first had to take the heights of Anlasswasen to the west of Metzeral and the Braunkopf to the north. For its attack on Anlasswasen (Côte or collet 955), two companies plus one platoon of 68e bataillon de Chasseurs Alpins were to tackle the enemy positions on the slopes of 955 which faced Sondernach and a pentagonal enclosure located between 955 and the bois de Winterhägel. (See the map from the unit history and the modern IGN map below):
However, when the French preparatory bombardment began at noon, German artillery batteries responded in turn and soon a barrage ‘of incredible violence’ fell on collet 955 and in the rear, causing heavy losses to a battalion of the 152e RI in reserve at 1025. As the batallion history describes:
« Au cours de cette réaction, le bataillon éprouve une perte douloureuse en la personne du lieutenant RENAUD, commandant du peloton de mitrailleuses. Un aveugle éclat d’obus vient frapper en pleine poitrine ce vaillant officier, au moment où il dirigeait l’installation d’une mitrailleuse destinée à appuyer l’attaque. Sa mort, que ses chasseurs et ses camarades ressentent amèrement, sème une impression de tristesse sur tous les visages. »
From another forum, dedicated to the chasseurs battalions, we learn that Renaud was buried in the cimetière communal de Kruth. He had also received three citations – two in army, and one in divisional, orders. These were:
1. « A l’Ordre de la Division. Lieutenant au 68e Bataillon de Chasseurs à Pied : extrêmement énergique et courageux, toujours en avant, remplit les missions les plus périlleuses. »
2. « A l’Ordre de l’Armée. A fait preuve au combat du 7 mai, comme officier mitrailleur, de belles qualités militaires ; accompagnant avec ses mitrailleuses les troupes de première ligne, s’est installé avec elles sur la position conquise et s’y est maintenu sous un violent bombardement, assurant par le feu de ses pièces le succès définitif. »
3. « A l’Ordre de l’Armée. Officier plein d’entrain, de sang-froid et d’audace ; toujours volontaire pour les missions les plus dangereuses. Au combat du 15 juin, est mort à son poste de chef des mitrailleuses, comme il avait vécu depuis le début de la campagne, en chef héroïque. » »
Finally, the battalion history explains one more aspect of the story of lieutenant Renaud, garde général and officier des Chasseurs Forestiers:
« Désireux d’honorer la mémoire de ses officiers tués au cours de l’avance sur Metzeral, le bataillon obtient l’autorisation de donner leurs noms à des points de ce territoire sur lequel il vient de répandre si généreusement son sang : Le camp de Mittlach-le-Haut où s’installe le train régimentaire, s’appelle désormais « camp RENAUD » et on y érige un monument à la mémoire du vaillant forestier. »
My longest blog post so far, and one that I hope has done justice to the story of the man and the unit.
2. A second photograph in the unit history shows the officers of the battalion in February 1915. In this photograph, Renaud is stood next to the battalion mascot, Théophile, a young Alsatian boy kitted out with the full uniform of a chasseur alpin. The boy clearly can’t hide his delight in his new status.
This blog post in a very occasional series, looks at the scale of expansion of the Mission Militaire Française (MMF) during the course of the war as well as where some of the men who were part of this expansion came from.
The following explains the MMF structure in 1917 at the time of the first major Allied offensive of that year:
La Mission Militaire Française attaché à l’Armée Britannique – April 1917
There were two main organisational elements to the MMF by this date.
• Bureau des Opérations – Général Pierre des Vallières (Tactics and Military Matters)
• Direction des Services (DS) – Lieutenant-Colonel Reynaud (Administration)
With the expansion of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), there was a concomitant need to expand the MMF. As the BEF grew, its organisational structure saw more divisions arriving on the Western Front and the need for more army corps headquarters to control them. These corps were, in turn, under the management of armies. There were five British armies within the BEF by mid-1916. Each of these higher formations needed French liaison officers and interpreters. Interpreters were also needed at the brigade and battalion level.
Meanwhile, in January 1916, the Direction des Services (DS) was created. This took on the burden of counter-espionage work that included issuing passes, the surveillance of foreigners and civilians in the zone des armées (ZA) – the area under French military control, but which included the areas with British military presence – as well as all aspects of British relations with the civilian authorities and civilian population and the resourcing of the material needs of the British Army.
The responsibilities and attributions of the DS were separate and distinct from those of the Commandant de la Région du Nord (general discipline, maintenance of public order, Gardes Voies Communication (GVC) – for protection of Lines of Communication, administration of bases/depots, recruitment, etc).
The key to an understanding of the DS is to see its responsibilities through the lens of the BEF – its work was to ensure that the more general issues were more tightly focused on the British military in its ‘occupation’ of Northern France. As an example, matters of discipline concerning British troops in the BEF sector, such as allegations of crimes against French people or property, were pursued from the French perspective by the DS. Conversely, the DS facilitated investigations by the British Provost Marshal and military police of alleged offences by British troops.
• Because of its responsibilities, it was vital that the DS worked hand-in-hand and maintained good relations with its British counterparts.
• In March 1916, the responsibilities of the DS were devolved to an extent to Sous-Direction du Service (SDS) each attached to the BEF’s then-four armies.
• 348 Officers and 10,209 troops were under the command of the Mission, including Gendarmerie, Bataillons d’Étapes*, companies of road-menders, quarry workers and agricultural workers, etc. There were 340 personnel (254 drivers) in the Service Automobile de la Mission at this time.
* A term used for pioneer, labour and ancillary units beyond the front-line zone.
The next two tables give some indication of what a large undertaking the MMF by this stage – especially if considered against the tabler in the earlier post in this series covering August 1914.
Officers of the Mission Militaire Française attaché à l’Armée Britannique as at April 1917
Général
1
Directeur de l’Intendance
1
Colonels or Lieutenant-Colonels
5
Commandants
17
Capitaines
36
Lieutenants
28
Sous-Lieutenants
27
Interprêtes
106
TOTAL
221
Source: Sénat Français Commission de l’Armée Procès-Verbaux 69 S 123. Rapport fait à la Commission de l’Armée Sur le Compte-Rendu de Visites faites aupres: 1°) de la Mission Militaire française près l’Armée Britannique … par M. Boudenoot. 1914-1918 Commission de l’armée 69 S 123 – Sénat (senat.fr)
Other Ranks of the Mission Militaire Française attaché à l’Armée Britannique as at April 1917
Service armé
Service auxiliaire
Inaptes
R.A.T (réserve de l’armée territoriale)
Engagés Spéciaux
Totaux
Observations
Interprétes
704
231
110
1,053
–
2,098
Secrétaires
1 (a)
79
1
45
2
128
(a) père de cinq enfants
Plantons *
“
18
“
8
“
26
Télégraphistes (sapeurs manipulants et ouvriers des lignes)
20
“
“
1
“
21
Totaux
725
328
111
1,107
2
2,273
*« Soldat de service auprès d’un officier supérieur, pour porter ses ordres » i.e. Runners.
Source: Sénat Français Commission de l’Armée Procès-Verbaux 69 S 123. Rapport fait à la Commission de l’Armée Sur le Compte-Rendu de Visites faites aupres: 1°) de la Mission Militaire française près l’Armée Britannique … par M. Boudenoot. 1914-1918 Commission de l’armée 69 S 123 – Sénat (senat.fr)
It’s very clear that, as their ally’s army grew in size and importance, the French Army’s high command invested more effort in building a larger organisation intended to maintain good relations at all levels between the two nations’ armed forces. In a planned later post, there’ll be an opportunity to compare this structure with that created with the same intent with the American Army. In the latter case, there was the benefit of the experience of three years of war on which to build, as well as, effectively, a blank canvas to work with. One thing that is extremely relevant, but no table can capture, is the importance of goodwill underpinning any such arrangements.
It’s also worthwhile noting that this table suggests the vast majority of interpreters were from the Service armé and the Territorial reserve, supplemented by the Service auxiliaire – recruitment from within the pool of men with military experience. By contrast, on the outbreak of war anyone (well, any man) with linguistic skills of whatever age and background seems to have been accepted for the role of interpreter – sometimes in a very haphazard and unstructured way – even down to the ‘uniform’ (or lack of it) for some of these men.
The accuracy of these figures from a report by a French senator needs verifying if possible but the point about an increasing commitment to the maintenance and development of effective military liaison and communication between the two nations is well made, along with the issues associated with an ally’s army occupying much of the most northerly region of France.
The fifth resource using Google Maps – a visual reference resource to make some of the ‘core information’ on the French Army in the First World War easily accessible.
Les Régiments d’Artillerie de Campagne shows the location of the Field Artillery Regiments by their Base HQ.
The map contains some additional information on the French artillery in 1914.
As with previous maps, this map is embedded as a link and immediately available ‘on click’ in a new tab:
Les Régiments d’Artillerie de Campagne by Home HQ, 1914
Feedback on the value and accuracy of these maps is always welcome, so do send a comment if you wish.
![French soldier's water can. The Bidon d’infanterie Modèle. 1877. This is the one litre version, covered in blue-grey cloth and intended for service in metropolitan France. It has two openings at the end of spouts on the top, each closed by a cork bung. One is much larger than the other. The container has a leather strap to carry it and there is a quart - a metal cup - hung by its handle from a string on the smaller of the two spouts.
[Image credit: le musée de la Grande Guerre à Meaux: https://www.museedelagrandeguerre.com/collections/bidon-francais-modele-1877/]](https://vingtfrong.home.blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/11-bidonfr.webp?w=908)
![White, blue and red tablets used in combination to purify water using the iodine-based method. [The photo shows items from the collection of the Musée du Service de Santé des Armées at Val-de-Grâce].](https://vingtfrong.home.blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/img_7171-1.jpeg?w=300)
Debout les Morts! 