This page provides suggestions for books, websites and other sources on aspects of the material culture of the French military experience of war. Many are recommended as reference sources and marked as such. The importance of good reference sources is something that historians, museum curators, genealogists, illustrators, collectors, modellers and others will all acknowledge. The nature of those sources may vary for these groups, and their availability may depend on a variety of factors including an individual’s job, interests and finances.
“You should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky …”
Reference Book Recommendation:
‘Les Canons de la Victoire 1914-1918’ series – 3 vols? (You tell me!)
These booklets have an almost mythical status. Published by Histoire et Collections (see below for details and recommendation) around 2006-8 and authored by ‘big names’ like François Vauvillier and Guy François, you’ll be lucky to find copies of any of them for sale online for anything other than crazy prices. Were they part of a series called ‘Les Matériels de l’Armée Française‘? If so, what happened to it? How many other books on what subjects were there in the series?
There are definitely volumes (each of c.64pp) covering:
– L’Artillerie de Campagne: pièces légères et pièces lourdes
– L’Artillerie Lourde à Grande Puissance (‘got‘)
– l’Artillerie de Cote et l’Artillerie de Tranchée.
If you have them, you’re one of the lucky ones.
Et, finalement, un message pour Histoire & Collections:
« Veuillez republier ces livres ! »
Reference Book Recommendation:
‘La Collection Vauvillier’ (Histoire et Collections, 4 vols., 2018 and ongoing).
These richly illustrated and colourful booklets, published by Histoire & Collections – Paris (a very useful site for reference works in French and English on various aspects of military technology, etc – I’m a big fan and you should be too) and each of about 66pp, don’t claim to be encyclopaedic but they are packed with detail (in French) on the military transport of the French Army in the period from the outbreak of the First World War to 1940. The first 4 volumes cover Tous les Renault, Laffly, Berliet and Panhard militaires, with further volumes on Latil and Delahaye in preparation. The Latil volume will help me to differentiate between them and the Renaults. If you’re working with photographic sources, these are ideal quick references.
[Added: 28 January 2024]
Translations of Soldiers’ diaries, memoirs and personal experiences (1):
From Marne to Verdun: The War Diary of Captain Charles Delvert (Pen & Sword, 2016)
Charles Laurent Delvert (1879–1940) served with 101e Régiment d’Infanterie from the outbreak of war until demobilization in March 1919. His diaries are extensive. This part covers 7 August 1914 to June 1916. It’s in English, you’ll gain a feel for the French soldier’s experience of war (albeit Delvert was an officer), and I hope it will encourage you to seek out other translations and, perhaps, works in the original French.
[Added: 18 November 2023]
Translations of Soldiers’ diaries, memoirs and personal experiences (2):
Henri Desagneaux, A French Soldier’s War Diary 1914-1918 (Pen & Sword, 2014)
Henri Desagneaux (1878-1969) was a lieutenant de réserve in le service des étapes et des chemins de fer on the outbreak of war. In 1916, he joined the 359e RI and was sent to a centre d’instruction des commandants de compagnie at Remiremont in the Vosges. He subsequently served at Verdun, on the Somme in 1916, in the Chemin des Dames Offensive in 1917, as well as back in the Somme region in 1918 facing the German Offensives there. He ended the war preparing for the Mangin’s planned Lorraine offensive in November 1918. His account offers a war of contrasts and the breadth of his experiences make it a valuable way to gain more knowledge of France’s war.
[Added: 18 November 2023]
Battlefield Guides:
Andrew Uffindell, The Battle of Marne, 1914: A Battlefield Guide (Pen & Sword Military, 2013) and The Nivelle Offensive and the Battle of the Aisne 1917: A Battlefield Guide to the Chemin des Dames (Pen & Sword Military, 2015).
Christina Holstein has the Verdun battlefields well covered in her Battleground Europe series, Andrew Uffindell (who has also translated Michel Goya’s important La chair et l’acier. L’armée française et l’invention de la guerre moderne (1914-1918), (Tallandier, 2004) as Flesh and Steel), offers accessible takes on the Marne and the Chemin des Dames. Both important ‘moments’ for France in ‘La Der des Ders’.
[Added: 18 November 2023]
Two that might make you see things differently:
Elizabeth Greenhalgh (ed.), With Marshal Foch: A British General at Allied Supreme Headquarters April-November 1918 (Helion, 2018)
Michael S. Neiberg, The Second Battle of the Marne (Twentieth-Century Battles) (Indiana University Press, 2008).
Here are two books that you might consider reading to have a different perspective on the importance of France’s military role in the last year of the war. Lieutenant-General Sir John Philip Du Cane (1865-1947) was a senior British officer appointed to act in an official liaison role between the ‘Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies’, General Ferdinand Foch, and the commander of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Du Cane’s shrewd observations on the two senior commanders are thought-provoking and challenge previous narratives of inter-Allied relations.
Michael Neiberg’s account of the Second Battle of the Marne in July 1918, although flawed in too readily accepting some participants’ accounts without challenge, is an accessible way to learn about the real ‘turning point’ on the Western Front in 1918. Not the Battle of Amiens that began on 8 August 1918, but the French-inspired and led actions that comprehensively defeated Germany’s last offensive in 1918 and saw the launch of a major counter-offensive by French, American and British units that signalled the beginning of the end for Imperial Germany.
[Added: 18 November 2023]
Reference Book Recommendation:
Laurent Mirouze and Stéphane Dekerle, The French Army in the First World War (Vols. 1 and 2).
The must-have books for collectors of Première Guerre Mondiale Armée de Terre militaria, I would imagine.
Incredibly detailed, profusely illustrated and, so, worth the money for anyone wishing to make connections between #materialculture (‘the stuff of war’) and the experiences of soldiers.
Reference Book Recommendation:
Michael Cox and Graham Watson, Pour la France: A Guide to the Formations and Units of the Land Forces of France, 1914-18
This is one of my current top 5 most useful English-language sources on the French Army in the First World War. Connects units to localities, regiments to divisions, provides short narratives for divisions, lists divisional commanders, etc. Very practical. It’s not perfect (there are occasional slips), but isn’t that all of us …?
Reference Book Recommendation: Don’t Knock it, Until You’ve Tried it:
Ian Sumner (illustrated by Gerry Embleton), The French Army 1914-18
A cheaper alternative to Mirouze and Dekerle’s mammoth two volume set. Packed with helpful tables and illustrations with several colour plates in the traditional Osprey Men at Arms formula. Useful. And portable.
The Essential
Elizabeth Greenhalgh, The French Army and the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2014)
I can’t emphasise how important this book was for me in reshaping and renewing my interest in the First World War. It opened up a new area of interest, changed my mind about what I thought I knew, showed how little I actually knew, refreshed me when I was exhausted by reading and writing the same narrow and partial things for too long and gave me the reason to ‘take fresh hold and go again’. Even the cover image with a Western Front that runs well beyond the Somme and down to the Swiss Border suggests the monumental scale of possibilities for a historian, reader of history books or battlefield tourist. You have to be open to the argument that Greenhalgh presents – that English-language historiography of the First World War all too often underplays the critical importance of the French army to all aspects of the fighting, from the war’s beginning to its very end. In doing so, you open yourself up to a better understanding of where the military operations of the other Allied nations fit in the great scheme of things. By looking beyond the British, Australian, Canadian, American, etc military’s experience of the war, you actually come to a better understanding of that experience.
I have to agree with the reviews that variously describe it as ‘the single best book on its subject for the foreseeable future’, ‘judicious and comprehensive’, and ‘a superb overview of the French army’s performance in the First World War’.
The ‘other’ 1916 Somme Battle
David O’Mara, The Somme 1916: Touring the French Sector (Pen & Sword, 2018)
Dave O’Mara inspired a group of English-speaking Great War enthusiasts to develop their nascent interest in France’s Grande Guerre, through his remarkable knowledge of the French Army in the war and by his generosity in sharing that knowledge with all around him – especially via Twitter. His knowledge of uniforms and equipment, weapons, personalities, maps and the detail of the French Army’s war – particularly on the Western Front was remarkable and his loss since his death has left an enormous hole in the scholarship (a word he’d have despised) in this area.
In this book, he brought his extraordinary knowledge to bear to encourage an interest in an English-speaking audience in the events of the French Army’s ‘Battle of the Somme’ – something critical to understanding so much about that battle – not least, the reasons why the Franco-British attack was launched astride the Somme River in the first place.
His intention was to ensure that the narrative of the 1916 Somme offensives as ‘British vs Germans’ was challenged and more of the French role was known and studied. His stories of American volunteers and the French Foreign Legion, the descendants of Napoleonic princes and, above all, the grit and determination of the ordinary French soldier in the great 1916 Franco-British offensive will undoubtedly grab the interest of anyone open to learning about the ‘other’ 1916 Somme battle.
Debout les Morts! 