Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
French infantry pushing through enemy barbed wire, 1915. During World War I, France was one of the Triple Entente powers allied against the Central Powers.Although fighting occurred worldwide, the bulk of the French Army's operations occurred in Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Alsace-Lorraine along what came to be known as the Western Front, which consisted mainly of trench warfare.
Four of the six French divisions (46e, 47e, 64e, 65e) were to return to the Western Front in spring 1918, with the two divisions of 12th Corps remaining in Italy. The Val di Portule captured by the 48th Division, 2 November 1918. The British Expeditionary Force (Italy) came under the command of General Herbert Plumer.
A British raiding party, heading for the German frontline (early 1917). After 12 April, Haig decided that the advantage gained by the Third and First armies since 9 April, had run its course and that further attacks must resume a methodical character. British intelligence estimated that nine German divisions had been relieved with nine fresh ones.
The British Army during the First World War was the largest military force that Britain had put into the field up to that point.On the Western Front, the British Expeditionary Force ended the war as the strongest fighting force, more experienced than the United States Army and its morale was in better shape than the French Army.
From 1907 through 1914, the French and British armies collaborated on highly detailed plans for mobilizing a British Expeditionary Force of 100,000 combat troops to be very quickly moved to France, and sent to the front in less than two weeks. [3] Grey insisted that world peace was in the best interests of Britain and the British Empire. [4]
Western Front; Part of the European theatre of World War I: Clockwise from top left: Men of the Royal Irish Rifles, concentrated in the trench, right before going over the top on the First day on the Somme; British soldier carries a wounded comrade from the battlefield on the first day of the Somme; A young German soldier during the Battle of Ginchy; American infantry storming a German bunker ...
The term British Expeditionary Force is often used to refer only to the forces present in France prior to the end of the First Battle of Ypres on 22 November 1914. By the end of 1914—after the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres—the existent BEF had been almost exhausted, although it helped stop the German advance. [3]
During the meeting Bülow received the news that his army was buckling under pressure from the French. Bülow ordered a 20 km (12 miles) withdrawal of his forces and prognosticated "incalculable consequences". Hentsch agreed with Bülow that when French and British forces crossed the Marne a general retreat by the Germans would be necessary.