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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.
French troops crossed the front lines starting November 17, following the German retreat at a distance of only ten kilometers, stopping at six successive lines. [179] In Alsace-Lorraine, assigned to Fayolle's army group (the former reserve army group), the 5th Cavalry Division advanced with the 10th Army , while the 3rd Cavalry Division was ...
The catalyst for the mutinies was the extreme optimism and dashed hopes of the Nivelle offensive, pacifism (stimulated by the Russian Revolution and the trade union movement) and disappointment at the non-arrival of American troops. French soldiers on the front had unrealistically been expecting US troops to arrive within days of the U.S ...
Gazier (troupes aéroportées): Airborne troops "grunt". Friendly nickname. Marsouin (literally "porpoise"; marines or naval infantry) Poilu (infanterie): "Hairy one". A term that appeared during the First Empire and used to refer to the French soldiers as they often wore a beard and/or a moustache—and were represented that way on memorials.
In August 1914, following the outbreak of the Great War, the French Armed Forces numbered some 1,300,000 soldiers, and by the end of the war the French Army had called up 8,817,000 men, including 900,000 colonial troops; of these around 1,397,000 French soldiers were killed in action, mostly on the Western Front.
The French harbors of Bordeaux, La Pallice, Saint Nazaire, and Brest became the entry points into the French railway system that brought the American troops and their supplies to the Western Front. American engineers in France also built 82 new ship berths, nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of additional standard-gauge tracks, and over 100,000 ...
Poilu (/ ˈ p w ɑː l uː /; French:) [1] is an informal term for a late 18th century–early 20th century French infantryman, meaning, literally, the hairy one. It is still widely used as a term of endearment for the French infantry of World War I.
German troops parade down the Champs-Élysées in Paris after their victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The critical issue for France was its relationship with Germany. Paris had relatively little involvement in the Balkan crisis that launched the war, paying little attention to Serbia, Austria or the Ottoman E