Aug 22, 1914: The day 27,000 Frenchmen died

With 27,000 French soldiers cut down by German machine-gun fire, Aug 22, 1914, was by far the bloodiest day in France's military history and quite likely the most deadly single day in the "war to end all wars".

After a battle that was brutal beyond imagination, extending over 400 kilometers of the front line, the top German general asked his staff if they could possibly have won, given they themselves lost around 10,000 men.

During five days of unprecedented bloodshed, between Aug 20 and 25, an estimated 40,000 French soldiers fell, shredded by machine-gun fire in the new mechanized form of warfare.

To put the slaughter into perspective, about five times more men were killed on August 22, 1914, than the total that fell during the 1944 D-Day landings of World War II.

Until then, the deadliest battle in French history had been a century before - the June 1815 Battle of Waterloo, which claimed the lives of 6,800 French soldiers and roughly the same number of Germans.

But far from being scarred into the French collective memory, like the first day of the Battle of the Somme is in Britain, historians say it is one of the "forgotten" battles of World War I, mainly because so few survived to tell the tale.

Sitting ducks

Why so many deaths? Historian Jean-Michel Steg, author of a book about the "deadliest day in French history", told AFP there were a host of contributing factors.

The main reason is simply that never before had so many French troops been exposed to enemy fire as on that day - 400,000 to 600,000 men took part in the battle, which stretched from Belgium to the region of Lorraine in northeast France.

And at this point in the Great War, the battles were still fluid. The bruising system of trench warfare would come later, meaning that the troops found themselves out in the open, sitting ducks for enemy machine-gunners.

It was also too early for proper medical units to be deployed. Many died from wounds sustained during battle that did not necessarily have to be fatal.

"In general, the French army suffered such heavy losses in August 1914 because they didn't really try to prevent them," writes Steg.

France's top brass were expecting a short, sharp war, and did not particularly try to stem the losses.

Like the Battle of the Somme, which has gone down in British history as a massive blunder by out-of-touch generals, the tactics of the French military leaders were also to blame for the scale of the massacre.

"We shall attack the enemy everywhere we find him," decreed Marshal Joseph Joffre, head of the French army, in a vague and ineffective order that did not take into account the new mechanized warfare that favored defense over attack.

This doctrine - a "French way of waging war" - meant that advancing troops were simply cut down by German gunners ensconced in their defensive positions.

The officer class suffered most, as they were ordered to march upright toward the enemy, without seeking cover, to "set the example" to the troops.

Weak leadership

British historian Anthony Clayton puts the disaster down to "the weaknesses" in the French military leadership, with elderly, often incompetent, generals who did not have enough information about enemy positions.

The orders from up high for relentless attack, regardless of the tactical situation on the battleground, also meant that no officer dared organize a retreat that could have saved thousands of lives.

The body of General Leon Raffenel, who lost 7,000 men during a battle for the Belgian village of Rossignol, was found on Aug 23, and it was not clear whether he died in battle or killed himself.

Given the scale of the slaughter, it is surprising that the battle of Aug 22 has left so few scars on the national consciousness - historians have only recently begun to explore the story.

Many experts believe that the "Miracle of the Marne", the unexpected French victory in September 1914 that halted the German advance to Paris, swept aside the bloody memories of the previous month's massacre.

But mainly, the battle is forgotten simply because so few people survived to relate their experiences.

(China Daily 08/21/2014 page10)