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A brilliant recount and thoughtfully compiled journal of the diaries of the men of the 151st IR Not only are the sweeping moments which defined the entire regiment here but the day to day tasks of the men in the hell of Verdun These observations are all supplied with the accounts of the heroes who served The perfect follow up book to the Price Of Glory by Horne 1526710293 An incredibly well researched and detailed history of the 151 Infantry Regiment s service during the First World War centered around its time at Verdun As a general history fan this book will offer insights and new knowledge of what the men of the French army endured during the war and some of it is truly horrifying The author goes over the massacres that occurred at Champagne in 1915 to the slaughter that was The Furnace or Verdun in 1916 17 However it is a very detailed account with specific troop movements and names of landmarks often mentioned At times the specifics could make the book drag on Though this book is the dream of a historian specializing in the french army of this time period I still found it entertaining as a general reader 1526710293 Very well written book focused on the men in the French 151st Infantry Regiment in World War I This storied unit participated in some of the most sanguinary battles of that dreadful conflict including The 1st Marne Ypres Verdun etc The stories written by the men themselves through diaries and post war publications give the book its tone The author lets the men speak through their writings and what results is a superb unit history a rare one at that of a French unit that gave its all to save the nation Kudos 1526710293 Exceptional 1526710293 Of the 8. Book the verdun regiment book The picture becomes worse when looking at the most exposed branch in infantry in which fully three quarters of all French soldiers served One in four did not survive the war For infantry officers it was one in three On average 900 soldiers died every day from the start of the war to the finish On top of the number of dead were over 4 million wounded cases or 48 per cent of all the men mobilized p 251 World War I is known to English speakers mostly through its poetry and memoirs along with Erich Maria Remarque s All Quiet on the Western Front There are two moderately well known French memoirs Henri Barbussse s Le Feu published in English as Under Fire and Louis Barthas s Poilu The French experience was both similar to that of the English and different in important ways For them the war was about revenge erasing the humiliations of the Franco Prussian war and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine French soldiers went to war in 1914 still wearing the Napoleonic uniform of blue jacket and red trousers and had been imbued with the spirit of offense l outrance the belief that with enough lan with enough cran guts they could conquer any foe They lost 309000 men between 6 August and 5 September throwing troops into frontal assaults in a series of engagements that came to be known as the Battle of the Frontiers On 22 August alone they had 27000 killed and 40000 wounded Within a year they had taken a million casualties and the furnace of Verdun was still in the future. The verdun regiment pdf free download Infantry Regiment 151 was the Verdun Regiment its pre war troops raised from Verdun and other regions of northern France It fought from the beginning of the war to its end repeatedly being decimated and rebuilt In August 1914 it had 57 officers and 3090 men close to its full authorized strength of 3250 Its baptism of fire at the Battle of the Frontiers came with the order to advance across two kilometers of open ground against dug in German troops supported by artillery and machine guns After appalling losses the survivors were pulled back reinforced and fought at the Battle of the Marne and then in the Race to the Sea where they ended up on the extreme left of the Allied line next to the English Channel They then fought through the miserable winter of 1914 1915 the coldest and rainiest in a century. The Verdun regimented In the spring of 1915 they were transferred to the Argonne a place of dense forests and steep ravines French army doctrine was still pushing the attack and the regiment took hundreds of casualties over the course of several weeks for no gains that they were able to hold against counterattacks The Germans had by this time developed defenses in depth and a doctrine combining strong pre attack bombardments by pre sighted artillery overlapping fields of fire and the new weapon of poison gas against which the French had only cloth pads to press against their faces In the first six months of 1915 the 151st lost another 2100 dead and wounded and 4200 total by the time they left that area a 150% casualty figure On 29 August a parade was held to mark one year since the regiment had entered combat the first time only 16 officers and 303 men were still in the ranks fewer than 10% of those who had started the war. Pdf the verdun regiment book Moved again the regiment took part in the Second Champagne Offensive on 22 September The Germans were behind multiple layers of barbed wire some of which were 50 meters thick The French attack was crushed by 25 September 151 had taken another 1400 casualties and by the 28th only 13 officers and 533 men remained Pulled out of the line and reinforced yet again 151 was sent back into the battle losing another 400 men in a failed attack on 6 October. The Verdun regimented definition Overall in 1915 the regiment suffered 5400 casualties effectively being wiped out twice in twelve months It was then pulled back reinforced again and began training in the new tactical doctrine which emphasized specialist functions such as grenadiers machine gunners mortarmen and skirmishers. The Verdun regimented definition The Battle of Verdun began on 21 February 1916 and would last until December though the French would continue to attack to re take ground for another year after that The 151 was alerted to move on 25 February and after exhausting marches in full kit through rain and snow eventually moved into position on 10 March The German assault had caught the French army off guard and the fighting to hold ground was desperate The regiment was sent forward to an area with no trenches no barbed wire no prepared positions to rest or hide from the ever present artillery and the German first line only 50 meters away They would spend nineteen days in this hellish position under constant fire frequent German assaults and rain that turned the entire area into a quagmire Supplies often were unable reach the front lines and men sometimes went days without food getting water required a heroic dash through artillery fire that frequently ended in heavy casualties The regiment lost 1300 men before it was relieved. The verdun regiment book review Reinforced to a strength of 2416 men it returned to the trenches 5 April to one of the most infamous places of the entire war Mort Homme The Germans were determined to capture it and the French had orders to hold at all costs The 151st would be in the middle of the German attack on 9 April the largest assault since the opening days of the battle It was preceded by days long bombardments of light and heavy guns directed by aircraft reducing the trenches to shallow ditches and caving in and burying the shelters men had dug Yet somehow after each bombardment and with ever fewer soldiers to hold the line there remained enough men and enough machine guns to mow down the Germans in vast numbers The Germans nevertheless made gains overrunning the position of one of the 151 battalions and opened a 600 meter gap between it and its neighboring unit but by that time there were no reserves to exploit the opportunity and the confusion caused by the French counter shelling disrupted communications and gave enough time for troops to be rushed forward and re establish the line By the time the regiment was relieved on 13 April it had lost another 700 men. The verdun regiment pdf free After receiving 930 replacements to bring its strength up to 57 officers and 2793 men the 151 returned to Mort Homme for another nineteen grueling days 5 24 May At this time the front lines were so close that most of the German heavy shells were directed against the French second line to avoid hitting their own troops The bombardments included a large quantity of the deadly new diphosgene gas. Pdf the verdun regiment pdf Attack and counter attack followed with the Germans gaining footholds in the French trenches followed by vicious and bloody hand to hand fighting The regiment would leave the front lines on the 20th with 1517 men having lost another 1300 One of its battalions which had started with around 635 men was reduced to two dozen. Ebook the verdun regiment pdf The rotations at Verdun during the 1916 phase of the battle were now over just in time for the start of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July The Somme is usually thought of a primarily a British battle but the French would commit 57 divisions and lose 209000 men during the five months of fighting half of them killed The British would lose 420000 and the Germans between 450000 and 500000 While the French lost fewer men at the Somme than at Verdun these losses were suffered over a much shorter period of time five months versus ten Thus French soldiers fell at a quicker rate in the Meat Grinder on the Somme as their army was on the attack The heaviest casualties were suffered in September when the French lost an average of 19000 killed or wounded a week p 221 On 20 September the 151st reinforced to 2070 men sloshed through pouring rain to its new front line positions in preparation for an attack Their initial assault was a success taking their objectives and hundreds of German prisoners but it quickly became bogged down in counter attacks and broken communications with the rear By 28 September it had lost half its fighting strength and was down to 1050 men Pulled out of the line for two weeks and reinforced again the regiment returned to the trenches on 17 October by which time the battlefield was a morass of mud following weeks of heavy rain They would spend 21 days in filthy trenches standing sleeping and eating in knee deep mud under frequent mortar and artillery fire conducting raids and being raided They would lose 900 men during this time. The Verdun regimental combat After a few months in a quiet sector and training replacements they were once again cast into the fire during the Nivelle offensive in April 1917 By the 22nd the regiment had taken 1547 casualties than half of its starting strength The regiment never mutinied but its officers reported the men s complaints of bad food and too little of it no leave no prepared rest positions behind the line and incompetently led offensives that led to heavy losses for few if any gains. Ebook the verdun regiment ebook As General P tain rebuilt the army after the Nivelle catastrophe the 151st was sent to a quiet sector and then later in the fall returned to Verdun to assist in pushing to Germans back to their starting positions of the year before Verdun had a symbolic value to the French and even though it was strategically almost worthless they would pay any price in men to retake it. Ww1 verdun free download The regiment spent November and December 1917 training American troops It then went back into the line and was used in the emergency following the great German spring offensive on March 1918 even though its ranks were by then severely depleted by the influenza pandemic With the front stabilized they took part in the offensive of July 1918 which finally broke the German lines and signaled the beginning of the end of the war They fought at the Battle of Soissons in August where they would lose another 890 men killed or wounded The war ended with them in Lorraine preparing to take the fight into Germany. The verdun regiment kindle book Although total casualty counts vary one of them puts the regiment s total losses for the war at 300 officers and over 16000 men or 500% of their official strength Of these than 6100 were killed. The verdun regiment pdf free download The 151st gained a reputation as an elite unit but that is a designation useful only for propaganda purposes because what can it mean to be elite if the only thing that remains of the regiment is its name after it was repeatedly bled out and filled with replacements The reason the author chose this unit was because its history was well recorded in the official army records and because the diaries or memoirs of six of its men were later published allowing personal details to fill out the bare essentials of orders and casualty counts For those used to reading the British memoirs where a certain detachment prevails these accounts are emotional and direct They are visceral in the literal sense of the word describing disembowelments and splattered brains One account from Mort Homme readsI turned and made out a ghastly sight At my feet lay two bodies viciously mutilated One was missing the head with the backbone and shoulder blade projecting out of the bloody flesh The other was split open from shoulders to hips like quartered meat at the butcher s stall The skull was split apart and the right eye torn out and from the gaping eye socket a thin trickle of dark blood flowed p 190 The regiment s experiences were far from unique This is what the French army was like in the Great War and many of the hundreds of other regiments would have had similar experiences in the great cauldron of slaughter The French fought bravely and incorporated new tactics and equipment as they became available but until P tain took over in the spring of 1917 their bias was always to attack to expel the invader from their land and avenge themselves for the losses of 1870 To do so they threw away men s lives as carelessly as the Russians did in World War II P tain was different mindful of the lives of his men to the point where he lost his army command Verdun because the other generals thought he was too cautious He was replaced by none other than Robert Nivelle who continued the tactics of frontal attack at any cost Once P tain had taken command again after the catastrophic Nivelle offensive of 1917 he honed the army into a combined arms weapon that could meet and defeat the Germans on equal terms. The verdun regiment ebook pdf download This book is well written well researched and often hard to read in its unflinchingly brutal descriptions of combat In order to get a big picture view of battles many accounts are just strategy and troop movements with only an occasional mention of heavy casualties This book shows what it was like for the soldiers who were there exhausted terrified tormented by hunger thirst and visions of death and dismemberment yet holding the line refusing to give in When the Germans attacked these men held their ground and when the whistles blew they rose up out of their trenches and moved forward even when they knew that few of them would survive This book puts names and faces to these brave men and reminds us of the true cost of war 1526710293

The Verdun Regiment: Into the Furnace: The 151st Infantry Regiment in the Battle of Verdun 1916 By Johnathan Bracken

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9781526710291

English

256

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Although the French fielded the largest number of Allied troops on the Western Front in the First World War the story of their soldiers is little known to English readers The immense size of the French armies the number of battles they fought and the enormous losses they incurred make it difficult for us to comprehend their experience But we can gain a genuine insight by focusing on one of the defining battles of that war at Verdun in 1916 and by looking at it through the eyes of a small group of soldiers who served there That is what Johnathan Bracken does in this meticulously researched detailed and vivid account The French 151st Infantry Regiment spent fifty days under fire at Verdun in 1916 and another thirty five in 1917 and lost 3200 soldiers killed or wounded Yet their ordeal was no different from that of hundreds of other infantry units that fought and endured in this meat grinder of a battle Their diaries and memoirs tell their story in the most compelling way and through their words the larger human story of the French soldier during the war comes to life The Verdun Regiment Into the Furnace The 151st Infantry Regiment in the Battle of Verdun 1916.

. Book the verdun regiment online 4 million men who had been mobilized between 1914 and 1918 65 per cent had been killed or wounded Over 1: Book the verdun regiment book 4 million French soldiers had died nearly 17 per cent of those who went off to war