The French Army Mutinies of 1917

Link https://youtu.be/-XrU9Pdbc54

The French Army Mutiny

Of 1917

Transcript

Hello and thank you for downloading Witness from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last. And as part of our centenary series on the First World War, using archived recordings we go back to the spring of 1917 when the French army was rocked by mutiny.

Edward Spears:

The thing that astonishes me is that the French army didn’t mutiny a long time before 1917. They had had absolutely appalling losses, due largely you know to mistakes and to mistaken theories.

Alex Last:

General Edward Louis Spears was in 1917 the head of the British military mission to the French Government.

Edward Spears:

At the beginning of the war in August 1914 I myself had seen the French army attacking German positions and machine guns with bands playing and officers in white gloves leading them in. they went on suffering terrible losses, still they endured displaying qualities of stoicism and staying power which we really thought only we were capable of.

Alex Last:

By April 1917 one million French troops had been killed, even more had been wounded, all in less than three years of war. Most had fought and died in seemingly hopeless battles of attrition on the western front, and even if they survived the big offensives, life in the trenches could be truly grim.

The British realising this would rotate men in and out of the front lines every few days, the French did not. Troops stayed in the morass, rest was short, leave often cancelled. On April the 16^th 1917 the French commander General Nivelle launched yet another massive offensive. In a message to his troops he boasted he knew the formula for victory and wrote to them of the need for sacrifice.

Louis Barthas:

The reading of this patriotic drivel aroused no enthusiasm at all.

Alex Last:

Louis Barthas kept a private account of life as an ordinary French soldier.

Louis Barthas:

It only served to demoralise the soldier who heard in it only a terrible menace, more suffering, great danger, a frightful death, a useless sacrifice totally in vain. No one had any confidence in this new round of killing leading to any useful result.

Alex Last:

One of the offensives principal targets was a ridge called Le Chemin de Dames, the French attack went wrong from the start.

Pierre Gaultier:

The plan of the French attack has been betrayed to the Germans. He knew exactly the date, even the hour of the French attack. The whistle went and we attacked, I was in the second line, in the few minutes after the attack was launched, the two battalions they had been wiped out.

Alex Last:

Pierre Gaultier was a sergeant in the French army.

Pierre Gaultier:

So our attack was stopped, was hopeless, put ourselves in shell holes or made little holes to put ourselves in so that the machine guns couldn’t hit us. We stayed there for the rest of the day could only recover to our lines at night.

Alex Last:

90,000 French troops were killed or wounded in the first day but Nivelle did not call a halt. A popular song emerged among the French troops of the time the words said it all.

[French recording of the song La Chanson de Craonne]

Adieu la vie, adieu l'amour, Adieu toutes les femmes C'est bien fini, c'est pour toujours De cette guerre infâme C'est à Craonne sur le plateau Qu'on doit laisser sa peau Car nous sommes tous condamnés C'est nous les sacrifiés

Goodbye to life,

Goodbye to love,

Goodbye to all the women,

It’s all over now, we’ve had it for good,

With this awful war,

Its in Craonne up on the plateau we’re leaving our skins,

Because we’ve all been sentenced to die,

We’re the ones that they’re sacrificing,

Louis Edwards:

The weariness, the hopelessness of the prospect of the war seemed utterly dreadful. Furthermore there were these rumours of the Russian Revolution and things weren’t looking at all good.

Alex Last:

In early May, elements of a French division refused the order to attack, mutinies soon spread.

Louis Barthas:

A wind of revolt blew across almost all the regiments. There were plenty of reasons for discontent, the painful failure of the Chemin de Dames offensive, which had no result other than a dreadful slaughter. The prospect of more long months of war, ahead with a highly dubious outcome, and finally the long wait for home leave.

It is that which bothered the soldiers most I believe.

Alex Last:

Louis Barthas’s regiment was one of those that mutinied.

Louis Barthas:

At noon on May the 30^th there was even a meeting outside the village to form a Russian style Soviet composed of three men from each company to take control of the regiment. To my amazement, they offered me the presidency of the soviet; that is to say to replace the Colonel no less.

Imagine me, an obscure peasant commander of the 296^th regiment. I refused as I had no wish to be tied to an execution post.

Alex Last:

Incredibly the French managed to keep the mutiny a secret from both friend and foe.

Louis Edwards:

It did seem astonishing that we had 60 highly qualified officers attached to the French headquarters, and over a period of weeks the French had managed to conceal any trouble from them. In a way perhaps it was fortunate, because the Germans hadn’t heard either, if the Germans had then the war would have been over.

Alex Last:

General Spears was one of very few outside the French army to hear about the mutinies. He went to investigate himself.

Edward Spears:

I found that there were only two divisions of the whole French army that could be relied upon, between the front line and Paris. And I arrived in part of the country near Soissons which I knew very well and there I was met with the most amazing sight. Regiment after regiment was in open mutiny.

There were degrees of mutiny, in many units all the men wore red rosettes, the officers were confined to a section of the village, had no authority at all. And the men had established posts, I wasn’t in the least molested, I asked what was going on? And got rather evasive answers, but in the main found that the line taken by the men was that they were prepared to occupy the line, but they weren’t prepared to fight. After what had happened, after the bloodbath they’d been submitted to after all, one could understand their point of view.

Alex Last:

Faced with mutinies on such a large scale the French army – both officers and men- wrestled with how to react. Caught in the middle sergeant Gaultier was ordered to lead a few men to halt a huge crowd of mutinous soldiers from another regiment.

Pierrre Gaultier:

Before we got to the crowd my men told me “we’ll follow you anywhere. But we shan’t go with bayonets on against French troops”. I looked at the crowd, they were unarmed. One of them had a frying pan in one hand and a poker in the other and was hitting it as hard as possible and he told me “come on boys, we’ll go to Paris and throw grenades in the Palais Bourbon”. 

So, I told him he may do whatever he likes but we weren’t of that opinion, we had nothing to do we started talking, there were thousands they were upset but they had nothing ferocious about them. But in the meantime some machine guns had already been put in position. And they went back to their quarters and the next day rains of lorries came and took them somewhere, I never heard of them again.

Alex Last:

Amid the crisis General Nivelle was removed, General Petain took over and promised to improve conditions. Through force and deception the most rebellious units were separated and purged. Thousands were arrested hundreds sentenced to death, though only around 50 were actually executed. And in time the mutinies petered out, units were returned to the line.

Louis Barthas:

We gathered to start off for the trenches, noisy demonstrations took place. Shouting, singing, whistling, screaming and of course the singing of the International. If the officers had made a gesture or sad a word against this noise I sincerely believe they would have been ruthlessly massacred, so high was the tension. 

They took the most sensible course, waiting patiently until calm was restored, you cannot shout, whistle and scream forever. And there was no leader among the rebels capable of making a decision or of giving us direction. So we ended up heading towards the trenches although not without grumbling or griping.

Alex Last:

For the French army after the mutinies for a time the notion of launching huge offensives was over. It adopted a more defensive policy to reduce the loss of life, but the sacrifices of the French soldier were to continue for another year, by which time almost one and a half million were dead, more than four million wounded. Losses that would profoundly shape France for decades.

But perhaps given the scale of the slaughter on all sides what’s remarkable was not that there was a mutiny but rather that it was so rare.

Louis Edwards:

Who can blame the men who had suffered so much for not believing that the struggle wasn’t hopeless? Who could blame for having lost faith in their leadership?