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Post by Old Bill on Sept 22, 2010 10:21:10 GMT -6
I've been reading "The Marne, 1914" by Holger H. Herwig. (Random House, 2009). A good read. He covers the movement towards war and the Battles of the Frontier up to the climactic Battle of the Marne. Some interesting stuff. The Germans, for all their technological adeptness, were woefully short of, and somewhat dismissive of, modern (for 1914) communications. The French leadership was beset with personality conflicts, and also given to fixing bayonets, unfurling flags and singing "La Marseillaise" while they charged machineguns. Both sides seem to have been dumbfounded by the effects of high-powered magazine rifles and unable to come up with a better solution than to send in yet more bayonet charges. You have to wonder how they missed the lessons of the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War.
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Post by tootall on Sept 25, 2010 4:33:06 GMT -6
Easy! The leadership, most of them were not even on the front lines. Back in their protected bunkers with old ways of thinking.
Most of them were still remembering the shoulder to shoulder combat of our civil war out on an open field. Trench warfare was still very new. THEIR FRENCH!!!
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Post by Old Bill on Sept 29, 2010 23:10:00 GMT -6
Many of the senior commanders had been junior officers during the Franco-Prussian War. The French had an early "machinegun", the Mitrailleuse, and a rifle, the Chassepot, that was technically superior to the Dreyse rifle many German troops carried. And the Germans still won. Which distorted the French appreciation of the effectiveness of modern weapons. German bayonet charges overwhelmed French firepower; ergo, a determined bayonet charge was the answer. The reality was that the French failure was in tactics rather than technology. Particularly with the Mitrailleuse. The French persisted in using it like an artillery piece. But in the instances when it was used properly it decimated German columns.
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Post by tootall on Nov 14, 2010 7:14:37 GMT -6
What can I say? the French are slooooow learners. Hopefully we have learned that lesson and that about the French.
How many times do we have to pull their butts out of a jam?
If you noticed in your reads everytime the Yanks were trained by the Frogs we did better than them and they learned something from us. We taught them to pull the trigger at the enemy during those bayonet charges! LOL
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