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Posted

Can someone help me out with the above question. I read about it somewhere and don't know if it's true or not, all I remember is that the British forces deserted from the front lines and were saved by the reinforcement using French army divisions in 1917.

WW1 is not my thing.

Anyone?

  • 2 months later...
Posted

Not really. The French Army had an outbreak of 'Collective Indiscipline' and the British/Cw forces helped out to a degree. 

Posted

WW1 wasnt my thing, but ive not read that.

I suspect a lot of it was down to a 1980's drama series called 'The monacled mutineer', which took some real life cases at Etaples and seem to have built them into something rather more significant than they were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étaples_mutiny

Good drama by the way, even though it is largely complete fiction.

Posted
21 hours ago, Argus said:

Not really. The French Army had an outbreak of 'Collective Indiscipline' and the British/Cw forces helped out to a degree. 

And while the French mutineers refused to advance, they didn't leave the line  and were quite willing to resist any German attack.

Posted

WWI is full of myths, genuine period ones. Like the 'ghost army' of deserters living between the lines, gone feral and preying on both sides to supply what they couldn't rat from the dead to make ends meet, banding together to raid isolated posts or take down patrols that threatened them... etc etc. Of course they were mostly Australian/Bavarian/Irish/Moroccan/Czech depending on local variation, and bigger pile of bollocks you couldn't find, but it still crops up from time to time. 

As for the front line troops breaking and heading for the hills, sure it happened. The French, British/Cw and Germans all had sections of line up sticks and depart without ceremony in the face of early gas, flame and tank attacks. But force density always ruled the day, at least on the Franco-Belgian front, the defender was able to plug gaps faster then the attacker could exploit them. The French mutinies were more in the nature of a labour dispute, Mssr Pilou et Freres reminding their parent company that contractual obligations work in both directions. The 'British' ones were generally boredom, bullshit and bullying, conflicts between rear area commands and troops separated from their units and so without recourse or channels of communication to otherwise express their greviences. Nothing like as much fun as the WWII 'wars' in Australia between the GI's and... well most everybody. 

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