Folding postcard relief map looking north from the River Aisne to the Oise Canal, from Compiègne to Soissons, and from Noyon to St. Gobain, France. A hand drawn arrow indicates Pimprez, marked with an 'X'.
Reverse:Cards number 2101 (left/west) and 2102 (right/east). Kunst-u. Verlagsanstalt Schaar & Dathe, Komm.-Ges. a. Akt, Trier.
"One of the largest of these mutinies took place on June 2 [1917] outside Cœuvres, a modest town about eight miles southeast of Soissons and situated on the edge of the Forest of Vollers-Cotterêts. . . .On June 2 the 310th received orders to leave Cœuvres and march to Bucy-le-Long, a town northwest of Soissons. The troops knew what this meant—a return to the trenches. They would not go. Colonel Dussange, the regimental commander, reported later, 'About three in the afternoon, one company refused to pack its gear. No acts of violence occurred, just a determined obstinacy. Immediately another company mutinied. The regiment refused to listen to me.'Pushing past their protesting colonel, the troops made their way into the woods on the south of the town. It was useless for Dussange to attempt to block the road. 'The troops passed right by me on either side, without insults or pushing. Some of them saluted me.' The colonel reported that his men 'intended to march on Paris. Other regiments were waiting for them in the Forest of Compiègne.'"
After the failure of French commander in chief Robert Nivelle's 1917 spring offensive — the Second Battle of the Aisne, begun on April 16 — an offensive that Nivelle had asserted would provide the breakthrough of the German line that would lead to victory, mutinous incidents broke out in the French army, particularly among the troops that had suffered the highest rates of casualties in the offensive. The mutinies were of greater or lesser severity, beginning in April, with increasingly disruptive incidents in May, and the most violent and serious in the first weeks of June. The Russian Revolution of March provided a model for some soldiers including those in the 310th who established their own camp and elected their own leaders.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, pp. 202, 203, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
1917-06-02, 1917, June, French mutinies, mutiny, folding postcard
