French dead and wounded soldiers on stretchers, and being carried by stretcher bearers. A German prisoner is in the center, hands in his pocket. The Adrian helmets date the photograph from mid-1915 or later.
"Now, by mid-June, the mutinies had almost become common knowledge. True, the newspapers were muzzled by censorship, but in place of facts a flood of wild rumors sprung up. The Zone of the Armies was swept by provocative tales of entire divisions abandoning the trenches, of wholesale executions of mutineers on such a vast scale that machine guns had to be used, and of huge clashes between the cavalry and the mutinous infantry.Some of the rumors had, of course, a certain basis in fact. . . ."
General Henri Philippe Pétain took command of the French Army on May 15, 1917 after the failure of the Nivelle Offensive, and as mutinies spread, ultimately affecting nearly half the army. Pétain assured the soldiers he would not squander their lives in pointless attacks, and that France would build the materiel — tanks, heavy artillery, aircraft — that could bring victory. He also punished mutineers. In his Pyrrhic Victory, Robert Doughty, using French author Pédroncini as his primary source, reports 3,427 soldiers were convicted and 554 sentenced to death. Most of the death sentences were commuted, but not all. Doughty's references put the number of executions between 'about 40' and 62.
Dare Call it Treason by Richard M. Watt, pp. 210–211, copyright © 1963 by Richard M. Watt, publisher: Simon and Schuster, publication date: 1963
1917-06-21, 1917, June, French wounded, French dead, mutiny, French mutiny
