French infantry charging 'à la baionnette'. The soldiers were sometimes ordered to remove their ammunition to ensure they fought and killed with the bayonet.
Guerre 1914 - 1915 Infanterie française 'Charge a la baionnette'.A 'Charge à la baïonnette' of the French infantery. - LL.
"Standing up in the car and looking back, we watched the river of war wind toward us. Cavalry, artillery, lancers, infantry, sappers and miners, trench-diggers, road-makers, stretcher-bearers, they swept on as smoothly as if in holiday order. Through the dust, the sun picked out the flash of lances and the gloss of chargers' flanks, flushed rows and rows of determined faces found the least touch of gold on faded uniforms, silvered the sad grey of mitrailleuses and munition waggons. Close as the men were, they seemed allegorically splendid: as if, under the arch of the sunset, we had been watching the whole French army ride straight into glory. . ."
American author Edith Wharton visited the French battle fronts in 1915, and, after writing from Paris, Lorraine and the Vosges, and Argonne, was on her way to the north, behind the Belgian and British front, when her car inched through French troops moving west. Writing on June 19, 1915, she found the fields of Artois untouched. She was well west of where the French had been fighting the Second Battle of Artois since May 9.
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 139, 140, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
1915-06-19, 1915, June, Wharton, Artois
