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Imperial War Museum via Retronaut.com
December 20, 1914: The Start of the First Champagne Battle
By December 1914, a succession of brutal conflicts on the Western Front had starkly revealed the overwhelming defensive superiority provided by modern weaponry, particularly machine guns and rapid-fire rifles. These advancements transformed infantry assaults into bloodbaths and rendered offensive maneuvers nearly ineffective. Despite this, commanders, deeply rooted in 19th-century offensive doctrines, believed that sheer determination could overcome any challenge. This mindset led to further unnecessary carnage and devastation.
On December 20, 1914, French General Joseph Joffre initiated the second major Allied offensive on the Western Front, later termed the First Battle of Champagne. The strategy involved the French Fourth Army, led by Fernand de Langle de Cary, assaulting the German Third Army under Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht in northeastern France's Champagne region. Simultaneously, the French Tenth Army advanced from Artois in the west, aiming to encircle and compel the Germans to retreat. Concurrently, other French forces and the British Expeditionary Force executed diversionary attacks across the front to immobilize German troops and prevent reinforcements.
However, this strategy, like numerous ambitious offensive plans during World War I, turned out to be highly impractical. The French Fourth Army achieved minor progress on the initial day, but the assault quickly lost momentum as German machine gun teams swiftly filled the breaches in their barbed wire defenses caused by French artillery. As December ended, de Cary attempted to exploit other sections of the German line, seeking vulnerabilities but with little success, as any minor advances were swiftly overturned by German counterattacks.
Simultaneously, the diversionary assaults along other parts of the Western Front yielded no gains, often at an appallingly high human cost. Corporal Louis Barthas, a barrel maker from southern France, documented his disdain for his superiors and their handling of the conflict:
… barely twenty men had emerged before one machine gun began firing, followed by two, then three… In the squad ahead of us, a soldier was struck through the shoulder, bleeding profusely and certain to die without urgent medical aid. Yet, no stretcher-bearers were present, and halting the advance to assist even a brother was forbidden. As we passed—or rather stepped over—this first wounded, groaning comrade, we trudged through his blood, leaving a grim impression on us all. Even the least perceptive among us realized we were marching to our deaths, with no chance of success, merely serving as live targets for German machine gunners.
Despite French propaganda glorifying the unwavering patriotism of the poilus (infantrymen), Barthas observed that during this incident, the soldiers only advanced after a junior officer, who remained safely in the trench, threatened to have their own machine gunners fire upon them. Days later, he saw another French officer intimidating troops too petrified to leave the trench:
The company captain… objected to this senseless attack, destined for failure, but under orders, he charged forward and was killed within moments. In the trench, men shook, cried, and begged. “I have three children,” one pleaded. “Mama, mama,” another wept. “Please, have mercy,” voices echoed. Yet the commanding officer, enraged and armed with a revolver, swore and threatened to execute those who hesitated… Suddenly, he collapsed, a bullet through his head.
As the offensive extended into the New Year, the situation worsened due to relentless freezing rains that flooded trenches (top, a British trench in January 1915), interspersed with biting cold that caused thousands of frostbite cases. The rain also transformed dirt roads into impassable mud, hindering the delivery of winter gear, food supplies, and ammunition (though the roads became somewhat usable when frozen).
Henri de Lécluse, a French officer, described the conditions on January 8, 1915: “It had rained incessantly for fourteen hours, and water from the surrounding hills poured into the trench like a river… Within a short time, the ground began to shift, trench walls crumbled in sections, and shelters collapsed.” Barthas echoed this in his own account:
I cannot begin to describe the horrors of that January or the suffering we endured. I never imagined the human body could endure such hardships. Each morning brought a dry, white frost, forming icy spikes on our beards and mustaches and freezing our feet. Then, temperatures would rise, and rain would fall, sometimes in torrents, turning our trenches into muddy rivers and irrigation channels.
Despite these dire conditions, the fighting persisted, driven seemingly by irrational momentum, and the First Battle of Champagne dragged on miserably into March 1915, achieving no strategic gains but inflicting immense suffering.
Back home, civilians on all sides worried about soldiers enduring unimaginable hardships at the front, while also grappling with their own struggles to survive the winter with scarce resources, particularly coal, which was in short supply due to army requisitions disrupting supply chains. For women, especially, it was a time of profound anxiety and sorrow, as noted by Mildred Aldrich, an American living in a rural village east of Paris, who conversed with a middle-aged Frenchwoman on a train:
… she inquired if I had children, and I replied no. She sighed, sharing that she was a widow with an only son who was “out there,” and added: “We French women of a certain class are so naive in our youth. I love children dearly. But I believed I could only manage to raise one… Now, if I lose him, what purpose do I have left?... It was foolish of me to have just one.”
Death was indeed claiming an entire generation of young men across Europe. By the close of December 1914, France had reportedly endured nearly a million casualties, with 306,000 dead, 220,000 captured, and 490,000 wounded. Germany faced similar losses, with around a million casualties, including 241,000 fatalities, 155,000 prisoners, and 540,000 injured.
And this was only the beginning of the war.
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