Nice one, but yes, battle of Verdun, with its many episodes, was a true hell and showed very well the problem of the French Army that was its higher officers who were slefish and only thought about their career, one man, the Lieutenant-colonel Driant, officer of a regiment of chasseurs à pieds (it could translated as Jäger in German and apparently Rifleman in English but I'm not totally agree with it...) and MP of Nancy, warned several times the French headquarter that Germans were preparing something at the border near Verdun but none listened him and Foch prefered to let the Territorials in position at Verdun and gather an important part of the French Army to prepare to the battle of the Somme. When Germans attacked on 21st February 1916, the both Driant's regiments were taken under the artillery fire during 10h before the Germans launched an army strong of 60 000 men on the front of the Woods of Caures, where the Driant's regiments were stationned. The 1 230 French soldiers succeeded to repel the German offensive but when Germans attacked back on 22nd February with flamethrowers, the front has been broken and the order of retreat was given, Driant made sure that all the survivors retreated before to leave but a bullet reached him in the head as he was retreating, of his 1 230 men, only 110 survived but this sacrifice permitted to slow down the German offensive and to prepare a bit better French troops of Verdun.

But that only one of the many stories considered as "heroic" that can be counted about the Battle of Verdun, there're many other as much terrible, such as the ones of Fort Vaux and of Fort Douaumont. I still don't understand how the men who were there were able to fight during all those years, to live with the death as a daily event, in such conditions, and to keep believing in a possible victory. Plus, the front of Verdun is one of the extremly rare French fronts that did not reported any mutiny in 1916 which is very surprising when you know the conditions of this battle...

Thanks, but yes, people who call French cowards only keep one thing in mind, the June 1940 Armistice without even considering what happened during the Battle of France. As exemple, on 12th May 1940, the Czech lieutnant Beran and the French Adjudant-chef (it doesn't have any equivalent in the RAF but would be like a Master Sergeant in the USAF, it's between Flight Sergeant and Warrant Officer for the RAF) Bassaget were on patrol over a Belgian city, Shelebelle, they were in charge to protect a regiment that was disembarking from a train. Everything was going well until the both allied pilots saw 14 heavy fighters Bf-110 coming right for them, the Czech lieutnant Beran was shot down in the first minutes of the dogfight and didn't baled out, as for the French ADC Bassaget, he quickly found that all his weapons were jammed (I think that he had an electrical problem with the weapons) but he kept fighting, feinting that he still had guns, he did many manoeuvres to get behind the 110s but he always avoided to get in a fire position for too long. Finally, he was shot down too but he succeeded to bale out and only had bruising due to the chock of the parachute opening and of the evacuation of the aircraft. When the dogfight ended, all the soldiers were out and far from the train which made of the Germans' mission, even if two Moranes were shot down, a failure.
But well, for the Armistice, I think it was most than necessary after the fall of Sedan, once the Sedan fallen, nothing could have stop the German offensive, mostly in the state in the one was the French Army, the Armistice permitted to stop some kind of hell, while a part of the French army was fighting for slowng down Germans, the other part was retiring because of the orders given by the heads, once again they caused the death of too much people with their ideas from another time, and were totally desorganised. The exodus created by the war in 1940 was a bloody mess, I'm reading a book of testimonies about it and it's really chocking to read in which conditions all that happened, people were carrying with them useless things, they were not informed, were scared and killed by the German aviation, vehicules from all the ages were on the roads, lorries and cars were scattered across the roadsides as the were often out of fuel or broken, and in the middle of civilians, it wasn't surprising to found soldiers, unarmed, that have been separated from their regiments during a retreat and artillery men who lose their canons, sometimes, their even were airmen who baled out after being shot down, sometimes, they were taken as prisonners by civilians like it was the case for the Polish lieutnant Wladislaw Chiuck as he was speaking with a strong foreign accent and it happened that even French airmen knew this as most people thought that the French aviation has been destroyed.

But as you said, it's easy to criticise when one don't know what it was like in reality and that they know that only by what TV show them, but I think they would think differently if they ever live such situations where their 4 years old child is killed in the amrs of their mothers by a bullet in the throat during an air raid, mostly when this is told by a nine years old child. Most of the popular rumours are quickly unvalidated when you study a bit the history of this population, each one had its brave men as each one also had its cowards (though Von Richthofen also said something very true: "Sometimes and cleverness aren't very different"). Indeed, to say someting like that, so much stereotypiical and genral is a great proof of, either ignorance or stupidity.

I remember comics like that. These days you can only be that violent if you're a super hero of some sort.

V.

and they were human... I think a lot of these comics were for those who fought that war as much as they were for the next generation...

V.

well done...

V.

Thank you, V.