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The Western Front, January 1917.

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The hopes of men lay frozen
in the grip of winter -

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one of the coldest
in living memory.

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00:01:35,680 --> 00:01:38,520
A British war correspondent wrote,

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"The snow gave a beauty, even
to no-man's land. Lying softly over
the tumbled ground of mine fields.

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"So that all the ugliness
and destruction and death
was hidden under this canopy.

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00:01:52,720 --> 00:01:59,280
"The snowflakes
fluttered upon stark bodies there
and shrouded them tenderly.

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00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:03,080
"It was as though all the doves of
peace were flying down to fold

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00:02:03,080 --> 00:02:06,400
"their wings above the obscene things
of war."

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00:02:19,960 --> 00:02:23,480
The cold imposed
a defiant cheerfulness.

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00:02:23,480 --> 00:02:27,000
Keeping warm became
a major preoccupation.

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00:02:30,200 --> 00:02:36,720
We slept in our clothes
and our boots. We used to place
our top boots under our bodies,

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because they used to be stiff in the
morning - one couldn't get them on.

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The weather then
was very, very bitter.

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The ground was frozen hard.
The hooves of a horse

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or the tread of a man's boot
would linger for a month.

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And when we received our rations,

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the bread had to be sawn through,

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because
you could see the ice in it.

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The sinews of war
were paralysed by the cold.

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Boilers of railway engines froze
solid, ships were trapped in ice,

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vehicles slithered to a halt,
aircraft were grounded.

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The guns still fired,
although accurate artillery
observation was often impossible.

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00:03:36,080 --> 00:03:42,920
"There was," wrote an onlooker,
"something suggestive of tragic
drama in this silent countryside,

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"where millions of men
were waiting to kill each other."

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At the beginning of 1917,
some 1,300,000 French men had
been killed or were dead of wounds,

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or in prison, or missing.

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00:04:02,120 --> 00:04:06,640
A loss of nearly one life
for every minute of the war.

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The French army
had forgotten how to smile.

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00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:15,840
An old soldier summed up
the French state of mind.

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"They had lost the habit
of the sun.

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"They even feared the moonlight.

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"They had abandoned the red trousers
and kepi of 1914

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"along with their illusions,
and had put on horizon blue.

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"The blue of a horizon always
dirty, dull, and without hope."

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Now the French soldiers were being
asked for yet one more effort.

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They responded once again to
a promise which brought fresh hope.

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General Robert Nivelle
assured his army...

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"The rupture of the front
is possible in 24 to 48 hours,

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"on condition it is with a single
stroke and by a sudden attack."

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Nivelle was aiming at nothing less
than an outright victory.

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As an army commander at Verdun,
his tactics had been brilliantly
successful on a small scale.

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But this attack involved a million
men. It envisaged, in his words...

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"The destruction of the principal
mass of the enemy armies
on the western theatre by a battle

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"delivered with a
considerable numerical superiority.

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"Breaking through the enemy's front
in such a way that the breakthrough
can be immediately exploited."

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The plan was to return to the
French offensive doctrines of 1914.

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It was a plan
with the simplicity of genius...

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or lunacy.

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General Nivelle was cultivated,
plausible, intensely ambitious.

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He expressed himself ably.

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But British military leaders, aware
now of the hazards of the Western
Front, were sceptical of his plan.

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General Robertson, Chief
of the Imperial General Staff,
voiced their fears.

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"To Haig and myself, the plan
seemed to have many fallacies.

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"A breach in the enemy defences
on the scale contemplated couldn't
be affected within 48 hours."

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Major Speirs, a liaison officer
who understood the French army,
had other misgivings.

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"The French army had suffered
and fought too long.
It was tired to death.

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"The light that had guided them
receded as they advanced down
the long, hopeless road of the war."

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Verdun, Champagne, Ypres, Artois,
the Somme, the scarp -

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they were all just synonymous
for suffering and death.

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Behind the lines too,
the war had left deep scars.

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The heart of France was beating
slower now, from loss of blood.

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From the agony of cumulative grief
endured by so many parents,

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so many wives, so many hundreds
of thousands of orphans.

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The assembling French army's
new weapons and new tactics
now offered new hope.

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The men were exhorted...

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"Keep moving - the infantry must be
through the rear German positions
seven hours after zero hour."

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And Nivelle insisted that...

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"The stamp of violence,
of brutality and of rapidity,
must characterise your offensive."

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Gradually the familiar round
of preparations gathered momentum.

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As over a million men
moved into the assembly areas,

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the spark of the Mons
was rekindled.

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The Marseillaise was heard again on
the march, as it had been in 1914.

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MARSEILLAISE PLAYS

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From French West Africa had
come 35 battalions of Senegalese.

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Men with fierce courage, but unused
to the cold of a northern winter.

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From the distant Urals
and from Moscow had come
two brigades of Russian troops.

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They received an ecstatic welcome.

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Now in France, in March 1917,
they read in their newspapers
of a revolution in Russia.

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The Tsar had abdicated.
There was talk of peace.

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The Russian troops in France
were a source of disaffection.

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They were divided among themselves.
When on leave in Paris, they saw
Russian revolutionary propaganda.

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They took a vote as to whether
they should join in the offensive
at all. They decided to fight.

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It was not a good omen.

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The Germans too
had had a hard winter.

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They occupied haphazard trench
lines that they were cast in by the
ebbing tide of the Somme battles.

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Hindenburg
told the German chancellor...

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"The military position
can scarcely be worse than it is."

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Hindenburg's lieutenant,
Ludendorff, predicted that if
one of the allies did not collapse,

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Germany's defeat was inevitable.

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00:10:20,320 --> 00:10:27,200
The probability of the allies
breaking though in the west had
worried Ludendorff since the Somme.

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Through winter he had been building
a strong system of fortifications,

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running from Arras in the north
to Soisson in the south.

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The Hindenburg line overlapped
the sector which Nivelle
was proposing to attack.

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It was not yet finished in February
1917, but under pressure from local
British attacks in the north,

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and with expectation of the French
offensive, Ludendorff ordered
a withdrawal to the new line.

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In some places,
30 miles behind the original front.

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"The decision to retreat was not
reached without a painful struggle.

99
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"It implied a confession of weakness
that was bound to raise the morale
of the enemy and lower our own."

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One night we were not shelled,
and we wondered what had happened.

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00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:23,880
Then we heard the old Hun,
as we called him, was pulling out.

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He'd gone.

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00:11:25,920 --> 00:11:28,760
And then we saw the cavalry come up.

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The Bengal Lancers trotted past -
a wonderful sight.

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Rumours all around were, "Is he
going? Is he packing up to go home?"

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Bit by bit we followed, our patrols
went out - they had good rear guard
action that they'd laid in advance.

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At last we got onto green fields,
and roads that weren't shelled.

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All was virgin country,
and we could gallop on the downs,

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we could see the hares
and see the larks.

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After the months and months
of utter brownness and chaos
and everything going back into ruin,

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to see that open country again
was marvellous.

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00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:21,000
The German withdrawal
was accompanied by an orgy
of calculated destruction.

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Bridges were blown, roads mined,
tracts of countryside flooded.

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Fruit trees in full bloom
senselessly felled,

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wells poisoned, household objects
booby-trapped.

116
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"Whole villages had been
torn down by hand, evidently
at the cost of immense labour.

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"It was as if the whole countryside
had fallen into the hands of demons

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"who had vented their lust for
destruction on these dwellings.

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"As the people grasped the fact
that the Germans had really gone,

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"they crowded round us,
tears of joy and gratitude
running down their cheeks.

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"Many just wanted to touch us,
to make sure that we were real.

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"Hardest to bear were the
inquiries - the piteous questions
about relatives and friends.

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"Their questions evoked unbearably
the vision of wooden crosses.

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"Hundreds of thousands
of little wooden crosses scattered
from Switzerland to the North Sea."

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The Allied advance towards the
Hindenburg line was painfully slow.

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The weather was atrocious, and the
troops, accustomed to static trench
warfare, moved as one man put it...

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"Like an army of moles suddenly
ordered to disport themselves
in the light of day."

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In France, as indeed in Britain,
the German retreat
was hailed as a great victory,

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00:14:00,560 --> 00:14:03,280
and Nivelle claimed the laurels.

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00:14:03,280 --> 00:14:07,120
"Had I been able to command
the German armies,

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"I couldn't have given them orders
more favourable to my plan."

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00:14:11,640 --> 00:14:19,080
Haig, whose army was to attack
at Arras in support of Nivelle's
offensive, took a different view.

133
00:14:19,080 --> 00:14:24,800
"The advisability of launching
Nivelle's battle grows daily less.

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"The enemy has organised the area
in the rear of the threatened front
to enable his troops to slip away.

135
00:14:32,800 --> 00:14:40,800
"His object seems to be to
disorganise our offensive by causing
our attacks to be made in the air."

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00:14:44,760 --> 00:14:51,400
Nivelle himself obstinately refused
to admit that the German withdrawal
had altered anything.

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00:14:51,400 --> 00:14:57,920
"I don't fear numbers.
The greater the numbers,
the greater the victory."

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"He was like a man under a spell,"
wrote a British liaison officer.

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00:15:02,840 --> 00:15:10,200
The German defences were wiped out
in his imagination and he could see
himself galloping in open country.

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Grave doubts
now beset Nivelle's own generals.

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Petain, Franchet d'Esperey,
Micheler - their misgivings
were shared by the politicians.

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Like Painleve, the new Minister of
War, and Ribot, the Prime Minister.

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00:15:27,040 --> 00:15:32,080
But the politicians did not dare
dismiss the commander in chief on
the very eve of a great offensive.

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00:15:32,080 --> 00:15:35,920
Already the British bombardment
at Arras had begun.

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Among the men of Haig's armies,
hopes ran high.

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They had a premonition
that this time all would go well.

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On the eve of the attack, a
trench raiding party was sent over

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to discover how effective
the bombardment had proved.

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00:17:28,560 --> 00:17:35,080
It reported that the first
and second German lines
were not recognisable as trenches.

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00:17:35,080 --> 00:17:39,120
German prisoners spoke
of "a symphony of hell."

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00:17:39,120 --> 00:17:45,400
A symphony which had shattered
every pain of glass in Douay -
15 miles behind their lines.

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00:17:45,400 --> 00:17:50,120
They knew the Canadians were
about to try to retake Vimy Ridge.

153
00:17:50,120 --> 00:17:54,160
"You Canadians may reach
the top of it," said one prisoner,

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00:17:54,160 --> 00:17:58,200
"But you'll be taken back to Canada
in a rowing boat."

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00:17:58,200 --> 00:18:04,200
On the dawn of Easter Monday, April
9th, the gunfire suddenly stopped.

156
00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:07,840
Then, "Fire!"

157
00:18:07,840 --> 00:18:10,760
"The British guns broke out again,

158
00:18:10,760 --> 00:18:15,800
"into such a fire as had yet been
seen on no battlefield on Earth.

159
00:18:15,800 --> 00:18:21,000
"It was the first hour of the Somme
repeated but a hundred-fold worse.

160
00:18:24,560 --> 00:18:31,600
"As our men went over the parapet
the heaven above them
was a canopy of shrieking steel."

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As the barrage passed, the Germans
on Vimy Ridge saw khaki figures
in flat steel helmets

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00:19:05,080 --> 00:19:07,600
swarming in every direction.

163
00:19:07,600 --> 00:19:14,120
These were the Canadians attacking
one of the strongest positions
on the Western Front.

164
00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:25,680
We had to thread our way amongst
the shell holes because the ridge
itself had been so pounded.

165
00:19:25,680 --> 00:19:30,200
The German trenches were almost
obliterated. They were mere ditches.

166
00:19:30,200 --> 00:19:35,040
We carried on there - the first
objective was the German main line,

167
00:19:35,040 --> 00:19:38,960
then we went on
to the eastern crest of the ridge.

168
00:19:38,960 --> 00:19:44,000
When we reached the top of the ridge
a remarkable sight was unfolded.

169
00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:46,600
We saw before our eyes

170
00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:54,080
all the German occupied villages
around Mons - the mining villages
with the slag heaps and mine shafts.

171
00:19:54,080 --> 00:20:01,080
And you could even see beyond Mons.
They didn't seem to be affected
at all. They still seemed intact.

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00:20:01,080 --> 00:20:08,440
This was the promised land and the
Canadian soldiers were the first
to see it since the days of 1915,

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00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:12,400
when the French
had held part of the heights.

174
00:20:12,400 --> 00:20:14,960
It was to remain a promised land.

175
00:20:14,960 --> 00:20:22,640
For though the British advanced
five miles in places on the first
day, capturing 13,000 prisoners,

176
00:20:22,640 --> 00:20:28,120
they hadn't the means or experience
to follow up this feat of arms.

177
00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:34,280
The British diversionary attack
had fulfilled its purpose.

178
00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:37,000
It had pinned down German reserves.

179
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:51,240
But the German positions facing the
French on the hills of the Aisne
were a great natural strength,

180
00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:55,280
and were organised in depths
to a distance of five miles.

181
00:20:55,280 --> 00:21:01,000
And the Germans knew the date, even
the hour, of the French attack.

182
00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:09,520
GERMAN ACCENT:
Minutes before the French attack,
the German batteries opened up.

183
00:21:09,520 --> 00:21:17,480
and the fire was so tremendous
that hardly any French soldiers
went over the top.

184
00:21:19,360 --> 00:21:23,760
After a while,
the Germans sent patrols

185
00:21:23,760 --> 00:21:27,360
to find out what happened.

186
00:21:28,320 --> 00:21:33,840
And there they found
the French trenches deserted,

187
00:21:33,840 --> 00:21:38,680
except for the wounded
and the dead.

188
00:21:38,680 --> 00:21:41,360
Full of dead.

189
00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:53,600
To the assaulting French infantry,
the attack was a nightmare.

190
00:21:57,160 --> 00:22:04,800
FRENCH ACCENT:
And we could see that everything
in the German line was in order -

191
00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:09,720
the machine guns,
the men, and everything, and...

192
00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:16,200
But even in some places
the barbed wire was there in place.

193
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:19,280
Was hopeless.

194
00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:36,800
The deeper they penetrated, the
more the guns took toll of them.

195
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:43,720
The Senegalese, their faces
grey with cold, were even unable
to load their rifles.

196
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:50,760
Caught between German machine guns
and their own artillery fire,
they fled the field.

197
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:54,360
The Russian brigades
also suffered cruelly.

198
00:23:54,360 --> 00:23:59,320
French tanks in action for the
first time, bogged down in the mud.

199
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:03,360
The French air force
was grounded by the weather.

200
00:24:03,360 --> 00:24:08,760
The wounded returned from the
front, swamping medical services.

201
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:13,400
On these muddy heights under
the drenching sleet and rain,

202
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:19,920
the French attacks faltered,
stopped, and wearily faced
the inevitable counterattack.

203
00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:22,440
Losses mounted, hope faded.

204
00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:26,240
"It's all up," they said.
"We shall never do it."

205
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:39,440
At French army headquarters,
as the reports came in,

206
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:44,440
an American man observed their
effect on some French politicians.

207
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:48,480
"All day they were telephoning
the government in Paris,

208
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:54,360
"that the army was being massacred
and demanding they stop the attack."

209
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:05,880
It couldn't be stopped. The Germans
counter-attacked immediately.

210
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:47,640
At the end of the first day's
fighting, French casualties
totalled 90,000 men.

211
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:50,560
At the end of a fortnight, 120,000.

212
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:53,920
At the end of three weeks,
over 180,000.

213
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:06,600
The Germans lost 160,000 men,

214
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:12,040
of whom 40,000 were taken prisoner,
and a few miles of ground.

215
00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:18,960
But the real balance was not
to be struck in gains and losses,
but in hope unfulfilled.

216
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:24,000
In the bitter sense of betrayal
felt by a million French soldiers.

217
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:31,240
"We've just taken part in one of
the most glaring crimes of the war.

218
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,040
"We are betrayed, sold, lost.

219
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:40,280
"We've learnt nothing -
it's a return to 1915.

220
00:26:40,280 --> 00:26:46,880
"They give us citations and crosses,
but we'd rather chuck them back
at the high command.

221
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:52,320
"Let those war-to-the-end merchants
come up here and see for themselves.

222
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:56,520
"Our commanders are incapable
of leading us to victory.

223
00:26:56,520 --> 00:27:00,520
"Peace ought to be made
straight away."

224
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:07,880
They had had enough. The army
of the Marne, of Champagne,
Artois, Verdun, the Somme.

225
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:12,600
This army which had expended itself
with valour for three years,

226
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:19,640
which had lost about one and a half
million men - killed or prisoners -
at last its proud spirit broke.

227
00:27:19,640 --> 00:27:22,680
They had had enough.

228
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:30,600
Back in Paris, beneath
the surface bustle of a great city,
all was speculation and doubt.

229
00:27:30,600 --> 00:27:37,120
But the hospital trains,
steaming into the Gare du Nord,
told their own truths.

230
00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:41,600
Rumours fed by parliamentary
deputies and fanned by defeatists,

231
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:45,640
spread their sly contagion
through the summer days.

232
00:27:48,160 --> 00:27:54,760
In every cafe, in every bistro,
in every concierge's lodge,
at every street corner,

233
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:58,440
the casualty figures were trebled,
quadrupled.

234
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:07,840
Rumours and evasions,
disillusion and defeatism,

235
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:12,760
everything that France stood for
seemed to be threatened.

236
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:17,040
Soon after I visited Paris
I observed for myself

237
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:21,960
that things weren't too well,
even in the civilian population.

238
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:26,400
I saw, for instance...

239
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:28,840
a strike,

240
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:36,560
of the girls in the big
milliner shops - the dressmakers.

241
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:43,600
They were called,
rather pathetically I thought, "Les
Petites Mains" - The Small Hands.

242
00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:49,440
And what they were striking for
was one sou an hour more -

243
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:51,680
a ha'penny.

244
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:57,160
I saw these girls processing down
some of the main thoroughfares,

245
00:28:57,160 --> 00:29:01,320
and a lot of men on leave
joined them.

246
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:07,480
That showed there was something.
There was unrest, disquiet.

247
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:20,480
Still more alarming stories
now began to filter into Paris
from the zone of the armies.

248
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:34,360
Anxious about all these rumours
concerning mutinies,

249
00:29:34,360 --> 00:29:37,880
I decided to go up
and see for myself.

250
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:44,000
I arrived in part of the country
near Soisson, which I know well,

251
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:48,920
and there I was met
with the most amazing sight.

252
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:57,120
Regiment after regiment
was in open mutiny.

253
00:29:57,120 --> 00:30:02,560
By which I meant there were degrees
of mutiny.

254
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,080
In many units,

255
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:11,680
the officers were confined
to a section of the village -

256
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:14,880
had no authority at all -

257
00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:18,320
and the men had established posts,

258
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:22,480
and I wasn't in the least molested.

259
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:25,680
I asked what was going on...

260
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:34,080
...got rather evasive answers,
but in the main found that the line
taken by the men was...

261
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:42,200
...that they were prepared
to occupy the line,
but they weren't prepared to fight.

262
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:46,440
The French army
had endured too much for too long.

263
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:54,440
The agony of Verdun, lack of leave,
miserable rest camps and canteens,
harsh discipline, low pay,

264
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:59,960
and now the awful disillusionment
of Nivelle's attack.

265
00:30:59,960 --> 00:31:06,560
It was not that they had failed
to win a victory, it was that
the victory itself was not enough.

266
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:10,320
It had not produced
the expected ending of the war.

267
00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:13,360
The soldiers went on strike.

268
00:31:13,360 --> 00:31:17,760
All through May and into June,
the mutinies multiplied.

269
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:22,200
More and more regiments out
of the line refused to obey orders,

270
00:31:22,200 --> 00:31:27,040
refused to take part in attacks
or even return to the front.

271
00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:02,000
54 divisions were affected,
yet there was little violence.

272
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:08,840
For the most part, men
drifted away into the woods, tried
to commandeer trains to Paris,

273
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:12,360
or just sat tight in their camps
or billets,

274
00:32:12,360 --> 00:32:17,400
until, weary of inaction, they
gave themselves up to loyal troops.

275
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:32,680
Russian brigades set up councils
and disarmed their officers.

276
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:39,720
They had to be shelled into
submission by French artillery. But
at the front, the line held firm.

277
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:46,480
The men's attitude was,
"We'll never advance, but we won't
let the Bosch advance either."

278
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:53,440
"No-one believed any longer
in a decision by force of arms,"
wrote an officer at French GHQ.

279
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:56,080
"It is an army without faith."

280
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:05,040
A choice had now to be made between
ruin and reason. Reason prevailed.

281
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:12,760
Nivelle was dismissed and France
turned, as she had done in the
worst days of Verdun, to Petain -

282
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:15,360
a man who understood men.

283
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:20,440
General Petain was
put in charge of the French army,

284
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:25,720
and he re-established morale
in a matter of months.

285
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:31,320
I saw him doing so,
some of the time.

286
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:38,040
He visited, in a very short time,
every division in the French army,

287
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:45,560
insisting that every single company
should be represented
by at least one trustworthy man.

288
00:33:45,560 --> 00:33:52,280
He spoke to them ALL
and they realised he felt for them,

289
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:55,000
appreciated what they'd endured,

290
00:33:55,000 --> 00:34:02,040
and was determined that
they shouldn't be submitted to
such unnecessary suffering again.

291
00:34:24,680 --> 00:34:29,720
Petain listened to the grievances
of his troops and acted swiftly.

292
00:34:29,720 --> 00:34:34,720
Every man who could be spared
was pulled out of the line.

293
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:44,600
Decent rest camps were built
with facilities for recreation.

294
00:34:59,720 --> 00:35:03,880
A leave system was introduced which
allowed men home every four months,

295
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:08,920
provided trains to get them there
and even canteens for the journey.

296
00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:13,760
The troops began to feel at last
that somebody cared for them,

297
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:16,800
that they mattered as individuals.

298
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:04,960
But military discipline
demanded harsher measures as well.

299
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:08,480
Petain reported
to the Minister of War...

300
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:13,520
"It is necessary to make examples in
every regiment that has mutinied."

301
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:28,200
Over 400 death sentences
were imposed. Many were commuted,

302
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:32,720
but 55 ringleaders were taken out
to face a firing squad.

303
00:36:32,720 --> 00:36:35,840
55 executions...

304
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:39,240
Those were the official figures.

305
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:46,320
But it is likely that more were
shot after summary courts martial.

306
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:49,080
How many will never be known.

307
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:04,240
The secret of the mutinies was kept
with extraordinary success.

308
00:37:04,240 --> 00:37:11,840
When I reported to the war office
there were mutinies
in the French army,

309
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:19,600
the Chief Imperial General Staff
expressed the utmost astonishment
at this...

310
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:24,560
...because he said
he'd heard nothing of it.

311
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:31,560
It did seem astonishing that we had
60 highly qualified officers,

312
00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:35,080
attached
to the French headquarters,

313
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:38,120
and over a period of weeks,

314
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:44,200
the French had managed
to conceal any trouble from them.

315
00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:50,720
In a way, perhaps it was fortunate
because the Germans
hadn't heard either.

316
00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:55,280
If the Germans had,
the war would have been over.

317
00:37:55,280 --> 00:38:01,880
When Major Speirs' report
was received, he was ordered back
to 10 Downing Street.

318
00:38:01,880 --> 00:38:05,640
Lloyd George said to me,

319
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:09,480
"Is the French army
going to get over this?"

320
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:14,240
And I said, "I believe it is.

321
00:38:14,240 --> 00:38:16,960
"They've had a frightful time.

322
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:23,800
"But now Petain's in charge,
and he's a wonderful leader
and the men have got faith in him,

323
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:26,520
"I believe they will get over it."

324
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:32,440
France did get over it, but her
convalescence was painful and slow.

325
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:37,600
In the meantime her armies were
in no state to prosecute the war.

326
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:44,320
It was a time of crisis for the
allies - the Russians were talking
of signing a separate peace.

327
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:46,840
The Italians wanted reinforcements.

328
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:52,840
On the Western Front, the British
Army was left to bear the burden.

329
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:57,400
In the words of Lloyd George,
"It was the one allied army

330
00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:03,960
"which could be relied upon
for any enterprise, however
hazardous and arduous it might be."

331
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:09,000
Yet one bright beacon illuminated
these dark and desperate days.

332
00:39:09,000 --> 00:39:16,560
On April 6th 1917,
the United States of America
had declared war on Germany.

333
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:24,120
Now despite all the
disillusionment of two and a half
years, there was hope again.