With a few notable exceptions, the French efforts on the Somme have been
largely missing or minimised in British accounts of the Battle of the
Somme. And yet when a Franco-British Offensive was originally planned
int he winter of 1915 it was to be one dominated by the French, who were
to provide at least twice as many divisions as Haig's BEF.
The Battle of Verdun, which commenced in February 1916, soon changed the
situation and by late spring it was clear that this would be a smaller
offensive and one that would make the British by far the bigger
contributor of manpower, though French influence over the direction of
the battle remained high.
Despite the fact that far fewer French divisions were deployed than had
been anticipated, the role of her army was considerable. The French
attack on 1 July was relatively very successful and great advances were
made, notably south of the river. However, the sharp bend to the south
that the Somme makes near Peronne made progress there extremely
difficult and so the French effort was soon largely transferred to the
north and the right of the British.
It was, therefore, here that cooperation with the BEF was closest and
most crucial. Thus many of the names which are well known to British
visitors to the area, such as Curlu, Maurepas, Hardecourt, Gommecourt
and Combles feature in this book. Whilst the BEF struggled to reach
Transloy Ridge in the dying days of the battle in the ghastly conditions
of late October and November 1916, the French battled it out with the
Germans in the tattered remnants of Sailly Saillisel and amongst the
stumps of St Pierre-Vaast Wood and came very close to a notable
success.
It has always been something of a disgrace that there is so little
available, even in French, to educate the public in an accessible
written form about the substantial effort made by France's army on the
Somme. This book builds on Dave O'Mara's _The Somme 1916: Touring the
French Sector_ in the Battleground series and will go some way to
rectify the lack of knowledge amongst most British visitors of these
'forgotten' men of France and the development of the battle to the
immediate right of Rawlinson's Fourth Army..
