CANCELLED The French Army in 1917

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The Coral Bell School

It is often claimed to be a “well-known fact” that the French Army mutinied in 1917 and did very little thereafter. This paper counters this misperception by placing the so-called mutinies in context and by analysing the operations carried out successfully by French troops in 1917. The relationship between the British battles of 1917 (Arras and Ypres) and those French operations is explored and Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s post hoc claim, that he continued the fighting into November so as to protect the French Army, evaluated. The centenary of 1917’s battles presents a timely opportunity to set the record straight.

Dr Elizabeth Greenhalgh is a Visiting Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. She is the author of Foch in Command (Cambridge, 2011), The French Army and the First World War (Cambridge, 2014) and Liaison: General Pierre des Vallières at British General Headquarters, January 1916 to May 1917 (Army Records Society, 2016). She has also published articles in the Australian War Memorial’s journal, Wartime. Currently she is working on two monographs: a study of how the First World War ended, and a study of the little-known French battles of 1915.