Last modified: 2013-11-25 by ivan sache
Keywords: first world war | signal pennant | czechoslovak legion |
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In a series of extremely well documented books, the French
historian Pierre Miquel recently analyzed the course of the
operations on the French-German front from 1914 to 1918.
The lack of preparation and an obsolete tactic, aggravated by the
lack of clue of the generals and politicians, caused the sheeer
butchery. The human loss for France only was 1,400,000, and 8,000,000
for the whole of Europe. Several French attacks had not the least
chance of success since the infantry troops were sent against the
German lines without any artillery preparation. Moreover, the
infantry lacked signal pennants, which were
used at that time to signal the conquered trenches and positions. The
soil and air observers, who were in a very unsufficent number and
badly equiped, could not indicate precisely the targets to the
artillery. In some cases, the artillery was misleadingly ordered to
shoot randomly or even on the French infantry.
Ivan Sache, 11 November 2002
The monument is a 32 m high steel spire, with three flags hoisted on smaller poles in foreground. The central flag is the French Tricolore, whereas the flag on the right is the Czechoslovak (and current Czech) flag; on the picture illustrating the article, the flag on the left is unfortunately furled, but it seem to be another Czechoslovak flag rather than a Slovak flag.
The monument is built near the site of the camp of the volunteers of the Czechoslovak Legion during the First World War. The place is of special significance for the Czechoslovak history: on 30 June 1918, the French President Raymond Poincaré acknowledged in Darney the right of the Czechs and Slovaks to have their own state.Ivan Sache, 17 December 2004