As we are getting ready to celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the Armistice, it would be good if we got away from the usual shortcuts: the Battles of the Marne, Verdun, the failure on the Chemin des Dames, the victorious offensives of 1918... It was in 1915 however - the bloodiest year of the war - that almost 400 000 French soldiers were killed. With Artois, Champagne was almost certainly the most murderous battlefield of the front. This book evokes in a most striking manner the twelve months of fighting which the tragic names of Souain, Massige, Tahure, Perthes et Mesnil-les-Hurlus represent. From the bloody winter battle to the great offensive on 25 September to break the deadlock, a host of powerful, mainly unpublished pictures, uniforms, weapons, memorabilia, and written accounts shed new light on this page of our history. The authors have also undertaken to recount the main features with an objective, critical evocation of events. Finally they wanted to pay a tribute to the combatants of that terrible year, 1915, in Champagne.

As we are getting ready to celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the Armistice, it would be good if we got away from the usual shortcuts: the Battles of the Marne, Verdun, the failure on the Chemin des Dames, the victorious offensives of 1918... It was in 1915 however - the bloodiest year of the war - that almost 400 000 French soldiers were killed. With Artois, Champagne was almost certainly the most murderous battlefield of the front. This book evokes in a most striking manner the twelve months of fighting which the tragic names of Souain, Massige, Tahure, Perthes et Mesnil-les-Hurlus represent. From the bloody winter battle to the great offensive on 25 September to break the deadlock, a host of powerful, mainly unpublished pictures, uniforms, weapons, memorabilia, and written accounts shed new light on this page of our history. The authors have also undertaken to recount the main features with an objective, critical evocation of events. Finally they wanted to pay a tribute to the combatants of that terrible year, 1915, in Champagne.