Episode 2: The Most Terrible August

27,000 Frenchmen dead in a single day.

This is the Battle of the Frontiers, and it's the moment the 19th century military mind finally collides with 20th century weaponry. French doctrine said élan and the bayonet would carry the day. German machine guns and field howitzers had other ideas. Joffre's Plan XVII sends the French army straight into the Ardennes believing they'd found a weak German centre — they hadn't, and the result is one of the bloodiest single days in French military history, inside the bloodiest single month of the war.

We're in the mud and the mist with the men who lived it, through the words of the officers who watched their companies disappear in front of them.

By the end of August, France has lost 75,000 dead and 260,000 casualties. And the war's not even a month old.

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KnowPast🔥KnowFuture — The documentary series

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Until next time — take it easy, and I'll see you around the traps.