I am glad that my search for info was useful, Joe.
I did found one other interesting fact about the Batlle of Rossignol in Barbara Tuchman’s classic standard “The Guns of August”. The French lost at Rossignol even their divisional commander, General Raffenel, and a Brigade General, Rondoney.
One of the reasons, why I don’t spend attention yet on my website to places of battles of 1914 around Liege and Dinant etc., is, that I prefer to concentrate on the front after the Race at the Sea, when it froze in the static trenches war at the end of 1914. And even then the front was never a static line at all, with always interchanging the possession of the lines and salients. I still have a lot of work to do and other sites to cover of the “frozen” front, Joe, like for instance the sector between Pont à Mousson and Nancy, Cambrai, and the Oise sector. Although I am extending all the time, I am aware that my website is not complete yet.
I read somewhere that only one out of three bullets were correctly directed at the opponents (which does not mean the hit was also successful). When there was no urgent reason for a kill, a lot of soldiers would shoot above or next of their opponents. Soldiers were not yet trained in the right fighting spirit, like they do nowadays after the Second World War. Artillery grenades were also very unreliable; only one out of three would explode. Of course next to hasty fabrication, and using the wrong type of shells like shrapnel for areas with barbed wire, the muddy soil along the battlefield helped a lot to prevent the detonation of many grenades.
I also sometimes am bothered by the British attitude about the Retreat from Mons and that they would have saved the positive outcome of the later Battle of the Marne. You wrote: “There is not a lot of English-language background from French encounters”. British battlefield guides even end at the east of the front at St. Mihiel sector, and forget easily that there was still over 350 km of front, covered by the French and in 1918 also by the Americans. Many British books forget to mention the French successes at the first day of the battle of the Somme and are often very sloppy about mentioning correctly the fighting German units below the level of a Division and the casualties toll on the German side. Before I will be boring by mentioning more examples, Joe, I will only remark, that I understand and subscribe your critical opinion.
My photo impressions about the Marne Battles, and especially that one about the
Retreat from Mons shows a plague in Néry dedicated to the 2nd Dragoon Guards with the inscription: “The Battle of the Marne was won at Néry”.
Which is to my opinion and with all due respect for the retreating 2nd Dragoon Guards totally bullchips. The success of the first
Battle of the Marne lies, quickly said, in the mistake of coordination of the operations between the 1st and 2nd German Army, and Galliéni’s alertness to turn the tide on the right moment with his Army of Paris and deploying colonials troops like Algerian Zouaves. Of course it is still undeniable that the retreated, heavily beated B.E.F. played also an important role, for instance at La Ferté au Jouarre, in the success of the First Battle of the Marne.
So, these are some reasons why I always try to check more sources than only British sources. But alas the German sources, as you will all know, are not that easily accessible as the French sources are.
And one thing, I detected, is common in all sources, even the Dutch: a kind of subliminal chauvinism or sometimes even taking sides, like the old history books of the twenties did. These were always talking about the “positions of the enemy”, instead of the “positions of the Germans”.
If you need any help with French translations, Joe, please write me a PM.
ale: 