Memorial to the French Moroccan Division at Vimy Ridge. The face commemorates the Division's victory at the Second Battle of Artois, in which the Moroccan Division broke the German front for the first time and took Hill 140, their objective.
Listed on the sides of the memorial are the sectors and battles where the Division fought:
1914
The Ardennes
August 28 — La Fosse a l'Eeau
August 30 — Bertoncourt
September 1 — Alincourt
The Marne
September 6 to 9 — Coizard, Mondement
December 30 — Ferme d'Alger
1915
Belgium
January 28 — Nieuport, la Grande Dune
Artois
May 9 — la Cote 140
June 16 — Ravin de Souchez
Champagne
September 25 — Butte de Souain, Bois Sabot
1916
the Somme
July 4 — Assevillers, Bellov en Santerre, Barleux
1917
Champagne
April 17 — Moronvilliers, Mont sans Nom, Auberive
Verdun
August 20 — Cumieres, Bois des Corbeaux, Forges Regnieville
1918
Lorraine
January 8 — Flirey
the Somme
April 26 — Villers-Bretonneux, Bois de Hangard
the Aisne
May 30 — Vauxbuin, Chazelle
June 12 — Ambleny
July 18 to 20 — Dommiers Chaudum
September 2 to 8 — Terny-Sorny, Moulin de Laffaux, Allemant
November 11 — Victory
November 17 — Entered Chateau-Salins © 2013, John M. Shea

Aux Morts de la Division Marocaine

Sans Peur Sans Pitié

A la mémoire

du Colonel Pein, Ct. de la 1re Brigade. du Colonel Cros, Ct. de la 2me Brigade

des Officiers, S/Officiers et Soldats de la Don Marocaine

Tombé ici glorieusement les 9, 10, & 11 Mai 1915

Le 9 Mai 1915 les Régiments de la Don Morocaine s'elancant a 10 Hres des tranchées de Berthonval et brisant de haute lutte la résistance des Allemands atteignirent d'un bond la cote 140, leur objectif, rompant pour la premiere fois le front ennemi



To the Dead of the Moroccan Division

Fearless Pitiless

To the Memory

of Colonel Pein, Commandant of the 1st Brigade, of Colonel Cros, Commandant of the 2nd Brigade,

of the Officers, Non-commissioned Officers, and Soldiers of the Moroccan Division

Gloriously fell here May 9, 10, & 11 1915

On May 9 1915 the Regiments of the Moroccan Division, darting at 10:00 hours from the Berthonval trenches, and breaking the resistance of the Germans in a hard-fought struggle, reached Hill 140, their object, breaking the enemy's front for the first time.

Other views: Detail, Left Side, Right Side

Select a Calendar for an overview of that year

1914
Black and white postcard with an embossed floral border, and a calendar for 1914. Two girls play at a water trough fashioned from a log, ribbons in their hair, and toy boats floating. On the trough, a poem: "This little card I send, and pray That round about your path each day The light of love may shine alway." E. Hutchinson 806J Copyright. Beagles' Postcards © Beagles' Postcards
1915
Calendar from the French magazine Le Petit Journal with scenes including (clockwise from top left) the capture of a German battle flag by Zouaves and Chasseurs à pied, a French artillery crew manning a 75mm. field gun, a dragoon moving into position, a heavier gun firing, entrenched troops, and marines advancing. The calendar includes Roman Catholic holy days, saints days, fête nationale (Bastille Day), and the time of sunrise and sunset. Illustration by L. Bomblec (?).
1916
Children dressed as Allied soldiers run to bring the New Year, 1916. France carries the 1, the United Kingdom (in a kilt) and Belgium — his national roundel on his hat — the 9, Serbia and Russia the 1 of the decade, and Italy the 6. Japan, bearing a flag, hurries to catch up. A folding calendar card for 1916 by G. Bertrand. Reverse: the calendar for 1916 Inside: With best wishes for a happy Christmas with love from Wallis
1917
1917 Wedgwood Calendar Tile with the United States Navy Yard in Boston on the face, and the 1917 calendar on the reverse.
1918
1918 YMCA folding calendar card of two child French and American soldiers dancing beneath a ball of mistletoe and the words "With much Love", by Ray or R.A.Y.

Sunday, June 6, 1915

"Daybreak. The sun rises, indifferent to the field of horror. Everywhere we see nothing but cadavers and shapeless human remains, pasturage for the rats which were more courageous than the crows, whose fear kept them away. . . .

But what is this? Has Hell opened up under our feet? Are we right at the rim of a furious volcano? The trench is filled with flames, with sparks, with bitter smoke, the air is unbreathable. I hear hissing, crackling, and alas, yes, the cries of pain. Sargeant Vergès has scorched eyes. At my feet two miserable creatures are rolling on the ground, their clothes, their hands, their faces on fire, like human torches. And in the trench everything is on fire — blankets, tent cloths, sandbags. The Germans had just fired some sort of incendiary liquid on us." *

Tuesday, June 6, 1916

"On the 5th and 6th of June [1916], Brusiloff's offensive really began to develop in the most remarkable manner. On his extreme left flank his troops forced the Austrians to retire for three miles from their first lines of trenches near Okna on the former day, and gave General Lechitsky his opportunity in Bukovina. Also on that day and on the next, the Russian's, on Brusiloff's right wing, having crumpled up the enemy's strongly fortified positions around Olyka, marched on rapidly towards Lutsk (Luck), and energetically beating down all opposition threw the Austro-Germans into such a panic that, abandoning their guns, they surrendered in thousands, whole regiments laying down their arms." *

Wednesday, June 6, 1917

"The causes of mutinies appear to be:

1. Too protracted periods in the front line without relief, after the great offensive—for want (in many cases) of reserves to replace them.

2. Leave periods delayed for over four months, contrary to all regulations.

3. The moral effect of the set-back of the 16th April, and the troops' determination not to make further attacks.

4. Disappointment at the rejection of the peace offers of the 12th December, 1916.

5. The veto on passports for Stockholm.

6. The general war-weariness." *

Thursday, June 6, 1918

"In the black recesses of Belleau Wood the Germans had established nest after nest of machine guns. There in the jungle of matted underbrush, of vines, of heavy foliage, they had placed themselves in positions they believed impregnable. And this meant that unless they could be routed, unless they could be thrown back, the breaking of the attack of June 2nd would mean nothing. There would come another drive and another. The battle of Château-Thierry was therefore not won and could not be won until Belleau Wood had been cleared of the enemy.

It was June 6th that the attack of the American troops began against that wood and its adjacent surroundings, with the wood itself and the towns of Torcy and Bouresches forming the objectives. At 5 o'clock the attack came, and there began the tremendous sacrifices which the Marines Corps gladly suffered that the German fighters might be thrown back." *

* Quotation contexts and sources

At the End

During the four and half years of the Great War from the summer of 1914 to November 11, 1918, over eight million combatants and six million civilians died. In battle, they were killed by new and increasingly powerful weapons, 70% by artillery fire, and in higher percentages than in Europe's wars of the previous century. Civilians died from starvation, from being shelled and bombed, and from genocidal operations against ethnic minorities.

In the war and its aftermath, the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Turkey were destroyed, and new nations were born and reborn.

New technologies were invented and young ones advanced rapidly - the airplane, poison gas, the machine gun, the tank, flame-throwers, submarines. Industrial production of the technologies, of shells, of bullets, of barbed wire, grew to unprecedented levels.

Societies changed. Women entered the wage labor market to free men up for combat and to meet the production demands of the war. Passports, identity cards, and increased border controls became increasingly common.

When the war itself ended, related wars continued: in Russia, Civil War between the new Bolshevik government and its enemies, both foreign and domestic; in Turkey, war by Greece to seize islands in the Aegean Sea and parts of the mainland of Turkey itself; in Ireland, war for independence from Great Britain.

At the Beginning

On Sunday, June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a province of Austria-Hungary, a team of seven conspirators with grenades, pistols and cyanide capsules/tablets, joined the crowds that had turned out to see Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife Sophie von Hohenberg. A failed assassination attempt - a grenade that slightly wounded spectators and two in the royal couple's entourage - altered some plans and led to other events. A planned visit to City Hall went ahead, but a decision to visit the victims in hospital necessitating a changed route, a failure to inform the drivers of the change, the lead driver's attempt to back to correct the mistake - put the Archduke's stopped car in front of the most determined of the assassins, the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. He stepped forward, averted his eyes, and fired twice, shooting the Archduke through the throat and his wife through the groin. The couple was dead within an hour. The gun, the bombs, the cyanide Princip took, and some of the conspirators would be traced to Serbia.

The Archduke was not popular in Austria-Hungary, and the reaction to his death was muted. But Austria-Hungary was a multi-ethnic, polyglot nation with populations that wanted to leave the empire. Princip had acted to advance his vision of a union of South Slavs that included Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In Vienna, the capital, government officials feared the rise of Serbia, which had been victorious and doubled its size in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.

Initial concerns in other European capitals of an Austro-Hungarian response to the assassination lessened as July passed. In Petersburg, the Russian capital, government officials felt they must support Serbia if Austria-Hungary acted. The French and Russian governments communicated their support of their alliance and mutual commitment to aid the other in the event of war. The government of Great Britain, the third member of the Triple Entente with Russia and France, heard little that alarmed it. In Berlin, capital of the German Empire, which was allied with Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance, there was support for a quick and limited military action by Austria-Hungary.

Fears

Defeated by Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and humiliated in 1908 when it failed its Balkan ally Serbia, and did not prevent Austria-Hungary's incorporation of Slavic Bosnia-Herzegovina, many government officials in Russia felt the country must act in the next crisis when it inevitably arose. Many in the French government wanted to restore the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine it had lost to Germany in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, but feared a Germany that had a population half again as large as that of France, and worked to strengthen its ties with Russia, in part by financing its ally's rapid recovery from the 1905 war. Having seen the creation and rise of the Balkan states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece, that had all wrested land and nationhood from the Ottoman Empire, and had come close to eliminating Turkey in Europe, Austria-Hungary feared losing its peoples and territories to these nations and to nations that did not yet exist. Great Britain, with the most powerful fleet in the world, and rule over one quarter of the world's population, but with a small army that was not structured for a European land war, was troubled by Germany's expansion and strengthening of its fleet. Many in the German military thought that war with Russia was inevitable, and that, with the recovery of Russia from the war and revolution of 1915, it should come sooner rather than when Russia had become even stronger. The military also feared a two-front war, facing France to the west, and Russia to the east. The military plan to address this, the Schlieffen Plan, aimed for a rapid defeat of France so that troops could be transported by rail across Germany to face the slowly-mobilizing Russians.

Austria-Hungary's Demands, Mobilization, and War

When Austria-Hungary's response to evidence that Serbia had played a role in the assassination came, there was little time for governments to react. Austria-Hungary submitted demands of Serbia that included unconditional acceptance within 24 hours. As European governments learned of the response, and hurried to react, Serbia accepted all by one of Austria-Hungary's demands, that which most impinged upon its sovereignty. The ambassador receiving the response left immediately for Vienna. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and on the next day bombarded Belgrade, its capital.

Russia mobilized its army in support of Serbia, but with a mobilization plan that activated troops facing not only Austria-Hungary but also Germany. On August 1, Germany declared war on Russia and invaded Luxemburg to begin its assault on France. France ordered general mobilization effective August 2, and began executing its plan to attack Germany along their border, through Alsace and Lorraine. On August 3, Germany declared war on France, and requested passage of its troops through Belgium to attack France along its northern border. Belgium, defending the neutrality that France, Germany, and Great Britain had pledged to support, refused. On August 4, Germany invaded Belgium. In Great Britain, where there was significant opposition to the war, the invasion of Belgium shifted the opinion of the public and the government. Britain declared war on Germany.

Across Europe, millions of men were in motion, on trains, horseback, and on foot. France and Britain were bringing troops and laborers from its colonies and the British Commonwealth, France from Algeria, Senegal, and Dahomey, Britain from Egypt and India. Generals had not assembled armies this large before, and had not put them into motion, nor led them into battle. Most generals, most soldiers, most civilians thought the war would end in months, that their their army would be in Berlin, in Paris, in Petersburg, by Christmas, before 1915. Only a few saw this war would be different, and would not end for years.