X-Nico

17 unusual facts about French Army


Battle of Méribel

The Battle of Méribel took place at Méribel, above Sallanches, Haute-Savoie, France, on 13 September 1793, when the forces of the Duchy of Savoy were defeated by the French Army.

Dranem

During World War I, Dranem continued his benevolence by performing for the troops at music halls and for wounded soldiers at military hospitals.

Émile Fouchard

He asked to be allowed to rejoin the French Army and became one of the leading members in the new Union populaire française.

État-major de force n° 1

The état-major de force n°1 (Force's staff n°1 in English) is a French Army's task force's military staff of level 2 (division).

Grandes Unités Françaises

Grandes Unités Françaises (full title: Guerre 1939-1945 Les Grandes Unités Françaises) is a monumental six-volume (the fifth volume is actually composed of four separate works) World War II order of battle and military unit history reference compiled by the historical service of the chief of staff of the French Army.

Gustavo Cochet

He enlisted in the French Army for a year in 1921, after which his first son was born.

Ishimoto Shinroku

Afterwards, from 1879–1882, he was sent as a military attaché to France, where he was able to complete his education in engineering and artillery at the French Army's École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr.

J. Roderick MacArthur

During World War II he joined the American Field Service, serving with the French Army in the ambulance corp., and he participated in the campaign that liberated France.

John Drummond, 4th Duke of Perth

He was educated at Douai, showed decided military tastes, and passed through several grades in the French Army.

John Shrimpton

In 1704, when the Garrison at Gibraltar came under threat from the French, a force of 2,500 troops under Shrimpton's command was dispatched to re-inforce the Garrison.

Juchitán de Zaragoza

On September 5, 1866, during the French invasion of Mexico, the indigenous people of Juchitán, Unión Hidalgo, San Blas Atempa, and Ixtaltepec defeated the Royal French Army stationed in Tehuantepec.

Lohr Fardier

This light 4x4 vehicle was developed by SOFRAMAG (later Lohr Industrie) for the French Army airborne troops, which used 300 of these.

Napoléon Charles Bonaparte, 5th Prince of Canino

Prince Napoléon Charles served in the French Army and saw action during the French intervention in Mexico and the Franco-Prussian War the latter of which resulted in the downfall of the Second French Empire of his cousin Emperor Napoléon III.

Nicolas Puzos

Puzos first started in medical studies in 1702 when his father sent him as an aide-major with the French army so he could learn surgery.

Sikasso

The city withstood a long siege from 1887 to 1888 but fell to the French in 1898; rather than surrender to the colonial army, Tieba's brother Babemba Traoré, who had succeeded him as king, committed suicide, honoring the famous Bamanankan saying "Saya ka fisa ni maloya ye" (literally: death is preferable to shame).

Subhi al-Khadra

During the Battle of Maysalun with the French Army on July 23, 1920, al-Khadra served as a combatant.

Virginia Defense Force

The Virginia regiment (now the VDF) can also claim participation alongside such storied regiments as the 44th and 48th Infantry regiments (now Royal Anglian Regiment), and the Queen's Royal Hussars of the British Army, and the 5th Regiment de Hussards, 2d Regiment de Dragons, and 12th Cuirassier Regiment (France) of the French Army; due to the campaigns of the 18th century.


11e régiment parachutiste de choc

The 11e régiment parachutiste de choc ("11th shock parachute regiment), often called 11e choc, was a parachute elite regiment of the French Army. It used to serve as the armed branch of the SDECE. Its insignia, designed by lieutenant Dupas, features Bagheera in the moonlight and a golden wing. The motto is Qui ose gagne ("who dares wins"), in continuation of the tradition of the British Special Air Service.

1st Laotian Parachute Battalion

The 1st Laotian Parachute Battalion (Fr: 1er bataillon de parachutistes laotiens) was a French paratroop battalion formed in Vientiane, French Indochina in 1951.

Ali Aref Bourhan

Through the latter, he was introduced to Mahmoud Harbi, the Vice President of the Government Council of French Somaliland and a former comrade of the Sultan in the French army during the World War II campaign.

André-Gaston Prételat

André-Gaston Prételat (14 November 1874, Wassy, Champagne, France – 6 December 1969, Paris, France) was a general in the French Army.

André-Joseph Lafitte-Clavé

André-Joseph Lafitte-Clavé, also André-Joseph de Lafitte (1740, Clavé, near Moncrabeau–1794, Perpignan) was a French Army engineering officer.

Battle of al-Musayfirah

The battle of al-Musayfirah was one of the major military engagements between Druze rebels and the French Army on 17 September 1925, during the early stage of the Great Syrian Revolt, which continued on until 1927.

Battle of Vrbanja bridge

The Battle of Vrbanja bridge was an armed confrontation which occurred on 27 May 1995 between United Nations (UN) peacekeepers from the French Army and elements of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS), after the VRS took over French-manned United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) observation posts on both ends of the Vrbanja bridge crossing of the Miljacka river in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War.

Bermuda Volunteer/Territorial Army Units 1895–1965

What was painfully clear to the citizenry of those Isles, when (following an assassination attempt on Emperor Napoleon III)there was a threat of invasion by the much larger French Army in 1858, was that Britain's military defences had already been stretched invitingly thin, even without sending a third of the Army to another Crimea.

Breguet Bre.4

At this point, André and Édouard Michelin approached the French government with an offer to sponsor the construction of 100 bombers for the French Army, and were awarded a licence to the Breguet design.

École Militaire

It succeeds the former Collège interarmées de Défense (Joint Service Defense College), itself the result of the merger of the four Écoles supérieures de guerre of the French Army, French Navy, French Air Force and National Gendarmerie, and the Cours supérieur interarmées since 1 September 1993.

Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild

In 1939, Édouard's son Guy joined the French Army and daughter Jacqueline escaped with her husband Gregor Piatigorsky to the United States.

French name

Male officers of the Army, the Gendarmerie and the Air Force are addressed as Mon by inferior ranks and deferential civilians.

German occupation of Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovak units and formations with overwhelming majority of Czechs (cca 82–85%) served with the Polish Army (Czechoslovak Legion), the French Army, the Royal Air Force, the British Army (the 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade), and the Red Army (I Corps).

Giuseppe Garibaldi Trophy

One of the fathers of unified Italy, he was also a general in the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

Grand admiral

In Bourbon Restoration France, the rank was an honorific one equivalent to that of marshal in the French Army.

Intimate Enemies

Lieutenant Terrien (Benoît Magimel), an inexperienced and naïve junior French Army officer, has volunteered for active service, rather than a safe staff post in Algiers.

Józef Hauke-Bosak

He died in the post of commander of brigade in the French army at Vosges, during the Franco-Prussian war in 1871.

La Plata Astronomical Observatory

The first director of the new institution was Francisco Beuf (lieutenant of the French Army and director of the Naval Observatory of Toulon).

Marc-Edmond Dominé

Marc-Edmond Dominé (21 June 1848 - 28 June 1921) was a French Army officer who served in the Franco-Prussian War, the Sino-French War, and in the various territories of the French colonial empire.

Maurice Audin

During the Battle of Algiers, Maurice Audin was arrested at his home on 11 June 1957, by Captain Devis, Lieutenant Philippe Erulin and several soldiers of the First Parachute Regiment of the French Army.

Military reserve forces of France

These reservists serve in many branches of the forces - the air force, army, gendarmerie, navy, health service, supply corps, and DGA.

Nicolas Lebel

Released from captivity after the Treaty of Frankfurt, he found a command in Tours, during the years of intense reorganization of the French Army which followed the 1871 defeat.

Puttee

The puttee was subsequently widely adopted by a number of armies including those of the British Commonwealth, the Chinese National Revolutionary Army, the Dutch Army, the French Army, the Imperial Japanese Army, the Italian Army, and the United States Army.

S-mine

French soldiers encountered the S-mine during minor probes into the coal-rich German Saar region in September 7–11, 1939, during the Saar Offensive.

Shapour Bakhtiar

Later he volunteered for the French army and fought in the Orleans battalion and in the French Resistance against the occupation by Germany when living in Saint-Nicolas-du-Pélem.