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Between Mutiny and Obedience

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Professor Smith illustrates post-structural theory in very down to earth terms. He summarizes accurately that military studies have traditionally taken the obedience of soldiers to their commanders as a given, with incidences of mutiny treated as aberrations -- "friction", in the Clausewitzian sense. He then argues that the relationship between soldiers and commanders must be examined as an ongoing power struggle. Further, he points up a wide range of responses for displaying resistance to the command structure between the extremes of complete obedience and outright mutiny. Through these more subtle forms of resistance, Smith argues, the soldiers of the WWI French Army constantly renegotiated the terms on which they were obliged to fight.
Taking the French Army's Fifth Infantry Division [5e DI] as a case study, Smith begins with an examination of the Army in the peacetime years immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. He shows how the political aftershocks of the Dreyfus Affair, the poor training offered French conscripts and reservists, and the overall decline of the French population, led to the creation of an Army which was highly democratic but ill-prepared to fight a modern war. These citizen-soldiers or "poilus" [roughly translatable as "hairy ones"], nevertheless, were aware enough of their own capabilities and limitations to recognize where their efforts were worthwhile. Thus, the poilus gradually drew to themselves the initiative to cut short a clearly suicidal attack by retreating, or even refusing to leave the trenches. Non-coms and junior officers were then faced with the choices of forcing their troops forward at gunpoint, which would likely invite immediate and violent mutiny, or with endorsing the decision to withdraw and issuing orders to that effect. In so doing, the non-coms and junior officers kept the respect of their men and retained coherence for the Army. Smith argues that this does not indicate cowardice or pacifism on behalf of the men, but rather a keen recognition of the military utility (or futility) of any given attack. The soldiers were still willing to fight and risk their lives, but not when the risk was out of all proportion to the likely gains.

As the war of movement congealed into a war of position, Smith details, the French High Command gradually took account of the limits of the poilu by moving from a strategy of "percée" [breakthrough] to one of "grignotage" [attrition, literally "nibbling"],and thence to one of "tenir" [holding on]. This slow movement from the concept of offense at all costs to the concept of defense at all costs became an admission that France could not hope to win the war, and that its best hope was to avoid losing. This admission, coupled with an erratic leave policy, poor food, and the unrelenting terror of trench warfare, ate away at the morale of the troops. The collapse came when, after yet another suicidal offensive ordered by the High Command, the 5e DI (which had spent several months in training for an anticipated percée) was ordered back into the trenches and refused to go.

Smith discusses the historiography of the mutinies, in which a debate still rages over whether the mutinies were primarily military or political in character. Smith himself argues that they must be treated as political, not because they were influenced by any political movement on the homefront, but because of the inherently political nature of the way the citizen-soldiers interacted with the officers in an attempt to renegotiate the parameters of authority. The soldiers continued largely to respect the authority of their immediate officers; what they demanded in return was that their own rights as citizens risking their lives for France be respected (e.g., in the form of regular leaves). As in the case of cut-short offensives, the junior officers found themselves forced to play intermediaries between the soldiers and the High Command. Smith notes that they acquitted themselves admirably, negotiating the men into acquiescence rather than trying to quell the mutinies by force. This light hand, he argues, spared France a revolution but earned the junior officers nothing but ingratitude and punishment from their superiors. Disappointed as the High Command was with having to negotiate any kind of arrangement with the troops, it did keep the courts martial and executions for participation in the rebellions to a bare minimum. More importantly, it addressed the grievances by combining a strategy of defense in depth with periodic offensive raiding, as well as authorizing more regular leaves. Such a policy, Smith concludes, did not enable France to win the war, but it enabled the poilus to hold on (physically and morally), long enough for the arrival of the Americans to tip the war of movement (restored by the German Offensive of 1918) irrevocably in the Allies' favor.

What makes Smith's work such a masterpiece is that he is able to apply an exceedingly complex methodology to a highly controversial subject and make both comprehensible to the lay reader. The key to his success is that he takes great pains to keep the level of strictly methodological jargon to an absolute minimum. Where he does bring in unfamiliar terminology, usually French idioms, he defines them immediately and in great detail. His one failure on this account is a frequent reference to the "foucauldian" despair experienced by French soldiers trapped in the cycle of unremitting violence of trench warfare. This assumes that his readers have previously read and digested the works of Michel Foucault, no small assumption. Even here, though, his context indicates his meaning with some clarity. Foucauldian despair, in Smith's usage, appears to indicate a sense of hopelessness and powerlessness born of imprisonment, in reference to Foucault's "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison." The trenches form a prison for Smith's poilus, in that they are not allowed to retreat to a more tenable position, nor can they move forward (due to the withering fire of the German guns), nor are they even allowed to remain in place for long (in some cases, driven forward by their own artillery provoking a German attack.

Smith's argument about the nature of power in an armed force is perhaps unique in military historiography. It is neither top-down nor bottom-up model, but rather a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of interaction. He spends much time in his work explaining how the poilu's behavior was a product of his citizen-soldier construct within the definitions of the French Third Republic. In his conclusion, Smith briefly examines contemporary models (based on the available literature of soldiers' social history) of the British and German subject-soldiers and the Russian subject -soldier cum Soviet citizen-soldier. His examinations of all three are cursory but intriguing enough to invite further work on the subject for these other examples. On the notion of the citizen-soldier as a political creature, Smith's work would also serve as a valuable model for a study of the American soldier not only during World War I, but also during the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. For the more adventurous and linguistically talented historian, such a study would prove highly valuable in examining the citizen-soldiery of the ancient Greek poleis, Republican Rome, medieval Switzerland, and modern Israel -- not to mention Revolutionary and Fourth Republic France.

One of the most remarkable aspects to realize after the French Revolution resides in a sudden transformation (evolution or involution?)

In what concerns the scope of its original meaning. Hero in its conceptual relevance disappears to be substituted by patriot; (due by definition the hero is a disarrayed human being without a defined nationality),honor instead noblesse, romanticism instead spirituality, the development of the Opera for the enjoyment of great audiences, the raise of the nationalism as identity carnet of many people who followed through this word their bliss, and the utopist gathering of two irreconcilable terms such as liberty and equality. If you pretend to impose one of them you necessarily must suppress the other. Thence the ideological basis and the approach about the significance of territorial concept changed totally, influencing visibly some aspects around the chain of obedience.

Leonard smith is a very young historian, but that quality is far to be an obstacle for him due his huge talent. He really worked hard in order to make a revealing essay around the well known case of the French Fifth Infantry. The astonishing and erudite way he dissected the combat experience into its components as well as the graphic support material, plus the nature of mutinies along its different mutations.

Absolutely indispensable as information source.