French soldier posing for a photograph with a skull in a trench following an artillery bombardment, ca. 1916.

Photograph acquired from @combatpix and @the_amateur_historian.

Today 109 years ago, on December 20, 1914 the First Battle of Champagne began on the Western Front between the French and German armies.

Following the First Battle of Ypres in November 1914, the Western Front had stabilised into a trench stalemate. The French and British enjoyed a numerical superiority in troops against the Germans and wanted to exploit it as much as possible.

The French planned a large-scale offensive on the recently formed Noyon Salient in Champagne and Artois, with smaller supporting attacks elsewhere. The British would also attack in Wytschaete and Givenchy in Flanders.

Although the French lacked sufficient amounts of artillery, equipment and ammunition, reports that 6 German Army Corps were being transferred to the Eastern Front forced the French to attack to help their Russian allies.

On December 17, 1914, the French forces attacked in Artois, but due to a lack of artillery they achieved little success. The British also attacked in Flanders.

On December 20, 1914, the main assault was launched in Champagne along a 19-km-long front. The French achieved small gains, but en masse frontal assaults in freezing snow against fortified German positions with barbed wire and machine-guns resulted in severe French casualties.

On December 30, the Germans launched a counter-offensive and managed to recapture much of the ground lost to the French. The battle turned into bloody counter-attack after counter-attack to recover any lost ground to no greater strategic purpose, with the small areas of French soil uselessly going back and forth between the two armies.

The French suspended their offensive on January 13, 1915, and by March 17 the front had finally quietened down.

In the First Battle of Champagne the French had advanced an average 3 km along the front and had suffered at least 93,000 casualties, but some sources claim they suffered up to 240,000. The French had failed to eliminate the Noyon Salient, or gain any form of strategic advantage.

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