Chapter 366: Desertion
France had passed emergency defense measures to protect the nation’s borders in the event of a major offensive, which they knew was only a matter of time before it began. The most heinous of which was full scale conscription.
Every man of proper age capable of being sent into the army to defend the borders was drafted to do so. Meanwhile, "volunteer" battalions consisting of teenage boys old enough to bear arms but not old enough to join the army were gathered, along with the elderly still youthful enough to do the same.
The pejorative term "voluntold" would be a more accurate description of these militias. Either way, France was doing its best to organize, train, and supply everyone who could possibly be mustered in its defense to do so.
In theory, this could be an effective deterrent, albeit a last ditch effort to preserve the republic. But the reality was far more grim. By now, the 8th Army was the spearhead of the German Army, and the 2nd Army had undergone re-organization into a similar combined arms unit. These two forces would storm past any defenses France could muster with damn near impunity, and mow over human wave tactics with ease.
At the same time, these conscripts would neither have the training, experience or sheer strength of will to hold the line under such a brutal onslaught. Defeat was certain there was no doubt of this. How long could such tactics could stall this reality? And to what greater degree of casualties would they incur? Nobody knew.
But to do so would surely cause the death of the Republic in the end. As the families of those who had been sent to their deaths for no just reason would demand the blood of the elected officials and unelected bureaucrats who had dispatched them to such a gruesome end.
However, the reality was that either way the Third French Republic was doomed to fall in this war. And there was nothing at this point they could do to stop it. Even if surrender was an option, the damage done to the people’s trust in their current form of government was too much to be redeemed.
So rather than accept this reality, the French leadership tried to put all their hopes in a mass mobilization, one which would only make their end that much more miserable when the time for the gallows came to find them.
Currently, there were young French boys dressed in civilian clothing being taught how to handle rifles within the borders of the city of Paris. The youngest of them were perhaps 12, while the oldest of them was around 16.
Considering their circumstances, they were equipped with much older rifles from preceding generations. Which was less than ideal for their smaller statures as the calibers used in those weapons were more ideal for hunting the largest game in Europe and North America rather than humans.
*bang* a line of shots were fired in succession, not unison, while the boys laid on the ground in a prone position, not even wearing steel helmets as they tried their best to hit the targets spread out a few dozen meters in front of them.
Unlike in places like the United States where it was common for young boys to learn marksmanship skills in pursuit of hunting, especially in more rural areas of the country. Such traditions were far less common in European countries, especially the likes of France.