Émile Driant
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Émile Augustin Cyprien Driant (September 11, 1855 - February 22, 1916) was a French Army Officer and first high ranking casualty of the Battle of Verdun during the First World War. He showed great potential but ruined this during the 1880s by first marrying the daughter of General Boulanger, a figure who had been cast as a new Napoleon in the Paris press, and then by criticising the holding of government files in the French Third Republic on openly Catholic Army Officers. He retired as a captain a few years later and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a representative for Nancy. He was a vocal supporter of a fortified frontier against Germany. Writing under the pen name of 'Danrit' he favoured co-operation with the British against any form of German threat.
However he was recalled to the Army as a captain in 1914 upon the outbreak of World War I. He was promoted to Colonel and placed in command of two infantry battalions, the 56th and 59th chasseurs reservists battalions. In December 1915 he criticised Marshal Joffre for removing artillery guns and infantry from fortresses around Toul and Verdun in order to strengthen other areas of the now deadlocked Western Front. Despite the support of the Minister for War Joseph Gallieni no troops or guns were returned to the fortresses. What were supposed to be formidable defences were reduced to a handful of guns and soldiers to man them. Driant claimed that the area was threatened, Joffre denied this.
Driant was proved right on the 21st February 1916 when the German Army launched a massive attack on French forces in the Verdun sector in an effort to destroy the French Army. As the French defences crumbled all around them Driant's two battalions mounted a desperate defence of a feature called the Bois des Caures. Under his command the battalions managed to resist the German onslaught until the afternoon of the next day helping to buy the time that the French High Command needed to rush troops to the threatened sector. When his battalions were outflanked and the position was untenable Driant ordered the survivors to withdraw. During this withdrawal he was killed. He was regarded as a hero among the French at the time, and he and his men are still commemorated at a ceremony on the 21st February every year.
He was initially buried by the Germans, who also wrote to his widow (via Switzerland) to assure her that he had been accorded full military honours. He was re-interred by the French where he fell in the Bois des Caures. Nearby, there is a memorial to him and his men.
[edit] References
- The Oxford Companion to Military History, ed. Richard Holmes, 2001, ISBN 0198606966.
- Paths of Glory, The French Army 1914-18, Anthony Clayton, 2003, ISBN 0304366528.
