| 1re Armée | |
|---|---|
Insign of First French Army during World War II |
|
| Active | 1914-1918 1939-1940 1944-1945 |
| Country | France |
| Allegiance | French Army Free French Forces |
| Type | Field Army |
| Motto | Rhin et Danube (Eng: Rhine and Danube) |
The First Army (French: Ire Armée) was a field army of France that fought during World War I and World War II. It was also active during the Cold War.
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On mobilization in August 1914 the First Army was put in the charge of General Auguste Dubail and comprised the 7th, 8th, 13th, 14th, and 21st Army Corps, two divisions of cavalry and one reserve infantry division. It was massed between Belfort and the general line Mirecourt-Lunéville with headquarters at Epinal. First Army then took part, along with the French Second Army, in the Invasion of Lorraine. The First Army intended to take the strongly defended town of Sarrebourg. German Crown Prince Rupprecht, commander of the German Sixth Army, was tasked with stopping the French invasion. The French attack was repulsed by Rupprecht and his stratagem of pretending to retreat and then strongly attacking back. On August 20, Rupprecht launched a major counter-offensive, driving the French armies out. Dubail was replaced in 1915. A frantic 1916 saw four different commanders command the First Army; an even more frantic 1917 saw five different commanders at the helm (including François Anthoine during the Battle of Passchendaele).
At the time of the Battle of Passchendaele, the First Army was composed of two corps - the I Corps (composed of 4 divisions) and the XXXVI Corps (composed of 2 divisions).
During World War II the Army formed part of the forces ranged against the German Army during the Battle of France. It included the 4th Army Corps. When the Wehrmacht invaded France and the Low Countries in 1940, the First Army was one of the many armies including the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that advanced north to stop the German armies.
On May 21, 1940, the First Army was one of the armies trapped in a vast pocket with their backs to the sea that would eventually result in the Dunkirk evacuations. As the Germans moved in, what remained of the once-formidable First Army was hopelessly surrounded at Lille but counterattacked and resisted fiercely in a delaying action aiming to buy time for the beleaguered Anglo-French defenders of Dunkirk. General Jean-Baptiste Molinié's 40,000 remaining men engaged 7 German divisions (roughly 110,000 men and 800 tanks), capturing General Friedrich Kühn of the German 33rd Infantry Division in the fighting and halting the German capture of Dunkirk for three days.[1] It is estimated that the First Army's last battle allowed the evacuation of an additional 100,000 men from Dunkirk.[1]
The First Army formally ceased to exist on May 29, though a portion escaped with the British troops.
French Army B under the command of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny landed in southern France after Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of the area. On September 25, 1944 French Army B was redesignated French First Army. Liberating Marseille, Toulon, and Lyon, it later formed the right flank of the Allied Southern Group of Armies at the southern end of the Allied front line, adjacent to Switzerland. It commanded two corps, the French I and II Corps. The French First Army liberated the southern area of the Vosges Mountains, including Belfort. Its operations in the area of Burnhaupt destroyed the German IV Luftwaffe Korps in November 1944. In February 1945, with the assistance of the U.S. XXI Corps, the First Army collapsed the Colmar Pocket and cleared the west bank of the Rhine River of Germans in the area south of Strasbourg. In March 1945, the First Army fought through the Siegfried Line fortifications in the Bienwald Forest near Lauterbourg. Subsequently, the First Army crossed the Rhine near Speyer and captured Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. Operations by the First Army in April 1945 encircled and captured the German XVIII S.S. Korps in the Black Forest and cleared southwestern Germany. At the end of the war, the motto of the French First Army was Rhin et Danube, referring to the two great German rivers that it had reached and crossed during its combat operations.
The First Army was mainly composed of North African units (Maghrebis and French Pied-noirs soldiers) from the Army of Africa which already played a major role in the liberation of Corsica (September - October 1943) and the Italian Campaign (1943–44) in which around 130,000 of their force's men engaged. During the French and German campaigns of 1944-45 these units formed the core of the First Army which comprised about 260,000 men (including 50% Maghrebis), and eventually more than 320,000 men during its offensive advances in Germany and in Austria,[2]
During the Cold War the First Army was again active, controlling the I Corps, the II Corps, and the III Corps as well as Army troops, including Pluton artillery, during the 1980s.
After deactivation as the war HQ for the Central Army Group, Ouvrage Rochonvillers was designated as the First Army's war headquarters in the 1980s.