I reconstructed my great-great-grandfather’s journey through WWI…
Hi everyone,
I’ve been doing genealogical research on my family for some time, and I’d like to share what I’ve managed to reconstruct about my great-great-grandfather’s experience during the First World War.
By cross-referencing his draft records, military service booklet, and the Journaux des Marches et Opérations (JMO), the French regimental war diaries, I’ve been able to piece together his movements and experiences, sometimes almost day by day. There are still some gaps and a few things I’m not entirely certain about, but I thought his story was worth sharing, both because of what he went through and because of how much these documents can reveal about the experience of an ordinary French infantryman.
(I have also included his military service number in the images, as well as the relevant JMO pages where he is mentioned in the wounded)
His name was Clément Célestin Joseph Rolland, born on August 13, 1893, in Audincthun, a small village in the Pas-de-Calais, northern France.
Before the war, he worked as a farmhand.
He was called up for compulsory military service on November 27, 1913, at the age of 20, and assigned to the 110th Infantry Regiment (110e RI), based in Dunkirk. He could hardly have known it at the time, but within months he would find himself at the beginning of one of the most devastating conflicts in history.
On August 7, 1914, just three days after France declared war on Germany, the 110th Infantry Regiment left its garrison in northern France. Clément was serving in the 9th Company, 3rd Battalion, and boarded a train with his comrades bound for the Hirson area, in the Aisne.
The following days were spent marching toward Belgium in oppressive heat, carrying a pack that could weigh nearly 30 kilograms. On August 13, his battalion crossed the Belgian border at the head of the brigade.
The regiment was soon involved in the opening stages of the Battle of Charleroi and the fighting around Dinant.
Between August 15 and 22, Clément and his company held positions along the Meuse around Houx, Anhée, and Haut-le-Wastia. They dug makeshift defensive positions, stood guard at outposts, and carried out dangerous night patrols on the right bank of the river to gather information about the German advance.
On August 17, his company witnessed the regiment’s first deadly skirmish, without directly taking part in the fighting. A few days later, however, the situation escalated, and the regiment was ordered to counterattack against German forces that had crossed to the left bank of the Meuse.
It was during these operations that Clément fought in a sector where the colonel commanding the neighboring brigade was Philippe Pétain, who was still largely unknown to the French public at that point.
Then came what would become known as the Great Retreat.
For nearly two weeks, the French armies withdrew toward the south, constantly harassed by German forces. Clément’s 3rd Battalion was detached to cover the army’s right flank alongside cavalry units, guarding bridges and carrying out rearguard duties.
On August 30, the battalion attacked the village of Hantion without artillery preparation. The attack took place in fog, and the French troops soon came under fire from German machine guns concealed in the village.
The battalion commander was killed, as was the last remaining officer of Clément’s company. In a matter of minutes, the battalion lost 172 men.
Somehow, Clément survived.
I have no idea how. His unit had lost most of its officers, and the situation had apparently descended into complete chaos.
In early September, the retreat finally came to an end.
On September 6, the First Battle of the Marne began. On September 9, in one of those rare instances where the JMO gives us enough detail to connect Clément directly to a specific operation, his 9th Company occupied the strategic ridge between Marlière and Janvillers before advancing toward the Molinots hunting lodge under heavy artillery fire.
The French counteroffensive eventually forced the German armies back toward the Aisne.
There, the front stabilized. The war of movement was giving way to trench warfare.
The 110th Infantry Regiment settled into positions around the Miette stream and the Choléra Farm, near Berry-au-Bac, where Clément would spend much of 1915.
In 1915, Clément took part in the fighting in Champagne, in the sector of the Brown and White trenches. The regiment made enough progress there that a captured German position was later known as the « Fortin du 110e », named in recognition of the regiment’s actions.
He was then sent to the Les Éparges sector, one of the most notorious areas of mine warfare on the Western Front.
The fighting there was brutal. Mud, artillery fire, mines and close-quarters combat became part of everyday life. French and German infantry repeatedly fought for small pieces of ground, sometimes at bayonet range.
In February 1916, the Battle of Verdun began.
Clément’s regiment was urgently sent by truck toward the Douaumont sector, one of the most heavily contested areas of the battlefield. The men were thrown into positions facing the village, under almost continuous heavy artillery fire.
On March 5, 1916, Clément was wounded in his right hand by shrapnel. He was evacuated and treated, and eventually returned to active service on May 8. That same month, he was transferred to the 153rd Infantry Regiment (153e RI), joining the 2nd Company of the 1st Battalion.
He then fought on the Somme during the summer and autumn of 1916, including around Maricourt and the Favière Wood, followed by the fierce fighting around Maurepas and Malzhorn.
At Sailly-Saillisel, near the end of the battle, the cold became as dangerous as the enemy. On November 29, 1916, in freezing weather and on ground reduced to a quagmire, Clément suffered severe frostbite in both feet.
He was evacuated and eventually reached an auxiliary hospital in Le Touquet in late January 1917, almost two months after being wounded.
After recovering, Clément returned to the front.
In 1917, he took part in war offensive, fighting around the Madagascar Plateau and the Brouzé Wood.
Later, his regiment was sent to quieter sectors in Lorraine, around Nomeny and Pont-à-Mousson.
In December 1917, the 153rd Infantry Regiment earned the right to wear the fourragère, a collective decoration awarded to units that had distinguished themselves repeatedly in combat.
The decoration can actually be seen in Clément’s photograph.
1918 would be, by far, the most difficult year of Clément’s war. In January, he returned to the Verdun battlefield, this time in the Mormont sector. Once again, the men endured mud, artillery bombardment and chemical warfare.
On March 12, 1918, Clément was gassed.
He was evacuated first by field ambulance and then transported by hospital train to Roanne, in the Loire. But his recovery did not keep him away from the front for long.
By late April, he was back with his regiment, which had been rushed to Flanders to help stop the German offensive around Mount Kemmel. The fighting there was extremely intense, including violent close-quarters combat at night.
Then came another German breakthrough.
On May 28, 1918, German forces broke through the front on the Chemin des Dames and advanced toward the Aisne. Clément was gassed for a second time, this time near the village of Chassemy. The regiment’s JMO gives a remarkable account of the chaos that day. A neighboring unit collapsed, German troops infiltrated the village, and the regiment’s headquarters itself was almost surrounded. The headquarters eventually had to escape across a makeshift footbridge after French engineers destroyed the main bridge earlier than intended. Clément was recorded as wounded rather than missing and was evacuated to a hospital in Mâcon.
It seems likely that he was evacuated shortly before the situation became completely untenable, although the surviving records don’t allow me to know exactly what happened to him during those hours.
The summer of 1918 brought the Allied counteroffensive. Clément’s regiment was among the French units entering the recently reconquered Château-Thierry, and later took part in the victorious Saint-Mihiel offensive in September.
On September 15, 1918, in the Jonville/Ligneul sector, Clément was hit by several bullets.
He was transferred to the military hospital in Toul and then sent to Briançon, in the Hautes-Alpes, to recover. That is where he would spend the final weeks of the war.
After the war, Clément married in February 1921 and had five children. Unfortunately, the family’s story did not remain peaceful for long. One of his sons, a coal miner, was deported during the Second World War to the Herzogenbosch concentration camp after taking part in a strike. Clément himself became a quarryman after the war. He died in March 1937, at only 43 years old, following a workplace accident. He therefore never lived to see what would happen to his son, nor the outcome of the Second World War. In 1932, five years before his death, he was awarded the Médaille Militaire, long after his service in the trenches had ended.
I’ve contacted the departmental archives to see whether they have any additional documents concerning him, and I still have many pages of the regimental war diaries to go through.
What fascinates me most about this research is that these old documents can take an ordinary soldier who would otherwise be little more than a name on a family tree and gradually bring his experience back into view, where he was, what his unit was doing, when he was wounded, and sometimes even what was happening around him on a particular day. In addition to that, I am passionate about history in general and especially about the two world wars.
I don’t know how much more I’ll be able to uncover, but I’m going to keep looking.
Thank you for reading, and I hope that, in some small way, sharing his story is also a way of remembering him.
So that’s the story I’ve managed to reconstruct so far.