The Great War and Its Lessons

When war came in August 1914, Lieutenant de Gaulle was ready—or thought he was. Nothing, however, could have prepared him or his generation for the industrial slaughter that would follow. The Battle of the Frontiers, where de Gaulle saw his first action, shattered the illusions of the offensive à outrance in a matter of days.

On August 15, 1914, at Dinant in Belgium, de Gaulle led his platoon across a bridge under withering German fire. A bullet struck him in the knee, his first wound of the war. As he was carried from the field, he could see his regiment being torn apart by German artillery. The 33rd Infantry lost most of its officers that day. The age of heroic charges was over; the age of industrial warfare had begun.

Wounds and Wisdom

De Gaulle's wound at Dinant was the first of several that would mark his body and shape his understanding of modern war. After recovering, he returned to his regiment, now commanded by Pétain himself. Under Pétain's leadership, de Gaulle participated in the First Battle of Champagne in early 1915, where he witnessed firsthand the futility of throwing men against entrenched positions defended by machine guns and artillery.

Promoted to captain, de Gaulle commanded a company with distinction but growing skepticism about high command's tactics. He began developing his own ideas about warfare, emphasizing surprise, concentrated force, and the importance of keeping reserves. These ideas, radical for the time, he kept largely to himself, sharing them only in letters to his father.

In March 1916, at Verdun—that charnel house that came to symbolize the war's senseless slaughter—de Gaulle's war came to a temporary end. Leading his company in a desperate bayonet charge near Douaumont, he was struck by a shell fragment that pierced his thigh. As he fell, his men saw him collapse into a shell crater. Hours later, when French forces retook the position, they found only German troops. Captain de Gaulle was listed as missing, presumed dead.

The Prisoner

But de Gaulle was not dead. Severely wounded and unconscious, he had been captured by German troops and eventually awoke in a German field hospital. For a man of his temperament, captivity was perhaps worse than death. He made five escape attempts over the next thirty-two months, each increasingly elaborate, each ultimately unsuccessful.

His fellow prisoners included some remarkable figures, including future Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and French journalist Rémy Roure. De Gaulle organized lectures, taught military history, and continued his intellectual development. He learned German, improved his knowledge of military theory, and began writing what would become his first book.

But captivity was also a profound humiliation. While his comrades fought and died for France, he was reduced to an impotent observer. Letters from home told of friends killed, of his mentor Pétain becoming a national hero at Verdun, of France bleeding white. De Gaulle's attempts to escape became increasingly desperate, including one episode where he feigned illness by swallowing soap and another where he tried to hide in a laundry basket.

Return and Reflection

The Armistice found de Gaulle still in captivity, in the fortress of Ingolstadt in Bavaria. He returned to France in December 1918 to find a nation victorious but exhausted. Of the young men who had entered Saint-Cyr with him, more than half were dead. France had won, but at a cost that would shape its policies—and de Gaulle's thinking—for decades to come.

The immediate post-war period was difficult for de Gaulle. While his contemporaries who had remained free advanced in rank and received decorations, he felt left behind. His record showed bravery—he had been wounded three times and mentioned in dispatches—but no spectacular achievements. Pétain, now a Marshal of France, remembered his former subordinate and secured him a position teaching at Saint-Cyr, but de Gaulle chafed at what he saw as a backwater assignment.

It was during this period that de Gaulle began seriously writing about military theory. His lectures at Saint-Cyr, published as "La Discorde chez l'ennemi" (Discord Among the Enemy), analyzed German decision-making during the war. The work showed his characteristic blend of historical knowledge, psychological insight, and clear prose. It also revealed his growing conviction that future wars would be won not by mass armies but by professional forces using advanced technology—particularly tanks and aircraft—in coordinated operations.