The 22nd French Dragoons have a long and glorious history on the field of battle since 1630 to the Napoleonic battlefield of Austerlitz, Eylau, Jena it was called again to duty in the First World War, one of its members trooper Christian Mellet recorded his experiences in and out of the saddle.
At the initial onrush of the French armies into Belgium to get to grips with the enemy Mallet and his regiment trotted out to war from Rheims in Northern France. The French forces in the Vosges and Alsace attacked en masse and were slaughtered whilst the cavalry that Mallet was a member fell back before stronger German forces. Fortunes swung back to the Allies side and as the Allies fought the battle of the Marne; Mallet, in the thick of it, remembers that he and his fellow troopers were exhausted and “covered with a layer of black dust adherent from sweat, looked like devils”. Mallet and his comrades then faced the war on foot as the chance to use mounted troops gave way to the advent of trenches; he fought on bravely until an attack at Loos where as Mallet recalls “we entered the zone of Hell.”. The Author by now a junior officer had the responsibility of leading his men, but suddenly felt “a brutal blow in the back with the butt-end of a rifle” but it was actually a vicious shell fragment that tore into his back. Mallet kept his men fighting for the time being until relief could arrive but was thereafter honourably discharged from the Army due to his wounds.
Few memoirs of the French cavalry still exist and fewer still have been translated into English making this both rare and compelling. Mallet writes in an easy style which is filled with anecdotes on the march or out of the line and vivid vignettes of the fighting which appeared as a blur to him amidst the shot and shells.
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