LEERNES AND COLLARMONT - 22 AUGUST 1914 - THE FORGOTTEN MEN OF THE BATTLE OF CHARLEROI

August 1914 — Belgium is invaded. Faced with the might of the German invader, King Albert I calls upon the Allied armies that guaranteed his country's neutrality. After some hesitation from the French high command, General Lanrezac, commanding the 5th Army, receives authorisation to deploy into Belgium, where General Sordet's cavalry corps has already preceded him. Among these troops, the 24th and 28th infantry regiments form the 11th Brigade of the 6th Division, III Corps. Initially tasked with covering Sordet's corps on the Charleroi-Brussels canal, then with defending the crossing points of the Sambre between Marchienne-au-Pont and Lobbes, these units find themselves drawn, much against their will, into what history has labelled — rightly or wrongly — the Battle of Charleroi. The engagements in which they take part, at both Leernes and Collarmont, should never have occurred. Fate decreed otherwise. The French fight against unequal odds, often outnumbered by more than five to one. Drawing on previously unpublished local archives, this work also illuminates little-known aspects of the Great War: the survival of the wounded, the care provided by a grateful Belgian population, and the fate of the remains of soldiers fallen "on the field of honour". It is to these fighters, forgotten in the byways of "grand History", that this book pays tribute.