Read "With the French in France and Salonika" by Richard Harding Davis online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
PARIS, January, 1916.
When speaking of their five hundred miles of front, the French General Staff divide it into twelve sectors. The names of these do not appear on maps. They are family names and titles, not of certain places, but of districts with imaginary boundaries. These nicknames seem to thrive best in countries where the same race of people have lived for many centuries. With us, it is usually when we speak of mountains, as "in the Rockies," "in the Adirondacks," that under one name we merge rivers, valleys, and villages. To know the French names for the twelve official fronts may help in deciphering the communiques. They are these: