re: #144 Dark_Falcon

A blockhouse is a good monument to the blockheaded overreliance on fixed fortifications by France in 1940.

Don’t forget how many they lost in 14 - 18. They did not have the resources to fight another such war and hoped that the fixed defenses would deter the Germans. In a way it did - they bypassed them where ever they could.

I remember stopping at one of the French military schools on leave with some other army types. The monument in the yard listed every graduate killed in action since the days of Napoleon to their colonial misadventures. It read on three lines:
Class of 1914.
Class of 1915.
Class of 1916.

Three years. No survivors. The French were bled nearly to death by the first act of the Word War.