1915 was a year of transition for the French Army. Gone were both the madder red trousers. The slow change over to horizon blue uniforms began.

The average Poilu still faithfully followed orders, but they had seen so many men die. Their officers told them the German losses were twice as great as theirs, but they wondered how this could be so when the Germans kept winning battles and they kept losing more and more of France.

Senior leaders had not yet given up on the massed infantry assault, the bloody Attaque Outrance. They still believed simplistically that a single attack with deep penetration into the enemy's communications and supply zone would result in the enemy surrendering en masse.

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