Brigade de Fusiliers Marins

The Brigade des Fusiliers Marins was a unit of the French Navy which fought alongside the Belgium Army in 1914-1915 and which held their ground until the last man standing in October 1914 at Diksmuide to halt the advance of the German army and protect Dunkirk. When war was declared in August 1914, the French Navy housed idle Fusiliers Marins on board naval ships, due to the principal combats being conducted on land. To make use of these men, it was decided on August 7, 1914, to create a strong brigade of 6,000 men organized into two regiments which would become the 1st and 2nd Regiment of Fusiliers Marins. The command of the brigade was entrusted to Pierre Alexis Ronarc'h, recently promoted to Counter Admiral. The first confined mission was defend the capital and outskirts to which garrison belong to. The brigade was constituted of one headquarter staff, two regiments and one mitrailleuse company of 15 platoons. Each regiment was commanded by a Capitaine de Vaisseau and each was formed of a headquarter staff along with 3 battalions. In the composition of the brigade, was 700 very young Fusiliers Marins apprentices (Young volunteers barely sixteen and a half year of age), reservist of the depot at Lorient, and mechanics in the Fleet. The extremely young composition astonished the Parisians. They were joined at Paris by reinforcements hailing from the other ports: Rochefort, Brest, Cherbourg and Toulon. These reinforcements included more senior Fusiliers Marins and volunteers, which all quickly transformed to land soldiers of the French Army. In October 1914, the Germans in numbers threatened to annihilate Belgian defenses. The brigade's mission was to leave Paris and reinforce the Belgian Army, a mission also confined to the 87th Territorial Infantry Division. The purpose was to aid the Belgian Army to deploy in France and protect the strategic port of Dunkirk. The brigade was transported by train into Flanders, then made its way to Antwerp and the Belgian Army. At Ghent, the brigade came to a halt; the train tracks were cut from there on.