Having just returned from a Tour of the First Battle of the Marne I am writing a brief note about the works of the French soldier and historian, Michel Goya https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Goya .
I am most grateful to Tim Gale (French Tanks of the Great War) https://www.waterstones.com/book/french-tanks-of-the-great-war/dr-tim-gale/9781473823501 for recommending to me over lunch one day Goya’s La chair et l’acier : l’armée française et l’invention de la guerre moderne, 1914-1918, Paris, Tallandier, 2004, 479 p. which has just been published in English by Pen & Sword and is available from them at a discount and on kindle https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Flesh-and-Steel-during-the-Great-War-Hardback/p/15120
One of Goya’s more recent works is Les Vainqueurs : Comment la France a gagné la Grande Guerre, Paris, Tallandier, 2018, 348 p. and I have attached a link to an interview which he gave, I think in 2018 https://centenaire.org/fr/publications-recentes/michel-goya-en-1918-larmee-francaise-est-la-plus-puissante-du-monde . When I looked at this it carried a link to Google Translate which is very handy as, in the French style, it is quite long.
Whether you think that the French Army did win the First World War or that it was the most powerful in the world in 1918 it is surely very welcome to see French military history of the Great War being addressed by a French historian and one who writes lucidly and clearly too – at least that is my experience of the first few chapters of Flesh and Steel. I am learning a great deal about the French Army of the Great War, a subject that has not been addressed very much compared to the other armies in that struggle and notwithstanding the valiant efforts of ourPresident and his students of whom Tim Gale is one.
Thank you, Tim for recommending this author and his work and to Pen & Sword for publishing an edition in English.