Win or die
How about this amazing early color photo (possibly an Autochrome Lumière) showing the combat-tattered banner of the French army’s 37e Régiment D’Infanterie (37e RI) shown resting on two stacks of bayonets atop Lebel 1886/15 rifles, likely late in the Great War. Note the famed “horizon blue” uniform of the Croix de Guerre-wearing Poilu, shown complete with an Adrian Adrian-style steel helmet. You can make out, under the Honneur et Patrie (“Honour and Fatherland”) motto, and battle honors for Zurich, Polotsk, and Alger.
Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud/ECPAD/Défense Réf. : AUL 56
With a lineage traced to 1587, the 37e RI picked up its number designation in 1790 while at Valogne under Col. Joachim Robin de Blair de Fressineaux (along with the honor of being named for Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Maréchal de Turenne).
It soon earned two battle honors in the Napoleonic Wars (“Zurich 1799” and “Polotsk 1812”) although it fought notably in no less than 24 large battles from Vauban to Ligny. Post-Napolean, the 37th fought in Algeria (earning “Alger 1830” battle honor), as well as during the 1859 Italian campaign, and at Sedan during the 1870 war with Prussia.
Starting the Great War at Nancy with the 11th Infantry Division, the 37th was repeatedly bled white over the next four years, earning four battle honors (Lorraine 1914, Flanders 1914, Verdun 1916, and Champagne 1918) while sending no less than 6,155 of its members to the scrolls of its honored dead– more than twice the regiment’s 2,722-man wartime authorization!
It ended the war on occupation duty in Frankfurt.
The 37th, in keeping with French interbellum doctrine, was redesignated a fortress infantry unit in the 1930s and staffed the Maginot Line at Rohrbach.
When the Germans came again in 1940, the 37th held the line until its until it was compromised then mounted a fighting retreat to Val-et-Chatillon, suffering over 1,000 casualties in the process. There, its survivors burned its cherished regimental colors on orders of Lt. Col. Combet on 25 June, rather than surrender them to “The Boche,” capping 150 years of solid service to the empire and republic.
Post WWII, the 37th would be reformed a few different times as “public works” (bataillon d’ouvrages) and reserve battalions, but never again as a line infantry regiment.
The regimental motto was “Vaincre ou mourir” (Win or die)
