The early French officers were professional army men, who cultivated the tradition of charging the enemy directly, a suicidal exercise at the age of machine gun

The early French officers were professional army men, who cultivated the tradition of charging the enemy directly, a suicidal exercise at the age of machine guns. But they not only forced their men to do so, they charged the enemy themselves too. As a result most of them died in the first year of the conflict. They were then replaced with drafted civilians who didn't share this chivalrous conception of war. One historian I heard (not sure how accurate this is) said the British Army had a parallel but somewhat inverted experience. Before the war the British Army was much smaller than eg the French or German armies, but was very professional and had adapted well to modern weaponry and tactics in both attack and defence. The trouble was that at the beginning of the war, the war was expected to be over quickly so the British command didn't worry about sending nearly all its officers (and their institutional knowledge) to France for the experience and 'adventure'. It didn't work out as planned though and after getting bogged down and suffering many casualties very quickly, the huge job of training lots of new officers and soldiers was left to an older generation of ex officers back home who reverted to the older tactics. It didn't take long for the British army to revert to those ineffective suicidal charges too.