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This temporary history section is an excerpt taken from Anthony Clayton's Paths of Glory

The three battalions of the 8th Regiment of Infantry, drawn from Boulogne, Calais and Saint-Omer, were mobilised and entrained for the front of 5 August 1914. The regiment was part of the 2nd Infantry Division in General Franchet d'Esperey's I Corps, itself in General Lanzerac's 5th Army. The regiment went into action first on the 15 August at Dinant, and then participated in the retreat to the Marne. After the Marne battle the regiment was moved to the Champagne sector where, by March 1915 its casualties, killed missing or wounded, since the outbreak of the war amounted to 3,319, including four colonels, more than the strength at mobilisation.

The regiment was then re-formed, command passing to Colonel Jacques Roubert, a St-Cyrien (the French equivalent of Sandhurst) whose earlier service had been in the Infanterie de Marine under Galliéni in Madagascar. Roubert remained in command until June 1917. In April 1915 the regiment was involved in the heavy fighting around Europe. February 1916 found the regiment at Verdun and September 1916 on the Somme. From April 1915 to December 1916 a further 3,376 members of the regiment had been lost, by April 1917 the total, augmented by a severe winter in Champagne, had reached 8,035 since the outbreak of the war; of these 3,010 were killed or missing.

It was, therefore, already a war-weary regiment that was to be committed to Nivelle's April 1917 offensive, where largely on account of insufficient local artillery support the regiment suffered a further 982 casualties in four days, this total including twenty-three officers, and 272 dead or missing. The regiment, withdrawn from the front line after the fighting, was badly affected by the wave of mutinies, two members being sentenced to death, a sentence apparently not carried out.

Discipline was restored during an eleven-week period at Mailly and at a rest camp at Provins. Roubert left on promotion, his successor Gaston Duffour was staff-trained and set in hand the modernised combat training of Pétain's directives. The regiment was brought up to strength with mean from the Classe 17 and a number of young officers; its firepower was increased by the machine-gun company for each battalion, the deliveries of the Chauchat light machine-gun, and small teams of grenadiers from each battalion.

So renewed, the 8th and its reserve unit, the 208th, both part of the 2nd Infantry Division, were dispatched to Flanders to participate in the great British July 1917 offensive. The regiment joined in the fighting on 16 August and remained committed until mid-October, and experience in which fool was limited to singe, morale was raised be gniole and regimental life became that of two men in shell craters. After Flanders there followed there followed action in Pétain's limited offensives of Verdun and Malmaison. Casualties were very much lighter than in earlier battles, and the regiment benefited form the system of rest periods. At the end of October Duffour was replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel Gégonne who commanded the regiment for the rest of the war. At first Gégonne could enjoy the relative calm of the 1917-18 winter period. In the successive 1918 battles, however, two of the regiment's three battalions were involved in the heavy early June fighting around Villers-Cotterêts and, in the next month, the 2nd Division having been transferred to the 6th Army, with further fierce fighting, at times hand-to-hand, in defence of Reims. During the last German major offensive of mid-July the 8th were involved in heavy fighting along the Ourcq, after which followed a rest period to last until the end of August. The 8th was then included in one of General Mangin's attacks near Pont Saint-Mard. The regiment's immediate adversaries were the Prussian Guards, though these at the time were weakened by fatigue and food shortages.

In mid-September the 8th was transported by rail to Alsace, in the hills west of Mulhouse, where fighting was limited to patrolling and the taking of prisoners. In late October the regiment was moved to the Nancy area to participate in Foch's proposed Lorraine offensive, in the event not to take place.

Clayton, A., Paths of Glory - The French Army 1914 - 18, 2003, Cassell, London