ABSTRACT
The encounter between the soldiers of the Indian Expeditionary Force (IEF) and the French has not attracted a lot of attention from scholars of the IEF, whether Indian or British and until recently only one French author had written about it, although not from an academic perspective. It is clear from multiple sources that the soldiers of the IEF had no precise idea of the place they were going to when the first contingents landed in Marseilles at the end of September 1914. After a few weeks of stay in Marseilles, the first elements of the Lahore division started their voyage towards the front line, which followed a complicated route through the Southwest of France to Orleans in Central France, where the troops were assembled before their despatch to the front to take part in the first battle of Ypres in Belgium in October–November 1914.
