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The German military Zeppelin L-Z-77 was brought down by a French incendiary shell from a 75-millimeter antiaircraft gun of the motor-gun section of Rénigny in the neighborhood of Brabant-le-roi, on February 21, 1916. This airship was hit by an explosive shell which ignited the gas bag and caused an explosion of the bombs, so that it was completely wrecked and fell in flames.
Inquiries followed, with the usual result, and the advancing days found other French vessels arriving, some of the passenger liners carrying three and four 75-millimeter pieces, the famous 75's. On April 5, 1916, Paris announced that French and British warships had sunk a submarine at an unnamed point and captured the crew.
The French 75-millimeter Creusots came into play again, and after a battle that lasted in all twenty-four hours, the Germans were driven back to their own trenches. In the morning of October 2, 1915, the Germans made a demonstration in front of the Belgian trenches at Dixmude, consisting of a bombardment and a violent discharge of bombs. On one small section alone 400 bombs were dropped.
General Foch, a well-known writer on strategy, had devised his army for defense. He was well supplied with the famous 75-millimeter guns, holding them massed in the center of his line. His extreme right and left were mobile and thrown partly forward to feel the attack of the invading army.
An entirely new piece was developed, firing a shell of about the same size as the regular 75-millimeter field gun. It was made lighter by half, with an effective range of 2,500 meters, considerably less than the standard gun. French skill in designing weapons, always a trait of the race, was evidenced here. The heavy steel breechblock of the seventy-five was replaced by a wooden block.
When dawn of this same day or torrential rain, September 9, 1914, broke over the hill-road that runs from Mareuil to Fère-Champenoise, at which point lay the left of General von Bülow's army, it witnessed a number of 75-millimeter guns on selected gun sites commanding the right flank of the German right center.
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