Recruitment/Drafting in Brittany

[Timothykready]

Hello- for a writing project I am doing, I am asking for information about French army recruiting in Brittany. Language difficulties, assignment to frontline regiments, etc. My efforts on Google have been exasperatingly null. If someone could direct me to a book, academic paper, I would be most grateful.

[Keith_history_buff]

Hello,

As per the rest of Metropolitan France it would have been the case that all eligible men would have performed compulsory military service upon reaching the age of 20. When war broke out, the men would have been mobilised. Depending upon their age, they would have been classified by age group. Each "Classe" (by birth year) would have a ledger for the "district" within the département. There would be a page for each man. These service records are referred to by a few terms, including matricule militaire, fiche matricule.

For the respective "classes" the call-up date was brought forwards during WW1, and this gets a mention on here, I believe on the French Army thread.

This will tell you about the various age groups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Army_in_World_War_I#The_Pre-War_Army_and_mobilization 

This man has been doing research on Brittany, and has plotted the twenty military regions in 1913 accordingly. We see that the 10th and 11th Regions contain some of the départements of Brittany.
http://87dit.canalblog.com/archives/2012/10/18/25248313.html

Although from the other end of Northern France, this man has created a website with a lot of content and has listed out those different military regions.
http://www.chtimiste.com/regiments/regionmilitairecestquoi.htm

During peacetime, it was possible to enlist as a volunteer in the Troupes Coloniales. The nearest equivalent to this body of men, raised solely for colonial service, which had existed in the English-speaking world, was the HEIC army, prior to its assimilation with the British Army in the years after the Indian Mutiny. As I understand it, a fair few Bretons served in this unit. 
 

[Timothykready]

Excellent trove of information. Thank you for your assistance.

[Keith_history_buff]

Monsieur Chtimiste's listing of the twenty Military Districts will give you the regiments associated with that geographic area, too. The website about the 87e RIT seems to be centred around Brittany.