FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

LONGUYON, FRANCE - The valley of Lorraine's Chiers River, flowing gently through flower-carpeted fields along the border of Belgium's vast Ardennes forest, is one of France's most beautiful, though least-known, regions.

Here, in May, 1940, German infantry divisions outflanked the western end of France's Maginot Line - 58 powerful forts and hundreds of interval casemates - then swung east to envelop the fortress chain from the rear. Though none of the great forts were taken by storm, the Line remains a national humiliation for France, and the term Maginot Line mentality' a synonym for military failure and strategic stupidity.

In fact, the Maginot Line did not fail. France lost the war because of faulty strategy and lack of offensive spirit caused by fear of casualties.

The Line, which covered France's eastern border with Germany and its southern Alpine border with fascist Italy, employed advanced military technology, in which France was world leader in the 1930's, to replace soldiers and greatly reduce combat losses.

The United States employed the very same high-tech strategy - first, unsuccessfully in Vietnam - then successfully in the air wars against Iraq and Serbia. Today, the Pentagon is in the process of restructuring its ground combat forces to further replace fighting men with machines. Here is where lesson of the Maginot Line has special relevance.

France suffered 6.1 million casualties in World War I: including 1.4 million dead and 4.2 million seriously wounded. Two million veterans were left mutilated or gassed. Maimed war veteran, Deputy André Maginot, spoke for all France when he vowed at Verdun, "our sons will never again face a storm of heavy shells with nothing more than their bodies."

The Maginot forts, buried 30 meters underground, covered by 3-meter thick carapaces of reinforced concrete, armed with artillery and machine guns in casemates or retractable turrets, could withstand huge 340-420mm shells (weighing over a ton, equal to those fired by battleship guns). The fort's interlocking fire covered the frontier from the Ardennes to the Rhine.

The Line was never "impregnable," pre-war French propaganda notwithstanding. It was built to delay a German attack long enough for France to mobilize; cover Lorraine's iron and steel industry; and force Germany to attack through Belgium or Switzerland bringing them into the war on France's side and avoiding fighting on French soil. France's low post-war birthrate did not provide enough divisions to cover all the frontiers: the Line minimized the number of troops needed to protect Alsace-Lorraine.

When Germany attacked in May, 1940, the Maginot Line worked as planned; France's field army failed. The German offensive through the Ardennes and breakthrough at Sedan, led by two of history's greatest cavalry generals, Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel, split the French army at its weakest point and forced it into retreat. A French army of seven divisions positioned to defend the Maginot Line's western flank was ordered to retreat when its left flank was exposed, uncovering the Line. Interval troops and artillery assigned to the Line were stripped away and rushed south to oppose the German advance to the Loire and Rhone. The Maginot Line was left isolated, and finally surrounded. Its unvanquished garrisons were the last French forces to surrender. As a sign of respect, the Germans granted them the full honors of war. The southern Maginot Line worked perfectly, crushing an offensive by 360,000 Italian troops aimed at Nice. In 1944, German troops defending the rear of Maginot forts held up Gen. Patton's 3rd Army for three months before Thionville.

France's field army had more and better tanks and artillery than the Wehrmacht, good officers, and courageous soldiers. If France had attacked Germany anytime from 1937 to the winter of 1940, it would have smashed the Third Reich. But France's politicians could not face sending their citizen-soldiers into battle. Instead, they kept hoping Hitler would become sated by his conquests. If he attacked, they reasoned, France would fight a defensive war to minimize casualties, letting the Germans break their teeth on the Maginot forts or besiege French and British armies dug in behind Belgium's river defenses and powerful fortresses.

Today, the United States is repeating France's fatal fear of military casualties. After losing a handful of soldiers, the US fled Somalia. In Bosnia, threats by Serbs to kill even a few US troops thwarted arrest of Serb war criminals. The Pentagon actively sabotaged deployment of combat troops to Kosovo, for fear of casualties.

The US is now developing a new generation of highly expensive unmanned air, land, and sea weapons - shades of the Maginot Line - that will supposedly allow the US to conduct pushbutton wars with minimal loss of American lives. This is a dangerous notion.

A nation that cannot tolerate casualties should not go to war. The "bloodless" air wars against Iraq and Serbia were flukes and left both conflicts unresolved. Future wars, particularly in urban areas or rough terrain, will still be won by infantry, not high-tech weapons.

The real lesson of the Maginot Line is that technology, no matter how impressive, is no substitute for the will to fight, to close with the enemy, and to take casualties.