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In the course of the First World War, the French Army sustained more than 4 million wounded, among whom tens of thousands underwent the amputation of a limb. From 1915 the Government decided to provide these wounded with artificial limbs, thus spurring the development of prostheses and the opening of rehabilitation centres. If officially it is a question of easing their reintegration into the economic life of the country once peace is restored, the more prosaic purpose, in a conflict that had become total, was to use them as reinforcements for those in the front-line. After 1918 a specific law was passed requiring firms to employ disabled ex-servicemen.