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"You must be Marshal Foch," murmured Thun, and then with all a madman's cunning, changed the conversation as the doctor and attendants, who had noticed his excitement, drew nearer. "Believe me, Mr. Briggerland," he went on airily, "the strategy of the Allies was at fault until I took up the command of the army...." Ten minutes later Mr.
I'll drop a line to General Foch and suggest to him that you rookies be detailed to teach the game to us oldsters." "I didn't mean to be fresh," apologized the jaunty one. "Won't you go ahead and tell us the things we need to remember?" "Well," exhorted Mahan, appeased by the newcomer's humility, "there aren't so many of them, after all.
And standing there in the sunshine was the commander of the field battery, Captain Mignot. A tall and bearded man, essentially grave, he listened while Lieutenant Puaux explained the request from General Foch that I see his battery. He turned and scanned the sky. "We regret," he said seriously, "that at the moment there is no aëroplane in sight. We will, however, show Madame everything."
The impression that the Chemin des Dames had been conquered was not removed until it really was gained by Pétain five months later; but there was contrast enough between the promises and the achievement to produce the deepest depression in France. On 28 April Pétain was appointed chief of staff and on 15 May commander-in-chief in succession to Nivelle, while Foch became chief of staff.
In view of his later career it seems to me that he found in the unalluring textbooks of Clausewitz and Foch and those bound in red covers for the use of the staff of the British Army, some expressions of a man's work which was absent from the sphere into which fate had set him clad in green silk tights. The subject was instinct with the commanding brain.
Foch inspected the Allied troops on the Rhine and Pershing renounced his trip to England, in order to be ready for the invasion that had been ordered if the time limit elapsed without signature. Only at the last moment did the courage of the Germans fail. A change of ministry brought into power men who were willing to accept the inevitable humiliation.
As he replaced the evening lamp on the cleared table in the big living room he listened to my fulsome praise of his artistry as Marshal Foch might hear me say that I considered him a rather good strategist. Lew Wee heard but gave no sign, as one set above the petty adulation of compelled worshipers. Yet I knew his secret soul made festival of my words and would have been hurt by their withholding.
It enjoyed the prestige given it by the eminent authorities who had held it; and the eighty officers who came to the school at each promotion, intensely desirous of developing their skill and judgment, were always impatient to see and hear the man who was to instruct them in these branches. "Lieutenant-Colonel Foch did not disappoint their expectations.
Under the driving rain, morning broke slowly, and almost before a sodden and rain-soaked world could awake to the fact that day had come, General Foch had nipped the rear of the flank of the opposing army, and was bending the arc in upon itself.
Thus secured on his right, Foch at once transferred troops from the Fourth Army, in support of General Mangin's counter-attack of the 18th, to the other side of the Marne salient, and Gouraud remained firmly on the watch in the position he had so victoriously held, till the moment came for his own advance in September.
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