23rd September 1939
Gamelin -- Man of the Moment
Just as the last war the French people loked up to "Papa" Joffre and
to Foch, the Supreme Generallissimo, so today they put their trust in General
Gamelin, who has control of all the armed forces -- on land and sea
in the air -- of the Republic.
General Marie Gustav Gamelin was born in Paris in 1872, shortly
after France of the second Empire had crashed in Bloody ruin at
Sedan. It is said that as a child, he played with toy soldiers in his
nursery, and today, when he attends a meeting of the Supreme War
Council, he sometimes glances across the road at the house in
which he was born.
The blood of the soldiers flows in his veins, although in his early
days he wanted to be a painter, and still today he is something
more than a dabbler in water colours. From the Military academy
at St. Cyr, the French Sandhurst, he went to the Chasseurs, and after
a term of service in Africa became military secretary to Joffre.
At the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, he held a position
on the Operation Branch of Joffre's staff. What happened then may
be told in the words of "Pertinax," the distinguished French journalist,
writing in the column of the "Daily Telegraph":
On the evening of 25th August there was a
discussion regarding the proper course to adopt
in order to stop the movement of the German army,
then pointing towards the valley of the Oise ad Paris
and threatening to outflank the French line on the left..
General Berthelot, Deputy Chief of the General staff,
declared himself in favour of a counter-attack directed
towards the north-west and aimed at the inner (i.e. left)
front of the enemy right wing, which was opposite the
British divisions. As against this Gamelin speaking for
the Operation Branch, maintained that the invader taken
in the rear by an army gathered in the region of Paris and
advancing north-eastwards. Joffre decided in favour of
Gamelin, who drew up Order NO. 2 -- the seed of the
Victory of the Marne.
The operation however, was not put into action before
the French armies had retreated behind the Seine. On the
morning of 04th September, when the Operation branch met,
Gamelin, examining the map on which the positions of the
various Corps were laid out, observed that they "Capped"
the German effectives -- in other words, that a sort of circle
seemed to be sketched automatically round them.
The favorable opportunity offered itself: it was was seizing
without delay. The attack must be made at once, and the
proposed recovery along the Seine put aside. Such is the
story of the Order No. 6 of 04th September, the order which
led to victory -- again the work of Gamelin's pen.
In the spring of 1918, he decided to leave the French G.H.Q. for the field
and was given command of a Brigade of light Infantry (Chasseurs) in
Alsace, and later of the 9th Division. At the time of the great March
offensive of 1918 Gamelin's single division held the front -- if it may be
called -- which gradually spread over eleven miles. In those terrible days
of defeat and retreat, he was one of the last to yeild ground.
After the war he held a command in Syria, and there again he achieved
victory for France at a most critical moment, when with 5,000 men he
annihilated a fanatical mob of 100,000 Druses.
Small of stature, with pink cheeks, reddish hair, steel blue eyes and a crisp
moustache, he is a typical French soldier. He is always meticulously
turned out, with his many ribbons and medals in his buttonhole. His favorable
phrase to be, "I am a philosoopher." As Joffre said after the battle of the Marne,
in which Gamelin had, as we have seen, played so valuble a part:: "If the be
philosophy, it is time that all generals were philosophers."
photo Top
Meeting General Lord Gort at Victoria Station, London, in the summer of 1939
photo bottom
On several occasion general Gamelin, French Generlissimo, has paid official visits to
(Aldershot) England, particularly since it became appartent that the Franco-British cooperation of
1914-1918 might have to be repeated in tg=he faceof the menace of Nazi aggression.
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