Word: generalizes
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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During the next four years he had various field commands and in 1906 he became orderly officer to General Joffre, then commander of the 6th Infantry Division in Paris. In 1912, when Joffre was promoted to the Supreme War Council, Gamelin was chosen as Joffre's chef de cabinet, or military secretary. During this time the French General Staff was discussing (but only discussing) the possibility of a German violation of Belgian neutrality to attack France. Gamelin made a study of it and wrote out a defense of such an attack. That was the germ of Joffre...
During those critical days General Joffre, who had called Gamelin "one of my red blood corpuscles," came to admire his little aide's unfailing composure as well as his swift and incisive tactical foresight. Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, he observed: "If this is philosophy, it is time all generals were philosophers...
...designed to break between the French and British armies where they joined in the devastated regions of the Somme. Gas soon shrouded the British batteries and their fire ceased. A little before 9 a. m. masses of German troops released from the Eastern Front poured through the fog toward General Cough's British-battalion after battalion, column after column, complete with field bakeries, ammunition trains, medical units, until more than 1,000,000 men were in motion, and advancing columns stretched back 45 miles behind the German lines. On a 75-mile front the Allied lines gave...
...maximum advantage of terrain so as to conserve manpower, but his shrewd disposition of fire power constantly enhanced the offensive quality of his command. His many citations praised his "highest qualities of method and of inspection" and his ability to carry his objectives "in the course of a general offensive at the cost of minimum losses." The French soldier did not like him less for that and the present French Army does not forget this quality in its Commander-in-Chief. "Very much all there," was the way one British general characterized Gamelin in the War years. He appears, during...
Brazil to Syria to Home. In 1919 General Gamelin headed the French military mission to Brazil, a job requiring the greatest tact since the old German pre-War influence in the Brazilian Army was still strong. In 1925 he was recalled and soon sent to Syria to help put down the Druse revolt, a suppression which he later succeeded in accomplishing alone with considerable bloodshed on the part of the Druses. He was on hand when French planes and artillery wiped out 1,456 civilians in the native quarters of Damascus, thus proving that Maurice Gamelin had no particular interest...