Word: weygand
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This is the last quarter-hour. Hold fast." Against 1,500,000 Germans who were engaged by week's end, Weygand had not more than 60 French divisions, plus perhaps two British, two or three Polish, perhaps one Belgian (last week being reorganized, re-uniformed)-about 1,000,000 men in all, to face an enemy whose reserves alone were that many. He dared not weaken further the garrisons of the Maginot Line or his ten divisions facing the new Italian enemy. The Germans, he prophesied, would extend their attack until it stretched all the way to Switzerland...
...Weygand had his men disposed flexibly in depth-the approved "accordion" pattern of defense against mechanized power. Behind the front line were carefully camouflaged batteries of anti-tank and heavy machine guns, spaced fairly widely down the valley and highway pathways of assault. Successive, deeper rows of similar weapons were spaced more & more closely until they were backed finally by batteries of 75-mm. field guns, weapons able to knock out heaviest tanks when fired pointblank. The defense plan was to let heavy tanks push back into this final network, to have the advance units destroy motorcycles, armored cars, troop...
Therefore, when the force and scope of the German penetration was realized and when the new French Generalissimo, General [Maxime] Weygand. assumed command in place of General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium to keep holding the right hand of the Belgians and give their own right hand to the newly created French Army which was to advance across the Somme in great strength...
...President, in a panic, told M. Reynaud he could not do this thing. France was beside the abyss, the danger was immediate and deathly. If Reynaud resigned, democracy in France would be finished; the only alternative was military dictatorship under Weygand or Petain. In the end Reynaud agreed to stay-providing he could purge the Cabinet...
...when he matriculated into a tougher school -World War I. He served actively in Poland in 1920, inactively as a post war staff officer under Petain, then in Syria, then in Paris. Only three years ago he became a colonel; only three weeks ago -with the advent of Weygand, who knows his worth -he became a general...