Word: commandant
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1940
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
General Weygand, at 73, had taken on another job for France, a desperate job, a supreme job. The desperation of the job was that at the hour when Weygand assumed command, the scene for the greatest debacle in military history was already set. In Poland the Germans annihilated a huge but half-mobilized and poorly equipped Army. In Flanders last week they had cut off and all but surrounded 1,100,000 men thoroughly equipped and thoroughly prepared to fight, the flower of the Allied Armies...
...British Imperial Staff was announced, replacing General Sir Edmund Ironside, who was put in charge of home defense (see p. 27). In a switch strategically parallel to the Weygand-for-Gamelin move, Mr. Churchill called on General Sir John Greer Dill, who was brought home from his command of the B. E. F. First Corps in France in April to be Sir Edmund's Vice Chief and standin. Sir John, 58 and Irish, is accounted the British Army's master of strategy and maneuver, in contrast to Sir Edmund's defensive talents. As a field commander...
...generals of France was not a product of the sacrosanct French War College. He was the product of the late, great Marshal Foch, who made him, bowlegged little cavalry colonel that he was, his chief staff officer purely on a seniority basis, when called upon to form and take command of the famed IX Army for the First Battle of the Marne...
...present battle was history's greatest and most decisive, but the Allied Commander fighting it had also fought history's last two "greatest battles," both desperate actions: at the Battle of the Marne where Weygand saw his chief resist the distraction caused by German pressure on his centre and his left flank, to concentrate on attacking; at Warsaw where in 1920 he himself took command of the Poles, threw back the victorious Reds and kept the tide of Bolshevism out of Europe...
...After trying to abdicate in 1866, when the U. S. had forced the withdrawal of the French troops which supported him, Maximilian next year took over command of the remaining troops, was court-martialed and shot by the victorious Mexican republicans...