GENERAL MANGIN’S RECORD.

Taihape Daily Times, 6 November 1918, Page 3

GENERAL MANGIN’S RECORD.

General Mangin, who has taken a creditable part in the Allied offensive, is one of the many hard-bitten, heavyhitting fighters formed by the colonial expeditions of France. There has hardly been an important French colonial war since the Sudan campaign in 1599 in which General Mangin did not take part. Speaking of him after General Mangin’s successful march on Marakesh in 1912 General Lyautey said that “he had made the Gallic cock utter the finest crew ever heard.” Since then he has made it crow victory again on every battlefield in Prance. He was appointed brigadiergeneral in 191 u, and on the outbreak of war he commanded the Bth Brigade in the region of Dinant. On the eve of the battle of the Marne he commanded a division, and during the ba.tle itself, when his troops were overtaken by a furious counter attack, the general arrived on horseback in the first line, and by his own personal example restored confidence and saved what otherwise might have been a perilous situation Wherever there was specially hard fighting to be done General Mangin was there. The laby-I rinths of Neuville-St. Vaast were the | prelude to his arrival at Verdun at the end of March, 1916. It was he who recaptured Douaumont, and it was he who retook Vaux. In the April offensive of 1917 ,which failed in its objectives, General Mangin’s part was criticised, and his action was inquired into. The result of that inquiry was to bring him back again to the forefront of the battle.