FOOTS SUCCESSOR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 December 1938, Page 2

FOOTS SUCCESSOR

GENERAL GAMELIN’S CAREER.

SOLDIER WITH IMAGINATION.

The Paris correspondent of the “Daily Mail” gives the following sketch of Marie Gustave Gamelin, supreme commander of the French Army, Navy and Air Force. After describing his career as a cadet and private secretary to the famous General Joffffre, he says: The outbreak of the war switched this pleasant life of gilded uniforms and parades abruptly into harsh action. Gamelin was made colonel of the 2nd Brigade of Chasseurs a Pied, and soon was ploughing in the mud of the Somme. He was a gallant officer, contemptuous of danger, contemptuous of most things. j When his brother officers at mess used to ask him about the legend that he inspired Joffre with the idea of turning the German right flank—a manoeuvre brilliantly carried out in the battle of the Marne—he would say, “Nonsense.”

He became Joffre’s chief of staff when the Marshal was given the supreme command of the French armies in 1915, worked 18 hours of every day sifting details, suggesting, planning. A year before the end of the war he was given command of the 9th Division and did brilliantly. He was honoured for this, put in charge of the counteroffensive of the French Fifth Army in July, 1918. At the end of the war Gamelin emerged a man of steel —taciturn, brusque, efficient as a machine. His career soared even with the peace.

1919.—-Appointed Chief of the French Military Mission to Brazil. 1925—Sent to Syria, where he relieved the besieged garrisons in Djebel Druse.

1926. —Commander of all troops in ■Syria.

Then the highlight —1931 —Chief ■of the General Staff.

This year France paid him the highest honour, gave him the biggest job of all —Commander of all the French forces, on land, sea, and in the air. A magic carpet career on the surface. From military cadet to Generalissimo. But General Gamelin has earned -all his gold braid by unremitting hard work.

He is that rare creature —a soldier with imagination. Though he talks little, he travels much. During the last few years he has visited nearly every country in Europe, watched their tattoos, their troop movements, scrutinised their guns, and learned. He has visited England frequently, though his trips have not been publicised. He has had long consultations with the British generals, the Polish, the Italian, and always he has been the patient listener. Gamelin is a great patriot. There are people in Paris who says his sympathies are with the Left. His reply —and it is on the record —is: “I am outside politics. When the bugle calls we all are —we are Frenchmen.”

Gamelin has great faith in himself. When he was appointed Supreme Commander, he said: “I now feel that I can push forward with full confidence, because everything has been entrusted to my hands.”