GENERAL DE GAULLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1941, Page 6

GENERAL DE GAULLE

MENTIONED IN DESPATCHES. TESTIMONIALS BY PETAIN AND WEYGAND. M. Maurice Dejean, formerly assistant to M. Coulondre, French Ambassador in Berlin, at the beginning of a lecture at Caxton Hall remarked that all his hearers, of course, knew General de Gaulle. Quite frankly, the French people in our midst have not put de Gaulle “over” to the British public. Beyond the fact that newspapers remind readers he is “head of the Free French Forces,” very few know anything else about him. And yet he has two remarkable "mentions in despatches” one in the last war, the other in this, which prove he is no carpet soldier. 1916: “An officer who has shown the highest moral and intellectual value. On March 2, at the village of Douaumont, when after a terrific bombardment the enemy attacked the battalion from every side, he led his company to the counter-attack in a furious hand-to-hand combat, the only solution to the situation compatible in his judgment with military honour. He was seriously wounded in the action. An officer of the highest order. Two previous wounds and one mention in despatches.” 1940: "An admirable leader showing dashing initiative; attacked with his division the bridgehead of Abbeville, firmly held by the enemy. Broke the German resistance and progressed 14 kilometers into the enemy's lines, taking hundreds of prisoners and capturing considerable material. Who signed these two magnificent testimonials? The first was signed by Marshal Petain, the second by General Weygand, and it was General Weygand who for his successes as a tank-corps leader around Laon on May 17, 18 and 19, made de Gaulle a general on the battlefield, the youngest general in the French Army, June 2, 1940. De Gaulle begged his superiors to let him unite all the tanks of the French army into one group, and had his plea been listened to the story today might have been a very different one. The National Broadcasting Corporation broadcast on January 1 an interview of its London representative, Mr. J. Mac Vane, with General de Gaulle. General de Gaulle did not believe in a German attempt to invade Britain, but he said, “The Germans will make a huge mechanised attack in the Balkans as soon as the weather permits use of tanks and lorries, in May or possibly April.” In 1934 General de Gaulle wrote: "Tomorrow the professional army will move entirely on caterpillar wheels. A large formation, striking camp at daybreak, will be a hundred miles away by night.”