FIGHTING FRENCHMAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 725, 5 June 1953, Page 12

FIGHTING FRENCHMAN

THE HISTORY OF THE FRENCH FIRST ARMY, by Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny, ‘translated by Malcolm Barnes; Allen and Unwin. English price, 42. --

(Reviewed by

W.A.

G.

had to fight almost as hard to win from the Allies recognition of French equality and independence as he had to drive the Germans from the forests and mountain passes of the Vosges. First of all, in North Africa, there was conflict between Allied method and French audacity. The French, with the courage and élan that have made France's soldiers famous, wanted to rush straight into the battle to liberate the Motherland; they had come to North Africa to fight, not to serve in base and service units. The Americans, on the other hand, relied on impeccable organisation and methodically used strength rather than boldness: But French dash, helped by local knowledge and_ the .maquis, won spectacular success, and within 12 days. after landing in Southern France they had captured Toulon and Marseilles, a month earlier than the Allies’ cautious timetable. In the advance north through France and into Germariy, de Lattre on sevDE LATTRE

eral occasions interpreted the Allied plan’ to suit French ambitions. Extremely conscious of national prestige and anxious that his forces should be in the forefront of the battle, he exceeded his orders to ensure that the French shared fully in the honours. To say the least, the Allied Command was sometimes hardly tactful. Ignoring French anxiety to avenge 1940 by invading Germany, it gave the French First Army a minor holding role in the crossing of the Rhine. Then there was some divergence of opinion about who was to garrison Stuttgart, captured by the French but in the American operational zone. And to cap it all, the French flag was not ‘among those of the Allies at the signing of the German capitulation in Berlin. When de Lattre drew attention to the omission, the Russians hurriedly made one from a sheet, a Nazi banner, and an engineer’s overalls. Although much of this ‘history is a tactical day-by-day account of the fighting:in France and the advance into Germany, the charm of: French prose persists in the translation. De Lattre’s style is exclamatory, the pace is sometimes breathless, and he. likes to ask rhetorical questions; occasionally a lively metaphor gives a sharp twist to his accounts of battle.