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To: weikel
And thanks to “Fighting Dan Daley” and some other Marines, we plugged the gap... and then moved forward.

When I think French military, I think of Petain and Weygand and DeGaulle.

As the French evaporated when the Germans crossed the Meuse in 1940, Weygand told Churchill that Britains neck would be strangled like a chickens. HA!

47 posted on 01/28/2003 12:27:40 PM PST by johnny7 (Maginot Line... come in... Maginot Line!)
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To: johnny7
When I think French military, I think of Petain and Weygand and DeGaulle.

Petain was a good WW I commander and helped save France; unfortunately he turned into a doddering old weasel in WW II.

And despite De Gaulle's annoying anti-American weaselosity, he was an EXCELLENT military commander.

De Gaulle was wounded three separate times in World War I (captured after the last wounding) and then proceeded to make FIVE escape attempts.

He then helped organize the Polish army which proceeded to kick the living snot out of the Soviets in the Russo-Polish war in the 20s (a completely forgotten war that may have saved all of Europe, and maybe the entire world, from going Communist.)

And in 1940 he commanded a division, and mounted the only successful French counterrack of the Battle for France. He'd previously strenuously argued that the French should combine their tanks into large masses and coordinate them with air power (particularly after studying the German invasion of Poland) but the High Command didn't listen, and scattered the French tanks in tiny groups here and there.

The French and British in 1940 had better tanks than the Germans, more tanks than the Germans, AND more men. Arguably, had De Gaulle been in overall Allied command, the Germans might have lost in 1940.

And after all the other French gave up and started licking German boots De Gaulle was the one guy that wouldn't give in.

49 posted on 01/28/2003 12:39:05 PM PST by John H K
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