15 - ‘Les Boches sont dans la purée’

Summary

Foch did not rest on his laurels. Well before the simple ceremony at his headquarters when he received his marshal’s baton (from President Poincaré on 23 August), he was already planning future moves. His plans to free the Amiens–Paris railway and the northern coalmines had long been in the pipeline and he now seized the opportunity to confer with the three commanders-in-chief in France about future operations. Usually, he preferred a less formal, face-to-face approach: this was the sole occasion prior to discussion of armistice terms that Foch called such a conference, its rarity marking its significance. It took place at his headquarters in Bombon on 24 July.

The previous day Foch had asked Weygand to prepare a memorandum to be given to Haig, Pétain and Pershing, together with a questionnaire requesting details of the forces that each Allied army would be able to put into line on 1 January and 1 April 1919. Foch’s confidence that his chief of staff would reproduce faithfully his ideas resulted in a more concisely expressed and clearer exposition of his views. Nevertheless, he was capable of concision, as his entry for 24 July in his notebook reveals:

These are the operations to be carried out as soon as possible with the aim of maintaining moral ascendancy over the enemy, maintaining the initiative, maintaining the direction of the war. 2) then a general offensive in the autumn 18; 3) withdrawal [to the] Hindenburg [Line].