Alphonse Juin
Alphonse Pierre Juin was a senior French Army general who became Marshal of France. A graduate of the École Spéciale Militaire class of 1912, he served in Morocco in 1914 in command of native troops. Upon the outbreak of the First World War, he was sent to the Western Front in France, where he was gravely wounded in 1915. As a result of this wound, he lost the use of his right arm.
After the war, he attended the École Supérieure de Guerre. He chose to serve in North Africa again. After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, he assumed command of the 15th Motorized Infantry Division. The division was encircled in the Lille pocket during the Battle of France and Juin was captured. He was a prisoner of war until he was released at the behest of the Vichy Government in 1941, and was assigned to command French forces in North Africa.
After Operation Torch, the invasion of Algeria and Morocco by British and American forces in November 1942, Juin ordered French forces in Tunisia to resist the Germans and the Italians. His great skills were exhibited during the Italian campaign as commander of the French Expeditionary Corps. His expertise in mountain warfare was crucial in breaking the Gustav Line, which had held up the Allied advance for six months.
Following this assignment, he was Chief of the Staff of the French forces and represented France at the San Francisco Conference. In 1947 he returned to Africa as the Resident-General of France in Morocco, where he opposed Moroccan attempts to gain independence. Next came a senior NATO position as he assumed command of CENTAG until 1956. During his NATO command, he was promoted to Marshal of France in 1952. He was greatly opposed to Charles De Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria, and was "retired" in 1962 as a result. He was the French Army's last living Marshal of France until his death in Paris in 1967, when he was buried in Les Invalides.
Early years
Alphonse Juin was born at Bône in French Algeria on 16 December 1888, the only son of Victor Pierre Juin, a soldier who became a gendarme after 15 years of military service, mostly in Algeria, and his wife Précieuse Salini, the daughter of another soldier who had also become a gendarme. He was named after his paternal grandfather. When he was six, his family moved to Constantine, where he went to primary school, and learnt Arabic from the local boys. In 1902 he was awarded a bursary to study at the Lycée d'Aumale in Constantine.In 1909 he passed the entrance examination for the École spéciale militaire. At that time cadets were required to spend a year in the Army before commencing the course, so he enlisted in an Algerian regiment, the 1st Zouaves Regiment, quickly rising to corporal and then sergeant. He entered Saint-Cyr in 1910. Classes are named, and his class, the 94th, was known as promotion de Fès after the Moroccan city of Fès that was at the centre of the Agadir Crisis of 1911. Among the class of 223, which included eight foreigners from China, Turkey, Iran and Algeria, were future général d'armée Antoine Béthouart, three future généraux de corps d'armée, four future généraux de division and eighteen future généraux de brigade, including Charles de Gaulle. There would remain a special bond between members of the class, and de Gaulle would always address Juin using the personal pronoun tu. Juin, de Gaulle and Béthouart would give their names to the Saint-Cyr classes of 1966–68, 1970–72 and 2000–03 respectively.
After graduating on 1 October 1912, Juin was commissioned as a sous-lieutenant in an Algerian regiment, the 1st Algerian Tirailleurs Regiment. He soon saw service in Morocco in the Zaian War, participating in the fighting around Taza.
First World War
Upon the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, a brigade of five battalions known as the Brigade des Chasseurs Indigènes was formed from Moroccan troops and sent to the Western Front in France. Juin joined Chef de Bataillon Joseph-François Poeymirau's 2e Régiment des Chasseurs Indigènes as a lieutenant. On 5 September, the brigade joined the fighting in the First Battle of the Marne. Juin was wounded in his left hand the following day, but refused evacuation to hospital, remaining at the front with his arm in a sling. He was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. The brigade was withdrawn from the line in January 1915, but committed to battle again in March in the First Battle of Champagne. In this battle Juin was again wounded, this time in his upper right arm. The damage was permanent, and he was given permission to henceforth salute with his left.Juin found Poeymirau, who had also been wounded, in the hospital, and Poeymirau arranged for Juin to be sent back to Morocco in December 1915 to convalesce. Promoted to capitaine, Juin joined Moroccan troops preparing to go to France, but he accepted an offer from Général de division Hubert Lyautey, the Resident-General in Morocco, to become his aide-de-camp for six months. Juin returned to France towards the end of 1916 in command of a company of the , participating in the Nivelle Offensive in April 1917. He was selected for staff training in February 1918. When he returned in October 1918, he was initially posted to the staff of his division, but then joined the French Mission to the United States Army, where he served when the fighting ended in November 1918.
Interwar
After the war, Juin returned to the 1st Moroccan Tirailleurs Regiment, but was seconded to Lyautey's staff, and then sent to École Supérieure de Guerre for more staff training. After graduating in 1921, he was posted to the headquarters of the division in Tunisia. He turned down an offer of a staff appointment in Paris to serve under Poeymirau in Morocco, but Poeymirau died suddenly in 1924. Lyautey then divided Morocco into two commands. When Juin arrived at the new headquarters in Fès, he found Capitaine Jean de Lattre de Tassigny occupying the position of G-3 that Juin had expected. Since Juin was staff trained and de Lattre was not, Juin became G-4 and had as principal task the supplying of the forts in the Ouergha River area. During the Rif War, he served on the staff of Colonel Charles Noguès. For his services leading troops in the field, Juin was made an officer of the Legion of Honour and promoted to Chef de bataillon.Lyautey was blamed for the French lack of preparedness for the war and relieved of his command. As a marshal, Lyautey was member of the Conseil supérieur de la guerre, and as such was entitled to a small staff of three officers. He asked Juin to be its head, and Juin accepted even though it was a desk job in Paris for an officer with little influence. He refused even to attend the infrequent conseil meetings because of the presence of Marshal Philippe Pétain. Juin was best man at de Lattre's wedding to Simonne Calary de Lamazière in March 1927.
Juin returned to North Africa in September 1927 to assume command of a battalion of the 19th Algerian Tirailleurs Regiment. He married Marie Gabrielle Cécile Bonnefoy, the daughter of an Army veterinary surgeon who had moved to Constantine and become a businessman, in 1928. They had two sons: Pierre and Michel. The following year he became military secretary to Noguès, who was now the director of political affairs in Morocco. An army requirement for officers to complete six months in command of a battalion before they could be promoted made Juin spend six months in command of a battalion of the 1st Zouaves Regiment. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in March 1932, returning to his previous post in time for active operations that year. They were successful, and he was posted to the École Supérieure de guerre as an instructor in 1933. Once again he chafed under the prevailing linear defence doctrine, and he returned to North Africa in 1935 to become second in command and then commander of the 3rd Zouaves Regiment. He was promoted to colonel in June 1935.
Noguès became resident-general in Morocco in 1937, with the expectation that he would become commander in chief in North Africa in the event of hostilities with Nazi Germany. If that happened, Noguès wanted Juin for his chief of staff, but since Juin was only a colonel, it was arranged for him to attend a senior officers course at the Centre des hautes études militaires. On graduation, he returned to Algiers, where he was promoted to the rank of général de brigade on 26 December 1938.
Second World War
Fall of France
After the Second World War broke out in September 1939, Juin helped arrange the despatch of units from the Armée d'Afrique to help defend metropolitan France. On 4 December, he was given command of the 15e Division d'Infantrie Motorisée. After the German attack began on 10 May 1940, the 15e DIM was ordered into Belgium to hold the area around Gembloux. This was held against German attacks on 14 and 15 May, before the defenders were compelled to retreat to Valenciennes. The 15e DIM came under heavy German attack on 24 May, and retreated into the Lille pocket, where it covered the British and French forces fighting in the Battle of Dunkirk. Some units of his division managed to escape to Dunkirk; the remainder fought until their ammunition ran out. Juin surrendered on 29 May.Juin became a prisoner of war, and was held in Oflag IV-B Koenigstein, a prison camp for officers in Königstein Fortress in Saxony. While in prison he was promoted to Général de division. He was released in June 1941 at the request of Pétain, now the head of the Vichy Government, in exchange for thirty German sailors, as a specialist in North African affairs. He was promoted to Général de corps d'armée on 16 July, and became commander of the troops in Morocco. Admiral François Darlan offered him the post of Minister for War following the death of Général d'armée Charles Huntziger in November 1941, but Juin turned down the offer, saying that he only wished to serve in North Africa. On 20 November, he was promoted to Général de corps d'armée, replacing Maxime Weygand as commander of French land forces in North Africa. In December he led a French mission to Germany that met with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring to discuss what would happen if the German-Italian Panzerarmee Afrika was driven out of Libya by Operation Crusader. This did not occur, but a dispute over what should be done led to Juin relieving de Lattre of command of the forces in Tunisia, permanently damaging their friendship.