To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [398]
Though Foch is regarded as France’s most celebrated hero of the Great War, he refuses all offers to pursue a career in politics. He dies in 1929, at age seventy-eight.
Foch is the first French leader to have a statue erected to him in London.
MARSHAL JOSEPH JOFFRE
Though he serves as titular chairman of the Supreme War Council, he is keenly aware that any role assigned to him is more ceremonial than meaningful. Once the Treaty of Versailles is signed, he retires. Joffre is a realist, and he understands that the failures of the French army to hold back the German invasion, and the subsequent agony of the four years of bloodletting, must be placed at someone’s feet. Joffre accepts his assigned place as France’s military scapegoat.
He is still much admired by the French people, who are consistently more forgiving than their politicians, and bowing to public pressure, the Ministry of War allows him to maintain a position and an office there, though again, Joffre knows he has no real authority. He is elected to the French Academy, a testament to the esteem he receives in many prominent social circles, and spends the rest of his life in quiet retirement. He dies in 1931, at age seventy-nine.
SIR DOUGLAS HAIG
After the armistice, he eventually returns to London and finds that he is a commander without a command. Having lost the battle of wills to David Lloyd George, Haig finds he has no allies in the British government, and settles into bored retirement at his home in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is granted peerage, given the title of Baron Haig of Bemersyde, and Parliament awards him a gift of one hundred thousand pounds. Various attempts to place him in some prestigious position come to nothing, including a campaign to have him named Viceroy of India. He settles miserably into a life of leisure, plays golf, hunts, and lunches at various clubs, which consider him an honored member.
As is typical of a commander who was popular with his troops, he receives a considerable amount of mail, is distressed to learn of the misery of so many of his men who are struggling to find their way in the civilian world. Haig begins to work with charity hospitals, drawing attention to the extraordinary number of invalid soldiers, and offers aid to counseling organizations, an effort to make life easier for the men who had fought so valiantly under his command.
Despite ongoing criticism of his ability in the field, including scathing assaults on him in Lloyd George’s memoirs, Haig makes no effort to state his own case, is confident that history will vindicate him. To this day he has his rabid supporters as well as equally passionate detractors. He dies in 1928 of a heart attack, at age seventy-seven.
THE LEGACY OF THE “WAR TO END ALL WARS”
The numbers tell the tale. In four years of the most brutal combat the world has ever seen, nearly ten million men die on the battlefield or in the hospitals nearby. The cost in human life can be translated to the loss of more than five thousand men every day the war was fought. Thus an entire generation of young men is erased from the future of humanity.
In all, fifty-seven countries participate on some level in the Great War. The war, and the subsequent treaties that follow, radically alter the map of Europe and the Middle East. Where once were kings and empires, from Germany to Austria-Hungary, Turkey to Russia, new governments arise, new leaders place their names in the history books.
In the United States, the cost of the war is horrifying in its own way. Over fifty thousand men die, a number that pales in comparison to the losses of the other major participants. But the American deaths occur in the relatively brief period from May to November 1918. The number is eerily similar to the losses suffered in the Vietnam War, losses that occur over a period of fourteen years. Other numbers are