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Show HERO OF WORLD WARJUGGUMDS EARL OF YPRES, BETTER KNOWN AS FIELD MARSHAL FRENCH CALLED BY DEATH Carried High Rank In British Military Circles; Was Called Luckiest Man In The Great World War Deal, Eng. The Earl of Ypres, better bet-ter known as Field Marshal French, British World war hero died here at the age of 73. The Earl of Ypres underwent an operation on March 19. Soon thereafter there-after he was reported to be recovering, recover-ing, but subsequently his condition became worse. Rising to the highest places and honors in British military circles, the Earl of Ypres often was characterized characteriz-ed as "the luckiest man In the army," and French luck became almost proverbial pro-verbial among the British soldiers. Later events, however, caused a difference dif-ference of opinion as to whether the luck had been on the soldier's side or on that of the British army and the British empire. Perhaps the most important event of his career which had to do with these two ideas was the historic battle bat-tle of Ypres in the World war, the winning of which barred the channel ports from the Germans and saved England from probable invasion. It was at Ypres that the Germans first resorted to their deadly gas attacks a form of warfare that impelled the British commander to deplore the fact that an army would stoop so low. In 1907 French was appointed inspector in-spector general of the forces and five years later he was made chief of the imperial general staff. He was made a field marshal in 1913 and as such went to France at the beginning begin-ning of the world war as commander in chief of the expeditionary forces. Here again he displayed his extraordinary extraor-dinary ability as a military leader. He was, in a way, responsible for the change in the British cabinet resulting result-ing in the creation of the minstry of munitions, at the head of which former for-mer Premier Lloyd George succeeded in awakening the munitions manufacturers manufac-turers to the necessity of rallying to the aid of the soldiers in the field. In the early engagements in France French's army was outnumbered by the enemy and short of high explosives explo-sives to halt the German advance. To the latter was attributed the necessity necessi-ty for the strategic retreat from Mons, in which he handled the sorely sore-ly tried British army In masterly fashion. Later, with 1,000,000 men under his command, he scored his great victory at Ypres. |