Editing Maxime Weygand (section)

==== Supreme Allied Command Staff ====
[[File:The Hundred Days Offensive, August-november 1918 Q9245.jpg|thumb|right|Foch and Weygand arriving at [[British Fourth Army]] headquarters on 12 August 1918 to meet [[King George V]]]]

Weygand was in charge of Foch's staff when his patron was appointed [[Supreme Allied Commander]] in the spring of 1918, and was Foch's right-hand man throughout his victories in the late summer and until the end of the war.

Weygand initially headed a small staff of 25–30 officers, with Brigadier General Pierre Desticker as his deputy. There was a separate head for each of the departments, e.g. Operations, Intelligence, Q (Quartermaster). From June 1918 onwards, under British pressure, Foch and Weygand poached staff officers from the French Commander-in-Chief [[Philippe Pétain]] (Lloyd George's tentative suggestion of a multinational Allied staff was vetoed by President Wilson). By early August Colonel Payot (responsible for supply and transport) had moved to Foch's HQ, as had the Military Missions from the other Allied HQs; in Greenhalgh's words this "put real as opposed to nominal power into Foch's hands". From early July onwards, British military and political leaders came to regret Foch's increased power, but Weygand later recorded that they had only themselves to blame as they had pushed for the change.{{sfn|Greenhalgh|2005|pp=229–231}}

Like Foch and most French leaders of his era (Clemenceau, who had lived in the US as a young man, was a rare exception), Weygand could not speak enough English to "sustain a conversation" (German, not English, was the most common second language in which French officers were qualified). Competent interpreters were therefore vital.{{sfn|Greenhalgh|2005|pp=9, 229–31}}

Weygand drew up the memorandum for the meeting of Foch with the national commanders-in-chief (Haig, Pétain and [[John J. Pershing]]) on 24 July 1918, the only such meeting before the autumn, in which Foch urged (successfully) the liberation of the Marne salient [[Third Battle of the Aisne|captured by the Germans in May]] (this offensive would become the [[Second Battle of the Marne]], for which Foch was promoted Marshal of France), along with further offensives by the British and by the Americans at St Mihiel.{{sfn|Greenhalgh|2014|p=322}} Weygand personally delivered the directive for the [[Battle of Amiens (1918)|Amiens attack]] to Haig.{{sfn|Greenhalgh|2005|p=248}} Foch and Weygand were shown around the [[Battle of Saint-Mihiel|liberated St. Mihiel sector]] by Pershing on 20 September.{{sfn|Greenhalgh|2014|p=335}}

Weygand later (in 1922) questioned whether Pétain's planned offensive by twenty-five divisions in Lorraine in November 1918 could have been supplied through a "zone of destruction" through which the Germans were retreating; his own and Foch's doubts about the feasibility of the plans were another factor in the seeking of an armistice.{{sfn|Greenhalgh|2014|p=362}} In 1918 Weygand served on [[Armistice with Germany (Compiègne)|the armistice]] negotiations, and it was Weygand who read out the armistice conditions to the Germans at [[Compiègne]], in the [[Compiègne Wagon|railway carriage]]. He can be spotted in photographs of the armistice delegates, and also standing behind Foch's shoulder at Pétain's investiture as [[Marshal of France]] at the end of 1918.