There was the Ninth army corps, from Tours, made up of Angevins (men such as Foch had learned to know when he was at Saumur) and Vendeans (the Bretons' south neighbors). Some of these men had been fighting without respite for nine days as they fell back, with the Fourth army, from the Belgian border. With them, since August 22, had been the remarkable Moroccan division under General Humbert.
Then there was the Eleventh corps of Bretons and Vendeans, which had been through the same terrible retreat.
And—not to enumerate too far—there was that Forty-second division of infantry which was destined to play one of the most dramatic, thrilling, forever-memorable parts in all warfare. It had been in the Ardennes, and had fallen back, fighting fiercely as it came.
To help him command these weary men whose hearts were heavy with forebodings for France, Foch had, as he himself has said, "a general staff of five or six officers, gathered in haste to start with, little or no working material, our note books and a few maps."
"Those who lived through these tragic hours near him," says René Puaux, "recall the chief questioning the liaison officers who did not know exactly where the different units were, punctuating his questions with: 'You don't know? Very well, then go and find out!'; putting together in his head the mosaic of which there were still so many pieces missing; gradually visioning a plan for bringing them together; calculating his effectives; estimating approximately his reserves of ammunition; discovering his bases of food supply."
And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable to get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law, Captain Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.
"It was not, however," M. Puaux says, "the time for personal emotions. The father effaced himself before the soldier. There was nothing to be thought of save the country."
Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.