Charles de Gaulle
Late-1920s: Trier and Beirut

After spending twelve years as a captain, a normal period, de Gaulle was promoted to commandant (major) on 25 September 1927. In November 1927 he began a two-year posting as commanding officer of the 19th chasseurs à pied (a battalion of élite light infantry) with the occupation forces at Trier.

De Gaulle trained his men hard (a river crossing exercise of the freezing Moselle River at night was vetoed by his commanding general). He imprisoned a soldier for appealing to his deputy for a transfer to a cushier unit, and when investigated initially tried to invoke his status as a member of the Maison Pétain, eventually appealing to Pétain to protect himself from a reprimand for interfering with the soldier's political rights. An observer wrote of de Gaulle at this time that although he encouraged young officers, "his ego...glowed from far off". In the winter of 1928–1929, thirty soldiers ("not counting Annamese ") died from so-called "German flu", seven of them from de Gaulle's battalion. After an investigation, he was singled out for praise in the ensuing parliamentary debate as an exceptionally capable commanding officer, and mention of how he had worn a mourning band for a private soldier who was an orphan earned praise from the Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré.

The breach between de Gaulle and Pétain over the ghost-writing of Le Soldat had deepened in 1928. Pétain brought in a new ghostwriter, Colonel Audet, who was unwilling to take on the job and wrote to de Gaulle in some embarrassment to take over the project. Pétain was quite friendly about the matter but did not publish the book. In 1929 Pétain did not use de Gaulle's draft text for his eulogy for the late Ferdinand Foch, whose seat at the Académie Française he was assuming.

The Allied occupation of the Rhineland was ending, and de Gaulle's battalion was due to be disbanded, although the decision was later rescinded after he had moved to his next posting. De Gaulle wanted a teaching post at the École de Guerre in 1929. There was apparently a threat of mass resignation of the faculty were he appointed. There was talk of a posting to Corsica or North Africa, but on Pétain's advice he accepted a two-year posting to Lebanon and Syria. In Beirut he was chief of the 3rd Bureau (military operations) of General Louis-Paul-Gaston de Bigault du Granrut, who wrote him a glowing reference recommending him for high command.
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