As he entered I saw a man of slight, erect figure, lame, indeed, and with that sad, empty sleeve, but conveying an immediate and startling impression as of some fiery, embodied force, dominating the slender frame.  He had a short beard, brown and silky, dark hair, and a pair of clear blue eyes, shrewd, indeed, and penetrating, but singularly winning.  A soldier, a most modern soldier, yet with an infusion of something romantic, a touch of thoughtful or melancholy charm that recalled old France.  He was dressed in a dark blue mess coat, red breeches, and top boots, with three or four orders sparkling on his breast.  His manners were those of an old-fashioned and charming courtesy.

As is well known, like Marshal Foch and General Castelnau, General Gouraud is a Catholic.  And like General Mangin, the great Joffre himself, Gallieni, Franchet d’Esperey, d’Humbert, and other distinguished leaders of the French Army, he made his reputation in the French Colonial service.  In Morocco, and the neighbouring lands, where he spent some twenty-two years, from 1892 to 1914, he was the right-hand of General Lyautey, and conspicuous no less for his humanity, his peace-making, and administrative genius than for his brilliant services in the field.  When the war broke out General Lyautey indeed tried for a time to keep him at his side.  But the impulse of the younger soldier was too strong; and his chief at last let him go.  Gouraud arrived in France just after the Marne victory, and was at once given the command of a division in the Argonne.  He spent the first winter of the war in that minute study of the ground, and that friendly and inspiring intercourse with his soldiers, which have been two of the marked traits of his career, and when early in 1915 he was transferred to Champagne, as Commander of a Corps d’Armee, he had time, before he was called away, to make a survey of the battle-field east of Rheims, which was of great value to him later when he came to command the Fourth French Army in the same district.  But meanwhile came the summons to the Dardanelles, where, as we all remember, he served with the utmost loyalty and good will under General Sir Ian Hamilton.  He replaced General d’Amade on the 10th of May, led a brilliant and successful attack on the 4th of June, and was, alas! terribly wounded before the end of the month.  He was entering a dressing-station close to his headquarters to which some wounded French soldiers had just been brought when a shell exploded beside him.  His aide-de-camp was knocked over, and when he picked himself up, stunned and bewildered, he saw his General lying a few yards away, with both legs and an arm broken.  Gouraud, during these few weeks, had already made his mark, and universal sympathy from French and English followed him home.  His right arm was amputated on the way to Toulon; the left leg, though broken below the knee, was not seriously injured, but the fracture of the right involved injury to the hip, and led to permanent lameness.