Henri Mathias Berthelot Henri Mathias Berthelot ( 1861 – 1931 ) was a French general during World War I . He served as chief of staff under Joseph Joffre , the French commander - in - chief . Biography . In 1883 , after graduating from the Saint - Cyr military academy , Berthelot was assigned to Algeria , and afterwards to Indochina . In 1907 , he was assigned to the French General Staff . During this period Berthelot worked together with General Joseph Joffre on the French war plan called " Plan XVII " . In 1914 , he served as chief of staff under General Joffre during the First Battle of the Marne . In November 1914 , Berthelot was given the command of the reserve forces at Soissons , later the command of the 53rd Division and of the XXXIII Corps . On 16 October 1916 Berthelot was appointed the chief of the French military mission in Romania , and between January and June 1917 he supervised the reorganisation and the retraining of the Romanian Army , defeated in the previous year by the forces of the Central Powers in Wallachia and Dobruja ( " see Romania during World War I " ) . The results of the reorganisation and resupply of the Romanian troops were seen in the summer of 1917 , when the Alexandru Averescu ' s army broke the front at Mărăşti and the major counter - offensive of the Central Powers with the aim of occupying the rest of the Romanian territory ( Moldavia ) and the port of Odessa was stopped at Mărăşeşti and Oituz . However , when the Bolsheviks took Russia out of the war , Romania , left surrounded by the Central Powers , had little choice but to sign an armistice in December 1917 , followed by a peace treaty in May 1918 . Under these circumstances the French military mission had to leave the country . In July 1918 , after his return to France , general Ferdinand Foch appointed him commander of the Fifth army . After the successful offensive on the Thessaloniki front which put Bulgaria out of the war , Romania re - entered the war on November 10 , 1918 , a day before its end in Western Europe . On 11 November 1919 , during the victory parade of the Allied forces in Paris , General Berthelot told General Foch at the sight of the Romanian detachment : " Foch , saluez ! C ' est la famille . " ( " Foch , salute ! It ' s [ our ] family . " ) From 1919 to 1922 , Berthelot served as military governor of Metz . From 1920 to 1926 , Berthelot was a member of the " Conseil Général de Guerre " ( Supreme War Council ) , and was involved in the decision to build the Maginot Line . From 1923 to 1926 , the general served as military governor of Strasbourg . He died in 1931 and was buried in Nervieux ( Department of Loire ) . Berthelot ' s legacy in Romania . Grateful for the French army ' s contribution to the liberation of Romania , and in particular , Berthelot ' s role during the World War I Romanian campaign , the Romanian Parliament awarded him honorary citizenship of Romania and King Ferdinand rewarded the general with lands located in the Transylvanian village of Fărcădin , confiscated from the Franz Nopcsa von Felső - Szilvás family . The property included a manor house , some arable land , an orchard and a forest . In 1923 , the local council decided to rename Fărcădin to " General Berthelot " . In 1926 , Berthelot was elected an honorary member of the Romanian Academy . In his will he left all his properties in Fărcădin to the Romanian Academy . During the , the castle was sacked and eventually turned into a silo . In 1965 the village ' s name was changed to " Unirea " ( Union ) . In 2001 , after Ceauşescu ' s downfall , a local referendum approved the renaming the village and the commune back to " General Berthelot " . Several schools , streets and boulevards bear his name in Romania .