Expedition to Europe

In the evening, Foch called and chatted with Qin Zhiyuan.

Foch did not talk about the ongoing war, but only chatted with Qin Zhiyuan about Girardine and Napoleon.

Girardine and Qin Zhiyuan returned to Paris together. Qin Zhiyuan was going to the front. Originally, Girardine could only stay at the Black Swan Castle, but Anne liked Girardine very much and let Girardine live at Foch's house. .

Qin Zhiyuan knew that Foch was trying to relieve his pressure.

Although Foch said he was gentle with Qin Zhiyuan, he actually cared about Qin Zhiyuan more than anyone else.

When you are outside, your orders will be ignored. There may be a similar proverb in France. Foch would not point fingers at Qin Zhiyuan. Since he chose Qin Zhiyuan, Foch would give Qin Zhiyuan full trust.

Qin Zhiyuan could feel Foch's kindness. Relatively speaking, Lyotai was not so friendly.

Perhaps Lyautey's pressure was too great. Lyautey asked Qin Zhiyuan to open the situation as soon as possible. Even if he could not achieve a great victory like the Battle of Ferenta de Noy, he would at least drive the German 18th Army out of Reims. Region, regain a piece of land, and give an explanation to the parliament.

This was a scam that Qin Zhiyuan could not let go, so the two newly-organized French military divisions were assigned to the 17th Army and became Qin Zhiyuan's direct troops.

That night, Qin Zhiyuan came to Ernest and Pierre to discuss how to use these two new French military divisions.

Although "Ernest" is a German name, Ernest himself is British.

Ernest was a supporter of the Knights Templar. He served in the British Royal Army ten years ago and served as a lieutenant colonel. After retiring, he became a hermit in a monastery in Belgium.

Ernest now commands a force of 1,600 men, all of whom are fanatical supporters of the Crusades. They dream of returning to Jerusalem one day and restoring the glory of the Crusaders.

Jerusalem has been occupied by the Turks for 400 years.

After the start of the world war, the British organized an expeditionary force of 150,000 people, led by Commander-in-Chief Allenby, and 170,000 Turks led by Germal, with Falkenhayn serving as an advisor, near Gaza and Beersheba. The battle is fierce, and there is currently no winner.

Although Ernest and the others were fanatical, they did not lose their reason. They knew that Qin Zhiyuan and North Africa now belonged to different battlefields. Qin Zhiyuan had to end the war here before he could take care of North Africa. Therefore, although they had resentment in their hearts, they never slacked off. .

"Your Excellency, Grand Commander, I salute you." Ernest showed great respect to Qin Zhiyuan.

"Sit down, we have two new editors, and I need someone to lead them." Qin Zhiyuan was not too polite. In fact, Qin Zhiyuan had always been wary of religious fanatics.

"They have officers." Ernest said without comment.

"What they need is not officers, but spiritual leaders." Qin Zhiyuan pointed out the core of the problem. What the French army needs now is faith: "You know the current situation of the army, let alone the newly formed army. If there is no one to lead They, they will be a mess."

The large-scale mutiny seems to have subsided by now, but in fact many French troops have not yet restored their combat effectiveness, especially their cohesion, which has been exhausted in the mutiny a while ago and will take more time to re-cohere.

Faith is what the fanatics of the Knights Templar lack most. They don't even need to say more, they just need to set an example by practicing it.

"Okay, Grand Commander, if you insist." Ernest agreed to Qin Zhiyuan's arrangement. They have been waiting for the "Eastern Expedition" for hundreds of years and have enough patience.

These two new divisions have not arrived yet, and it will probably take at least half a month for them to arrive on the battlefield, so Qin Zhiyuan can only rely on the existing troops for now.

The fighting resumed early the next morning.

As usual, the battle began with an artillery bombardment.

Last night, Qin Zhiyuan issued a combat order to Zhou Hongguang, the commander of the bomber unit. Today, the bomber unit must be prepared, and they may be dispatched at any time.

Zhou Hongguang was the former worker representative at the Renault factory, and the other one was Zhang Tianyun. Zhou Hongguang has always been very interested in aircraft. When Qin Zhiyuan formed a bomber unit, Zhou Hongguang volunteered and passed Qin Zhiyuan's assessment.

In fact, there are no complicated tactics in air combat in this era, and even two-plane formations have not yet appeared. The outcome of an air combat depends entirely on the pilot's proficiency with the aircraft. Qin Zhiyuan simply assessed Zhou Hongguang's driving skills. Appoint Zhou Hongguang as commander of the bomber force.

The power of the 1,000 artillery salvoes was astonishing. There were more than 400 large-caliber artillery pieces. They were placed on six artillery positions, each responsible for different areas, and bombarded the German positions indiscriminately.

The first round was high-explosive bombs, the second round was gas bombs, and the third round was shrapnel bombs...

Just proceed in this order.

In order to better command the troops in combat, Qin Zhiyuan took a command vehicle and headed to the Obili area, which was less than three kilometers away from the German defense line. Qin Zhiyuan could have a clearer grasp of the offensive and defensive situation.

In fact, in yesterday's fire attack, the defense facilities of the German frontline positions were basically destroyed. When they retreated to Ankang, they used a lot of explosives and blew up many underground tunnels on the frontline battlefield. As for whether there were any Germans inside. If people take care of it, as long as the tunnel facilities are destroyed, the purpose will be achieved.

It took the Germans four months to build these tunnels, but the Chinese only took about 40 minutes to destroy them. Destruction is indeed easier than creation.

With each violent explosion, orange-red, flames and black smoke rose into the sky, accompanied by soil, wooden stakes, large sections of barbed wire, and German limbs and arms.

The bodies that had been buried underground were blown out again, and the soldiers who were originally defending the positions were buried.

The scorching sun in August was high in the sky, and even the fresher bodies had already been highly rotten, and more bodies were left with only piles of bones.

If you don't wear a gas mask, you can't launch a charge at all, and the smoke can suffocate people to death.

The Xu Sheng Regiment and the Fu Lehe Regiment responsible for the attack this time were both infantry regiments under Griff, and they were also supplemented by an Annan Infantry Regiment.

The mission of Xu Sheng's regiment and Fu Lehe's regiment is to set up sniper positions on the spot after conquering the German frontier positions. Therefore, the troops carry a large number of steel structures to quickly arrange positions. At the same time, tank troops will accompany the attack. These tanks will become the defensive fulcrums on the defensive positions.

The mission of the Annan Infantry Regiment is to assist in defense, to put it bluntly, to help Xu Sheng's regiment and Fu Lehe's regiment, help build positions, carry ammunition, transfer wounded and so on.

Bastian directly took out a division, the 32nd Division with the strongest combat effectiveness in his own hands, ready for continuous attack.

This work is organized and uploaded by Liujiu Book Bar~~

According to yesterday's battle deployment, after conquering the enemy's frontier positions, Xu Sheng's regiment and Fu Lehe's regiment will arrange defensive positions on the spot, and Bastian's troops will continue to attack the Germans' second line of defense.

Even if the progress is smooth, Bastian's troops can only advance one kilometer at most, which is exactly half of the distance that the 185th and 192nd regiments advanced yesterday.

At this position, if the Germans launched a counterattack, they would not have much success. If they did not launch a counterattack, the Germans would be forced to retreat after the attacking troops arranged their defenses.

Qin Zhiyuan had to take steady steps and press forward step by step. Anyway, Lyothe's combat requirement was to capture Reims, and the Germans' frontline positions were only about five kilometers away from Reims. As long as they advanced steadily, the Germans would either withdraw from Reims in three days at most, or they would have to choose to fight Qin Zhiyuan to the death.

Ludendorff's tactics were indeed unique, but no tactic was a panacea. The Germans were wrong in wanting to use a set of tactics to deal with all situations.

How could this be possible? If we cannot adapt to local conditions, then even the best tactics will become yesterday's flowers.

But it is not so easy to formulate a set of tactics. In the early 20th century when information was relatively closed, those who could formulate a set of tactics and implement them were all military masters of the time, such as Moltke the Younger, Falkenhayn, and Ludendorff.

Speaking of Falkenhayn, after he was dismissed from his post as Chief of the German General Staff, he first commanded the German Seventh Army to defeat the Romanian army and then occupied the entire Romania. He is now commanding the Ottoman Empire's army to defend Palestine, and during this period he has successfully implemented the plan to expel the Jews.

Look, although Falkenhayn was a bit cowardly when facing the French, Falkenhayn's performance was still remarkable when facing the Romanians and the British in North Africa, which fully demonstrated the combat effectiveness of the French troops during the First World War.

For now, Qin Zhiyuan only needs to find the weaknesses of the "flexible tactics" and formulate corresponding tactics based on the weaknesses, and what awaits the Germans will only be failure.

No matter whether the opponent is General Hutier or General Ludendorff.

The bombardment did not last long, because there was no target worth attacking on the German front line. It looked like a wasteland that had just been reclaimed and had not been leveled yet. It could no longer be seen in its original appearance, and only craters and corpses were left all over the mountains.

So the infantry launched an attack.

With almost no obstacles, the infantry under the cover of tanks arrived in front of the German anti-tank trench.

After several exercises, the soldiers were already familiar with dealing with anti-tank trenches. Three or four soldiers jumped into the trenches, used steel chisels to punch holes in the trench walls, and then stuffed a certain amount of explosives into them. With a loud bang, the anti-tank trenches that the Germans had worked so hard to dig became two small earth slopes.

It was so easy.

After capturing the German frontier positions, the 32nd Division did not rush to attack, but set up simple defensive positions to cover the Xu Sheng Regiment and Fu Lehe Regiment to set up defensive positions.

Compared with the positions of the 32nd Division, Xu Sheng and his team's positions were much more complicated.

Because there were a large number of steel structure bunkers, one by one, the bunkers were quickly set up. Because of the repeated ravages of artillery fire, the soil on the surface had become extremely loose, and the sandbags that provided reinforcement quickly accumulated, and two thick layers were wrapped outside the bunkers. Then we need to connect the steel structures, set up anti-artillery holes and command posts; finally, we need to set up communication trenches, allocate tank troops to defense areas, etc.

It took less than two hours to build a strong and durable defense position with complete facilities.

The steel structure made a great contribution. If it weren't for this thing, it would take at least a week for Xu Sheng and his two regiments to build such a position.