Expedition to Europe

After the expansion of the army, Qin Zhiyuan had a total of six divisions.

Their designations are the four infantry divisions "1 to 4" of the Foreign Legion, the 1st Armored Division, and the 1st Artillery Division.

The infantry division no longer has a brigade-level establishment. Directly below the division is the regiment. The standard "three-three system". A standard regiment has about 3,500 people. Plus the division-affiliated troops, each division has 10,000 taels. Thousands of people.

The armored force is slightly smaller in number, with each regiment having 102 tanks, plus the logistics support force, which has about 1,500 people. The total number of troops in the three regiments is nearly 400 tanks. The divisional artillery of the armored forces uses 12 155mm self-propelled artillery. The entire army has more than 700 vehicles. Since it is no longer equipped with accompanying infantry, there are more than 7,000 people in total.

The artillery division is the largest unit, with 40 194mm self-propelled artillery, 40 155mm self-propelled artillery, plus nearly a hundred towed artillery, the number is close to 20,000, which can almost be split into two divisions.

After the expansion, the six divisions had a total of nearly 80,000 soldiers. In addition to Chinese and Annan people, some French were also added.

These French people did not have any resistance to accepting Qin Zhiyuan's command, but were somewhat looking forward to it. The reason was probably because it was easier to gain military exploits by staying under Qin Zhiyuan's command.

Among the four infantry divisions, Qin Zhiyuan disrupted the troop organization and mixed Chinese and Annan people.

Wu and Ruan had no objections to this. Ge Lifu and Liu Zizheng also agreed to accept some Annan people, and everything went very smoothly.

By mid-June, Qin Zhiyuan's troops completed their expansion and moved to Ferenta-de-Noy again, taking over from the French Fourth Army that had been defending in this area and taking charge of the war against Germany in this area.

At this time, the battlefield on the Eastern Front was in mourning.

It doesn't matter if you are French, British or German.

The civil strife in the French army had actually been put down. Foch calmed most of the soldiers and only used artillery against a Russian unit. There were about 15,000 soldiers in that Russian force. They had lost 6,000 people in the previous battles. The survivors openly rebelled. In their words: "We were informed that we were sent to France to pay for our sale to Russia." of arms expenses.”

Foch treated them decisively and fiercely. He used artillery to attack the Russian camp. The Russians succumbed and were dismissed.

Although the civil strife in the French army has been calmed down, the French army has also lost its offensive capability, and the entire southern front is in a state of stalemate.

The Germans on the opposite side also had a hard time. Crown Prince Wilhelm's aggressive advance was criticized. The loss of nearly 100,000 people offset the advantage gained by the German army by defeating Nivelle's spring offensive. The Germans were adjusting their defense. About four divisions of troops were transferred from the German eastern front to the western front to fill the defense vacuum caused by the destruction of Crown Prince Wilhelm's Army.

General Oscar von Hutier was transferred to Reims to serve as the southern commander of the German army and command the newly formed 18th Army. He will be Qin Zhiyuan's opponent for the next period of time.

If Qin Zhiyuan is proficient in the history of war, then Qin Zhiyuan must know that although General Oscar von Hutier is not well-known, he invented the "Hutier Tactics" during World War I, which is also known as the "Hutier Tactics". "Infiltration tactics" or "storm troop tactics" were the predecessor of the German army's later mechanized all-arms doctrine.

Just when Qin Zhiyuan ushered in a new opponent, the British Commander-in-Chief Haig also selected a new attack direction.

The British made good progress at the beginning of the spring offensive. Near Arras, the Canadians performed exceptionally well. They successfully captured Vimy Ridge and continued to attack the Germans based on this.

But after Ludendorff relieved General Derwig von Falkenhausen of his duties, the British offensive ran into trouble. They suffered an average of 6,000 casualties per day, but never achieved a victory similar to Vimy Ridge.

The British offensive in Arras ceased after Easter, and British Commander-in-Chief Haig turned his attention to the Belgian coast.

How to put it, as a naval power, Britain's persistence in ports is really surprising.

Prior to this, in 1914 and 1915, the British had launched two large-scale attacks on the Ypres area in western Belgium, but both ended in failure.

Now British Commander-in-Chief Haig felt it was time for a third.

Before this attack, Haig sent people to check all the weather data since 1830. He found that every August, the Flanders area where the British planned to launch the attack would fall into the rainy season. Therefore, Haig decided to rush to Attack before August.

But like the spring offensive proposed by Nivele, no one was optimistic about Haig's battle plan. Not only were Foch and Pétain not optimistic about it, but even Britain was not optimistic about it from top to bottom.

In order to get Haig to give up his battle plan, Lloyd George ordered the 450,000 newly trained local recruits to postpone reinforcements to the French mainland. A Times reporter who had served as a lieutenant colonel in the army even bluntly told Haig: "Water will be your enemy."

By water, I mean not just the rainy season, but also Flanders’ fragile drainage system.

Flanders is low-lying, with a reservoir upstream and the Issel River, which often floods. As early as the beginning of the World War, the Belgians opened the dam to flood the east bank of the Issel River to prevent the Germans from breaking through. If an attack is launched in Flanders, even if the Germans do not take the initiative to open the gates to release water, the bombardment of heavy artillery will cause flooding in the area.

Haig was not unaware of the dangers in this area, but he did not make any adjustments. When the Battle of Arras just ended, Haig began to prepare to launch an attack in Flanders, even though Lloyd George had not approved Haig's battle plan at this time.

Look, disobedience is not unique to the French.

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

The Flanders Offensive, like the Spring Offensive, was extremely smooth in the beginning.

The British had a big plan. After the failure of the second Ypres Offensive in 1915, they dug tunnels under Flanders. The person in charge of this was General Herbert Plummer, commander of the British Second Army.

The longest of these tunnels is one mile long and 100 feet deep, with a total of 22. The reason for digging so deep is to avoid German detection. In order to cope with the low-lying terrain of Flanders, there are even electric pumps in the tunnels to pump out the accumulated water and reach the German positions directly.

These 22 tunnels were eventually dug into 21, and the crazy British piled a total of 445 tons of explosives in them. The largest one contained 41 tons of explosives, which is the largest mine in the world.

Haig's bombardment began at 3:10 in the morning of July 7. The scale of the bombardment exceeded that of Nivelle's spring offensive, with an average of one cannon every seven yards.

When the bombardment began, the mines in the tunnels were detonated, and 19 of the 21 super mines were successfully detonated.

The earth-shaking explosions of these mines could be felt in London, and the destructive power was unparalleled. The entire mountain was blown away, and about 10,000 German soldiers died on the spot, and countless people were injured.

The British easily occupied the town of Messina at almost no cost.

After the war report reached Paris, there was deep reflection behind the jubilation. Why did the British always make progress, while the French made no progress at all?

On July 10, a telegram from the Ministry of War was sent directly to Fer-Anta de Noir.

Lyaute asked Qin Zhiyuan to launch an attack on the Germans in the direction of Reims. The French needed news to recapture lost territory, even if it was just a village.