Expedition to Europe

In March, the French army changed positions. The troops that had defended for a winter retreated to rest, and the troops that rested in the winter moved forward to prepare for the war in 1918.

The position of the Foreign Legion was still in the Reims area. They were to replace Michelet's Tenth Army.

At this time, the Foreign Legion had been further expanded, with eight Chinese infantry divisions, two Chinese artillery divisions, an armored division, and an air force division with a mixture of bombers and fighters.

A rough calculation shows that the current Chinese troops alone have exceeded 150,000 people, and there are more than 30,000 people in training in Corsica. They will probably not be able to complete all training subjects until May.

In addition to the Chinese troops, Qin Zhiyuan also has four Annan divisions and two Senegal divisions, which add up to nearly 100,000 people.

Now, Qin Zhiyuan has the most troops in the entire Western Front, even Bastien's Fifth Army is dwarfed by it.

Bastien's Fifth Army's defense line was adjacent to the Foreign Legion's defense line, responsible for the line from Sossovo to Compiègne, and beyond that was the defense line of Hubert Gough of the British Fifth Army.

Compared with Qin Zhiyuan and Bastien, Gough was the worst. He had only 14 divisions, but was responsible for a 52-mile defense line.

Bastien had 17 divisions, but was only responsible for a defense line of about 41 miles between Roye and Laon.

Qin Zhiyuan had the most troops, and he was responsible for a defense line of about 56 miles from Laon to Champagne-Chalons.

In early March, Qin Zhiyuan said goodbye to Julie and went to Reims to hand over to Michelet.

I still remember that Qin Zhiyuan first met Michelet in Foch's office. At that time, Michelet was a lieutenant general, and Qin Zhiyuan was just a colonel who had not yet been officially appointed.

In a blink of an eye, a year and a half passed, and Qin Zhiyuan's rank was promoted to general. Although Michelet was also promoted to general, he was as slow as a snail compared to Qin Zhiyuan.

So Michele was envious when he saw Qin Zhiyuan: "Oh, Qin, I'm so happy to see you."

"Ah, General, your belly is big again. This won't work. I'm afraid your car needs to be specially made." Qin Zhiyuan joked casually.

The place where Qin Zhiyuan and Michele met was called Brillmont. It was originally the headquarters of Crown Prince William. After Michele arrived in Reims, he also used it as his headquarters.

Qin Zhiyuan had no intention of changing it, and didn't want to make any more trouble, so he set up his headquarters here.

Brillmont is a small town. It's not big, with about a hundred households. The surrounding scenery is beautiful, with mountains and water. If you ignore the trenches that look like dogs chewing, this is a pretty good place.

When Brillmont was occupied by the German army, all the French residents here had fled. After Qin Zhiyuan recaptured Reims, some of the residents here returned, but were persuaded to leave by Michele's people on the grounds that the war was not over yet.

So now Brillmont is a military fortress. There are no dogs except soldiers.

Michelet's headquarters was set up in a hotel. Although it was not very spacious, it had complete living facilities and separate meetings.

Entering the headquarters, Qin Zhiyuan complained: "I just went to the front line. You are so easygoing that you didn't even build fortifications. Now we have something to do this month."

"Fortifications?" Michelet's expression was very interesting, as if he had heard something incredible: "Do we need to build fortifications? The Germans have been staying in the trenches. As long as they dare to leave their positions, we can drive them back to Germany."

Throughout the winter, the Germans launched several attacks and successfully drove the Tenth Army's defense line back from the Aisne River to the Supp River, but it seems that Michelet ignored this fact.

"The Supreme War Council has decided that there will be no large-scale offensive this year, so we need to be on guard against the Germans. Recent intelligence shows that the Germans are moving frequently, and they are likely to launch an offensive within two months, or even a month, so even if you go to the rear, you must be prepared to support at any time." Qin Zhiyuan didn't want to correct Michele's approach, he just wanted to remind him.

"Damn it, end this damn war quickly, our nerves have been tense all winter, but even on vacation, we can't rest." Michele was also tired of the war. He rubbed his temples and fell on the sofa, and the sofa made an unbearable groan.

"Come on! You are responsible for defense in winter, but the Germans will not attack. We come here to change guard in the summer, and we fight the Germans to the end every time. So don't complain, compared to you, I have more reason to complain." Qin Zhiyuan also wanted to complain, but Qin Zhiyuan didn't dare, because Foch was Qin Zhiyuan's immediate superior.

"Hahahaha... you are right! My vacation is about to start, so goodbye." On this issue, Michele really has nothing to complain about.

The staff and secretaries had packed up their things, and all the boxes were loaded into the car, waiting for Michele and Qin Zhiyuan to say goodbye.

Qin Zhiyuan sent Michele out of the headquarters. When Michele and Qin Zhiyuan shook hands, he suddenly remembered something: "Oh, by the way, I left some good things for you upstairs, no need to thank me."

Qin Zhiyuan didn't know what was going on, but he still thanked him politely.

When he went upstairs, Qin Zhiyuan found that Michele had left a whole wine rack of various wines for Qin Zhiyuan, which made Qin Zhiyuan couldn't help shaking his head and smiling bitterly. It seems that Michele has had a good time during this period.

But when he came to Qin Zhiyuan, he had no good days. After settling down, Qin Zhiyuan immediately called all the generals to hold a military meeting to arrange the deployment of the stage and prepare to deal with the German attack.

At present, the commanders of the eight infantry divisions of the Chinese troops are: Ge Lifu, Liu Zizheng, Zhang Tianshou, Xu Sheng, Xiang Ankang, Qin Haoge, Jin Taihe, and Wang Dingshan, the commanders of the artillery divisions are Zheng Dali and Cheng Feiming, the commander of the armored division is still Chen Kangjian, and the commander of the air force division is Zhou Hongguang.

The commanders of the four Annan divisions are Wu Yuanting, Ruan Juncai, Fan Wenxiong, and Hu Yangshu, and the commanders of the two Senegalese divisions are appointed by the Ministry of the Army, one is Alex Steele and the other is Jerome Wayne.

There is no need to mobilize to fight the Germans. The veterans have been fighting for a year and a half, and the recruits have at least undergone six months of personal skills training. There is no problem in terms of combat skills.

The main thing is deployment. In fact, according to the order of combat effectiveness, the Chinese troops should be the strongest, followed by the Annan troops, and the weakest is the Senegalese troops. However, Qin Zhiyuan was reluctant to arrange all the Chinese troops on the front line, so there were only five Chinese divisions on the front line, followed by three Annan divisions and one Senegalese division.

Among them, the Senegalese division's defense line is near Champagne Chalons in the southernmost part, and the front line is only three miles wide, which should be no problem.

In last year's battle, Ludendorff's "elastic defense" left a deep impression on Qin Zhiyuan. Therefore, when defense was needed, Qin Zhiyuan simply copied Ludendorff's tactics completely and prepared to use "elastic defense" for defense.

The original text is in Liu # 9 @book/bar!

The only disadvantage is time. Qin Zhiyuan did not have enough time, so the position setting may not be as solid as the German position.

However, the foreign legion also has an advantage that the Germans do not have, that is, armored forces.

In Qin Zhiyuan's design, if the front-line positions were occupied by the Germans, when a counterattack was needed, the Foreign Legion would launch an attack with the tank troops as the vanguard. At that time, because the Germans lacked anti-tank weapons, they would probably be crushed into meat paste by Chen Kangjian's tanks.

Chen Kangjian's tank troops now have nearly 400 tanks, which can actually be divided into two divisions, but in order to shut up Pershing and Pétain, Qin Zhiyuan did not split them.

After last year's Battle of Reims, everyone has fully realized the role of tanks, so tanks have become a hot commodity, and Lyautey can't continue to allocate tanks to Qin Zhiyuan unscrupulously.

Almost all French generals are envious of the size of the armored forces in the Foreign Legion, and they also have complaints about Lyautey's partiality. ,

In fact, Qin Zhiyuan also equipped the infantry division with tanks, about 40 tanks per division. So Qin Zhiyuan now has more than 700 tanks, which is currently the largest armored force in the world.

This time, Chen Kangjian's tank troops were not used in a concentrated manner. Instead, a regiment was placed in Corbeni, Burgundy, and Bacone. These troops acted as defensive fulcrums. Once a certain line of defense was breached, the nearest armored troops would immediately provide support. The armored troops were Qin Zhiyuan's trump card.

No, compared to the armored troops, the air force was the trump card.

The current air force has nearly 100 bombers and more than 140 fighters. Strictly speaking, these bombers are Qin Zhiyuan's trump card.

Nearly 100 bombers, each with a bomb load of about one ton, can throw nearly 100 tons of steel on the Germans every time they are deployed. This delivery capability is much stronger than that of the artillery troops.

The two artillery divisions in the Foreign Legion, one is equipped with self-propelled artillery and the other is equipped with towed artillery.

The self-propelled artillery divisions are equipped with artillery of 194 mm caliber and 152 mm caliber, with a total of 76 guns. The towed artillery divisions were also equipped with these two calibers. Although the shells were exactly the same, the range and power of the artillery were inferior to those of the self-propelled artillery.

In fact, the infantry divisions were also equipped with artillery, and there were quite a few of them, but most of them were "Miss 75". Each division had only one heavy artillery regiment, equipped with 24 152mm caliber artillery to provide fire support for the infantry.

Throughout March, all the troops of the Foreign Legion were busy building positions. They had to build defensive positions with a depth of two kilometers on a 56-mile-long defense line to prepare for possible attacks by the Germans.

During this period, Lyautey and Foch came to the Foreign Legion's positions for inspection many times, constantly putting forward higher requirements for Qin Zhiyuan. The depth of the defensive positions also increased from two kilometers to four kilometers, from the Supp River to Reims.

Fortunately, Lyautey sent a lot of laborers to Qin Zhiyuan, otherwise it would be estimated that he would not be able to complete the task if he relied solely on the engineer shovels in the hands of the soldiers.