Expedition to Europe

It took only half an hour for all the battles in the air over Omenancourt to stop. The once famous hunting brigade was completely wiped out, and no one escaped.

The Red Baron was also shot down, but it was not in Bao Deshui's account, which made Bao Deshui very regretful.

The Foreign Legion's battle results statistics method is different from that of the French Army. If it is a group attack, the results will only be recorded on the head of the last fighter to launch the attack.

If the French Army's statistics are followed, the honor of shooting down the Red Baron also belongs to Bao Deshui.

Fortunately, this result was finally recorded on the head of Bao Deshui's wingman Dou Yongyi, which made Dou Yongyi ecstatic. After this battle, Dou Yongyi will also become a "double ace" who shot down ten enemy planes, and the entire air combat regiment has added two more "ace pilots".

The bombardment started at three o'clock in the morning and lasted for a total of three hours. About 4,000 artillery pieces and 4,000 mortars participated in the bombardment, setting another record in terms of scale.

When the bombardment stopped, 14 German divisions launched attacks at Amienfontein and Châlons-en-Champagne at the same time.

Qin Zhiyuan's concerns were indeed confirmed, and the troops in these two places failed to hold their positions.

Châlons-en-Champagne was the first to collapse.

In fact, in Châlons-en-Champagne, in addition to the two Senegalese divisions, there is now part of the Ninth Army led by General Denis Duchene.

Denis Duchene used to be Foch's staff officer and was quickly promoted during the war. When Qin Zhiyuan expressed his concerns about Châlons-en-Champagne to Foch, Foch sent part of Denis Duchene's troops to assist in the defense of Châlons-en-Champagne.

The troops sent by Denis Duchene were three British divisions, and these three British divisions were not fully staffed. They should have stayed in the rear to rest and gradually replenish their troops, but the fierce fighting on the front did not give them much opportunity to rest.

Before the Germans launched the attack, Denis Duchene had the opportunity to strengthen the defense.

His troops captured two lost Germans, one an officer and one a soldier.

During the process of escorting the prisoners, the soldier chatted with the French soldier in charge of escorting them, and revealed the information that the Germans were about to launch an attack.

Although this was severely reprimanded and denied by the officer, it was immediately reported.

So the officers and soldiers were interrogated separately.

The soldiers confessed more information, such as they had received enough bullets and grenades, which was an important signal that the Germans were about to launch an attack. But at the same time, the soldiers did not receive field rations, so they could not determine the time of the attack.

During the interrogation of the officer, the officer talked freely and claimed that the Germans had no attack plan.

The British officer in charge of the interrogation did not beat around the bush and told the Germans directly: If you lie, you will be treated as a spy.

The officer was scared and finally confessed more things, including that the Germans would launch an attack on the morning of the 10th.

British commander Hamilton Gordon immediately reported this intelligence to Denis Duchene.

Denis Duchene didn't agree. He replied arrogantly: There is no evidence that the German army is about to launch an attack.

After replying, Denis Duchene left Châlons-en-Champagne and went to Paris to meet his lover.

Then the Germans launched an attack in the early morning of the next day.

The defensive position arranged by Denis Duchene also had problems. Qin Zhiyuan originally arranged two Senegalese divisions behind the Ypres Canal, including the artillery positions, with a depth of about five kilometers.

Compared with the strength of the troops, this unfamiliarity is normal, but after Denis Duchene arrived in Châlons-en-Champagne, the defense force increased to five divisions, and the depth of the position was still five kilometers, which was inappropriate.

So the German artillery bombardment could easily cover all the front-line positions and the artillery positions in the rear, and the Germans did not skimp on shells at this time.

In the overwhelming bombardment, the two Senegalese divisions that were not strictly managed collapsed first, followed by the three British divisions with heavy casualties. The German Seventh Army, which was responsible for the attack, easily crossed the Ypres Canal and advanced towards Châlons-en-Champagne.

After Qin Zhiyuan received the news of the attack, he immediately dispatched Xiang Ankang Division and an Annan Division led by Hu Yangshu to reinforce. The reinforcement location was not the Ypres Canal or the Bussy River, but the Marne River behind Châlons-en-Champagne.

Qin Zhiyuan was pessimistic about the combat effectiveness of the British and Senegalese divisions, and estimated that they would have to withstand the German attack at the Marne River.

Almost as Qin Zhiyuan imagined, the Germans crossed the Ypres Canal at 10 a.m., crossed the Bussy River again at 3 p.m., and arrived at Châlons-en-Champagne at 7 p.m.

On the first day alone, the Germans advanced 15 miles on a 20-mile wide front, which was a brilliant victory compared to their previous record against the Foreign Legion.

The Bavarian prince was still not satisfied with the current progress. He asked the troops to continue the attack, advance, advance and advance again.

But the Seventh Army was exhausted. They had no ability to attack the positions of the Foreign Legion, which was on high alert. They only launched a tentative attack, and the German army no longer attacked rashly.

When night fell, the Marne River defense line was miserable. The three British divisions now had less than a division's strength, and the two Senegalese divisions suffered heavy casualties. When the Germans began to bombard, the blacks were in chaos. Many soldiers ran out of the anti-artillery holes and wanted to escape back to the rear, but they were either killed by explosions or suffocated by poison gas bombs.

The statistical results left Qin Zhiyuan and Dennis Duchene speechless. Of the nearly 70,000 soldiers, 46,000 were lost in one day, leaving only more than 20,000 desperate soldiers to cross the Marne River.

Someone must be responsible for this, but it should not be Alex Steele and Hamilton Gordon. Alex was killed in the battle, and Hamilton was seriously injured and had been in a coma.

In Amifontein, the German army also made progress.

MacArthur was too radical. He placed his troops on the front line and faced the German artillery fire.

The American soldiers did not lack courage, but in the face of the complex artillery fire like a symphony, the courage of the American soldiers did not play any role. During the German artillery fire, about 3,000 American soldiers were killed and the same number of American soldiers were injured. The 84th Brigade was basically crippled.

When the German ground forces began to attack, the fighting will of the American army played a role. The soldiers held their rifles with bayonets and fought for positions with the Germans inch by inch.

Pershing made the same mistake as Foch and his men at the beginning of the war. Pershing believed that the courage of the soldiers should be reflected in rifles and bayonets, and machine guns should not be the key factor in determining the course of the war. Under the guidance of this idea, the number of machine guns equipped in the US military was very small. The entire 84th Brigade had only six heavy machine guns, which was only the number of machine guns in half a battalion of the Chinese troops.

Because of the lack of machine guns, the battle was extremely tragic, and the US military suffered heavy casualties, but they vowed to never retreat. On many fronts, even if there were only three or five soldiers left, the soldiers would fight to the death. They relied on simple positions, or the ruins of a house, or even a tree, and tried their best to deal with the attacking Germans.

The original text is in Liu # 9 @Book/Bar!

The battle lasted from morning to noon. After Qin Zhiyuan ordered the 84th Brigade to retreat to Qin Haoge's defense line several times, the 84th Brigade was unable to withdraw from the battle because the two sides were too closely entangled.

At noon, Qin Zhiyuan ordered the tank troops deployed in Corbeny to go to Amifontein for support. After another hard battle, the 84th Brigade finally withdrew from the battlefield, but at this time, only more than 2,000 soldiers were left out of nearly 10,000 soldiers, and there were a large number of wounded.

The Germans did not give up on annihilating this US army. They chased after it and chased it all the way to Corbeny.

Qin Haoge had established a solid defense line in Corbeny. Relying on forests and not too high mountains, it has the advantage of being high above, enough to stop the German attack.

In April, when the US troops rushed to the front line in trucks, they sang songs at the loudest voices in the carriages, told slightly vulgar jokes, and talked about the upcoming battle unscrupulously, as if they were saviors who would rescue the British and French from the quagmire of war.

Reality gave the US military a heavy blow. The US military was unable to turn the tide. They were defeated in the first battle and suffered a heavy blow.

It is not without significance. Because of the disastrous defeat of the 84th Brigade, the U.S. Army finally put away its arrogance, and Pershing also began to be pragmatic. Instead of pinning hopes on rifles and the courage of soldiers, he shifted his focus to new weapons such as tanks and machine guns.

MacArthur lost the first battle.

This was also the first battle that the U.S. Army participated in, but because of the commander's recklessness, it ended with almost annihilation of the army.

Pershing, who had learned from his mistakes, summed up his experience and asked the troops to equip more machine guns. At the same time, he proposed to Foch to concentrate the U.S. troops who were scattered to various directions to provide support.

Foch partially agreed to Pershing's request and allocated more machine guns to Pershing's troops, but said that the U.S. troops who had entered the position could not be withdrawn because Foch did not have more troops to fill those gaps.

If there were reinforcements, Foch would first send them to Qin Zhiyuan. Although Qin Zhiyuan still had complete Chinese troops and Annan troops, they were facing 50 German infantry divisions and a certain number of K7Vs.

Crown Prince William had been captured by Qin Zhiyuan. Germany could not bear the blow of another prince being captured. Therefore, the proportion of tanks in the Bavarian prince's troops was much larger than that of other troops.

At midnight, Qin Zhiyuan finally got the final battle report. In the battle of this day, the Foreign Legion, the US Army and the British Army lost nearly 60,000 people in total, and they consumed at least the same number of German troops.

The casualties in Champagne-Chalons were heavy, and there were not many results.

The US Army fought bravely in Amifontein. They caused about twice as many German casualties as themselves, but there were no exact statistics. The final data would be available only after the battle was over.

The biggest result came from the tank troops that attacked. They defeated at least two German divisions. While causing nearly 10,000 casualties to the German army, they captured 5,000 German soldiers. This was the only bright spot in today's battle.

That night, Qin Zhiyuan did not sleep all night, and he finally felt anxious.

Excluding the two divisions sent to Yamin and today's losses, Qin Zhiyuan still had almost complete Chinese troops and Annan troops.

At the same time, although the Bavarian prince opposite Qin Zhiyuan suffered a lot of losses, the troops he could mobilize increased instead of decreased.

Ludendorff gave all the nine divisions that were originally prepared to launch an attack in Flanders to the Bavarian prince.

Qin Zhiyuan now had no reinforcements.