In March, the French army changed its positions. The troops who had been defending for a winter retreated to rest, and the troops who had rested in the winter moved forward to prepare for the 1918 war.
The position that the Foreign Legion is responsible for is still in the Reims area, and they have to take over from Michelet's Tenth Army.
At this time, the Foreign Legion had further expanded to include eight Chinese infantry divisions, two Chinese artillery divisions, an armored division, and an air force division with a mix of bombers and fighters.
A rough calculation shows that the number of Chinese troops now exceeds 150,000, and there are still more than 30,000 people training in Corsica. It will probably take until May for them to complete all training subjects.
In addition to the Chinese troops, Qin Zhiyuan also has four Annan divisions and two Senegalese divisions. These troops add up to nearly 100,000 people.
On the entire Western Front now, Qin Zhiyuan has the largest number of troops, dwarfing even Bastian's Fifth Army.
Bastian's Fifth Army's defense line is adjacent to the Foreign Legion's defense line, responsible for the line from Sosonwa to Compiègne, and beyond that is the defense line of Hubert Gough of the British Fifth Army.
Compared with Qin Zhiyuan Bastian, Gaofu was the worst. He only had 14 divisions in his hands, but he was responsible for a 52-mile defense line.
Bastien had 17 divisions in his hands, but he was only responsible for the approximately 41-mile defense line from Roi to Laon.
Qin Zhiyuan had the largest number of troops, and he was responsible for the approximately 56-mile defense line from Laon to Chalon de Champagne.
In early March, Qin Zhiyuan said goodbye to Julie and went to Reims to hand over to Michelet.
I still remember that the first time Qin Zhiyuan met Michelet was in Foch's office. Michelet was a lieutenant general at that time, and Qin Zhiyuan was just a colonel who had not yet been officially appointed.
In the blink of an eye, a year and a half later, Qin Zhiyuan's military 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 not without envy when he saw Qin Zhiyuan: Oh, Qin, I'm so happy to see you.
Ah, general, your belly is getting bigger again. This won't work. I'm afraid your car will have to be specially customized. Qin Zhiyuan joked casually.
The place where Qin Zhiyuan and Michelet met was called Brimont. This was originally the headquarters of Crown Prince William. After Michelet arrived in Reims, he also used this place as his headquarters.
Qin Zhiyuan had no intention of changing it, and he didn't want to make any more troubles, so he decided to set the headquarters here.
Brimont is a small town, not big, with about a hundred households. It is surrounded by beautiful scenery, with mountains and rivers. If you ignore the trenches that look like dog gnaws, this is a pretty good place.
When Bremont was occupied by the Germans, all the French residents here had fled. After Qin Zhiyuan regained Reims, some of the residents returned, but were persuaded to leave by Michelet's people on the grounds that the war was not over yet.
So now Brimont is just a military fortress, with no dogs except soldiers.
Michelet's headquarters is located in a hotel. Although it is not very spacious, it has complete living facilities and has separate meetings.
Entering the headquarters, Qin Zhiyuan's tone was full of complaints: I just went to the front line for a tour, and you really made it easy. You didn't even repair the fortifications. Now we have something to do this month.
Michelet's expression on the fortifications was wonderful, 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 from the Aisne River back to the Syep River, but it seemed that Michelet ignored this fact.
The Supreme War Council has made a decision not to launch a large-scale offensive this year, so we need to be prepared for the Germans. Recent intelligence shows that the Germans are mobilized very frequently, and they are likely to launch an offensive within two months, or even
One month, so even if you arrive at the rear, you must be ready to provide support at any time. Qin Zhiyuan does not want to correct Michelet's approach, but just wants to remind him.
Damn it, end this damn war quickly. Our nerves have been tense all winter, but even if we take a vacation, we can't rest. Michelet was also tired of the war. He rubbed his temples and fell on the sofa.
He let out an unbearable moan.
Come on, you guys are responsible for defense in the winter, but the Germans won't attack. We come here to switch defenses in the summer, and fight the Germans to the end every time. So don't complain, compared to you, I have more reasons to complain. Qin Zhiyuan also wants to
He complained, but Qin Zhiyuan didn't dare because Foch was Qin Zhiyuan's immediate boss.
Hahahaha, you are right. My vacation is about to begin, so goodbye. On this issue, Michelet really has nothing to complain about.
The staff officers and secretaries had packed their things and loaded all the boxes into the car, waiting for Michelet and Qin Zhiyuan to say goodbye.
Qin Zhiyuan sent Michelet out of the headquarters. While shaking hands with Qin Zhiyuan, Michelet suddenly remembered something: Oh, by the way, I left you something good upstairs, so don't thank me.
Qin Zhiyuan didn't know what was going on, but politely thanked him.
When Qin Zhiyuan went upstairs, he discovered that Michelet had left a whole wine rack full of various wines for Qin Zhiyuan. Qin Zhiyuan couldn't help but shake his head and smile bitterly. It seemed that Michelet had lived a good life during this period.
good.
But when Qin Zhiyuan arrived, he had no easy time. After settling down, Qin Zhiyuan immediately called all the generals to hold a military meeting to arrange the deployment of the stage and prepare for the German attack.
The current Chinese troops, the eight infantry division commanders are: Ge Lifu, Liu Zizheng, Zhang Tianshou, Xu Sheng, Xiang Ankang, Qin Haoge, Jin Taihe and Wang Dingshan. The artillery division commanders are Zheng Dali and Cheng Feiming respectively. The armor division commander is still Chen Kangjian. The air force commander is Chen Kangjian.
The division commander is Zhou Hongguang.
The commanders of the four Annan divisions are Vo Yuen Dinh, Nguyen Jun Cai, Pham Van Hung and Hu Duong Thu. The commanders of the two Senegal divisions are appointed by the Ministry of War, one is Alex Steele and the other is Jerome Wien.
To fight the Germans, mobilization is no longer needed. The veterans have been fighting for a year and a half, and the recruits have undergone at least six months of personal skills training. There are no problems in terms of combat skills.
The main thing is deployment. In fact, in order of combat effectiveness, the Chinese troops should be the strongest, followed by the Annan troops, and the Senegalese troops last. However, Qin Zhiyuan was reluctant to put all the Chinese troops on the front line, so there were only five Chinese on the front line.
division, then three Annan divisions, and one Senegalese division.
Among them, the defense line of the Senegalese Division is near Champagne Chalons at the southernmost point. The frontal front is only three miles wide, so there 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 to defend.
The only disadvantage is time. Qin Zhiyuan does not have enough time, so the position setting may not be as strong as the German position.
However, the Foreign Legion also has an advantage that the Germans do not have, and that is armored units.
In Qin Zhiyuan's design, if the front line position is occupied by the Germans and a counterattack is needed, the Foreign Legion will launch an attack with tank troops as the lead. At that time, because the Germans lack anti-tank weapons, it is estimated that Chen Kangjian will
The tank was ground to a pulp.
Chen Kangjian's tank force now has nearly 400 tanks, which can actually be divided into two divisions. However, in order to silence Pershing and Petain, Qin Zhiyuan did not split it.
After last year's Battle of Reims, everyone has fully realized the role of tanks, so tanks have become a hot commodity. Lyautey cannot continue to allocate tanks to Qin Zhiyuan unscrupulously.
Almost all French generals were envious of the size of the armored forces in the Foreign Legion, and they also complained about Lyautey's partiality.
In fact, Qin Zhiyuan also equipped his infantry divisions with tanks. Each division has about 40 tanks. After all, Qin Zhiyuan now has more than 700 tanks in his hands, which is currently the largest armored force in the world.
This time, Chen Kangjian's tank troops were not used intensively. Instead, they placed a regiment in Corbeni Burgundy Baccon. These troops served as the fulcrum of defense. Once a certain line of defense was breached, the nearest armored
The troops will immediately support him, and the armored troops are Qin Zhiyuan's trump card.
No, compared to the armored forces, the air force is the trump card.
The current Air Force has nearly a hundred bombers and more than 140 fighter jets. Strictly speaking, these bombers are Qin Zhiyuan's trump card.
Nearly a hundred bombers, each carrying about one ton of bombs, could drop nearly a hundred tons of steel on the heads of the Germans every time they were dispatched. This delivery capability was much stronger than that of artillery units.
Of 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 division is equipped with two types of artillery, 194 mm caliber and 152 mm caliber, with a total of 76 guns. The towed artillery division is also equipped with these two calibers. Although the shells are exactly the same, the range and power of the artillery are compared.
Self-propelled artillery is inferior to all others.
In fact, infantry divisions are also equipped with artillery, and there are quite a lot of them, but most of them are Miss 75. Each division has only one heavy artillery regiment, equipped with 24 152 mm caliber artillery, to provide fire support for the infantry.
Throughout March, all troops of the Foreign Legion were busy building positions. They had to build defensive positions up to two kilometers deep on the 56-mile-long defense line to prepare for possible German attacks.
During this period, Lyautey and Foch visited the Foreign Legion's positions many times to inspect and constantly put forward higher demands on Qin Zhiyuan. The depth of the defensive position also changed from two kilometers to four kilometers, from the Sype River to Reims.
Fortunately, Lyotai sent a lot of laborers to Qin Zhiyuan, otherwise he would probably not be able to complete the task just by relying on the engineering shovels in the hands of the soldiers.
