The first and second lines of defense of the German army, in the face of such a three-dimensional offensive, were like snow pouring over them, and no unit could hold on to a line of defense for even an hour. The reports received by the headquarters of the German Second Army were all messy, and some even contradicted each other, but one thing is certain, the front line was in big trouble, and the offensive of the Entente was extremely sharp, and the previous kind of thousands of troops, the momentum was different, this attack was more like a precision machine tool cutting the workpiece, although the momentum was not large, but the steel and iron filings were cut off layer by layer, no matter how strong-willed the German defending troops defended, it did not play any role.

In less than an hour, the third line of defense, which had been three kilometers behind the front line, had also been lost, and the commander of the Second Army, General Bülo, had been numbed by the bad news, but the defeat of the 80,000 German troops still made the German stalwart feel extremely frustrated. But what shocked him even more was still to come, General Bilo, who didn't have time to eat at noon, took his staff officers to study the situation on the sand table, and as the information was verified one by one, the situation on the sand table became clear. The Allied attackers, with their little blue flags, were increasingly prominent and had now reached Arras, where they continued to threaten the El Canal area. In addition to the two corps that were defeated, the Germans also had two infantry corps and two cavalry divisions in the canal area of the second line, and after a morning's preparations, they had now rushed to the front line separately, if nothing else, they would hit the opponent's forward head-on, as for the large groups of fast-moving and invulnerable tanks reported by the front, General Billlow thought that this was purely the imagination of the soldiers on the front line, even the British army did not have more than twenty tanks in the battle, and they were all big and stupid, how could this foreign army belonging to France be equipped with hundreds of tanks?

But lion is better than bear poop, and when one of the last remaining pilots of a Fokker Dr1 flight squadron put the reconnaissance photos they had taken with their lives in front of General Barrow and his staff officers, they had to believe in the cruel reality that this army with a red eagle emblem battle flag that had never been seen before really sent no less than 150 tanks to participate in the raid, and they were followed by large groups of wheeled armored vehicles and New Zealand infantry wearing cowboy sun hats, Canadian soldiers wearing frying spoons, It looked like there were no less than three divisions, maybe more, and the only good news was that they didn't seem to see pack horses and towed heavy artillery. As for air power, Bilo can no longer make too many assumptions, one squadron of fighters covers the reconnaissance planes to reconnoitre, six two-seat reconnaissance planes will come back, and the fighters are simply wiped out, and the other side has concentrated no less than 140 planes circling over the cluster to cover, and half of them are the kind of hateful Chinese eagles.

"Hurry up, damn it, don't be slow like a young lady." Sergeant Kron's loud voice made the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Battalion in Auckland around him lower their heads and speed up: "The Chinese's tanks have passed, and if you can't keep up with the armored vehicles, you will be beaten into a sieve by the Germans' fire, don't hurry up." ”

"Sergeant, how far do we have to go?" O'Keeffe couldn't help but ask, but he didn't expect the sergeant who was shouting loudly just now to look at him with a confused expression.

"Ah, I don't know. Anyway, it's better than charging against the Germans, and hopefully they'll drive all the way to Brussels. The sergeant said, patting O'Keeffe's backpack and pushing him to keep up with the group.

"yes, that way, we can go home." O'Keeffe looked up and pushed his hat up, looking at the roaring armored vehicles in front of him and the tanks that had turned into small black dots, although the smoke of the diesel engines was choking, it was much more comfortable than when he was charged by the dense German machine-gun fire a month ago. At least for the time being, none of their brothers had fallen, and of course there were few successes, and the Germans in the first and second trenches had been beaten and bombed and bombed, and even the prisoners were captured.

"I've hit a hard stubble in front" Xie Feng, the commander of the 115th Tank Company's leading car, said in a hurry, "It's 80 mm caliber cannons, 2 guns, they are hiding in the village, they are burning grass, we can't see the muzzle flame from the smoke, now we can't get close, please instruct." ”

"It's the village of Eduar, there's no way, the road passes through the village, we don't have to take a detour." The combat staff officer of the tank company, who was full of Chongqing accent, turned back and reported to Lieutenant Colonel Zheng Mingfa, the commander of the cluster in the commander's seat, "Do you want to ask for air force support?" Knock out two points of fire. ”

"No way, they just left us ten minutes ago, and even if they come back, they will have no ammunition, and they will have to rely on themselves."

"Artillery support. The fire support company of the cluster is already in place, let them fire and suppress it, maybe we can shoot at close range to eliminate them? ”

"There are many brick and stone houses in this village, are you going to demolish them? Our 85 shells do not have two bases that do not move them at all, and besides, time does not allow. Zheng Mingfa's brows furrowed into a Sichuan character, if it was a field, he could take it with one or two tank losses, but unfortunately this is a village, the terrain is complicated, and once the tank falls into the narrow street, there is not much way to get out.

"By the way, has the engineer company come up?" Zheng Mingfa suddenly thought of a way, and he gently kicked Xiao Liu, the combat staff officer, on the shoulder with his foot.

Xiao Liu was a little dazed, can the engineer company work? "Ah, the engineer company is behind three companies with wheeled armor."

"Summons, let them come up. Yes, immediately, immediately come up with sapper road construction vehicles. In a daze, Xiao Liu still conveyed the order to the second echelon behind. The speed of the fully mechanized sappers was not slow, and more than two dozen strangely shaped engineering vehicles rushed over from the road where the wheeled armor had been vacated.

"Company Commander Zhang. Order your bulldozers to line up in front, use the bucket as a shield, wade out 2-3 roads as soon as possible, let the tanks behind you get close to destroy the enemy's cannons, and then you use the method of demolition and demolition to quickly widen the road, and blast the houses on the side of the road to both sides of the road. Widen the road and let the main forces pass quickly, got it? Go, take the village of Eduar, and your sapper company will take the lead. ”

"Yes, sir." As soon as Company Commander Zhang heard that he could make meritorious contributions, his spirit was even more sufficient, and the engineer company also built bridges and paved roads, swept mines and mines on the battlefield, and the danger was not low, and there was no credit, and it was rare to have the opportunity to grab the first credit, and when Company Commander Zhang returned to the company and said, he was surrounded by the soldiers, and finally selected four bulldozer drivers, and manipulated the crawler multi-purpose bulldozer to erect the bucket as a shield, and drove to the village at full speed.

The machine-gun bullets hit the "watchtower" tank like rain on plantains, and the clanging was very pleasant, but if an 80-millimeter cannon hit such a small iron box weighing only seven or eight tons, it would have been a good look. However, the Germans were a little dumbfounded when they looked at the tracked vehicles that rushed out of the smoke, and the bulldozers holding half-ton buckets were regarded as the vanguard, although they did not shoot and fire, but this kind of formation made the Germans unable to think of a way to crack it, the cannon is not the kind of infantry artillery imported from China, three or four people dragged around the world, and the position of this kind of cannon is not something that ten or eight people can convert. The opponent's bucket blocked the entire angle of fire, any shot must be on the bucket, but the light tanks that probed the brain behind were not vegetarians, it is estimated that as soon as they fired, the other party could find their position, although the fortifications were hidden in the French house, but once discovered, the opponent's 37 guns could also penetrate the defense of their artillery.

In order to stop the Chinese armor from rushing forward, the commanders of the two cannons still ordered to open fire one after another, as the two bulldozers were hit, the two "watchtower" tanks behind them quickly rushed out from behind the bulldozers, a quick stop and short sight, a 37 shell through the courtyard wall to blow up the position of one cannon to pieces, the gunner of the other cannon saw this and immediately scattered, but most of them were caught up by the tank commander with a machine gun and knocked to the ground.

The sappers turned the forklift to the side of the road, and one by one large-caliber ammunition launchers (guns without conscience) began to carry out forced demolition within 200 meters, and one after another French houses were blown up to both sides, and the smoke and dust and collapsed houses blocked the German troops hidden in the village in the houses behind.

Passing through the village of Eduval with almost zero casualties, the entire cluster continued to advance, breaking through the last line of German defense just an hour later. There were no longer any formed German units between the Eyre Canal and the Chinese Expeditionary Force.

However, at this time, the god of the German army, General Xia Fei stepped on the colorful auspicious clouds, and the personal order of Xia Fei, the commander-in-chief of the Western Front of the Entente Countries, transferred by the Yuan Division, ordered the First Armored Group of the Chinese Expeditionary Force to stop the attack on the west bank of the Eyre Canal, consolidate the position, and at the same time transfer the New Zealand Division to cover the so-called supply line, while the Canadian Infantry Division received the task of covering a French boat bridge force. The French Sixth Army is finishing its recuperation, using the French army and requisitioned British vehicles to transport it to Arras in full force, and then take over the Chinese expeditionary force to cross the canal and advance to Lille on the Franco-Belgian border, while the other two French armies are also preparing to support the Sixth Army with them, the French are determined to leave the honor of entering Belgium to their own troops, maybe if the British army can break through the Franco-Belgian border, it will not make the Gallic rooster have such a strong reaction, and the one they think drags with long braids, The Chinese army, which was cowering and could not even fill the trenches, was so violent, and the French sense of honor made the old general make an unforgivable mistake, he actually stopped the rushing Chinese armored clusters, and gave the Germans gold, nay, diamonds, precious opportunities to regroup, build one defense line after another on the east bank of the canal, and wait for their French feast with knives and forks.

Perhaps no other Western General Staff surpasses the French in terms of contempt and distrust of the troops. Before the outbreak of the war, French military leaders estimated that about fifteen percent of reservists would refuse to be drafted. In fact, this figure is a little more than one percent, and more than 350,000 volunteers rushed into the recruit recruitment offices in droves. To the great surprise of the High Command, the 3,000 deserters in peacetime returned to their units of their own accord.

In a country torn apart by political struggles, the murder of even the most popular leader of the French Socialist Party, Jean 61 Jores, did not cause chaos in the country. Jores, who had broken from the German-Austrian branch of the Socialist International, openly urged his followers to take part in the "Holy War ...... for our beloved France", and on July 31, 1914, less than twenty-four hours before mobilization, Jores was killed by a mad youth. In another case, his assassination would have provoked strikes and commotion across the country, but with a big war looming, things changed. Since the founding of the republic in 1871, there has never been such unity. On the one hand, Wu Chenxuan hopes that this situation can also be reflected in the Chinese people, and on the other hand, he also hopes that the people of the great powers will continue to maintain the fine traditions, otherwise the First World War will end hastily, and who will he sell the military supplies and civilian materials he has accumulated.

On August 4, 1914, President Raymond 61 Poincaré brought his War Address to the National Assembly. At the time of Poincaré's war speech, those who had been his critics and adversaries stood with him. Constantly punctuated by cheers and cheers, he exhorted all French people, regardless of their political differences, to unite in a "holy alliance" and to "unite as brothers in a common patriotic conviction."

French politicians, who had long been skeptical of military factions, now turned dramatically, entrusting the fate of their country to the generals. Under the law in force since 1878, the president declared a "state of martial law" justified because of "the imminent danger caused by foreign war or armed aggression." Although this decree amounted to the declaration of martial law throughout France and Algeria, it was approved by the National Assembly without debate.

It soon became clear that it was inexpedient to entrust this power to the General Staff. Of all the troops of the Western Front, the French suffered the most unfortunate defeat due to the incompetence of their generals.

Although the French mobilized well and the morale of the army was high, the incompetence and stubbornness of the French general command cost them dearly. Although the armor of the Chinese Expeditionary Force defeated the Germans this time, the Germans escaped with 12 gold medals from Xia Fei, and the attacking French Sixth Army would be devastated, and the French would lose three incomparably precious things: a veteran general with a good reputation, the lives of thousands of French boys, and the only chance for France to end the First World War early.

This is destined to make countless French people in later generations gnash their teeth when they mention it, and the short-lived appearance of China's armored cluster not only allowed China's fledgling armored force to gain valuable battlefield experience, but also made many willing generals begin to put down the tactical thinking of trench barbed wire and machine guns, and instead study the all-round three-dimensional offensive system displayed by the Chinese expeditionary force.