"Whew~~~" A long ball of smoke was exhaled, and Sergeant Dawn pressed the cigarette butt in his hand against the chest wall of the trench, and then retracted into the firing point. "Going to start?" Seeing Sergeant Dawn bending in, Corporal Cole asked.

"Well, it's going to begin." Dawn nodded.

As soon as the words fell, there was a screech of falling cannonballs overhead.

Immediately afterwards, a series of explosions came, and while the fire point was constantly vibrating, the top cover on the top of the head was also constantly splashing with ash. After suffering two losses, Dawn already knew that he would go outside and finish his cigarette, and then pinch the time to retract the point of fire before the French shells hit.

Unlike the 6th Army at Verdun that pressed the French, the 7th Army did not have such a good fate. From Alsace, after following the railway line northwest into the French border, he occupied Lüneville all the way, and then, after capturing Nancy before the French could react, he collided head-on with the French 5th Army as he prepared to continue the attack on Tulle.

The French 1st and 2nd Armies were massing in the province of Meuse to prepare for an eastward attack on Lorraine, while the 5th Army was one of the forces on the southern front preparing for an attack on Alsace. Although Nancy was less than 20 kilometers from the border, the Germans took an offensive route almost parallel to the border line, so some time was wasted. The 5th Army, on the other hand, was preparing to assemble in Nancy as its rear distribution center, but as a result, both sides were taken aback at the first contact.

The French found that their assembly point was now German, and the Germans found it impossible to launch a preemptive attack on the Tulle fortress complex on the French border defenses, as the 6th Army did at Verdun. The commander of the 7th Army, Lieutenant General Hindenburg, after weighing up, decided to stop the offensive and return to Nancy to build defensive positions.

For Hindenburg, Jochen did not like him. Not because he, like Wilhelm II, was mercilessly defeated by Hindenburg in military exercises. Jochen was a naval officer, so he wouldn't have given Hindenburg this chance! Instead, Hindenburg and Ludendorff dismissed the prime minister twice in history, controlled the military and political power of the country, overthrew the emperor, and promoted a general war, which eventually led to the loss of control of the internal situation in Germany. As emperor, Johen has been baptized by power for so many years. There is already an instinctive hostility towards those who might threaten their authority, even if the threat is uncertain speculation.

Of course, Jochen will not be like Wilhelm II, stingy to put on Hindenburg's shoes, forcing Hindenburg to think that the future is hopeless and choose to retire, but Jochen is not ready to give Hindenburg such an honor as a great victory in Tannenberg to pave the way for Hindenburg to take the post of Chief of the General Staff of the German Army. So, playing squatting with the French on the Western Front became Hindenburg's job.

Although the battle plan for the Battle of Tannenberg was actually drawn up by Hoffmann and executed by Ludendorff, Hindenburg's ability to lead an army group to accompany the French was more than enough.

Having found it unwise to attack the Tulle fortress complex when the French were already prepared, Hindenburg made the right decision to defend in Nancy. Nancy, the capital of the medieval Duchy of Lorraine, was the capital of the province of Meerte-Moselle until the Franco-Prussian War. Although it became a border city after the German occupation of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War, Nancy remained an extremely important transport hub.

The Moselle and Marne-Rhine rivers meet here, and the railway that meets here leads north to the north-west of Lorraine, south through the southeastern end of Lorraine into central Alsace, and west to Tulle, one of the French border fortresses.

As long as it was stuck here, not only would the French attempt to attack southern Lorraine and central Alsace be blocked, but the route to the northwest of Lorraine would also be connected to the rear of the 6th Army, which was at Verdun at this time, and the 7th Army could protect the flanks of the 6th Army. And the French wanted to bypass the 7th Army and attack southern Alsace. Not only would it be a big circle, but the terrain of the Vosges Mountains would not be so friendly to the attackers.

The Germans could not capture Tulle. However, the positions that the Germans forced tens of thousands of citizens to build in Nancy were not so easy for the French to break through, and even if the French broke through the positions outside the city, the 7th Army would retreat into the city and continue to engage the French army, so the German and French sides were deadlocked here.

The Germans kept digging and digging here, while the French 5th Army continued to attack in an attempt to retake its own city. Therefore, outside Nancy, the attack and defense reversed, and the Germans were the ones who were shelled.

The shelling of the French was so great that it was not much worse than the formation that the Germans had created at Verdun. The French soldiers were proud, and the Schneider M1897 75mm field gun, affectionately known as "Miss 75", was showing their amazing rate of fire.

Shoot at large elevation angles. The M1897, which used the self-weight of the shell to automatically retreat, took advantage of its rate of fire to the extreme, and the shells that poured down like a downpour of shells filled the German position with gunsmoke, fire, and earth and rock, and the entire position looked precarious.

Unfortunately, this was not the first day that such a scene had been played out on the German positions, and although the rate of fire was impressive, the power of the 75-mm shells fired by the M1897 was clearly insufficient.

After the Germans forced the citizens of Nancy to help them dig the trenches, the Germans put in more than 4,000 laborers per kilometer of the front of the battlefield. After such intensive work, the trench system established by the Germans was far from being called improvised fortifications.

Five horizontal trenches and connected diagonal communication trenches constitute a complex defense system, and the closest place to the demarcation line of the battlefield is a trench with a depth of 3 meters. This is the starting point for the troops to attack, and ladders are used to climb out of the trenches, and unlike the trenches built by the Germans, which are generally concave or zigzag, this deep trench is basically straight. At each of the junctions of the diagonal communication trenches connected to the rear trenches, machine gun fire points were set up after the dug earth was piled up.

These machine-gun firing points could not only attack the attackers, but also block the entire trench, and the walls around the interior of the firing points were reinforced with logs, and the roofs were built on top of logs, covered with canvas and covered with earth. And camouflage, forming small pillboxes. In this way, even if the French break through the blockade of machine gun fire and jump into the trench, they will find themselves trapped in this tunnel that they cannot climb out of at all, and the two sections of the tunnel will be waiting for them with German machine gun fire, and the mortars in the rear who have already calibrated the shooting parameters will accurately hit the shells into the trench that was originally dug by their own people.

And because of the realization that the most lethal damage to the enemy in the defense is machine guns and artillery. The role of the rifle is actually not very large, and the soldiers in such a deep trench cannot lie on the edge and snap their guns outside, so the first trench does not deploy infantry.

If the first line of trenches is lost, the soldiers at the machine gun fire point can use the diagonal communication trenches next to them to retreat to the second line of trenches, that being said, but in fact these machine gunners are actually outcasts who are consumed after being used to inflict maximum damage on the enemy, and it is estimated that there will be very few people who can safely withdraw to the second line of trenches.

After that, there are 2 shallow trenches, which are the main defenses of the infantry, unlike the first trench. The walls were also reinforced with logs, but there was no roof like a machine-gun fire point. Not only were the same machine-gun fire points set up directly opposite the junction of the trenches, but the jagged trenches would be filled with German soldiers waiting for the enemy to rush from the other side of the trenches.

If the French climbed out of the trenches and rushed over the ground, the German soldiers in the shallower trenches could re-enact how the French had fallen on their own soil with their weapons in their hands. In the third trench, mortar fire points and direct-aim field artillery positions are deployed.

The fourth trench was the main trench of the entire defensive line, which was dug as deep as the first trench, but not only was the wall reinforced with logs, but it also had a log roof with the machine gun fire point. In order to avoid trench footing, not only drainage ditches were dug. And the floor was paved with planks nailed to the bottom with wooden strips to raise the pads.

The main trench is where the infantry is usually on standby, where they will evade enemy artillery fire and then quickly move through the communication trenches into the front trenches for defense.

The 5th trench behind the main trench is a trench used to support the troops in the main trench, where field medical stations, food rations, and reserves are deployed.

Further back were the large-caliber inter-sight artillery positions, material distribution centers, and field hospitals of the group army, which were outside the firing range of the French army's small- and medium-caliber artillery. The large-caliber artillery of the French army was also difficult to reach. However, it was also difficult to reach the depth of the French positions, so if you want to attack the French artillery positions, you usually need the artillery to transfer the artillery to the prefabricated artillery positions located in the main trenches, and then withdraw when the French counterattack.

However, this is very troublesome, so in general. These artillery pieces were generally kept in the rear and used to block the French attack, while counterattacks against French artillery positions were left to larger caliber gadgets and FFAs.

Such a complex trench system was explored and perfected by the Germans under constant exercises, attempts, and His Majesty the Emperor's constant "troubles", so the attack of the French, who were not even considered beginners in trench warfare, was of no use to the German defense line at this time

The seemingly massive shelling lasted more than an hour, but the 7th Army suffered no casualties, and it was this situation that allowed German soldiers like Dawn to easily time a cigarette first, instead of holding their heads and screaming hysterically during the shelling like the French at Verdun.

Holding the time to calculate that it was almost over, Dawn patted the dust on his body, then sat down in front of his MG3, opened the receiver cover to check again whether there was dust falling into the chamber, and then buckled the receiver cover, pulled the bolt, and the long 300-round chain extending from the ammunition supply port was connected to the ammunition box placed on the ground on the side, such ammunition boxes were piled up in this firing point.

The neat cartridges on the canvas chain hanging from the machine-gun feed port shimmered in the morning light shining through the firing port. (To be continued.) )

PS: I'm actually a little speechless today, and I met again and told me how about the author, so I'm going to see pirated, and it's still in the book review area.

It's hard for me to understand the mentality of the person who says that.

I have no objection to piracy. As I said in the author's statement, I don't care about piracy.

I also read pirated books and play pirated games myself. Naturally, there is no right to blame others.

But piracy isn't a glorious thing, is it? It's good to do it secretly, not only to say it, but also to say it to the author with confidence, what kind of mentality is this? And to see piracy as a means of negotiating with authors?

The author you don't accept my opinion, so I went to see piracy. The author you argued with me, so I went to see piracy. Author, you write too slowly, so I went to see piracy. Author: I'm worried about you eunuchs, so I went to see piracy. I really can't understand the logic of saying this.

I only need to update it before 12 o'clock now.,Basically, piracy on Baidu and the starting point appear at the same time.,Even the starting point hasn't been refreshed yet.,I can search for piracy in Baidu.,I've never said anything.。 I've never used the anti-piracy feature at the starting point.

I write books at such a slow update rate, I know that the manuscript fee cannot be high, and I think that I write a book for the manuscript fee, and I don't need to use my brain. So it makes sense to scare me by looking at piracy?

Anyway, my attitude is here, it's okay to look at piracy, don't say it in front of me.