Under the bright sun, white tethered balloons float over Paris, and the Seine River flows quietly through the city, bringing vitality and vitality to this world-famous romantic capital for thousands of years. Pen ~ Fun ~ Cabinet www.biquge.info Nowadays, most of Europe is being devastated by the smoke of war, and a large area of eastern France has been trampled by the iron hooves of the German army, but the Parisians are not hiding in the corner like rats and shivering, they are still walking on the streets, paying attention to every message posted on the bulletin board, listening to the impassioned language of the speaker, and supporting the French Third Republic in the best way possible to resist the military invasion of the Second German Reich.

At noon, on a tethered balloon in the northeast corner of Paris, lookouts spotted a group of black dots on the horizon, and through the telescope, they quickly realized that they were nine large planes that had never been seen before, and the field gray livery unmistakably revealed their camp. In this era when the concept of air defense was just in its infancy, there was no whimper of air defense sirens, no special air defense shelters for military and civilian use, and no strict air defense evacuation system.

In order to support the Anglo-French fighting on the Marne front, the French concentrated more than half of their military aircraft around Paris and established three large flight camps. The first call reached the headquarters of the flight camp when the watchmen detected the approach of the German planes, and the French flying units reacted quickly, with six fighters in the air within five minutes. However, at this time, the fighters equipped by the French army were only aircraft that had begun to have combat capability, and there were various models and uneven performance, some of which were set up above the pilot's cockpit, and some were operated by the co-pilot. The French fighters rushed towards the German fleet as defenders, but the pilots were soon surprised to find that the oncoming German bombers were unbelievably large, their wingspan was four or five times that of an ordinary aircraft, the height of the fuselage and wings was more than one floor, and its propellers and engines were located in the middle of the wings on both sides, so that the occupants of the aircraft could fire directly ahead without hindrance.

As early as the design and manufacturing phase, the Junkers VI was endowed with powerful defensive capabilities. They carried four MG08s, with machine guns in the nose and back covering the upper hemispheres of the aircraft, and the shooter's seats in the middle of the fuselage were extended to the wings on both sides, and special rotating gun mounts were installed, covering most of the left and right hemispheres of the aircraft, so that the overall defense of the aircraft was smaller, and two or three machine guns could be thrown at the same time against targets in most directions, and they could cooperate with each other and defend themselves against the enemy when flying in formation - the French pilots quickly learned this. As soon as their fighters approached the German group, they were fired upon by heavy fire, and two fighters were hit in key areas on the spot, and both crashed to the ground. The remaining French fighters had to avoid the front and try to attack from the flanks and rear, but they still hit hard nails.

After taking out the French fighters that came to intercept them, the nine Junkers VIs could have driven straight in and dropped their bombs in the center of Paris, but they targeted the bombing at one of the six railway junctions in Paris, the Gare de l'Est train station. These huge German bombers dropped 90 light bombs and 54 medium bombs at an altitude of 6 or 700 meters in level flight, and although the direct hit rate was less than 20 percent, they turned the Paris East train station into a sea of fire in just a few minutes. In the process, the French ground forces were helpless, because they were not equipped with specialized anti-aircraft guns, but used field guns and Hatch Chase machine guns for emergency purposes, the former with extremely poor hitting efficiency, and the latter with limited anti-aircraft range.

Comparatively, the German army was ahead in this regard. As early as during the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussian army made a "balloon cannon" that could shoot at the air in order to deal with the manned hot air balloons of the French army, and in 1906, the German Eihardt Arms Company (the predecessor of the Rheinland Arms Company) made a special artillery for attacking airplanes and airships on the basis of the balloon guns according to the characteristics of airplanes and airships, and mounted the guns on the car, and used the control handwheel to adjust the high and low firing boundaries, so that it had a strong actual combat ability. The maximum anti-aircraft firing range of 50 mm and 65 mm anti-aircraft guns reached 4200 and 5200 meters, respectively.

After the bombing of the Gare de l'Est train station in Paris, the German Navy's Junkers VI group shot down five more French fighters on the way back, and none of them were damaged, setting a record for the largest ratio of bombers to fighters.

In addition to sending long-range bombers, the German Navy sent attack planes stationed in Arras to bomb other railway junctions and railway bridges in northeastern France, as well as attack French trains parked at railway stations and in operation. In the absence of effective resistance, German naval pilots paralyzed the rail transport system in northeastern France with astonishing efficiency.

Although rail transport was the primary tool for the French army to mobilize troops, it was not the only way to maneuver. In order to support the Marne front, the Paris government issued a conscription order, and raised thousands of taxis, trucks, buses and other types of motor vehicles to transport soldiers and supplies for the army, this strange and huge transport force can transport 6,000 soldiers from Paris to the Marne River every day, becoming an important support for the French army to maintain the Marne front. This time, this special transport line was laid eastward to the banks of the Tyran, transporting French soldiers from the periphery of Paris to the line of Miu, Beauvais, and Elm to block the German attack from the direction of Amiens.

On the evening of the second day after the German capture of Amiens, the news of the heavy bombardment of Paris by the German headquarters in the small city of Bar, on the banks of the Seine, had already made Xia Fei and his generals anxious, and they were shocked to learn that the German troops that captured Amiens and fought all the way to Paris belonged to the Marine Corps.

"According to the pilot's report, the German troops moving south from Amiens were about 20,000 to 30,000 men, with dozens of impregnable steel chariots and columns loaded with heavy artillery, which coincided with the description of Philippe Petain, commander of the 6th Infantry Division."

The chief of staff of the French army, General Clegery, said reluctantly.

After a long thought, he decided to blow up all the bridges over the Tyland in order to prevent the Germans from using the French railway lines to transport troops and baggage, and ordered the commander of the 9th Army, General Ferdinand Foch, to send all the troops he could to the Tyland to stop the fierce German marines.

The headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force was now located across the street from the French Headquarters, and in the humble conference room, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Field Marshal Sir John French, the Chief of Staff of the Expeditionary Force, Archibald Murray, the Deputy Chief of Staff, Henry Wilson, and the special messenger who had just arrived from London, Colonel McDonough of the Army Intelligence Department, sat around the table with solemn faces.

"Even if, as it is claimed, the German Navy has formed a 100,000-strong Marine force with the Marines and the garrison of the forts, and is preparing to land on the island of Great Britain with this force, it is not possible for the Germans to fight this cross-sea landing battle while maintaining the Eastern and Western Fronts at the same time, and the British people are frightened enough by this rumor. After all, the British Grand Fleet had already been defeated by the German Navy, and submarines and torpedo boats alone could not defend the coastline, but the Germans could piece together half of the main fleet. Inviting the French fleet to come and assist in the defense of Britain itself, without considering whether they could withstand the German navy, and the dignity of the empire on which the sun never sets, did not allow such a situation, so ......" At this, Sir French shook his head helplessly.

"The question is whether the French army will be able to fill the void we have left in time if we transfer two or three divisions of troops." Wilson asked worriedly. As they knew, the French had committed sixty divisions to the Marne front, and the French General Headquarters had reached the point where it could not move a single infantry division in any other direction, and the more than 10,000 troops sent to the banks of the Tyland were pieced together by a battalion and a company.

However, the letter brought by Colonel McDonough was almost a military directive - His Majesty and Lord Kitchener were very resolute in the attitude of the British Commander, and that the British psychological defence needed these 30,000 British soldiers, and in their view, the fate of 30,000 soldiers on the Marne, where two million troops had been committed by both sides, might not matter much.

"Our choice could lead to the collapse of the entire Allied front, the shift of the battlefield to Paris, and if the French could not hold ......Paris," Murray looked at his colleagues anxiously, at a time when the relationship between France and Britain was in a state of flux, and if France was defeated, Britain would either continue to fight against the rising German Empire, or surrender its rich colonial interests.

French looked up and sighed: "Then let the French do their best to defend their capital!" ”

After a moment of silence, General Murray asked in a low voice, "Then whose troops will return to England?" ”

After the end of the Second Battle of Flanders, the exigencies of the Battle of the Marne led the British to send additional combat troops to France, with a total of five infantry divisions, a Marine Brigade and a Cavalry Brigade fighting alongside the French army, with only the British 6th Infantry Division, which was on standby, remaining in Britain itself.

The British Expeditionary Force troops that arrived in France were organized into two corps, commanded by Sir Douglas Haig and Sir James Grierson. Sir Haig's 1st Corps, the most combat-ready corps, had fought in southern Belgium, endured the grind of the frontier battles, and finally entered the meat grinder-style Marne battlefield, where three elite infantry divisions suffered heavy casualties, and it was time to remove them from the front line for recuperation. However, the brutality of the war front, the ferocity of the German army, and the loss of the troops themselves, may well have had a negative impact on the British military and civilians. In contrast, Sir Grierson's 2nd Corps suffered fewer casualties, and with the exception of the 1st Cavalry Brigade, the rest of the troops had not really been tested in purgatory.

(End of chapter)