In late July, Qin Zhiyuan led his army to the Tadenoy area, preparing to begin an attack on Reims.

At this time, Reims was not a city, at most it was just a small town.

Behind Reims was Brimont, who was Niveller's target in the spring offensive.

At that time, Niveler's plan was to attack the area of Avinicourt and Argikul along the line of the Aisne River from Pruwe, so as to outflank the German army in the Brimont area, and then annihilate the German army in this area.

Nivelle is a representative of his heart higher than the sky and his life thinner than paper, and his plan failed because of Ludendorff's new defense system, which became the overthrow of Qin Zhiyuan's predecessor.

Relatively speaking, Qin Zhiyuan's plan is more in line with reality.

Qin Zhiyuan just wanted to defeat the German army, recover some of the lost territory, and give an explanation to the War Department and Paris, and did not have the luxury of swallowing up the entire German 18th Army, in that case, he might be strangled to death.

Taizu once taught us that we should despise the enemy strategically and attach importance to the enemy tactically.

Therefore, Qin Zhiyuan made as thorough tactical preparations as possible.

At this time, the reinforced French artillery division was already in place, and the two division commanders were Demps Gale, Qin Zhiyuan's old acquaintance in the Capi area, and the other was Colvin, Foch's former staff officer.

Foch was still a little uneasy about Qin Zhiyuan, and in order to be able to check the gaps, Foch sent his chief of staff, Maxim Weygand, to lead the staff of the 17th Army.

The 17th Army is the unified establishment of all troops in the Fair-on-Tadenoy area, this is only a temporary formation, and it will be disbanded after this battle, and Qin Zhiyuan is currently the commander of the 17th Army.

Beginning on the 10th of July, almost every day there were convoys from Paris, bringing all kinds of supplies to the 17th Army, including shells, bullets, all kinds of canned food, alcoholic beverages, vegetables, meat, and so on.

Now, the French have finally shown their heritage, and even though the world war has been going on for three years, the French still have plenty of supplies. Perhaps the supply of ordinary people is insufficient, but for the army, the French have never been stingy.

Recently, the weather has been beautiful, every day has been sunny, and the preparations have been carried out quickly without being disturbed by the weather conditions.

In the Tadenoy area, four divisions on the front line have been prepared, namely the 1st Division of the Foreign Legion led by Liu Zizheng and the 4th Division led by Nguyen Thuan Thuan, as well as the newly formed 21st and 23rd Divisions of the French Army, which are distributed in a five-kilometer starting position from Bulles to Kurma.

After the infantry position, there were three divisions' artillery positions, and when all the artillery pieces were gathered together, Qin Zhiyuan was surprised to find that he also had thousands of artillery pieces available in his hands.

Including the self-propelled artillery of the tank division and the divisional artillery regiments of various infantry divisions, Qin Zhiyuan had 1,100 artillery pieces in his hands, of which 407 were guns with a caliber of more than 105 mm.

The artillery positions were set up in the Blinny area, about six kilometers from the German line in Reims and about 13 kilometers from Reims, and for those large-caliber artillery, from the forward positions of the Germans all the way to Reims, they were within their strike range.

Behind Blini, two supply centres have been built, Salsi and Shaw Miqi, with about 40,000 Indian and Annam laborers ready to deliver ammunition to the front.

About two kilometers behind Tadenoy, in Romney, a large field hospital is under construction, and 150 military doctors trained in first aid led by Mao 18 are already on standby, and about 800 nurses, more than half of whom are Chinese, are working with the military doctors.

Maxime Weygand had extensive combat experience, having graduated from the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1887 and began following Foch in 1913, serving as Foch's chief of staff from the 20th Army to the 9th Army and Army Group North.

After Foch became the commander-in-chief of the French army, Maxim Weygand joined the Supreme Military Council as a member, and when the War Department decided to launch the Reims offensive led by Qin Zhiyuan, Foch asked Maxim to escort Qin Zhiyuan.

As Foch's old friend, Maxim admired Qin Zhiyuan very much, he also participated in Qin Zhiyuan and Julie's engagement ceremony, and understood that Foch valued Qin Zhiyuan, so he did not point fingers at Qin Zhiyuan's arrangements, but only spoke when he needed to speak.

"Shouldn't tank units be put on the front line?"

After reading Qin Zhiyuan's arrangement, Maxim raised his own questions.

"Nope! Can't be put on the front line. Tank units can only play their greatest role in the assault stage, and in the tentative stage at the beginning of the battle, it is not suitable to use tank troops, and only at the stage of attacking fortified positions can the combat effectiveness of tank units be brought into full play. Qin Zhiyuan did not hesitate to point.

It seems a bit overt to describe it like this, but in terms of the use of tank troops, Qin Zhiyuan is qualified to instruct everyone in this era.

In late July, in the Third Battle of Ypres, General Hubert Gough of the British Fifth Army used 52 tanks in the attack, but unfortunately 22 of them broke down in the mud pits of Flanders and 19 were destroyed by German artillery fire.

Compared to the time of the Battle of the Somme, the British do not seem to have made the slightest improvement in the use of tanks.

"And when will the shelling begin?" Maxim's greatest advantage is that he is never self-righteous, and in front of Qin Zhiyuan, almost all French generals now have no self-righteous qualifications.

In other words, all the generals of the entire Entente countries are not qualified to be self-righteous in front of Qin Zhiyuan!

Soldiers, battle record is the last word!

"Wait a few more days, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow." Qin Zhiyuan was not impatient, and instead of rushing to attack before he was ready, Qin Zhiyuan would rather postpone the attack.

There are so many Chinese warriors now, Qin Zhiyuan doesn't want to waste any of his lives, and if possible, Qin Zhiyuan doesn't want anyone to suffer bad luck, although it's not realistic.

"War Department telegram." A young staff officer came to report.

"Don't read it, just put it there." Qin Zhiyuan didn't want to hear it.

You don't have to listen to it to know that Leotera must be asking when the attack was launched. During this time, Leothai was under great pressure, and telegrams urging Qin Zhiyuan to attack were sent one after another.

"Yes, General." The staff officer looked helpless, put the telegram on Qin Zhiyuan's desk and turned to leave, where the telegram had already been placed in a small pile.

Maxim shook his head speechlessly, and went over to pick up the telegram and look through it.

"Qin, you should take a look, your hen plan has been completed." Maxim surprises.

"Done?" Qin Zhiyuan was even more surprised, and quickly stepped forward to take the telegram.

"The hen plan is ready to attack." It was clearly written in the newspaper.

"Praise the Lord! Pierre, order the artillery units to open fire, and we can slaughter all sides! Qin Zhiyuan made up his mind.

(To be continued.) )