We do not know whether the expeditionary force was closely watched by 40,000 compatriots, but it is true that they received the attention of more than 1.5 million Chinese laborers who participated in the war. From France to England, almost every Chinese laborer cheered the arrival of the Chinese Expeditionary Force.

These Chinese laborers have been drifting thousands of miles from all over China to the war-torn European continent since July last year, and according to Wang Zhenyu's original idea, that is, the scale of about one million people, it is about 60 million pounds per capita from Britain and France. As a result, Hu Hanmin's grandson was even darker, and this figure directly increased by 50% to 1.5 million, and the intermediary fee increased by 30 million pounds.

As Europe expanded, even women went into factories and supported the war with half the wages of men. And these hard-working Chinese laborers were paid only a quarter of the wages of an adult British worker, and were docile and obedient, doing whatever they wanted.

By the end of the European war, the final number of these laborers reached a staggering 2.3 million, and in fact, the total number of laborers exported from China was much more than this number, including both privately hired laborers and those who did not reach Europe due to homesickness and other reasons on the way, and many of these people were scattered in Southeast Asia, Africa and other regions. Of the 2.3 million laborers who reached Europe, about 2 million eventually returned to China after the war, while 200,000 who did not return chose to stay in Europe, and 100,000 left the shijie because of war, illness, etc.

In addition to intermediary fees, these laborers eventually brought back nearly three billion pounds of foreign exchange earnings to China over the course of more than two years, which laid a solid economic foundation for the rise of Chinese industry. Moreover, about 400,000 of them became Jishu workers in the field of military industry and civilian manufacturing, which cultivated the backbone of the later development of Chinese industry. To this end, the Nationalist government later passed a bill to build a special museum for Chinese laborers who participated in World War I. Shao Piaoping, the first gunner in the press, wrote a sarcastic article on the declaration: "It was the shameless Nationalist government that sold these laborers to Europe like human traffickers, and now they are embarrassed to come out to commemorate them?" ”

One of the first expeditionary forces to arrive was the Ninth Division under the command of Zhou Zhengming, and they arrived in Marseille on March 23, when France was under a dark cloud, and after the brutal Battle of Verdun, the Allied forces suffered an unprecedented blow at the Battle of the Somme in December 1916. The Battle of the Somme was a typical trench battle in which both sides suffered extremely heavy casualties in the First Shijie War. Both sides invested the most troops and weapons in this war. The British had 54 divisions, the French had 32 divisions, and the Germans 67. At the end of the battle, the British and French forces suffered 794,000 casualties, and they failed to break through the German defenses and advanced only 5-12 kilometers. The Germans lost 538,000 men. Although Germany lost 240 square kilometers of trench positions, it succeeded in intercepting the strategic jihua of the Entente. However, the victory of the Allies on the Southwestern Front gradually shifted the dominance of the war from Germany to the Allies.

It is almost inconceivable that on the first day of the battle alone, the British alone suffered 60,000 casualties, given that the total number of British expeditionary forces in France was only 500,000. The battle was not without bright spots, at least the tank that Wang Zhenyu had been looking forward to finally appeared, and it played a great role in the advance of the British and French troops. But for the French, it was not at all worth rejoicing, on the one hand, they had many widows and maidens who needed to be comforted by men, and on the other hand, their wounds were further expanded, and the French high-ranking Xia Fei and Fu Xi were forced to resign because of the heavy casualties in the battle.

However, compared to Xia Fei, Fu Xi was much luckier, and he was demoted to the director of the Military Research Center for advocating the attack, which was actually responsible for coordinating the cooperation between the allied forces. So now it was his turn to start pointing fingers at Bai Chongxi, the commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force......

The location of the Chinese expeditionary force was finally chosen in the Ardennes region, because the traffic situation in the Paris area did not allow an army of 200,000 men to enter. In order to cope with the German attack, the French are now increasing their investment in the front, even if the French women have reached the point of selling their flesh for a piece of bread, they will not change in the slightest.

This made Wang Zhenpeng, who followed Zhu Zhixin to inspect French armaments and logistics, feel extremely surprised, and his latest appointment has already been down, deputy chief of staff of the First Division of the First Army of the Expeditionary Force and colonel of the Armaments Department. Well, I am in the same unit as Jiang Zhongzheng, who is now in high spirits.

Wang Zhenpeng was still very satisfied with his new work, and he was responsible for the entire units under the First Division's Armaments Department, including the baggage regiments directly under the division headquarters, and the armament and logistics units above the battalion level. It is worth mentioning that according to Wang Zhenyu's requirements, all the military uniforms of the expeditionary force were required to be replaced with the style of the French army, and the only difference from the French army was the large-brimmed steel helmet exclusive to the main assault force of the Youth Army. This hat has been proven to be very useful during the Protectorate War, and this time Wang Zhenyu was generous to Britain and France anyway, so he did not hesitate to distribute one to each of the 230,000 expeditionary troops. This hat proved to be a great reduction in the casualties of the Chinese army in the war in the ensuing war, and then the British and French troops also put forward orders for similar goods to the Chinese side, so that Wang Zhenyu's Chinese military industry made a small profit.

But in the process of this redress, the industrial gap between China and the European powers is still manifested. At least the gas mask is not available in the Chinese army, who would have thought that the great powers would have played the war to this level.

On April 1st, the whole change of clothes was finally completed, and Marshal Fu Xi, who had just been promoted to chief of the general staff of the French army, arrived at the headquarters of the Chinese European Expeditionary Force with a vote of senior generals of the Allied forces and a large group of translators, who, at the request of the Allied Allies, were to inspect this army from the Far East on behalf of the Allied Powers. You must know that in order to arm such an army, the Entente has paid almost 600 million pounds before and after, and if Zuihou finds that this army is a parallel commodity like the Indian Ah San, then the money will be spent too unjustly, I hope these yellow-skinned Chinese guys are indeed as heroic and good at fighting as the guys from the Far East Military Observer Group said in the telegram and report.

The first impression of the Chinese Expeditionary Force on Marshal Fuxi was not good, because Bai Chongxi, the supreme commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, introduced by the translator, was actually a hairy young man in his twenties. No matter how you look at it, it is a bit of Chinese nepotism, you must know that Fuxi is already in his sixties, and Bai Chongxi is at most one or two years older than his grandson, can he command the Chinese expeditionary force that will eventually reach 400,000 at such an age? At this moment, Fuxi completely forgot that Napoleon Bixia, who had been missed by the French for a hundred years, was only Bai Chongxi's age when he became famous.

Preconceived to kill people, Petain, who accompanied Fuxi to inspect the Chinese Expeditionary Force, discovered Fuxi's bad mood. Petain is the most controversial figure in French history, he was a patriot and a hero during the First World War; During World War II, he was a traitor, but secretly he secretly supported de Gaulle's Free French movement, and even secretly ordered the French troops stationed in the African colonies to surrender to the Allies, exposing the Germans' butts. After the war, Petain was sentenced to death without saying a word in the courtroom, and then de Gaulle pardoned the eighty-year-old historical figure despite the opposition of the people.

It is worth mentioning that, unlike Fosse, who advocated the supremacy of offense, Petain was a representative of French military defenseism, which made his promotion as slow as that of a French snail. At the outbreak of the First Shijie War, Pétain was only a brigadier general. If it weren't for the damned Germans, Petain estimated that he would not be a French field marshal in his life, and the best outcome waiting for him would be an honorable retirement, who would make him, like de Gaulle, always sell something that is unacceptable to everyone. If you don't die, you won't die......

It was the season when the spring rain was as expensive as oil, and after a brief greeting with all the senior generals of the Chinese European Expeditionary Force Command, Fuxi and Petain and other people began to review the expeditionary force on behalf of the Entente countries.

The 25,000 energetic soldiers wearing legal uniforms and steel helmets with large ears stood neatly in the muddy clearing, without anyone whispering, and the silence of the scene was surprising. What surprised Petain even more was that although the straight Chinese soldiers were about the same size as the French soldiers, they were not tall, but unlike the rumored famine in China, these soldiers were very well nourished, with ruddy complexions, swollen muscles, and very toned inverted triangles. Moreover, in addition to the standard equipment of the French army, these soldiers are also equipped with sapper shovels and pickaxes, and they seem to be masters of civil engineering.

"Your Excellency Chief of the General Staff, these Chinese soldiers seem to be full of fighting spirit, and I think the Germans on the other side are going to suffer," Petain still couldn't help but praise in public.

Fu Xi was very dissatisfied when he heard this, and without waiting for the translator to work, he refuted loudly: "It's just a neat point of the queue station, what's this, those damn Germans on the other side are better at this, aren't they also blocked by us now and can't go further?" Showy but impractical skill. ”

Fuxi was still very proud, and did not signal the translator not to translate, so Bai Chongxi's face was blue with anger, this old man is going to die!