Historically, the patriotism of the French is still very touching, and although France is not a ** country, it is by no means a ** country. This is a centralized state, and US imperialism never considers France to be a country anyway. Naturally, such a country cannot escape the fate of corruption, greed, and darkness. However, the French are still a very thoughtful group, so the impression left by the whole French society is free and loose. It is difficult for the people in power to respond to any propositions of those in power, and even the people still strongly oppose them from time to time in the form of strikes, demonstrations, etc. This point has not been solved even in the 21st century, and the French people are more real than the common people of any ** country, aren't you reluctant to change the form of government? Okay, then you play yours, I'll play mine.

Therefore, despite the notoriety of the French government, the centripetal force of the French nation has always existed, because they have found a way and a platform to resolve the contradictions.

Before the outbreak of the First World War, France was in a state of chaos, and various social contradictions were constantly erupting. Before the outbreak of the war, the French government even pessimistically predicted that the percentage of people in France as a whole who might refuse to enlist in the army was about 15 percent. But when the war really broke out, an astonishing scene appeared, the proportion was less than one percent, and what was even funnier was that more than 3,000 peacetime deserters actually took the initiative to apply to return to the team. Quan Shijie couldn't help but exclaim that this was the moment of the greatest unity of the French since the founding of the Republic in 1871.

But as the war progressed, especially after the French army leaders like Xia Fei made frequent tricks and sent three million French youths to the slaughterhouse. The French soldiers really can't stand it any longer, and although we are patriotic, patriotism should not be reduced to a fig leaf for political hooligans.

So on April 29, 1917, because Nivel forcibly launched the Verdun counterattack, the French soldiers finally became angry, and they chose to refuse to carry out the order. Despite the urging and intimidation of the officers, the soldiers refused to leave the trenches. Marshal Pétain, commander-in-chief of the French Army, who was ordered to go to the front to deal with the matter, even lamented: "If it weren't for the Germans on the other side, these children might have chosen to put down their weapons and go home." ”

The political hooligans and the rich and powerful who hold the lifeblood of the country will never be able to appreciate the hardships of these patriotic French soldiers on the battlefield, whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter, whether it is windy or rainy, they are in the muddy trenches, ready to face the call of death. There are no benefits, no vacations, no one cares about their existence, and their value is to kill or be killed by the enemy for the powerful. They were the cornerstone of officers' promotions and honors, and they were treated as numbers in the war report, ruthlessly driven to the battlefield to die for their lives.

The truth of war is often the most cruel, so Marshal Pétain, who was dubbed a traitor by the world, did not hesitate to choose a compromise at that time, and he promised to give the soldiers seven days of vacation every two months, allowing these war-wounded children to withdraw, take a breath, and take a break. Petain even advocated a change in tactics so that the blood of the French would not continue to be shed in vain, but unfortunately this very humane suggestion was not accepted by the British and French politicians.

On this plane, a mutiny still happened, but not in Verdun. Due to the arrival of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, Nivel's counterattack operation Jihua was not passed. Not only that, but the Allied Command also moved Verdun's forces westward, and Nivel had only one army group in his hands, with a total number of about 240,000 people, and not all French soldiers, including about 40,000 soldiers from North Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand and other colonies. It was obviously unrealistic to attack the Germans with such an army, and Nivel became so angry that he became pessimistic, and he even told Marshal Petain, who had come to inspect him, that this force could not hold Verdun at all. "If the Germans attack Verdun again, this place will definitely be lost."

Unfortunately, Marshal Pétain did not have time to make a judgment and hurried to the western sector, because the French troops there had mutinied, and the reason was that the Allies wanted them to die in front of the German elastic line.

And in Verdun, despite the poor high-level relations between the two sides, at the soldier level, dozens of combat units played friendly football matches. The French in Langman were surprised that the Chinese could play football, not very well, but at least they could.

Jiang Baili now had no time to watch the boys play football, so he found Wang Zhenpeng, the director of the Armaments Department of the First Division, that is, Wang Zhenyu's fifth brother, and gave him an important task, to send a large number of cement, steel bars, gas masks, food, water, and ammunition to the fortified point he had set for the Sixth Division.

All the officers and men of the 6th Division were ordered to work overtime to build fortifications, and this time the fortifications were different from the past, not temporary fortifications like trenches. According to the order of Jiang Baili, deputy chief of the general staff, Zhang Zizhong's headquarters was required to build permanent fortifications together with the laborers.

The pillboxes were poured with steel and cement three meters below ground level, and then the infantry would hide in these strong pillboxes and wait for the Germans to come and die. This fortification is still learned and used by Jiang Baili from the hands of the Germans, and I don't know what kind of expression the Germans will have when they encounter such a fortification.

"There is a firing angle between the pillboxes, even if the Germans pass through the pillboxes in front, they will be easily knocked down by the fire of the pillboxes in the back, there are no trenches, these damn Germans don't even have a place to hide."

Zhang Zizhong nodded and said, "Chief of Staff Jiang, I feel that it is more dangerous for our Sixth Division to be scattered in such a dozen pillboxes and two large fortresses to fight like this, I want to know how long my mission will last?" Because you have also seen the firepower of the German army, once you are under siege and the supplies are used up, it will be a big trouble to replenish them. At that time, it will be nothing if we let the Germans run out, and what will we do if we don't run out and the supplies are cut off? ”

Jiang Baili looked at the tall and strong Zhang Zizhong and nodded: "The jihua I gave you is to hold on for fifteen days, and the current military reserves can only do this, in fact, if we exceed this number of days, we have not been able to pull the German army back from the front line, my advice to you is to surrender, this is not a shame, on the contrary, as long as you persist until Zuihou completes the task, I hope you can survive and spread the experience to other units of our army." ”

"Surrender?" Zhang Zizhong's mouth was almost closed when he heard this word, and he even thought that Chief of Staff Jiang had said something wrong.

Unexpectedly, Jiang Baili expressed in an affirmative tone: "That's right, it's surrender, the Europeans are different from us, they generally don't kill prisoners." Second, you did your best, and there is no way to continue fighting, and you will still be respected and treated favorably. It should be time to defend our own homeland, in France, we have to show strength, we want to fight for honor, after doing our best it is not worth sacrificing our precious life in vain, how to operate, you can do it yourself. ”

It's not just the defense here, it's also a lot of surprise work. The armies involved in the assault were more troublesome, less and less powerful.

According to Jiang Baili's opinion, a total of five divisions were invested in the entire defensive operation, while only four divisions had 100,000 men in the assault operation.

Specifically: Zhang Zizhong's Sixth Division and Tang Shengzhi's Seventh Division were used as bait for the entire campaign, and they were thrown to the Germans to gnaw. Then He Yingqin's 2nd Division, Li Hongkui's 8th Division, and Zhou Zhengming's 9th Division interfered with the German army in the form of positional warfare and the situation of movement warfare around these two hard bones, so that the Germans would not want to gnaw easily. Zuihou was to use Liao Lei's 1st Division, Xia Wei's 3rd Division, Li Pinxian's 4th Division, and Ye Kaixin's 5th Division as the main force to carry out the strategic interspersed mission, bypassing the gap between the German defense lines and entering the Lorraine area, which was also the result of Bai Chongxi and Jiang Baili's repeated deliberations. Because they found that Alsace itself is a German-speaking region, and Lorraine is a French-speaking region, which is different from the situation in "A Lesson in Zuihou", it seems that bragging is not only the fault of the Chinese, but also the people of that country and place are not exempt from vulgarity.

Different from the brigades under the youth army division in China, the expeditionary force Zuihou, which originally set up brigades under the Jihua division earlier than the youth army, actually insisted on the system of one division and four regiments at Bai Chongxi's insistence, the reason was that in order to reduce the scale of the expeditionary force headquarters, Bai Chongxi did not want to turn the expeditionary force headquarters into a hodgepodge including artillery, engineers, and military police headquarters.

According to Jiang Baili's meaning, whether the entire operation can be landed or not depends on the execution of regiment-level officers, and Wei Lihuang, Chen Cheng, Luo Zhuoying, Serious, Deng Yanda, Gu Zhutong, Hu Zongnan, Zhang Fakui, Zhang Zhizhong, Xiong Shihui, Xue Yue, Zheng Jiemin, Wang Tianpei, Sun Zhen, Wang Mingzhang, Wang Zhanxu, Luo Zezhou, Wang Lingji, Pan Wenhua, Tang Shizun, Tian Songyao, Fan Shaozeng, Guo Xunqi, Wang Jialie, Long Yun, Lu Han and other 36 regiment commanders are strictly a little unprofessional. There is even a suspicion of exceptional promotion, these people are just battalion commanders in the country according to their qualifications. Some of the generals transferred from the Sichuan army were still demoted and appointed, but these Sichuan people were still quite safe and reasonable, and knew that this demotion was beneficial, and it represented recognition and absorption.

Looking at these officers who had no experience in modern warfare, Jiang Baili, a military theorist who had commanded such a large-scale military operation for the first time, couldn't help but shudder, he was faintly afraid, can these soldiers complete their jihua, will they dare to be beaten by the Germans as soon as they appear? If that's the case, it's better to stay in the trenches and play attrition, because once hundreds of thousands of troops enter a state of movement warfare, they will collapse, and the speed alone is very amazing.

Bai Chongxi Zuihou dispelled Jiang Baili's worries: "Brother Baili, don't think about holding the position like Britain and France, they have been defending for three years and they have lost more than the Germans, and we will not have a future if we follow their old path......"