In fact, the reason why Joan of Arc was able to enter the upper echelons of the army in the first place was not because of his own ability.

At that time, the confidence of the people in West France to defeat Germany was actually very low, because in their opinion, the combination of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia was almost invincible.

After all, there is no such advanced network in this era, and not everyone can understand the international situation.

Germany shares a border with West Franc, and in recent years their strong industrial capabilities have impressed the West Francis people.

And at this time, the existence of Joan of Arc also happened to enter their sight.

The name of the general who met Joan of Arc in the village was Raman Arnold, the adopted son of Joseph, the commander of the French army.

After meeting him, Joan of Arc chose to join the army and accompanied them.

At first, they thought that Joan of Arc was just a girl who happened to be on par with the saint of the past.

But later, after she made several judgments that were close to the prophecy, and all of them were correct, Rahman began to value her opinion.

With the victory of several battles, her name gradually spread among the army, and soon reached Joseph.

Joseph was keenly aware of the label Joan of Arc.

Claiming to be Joan of Arc, feminine, and possessing a special instinct, it is the perfect poke at the heroic fantasy of the West Franciscans.

So they hyped her name in the country.

Who knows, her ability is also beyond Joseph's imagination, and the battles she commanded later are enough to go down in the history of war.

With the front-line achievements as a basis, for a while, her name became more and more famous in West France, and many supporters appeared.

Many say that she is the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, who saved West Francis hundreds of years ago.

And this time, she came to West Farland again.

She will also save the country once again.

"The enemy's aim was not to occupy Verdun." Joan of Arc made an affirmative conclusion to the sand table in front of her.

She glanced at the crowd.

"Instead, use large firepower to drain our living forces, and the enemy wants to make Verdun our graveyard."

The faces of the generals around them changed, and they gradually became solemn, and they actually noticed something as well.

The firepower of these waves of Allied offensive was a little too terrifying.

"Then should we retreat now?" Rahman asked.

"How to retreat, where to retreat?" Joan of Arc asked.

They fell silent.

"With Paris behind us, we have no way back." Joan of Arc's voice was low.

"The souls of the two hundred and forty-two children who died in the bombing of Paris are still weeping, and we will not let this happen a second time."

"They made a big mistake by not immediately attacking the weakly defended west bank of the Meuse and occupying Verdun after breaking through our defence.

Presumably, it was the fear that we would abandon the attack on Verdun.

Moreover, this style of heavy firepower coverage has too high requirements for logistical support, which is also the direction of our breakthrough. ”

Joan of Arc pressed her hands on the edge of the sand table, leaning forward slightly, looking down at the sand table in front of her, as if the entire battlefield was under her control.

And the position and situation of the German army at the moment also came to her mind.

Her eyes flickered.

"They will pay for their arrogance"

On Joan of Arc's orders, the whole army at the front began to move at an alarming pace.

The presence of the Sapper Mechs has dramatically increased the speed of the construction of positions on the front line.

In a very short period of time, the Allied army quickly built a defensive position in Verdun that spanned both sides of the Meuse River, with a frontal width of 112 kilometers and a depth of 15~18 kilometers.

There are a total of four defensive positions, the first three are field defensive positions, and the fourth is a strong position composed of permanent fortifications and two fortified areas, which are condescending, easy to defend and difficult to attack.

West Fland mobilized 11 divisions, more than 630 artillery pieces, and 1,300 mechs under the jurisdiction of the 3rd Army.

Five divisions defended the area north of Verdun, three divisions east and southeast of Verdun, and three divisions were deployed as reserves in the area south of Verdun on the west bank of the Meuse.

After that, the French army used the Baledique-Verdun road, the only one to maintain contact with the rear, to continuously transfer troops and supplies to Verdun, organizing 3,900 trucks and 1,000 transport mechs in a week, transporting 190,000 personnel and 25,000 tons of supplies.

It was the first large-scale automobile transport in the history of the war.

Joan of Arc keenly grasped the arrogance of the Allied troops, and took advantage of the fact that they had not taken Verdun to strengthen the fortifications of Verdun with all her might, and chose to engage in positional warfare with them.

A large number of Allied reinforcements were put into battle in time, strengthening the defense in depth, and also had a significant impact on the course of the entire campaign.

Massive bombardment by the Allies could not be carried out all the time, because the industrial capacity was there, and this was when positional warfare came into play.

In the first few days of the second week, Joan of Arc even led his army in a large detour blitzkrieg, destroying several railways built by Germany.

By the end of the month, the Germans were depleting ammunition and the strategic reserves did not arrive in time because of the destruction of the railway, and the attack force was sharply reduced, and the two sides began to fall into a stalemate.

It can be said that the fact that the Allies did not choose to occupy Verdun was definitely a huge mistake, which deprived them of the best opportunity to break through the line of defense of the Entente.

In early March, the Confederates began to shift tactics. The first is to expand the width of the frontal offensive, to thirty kilometers.

Immediately afterwards, the direction of the assault began to be shifted to the west bank of the Meuse, in an attempt to encircle Verdun from the west, and at the same time eliminate the threat of French artillery on the west bank, and continue to strengthen the offensive on the east bank.

The difference was that the Germans no longer attacked in a hurry, but began to advance steadily.

However, this strategy was also met with stubborn resistance from the French army, and in the end only a few small strongholds were captured, which did not achieve the strategic goal, but paid a large sacrifice.

And at this moment, in the camp of the German army,

Malfoy, the commander of the German army in charge of attacking Verdun, began to roar angrily at the general beside him.

"You can't even break through the first line of defense, what's the use of the empire asking a general like you!?"

Malfoy also has the status of being the eldest son of William II, that is, the crown prince.

Compared with governing the country, military merit is the easiest way to gain prestige, so many princes have military ranks.

But if the battle ended in defeat for the Germans.

Then not only will his position be unsafe, but even the throne of his father, who is far away in his own country, will be challenged.

So at the moment he was in a very irritable mood.

"We missed the best opportunity to attack, the enemy's defenses were plentiful, and there was also a partisan detachment loitering around our logistical line." The general spoke slowly.

"Is there nothing that can be done?" Malfoy continued.

The general was silent for a moment, "It's not for nothing. ”

Hearing this, Malfoy looked up at him.

"Last year, on the battlefield of the Sailing country, we used a weapon that worked very well." There was a faint glimmer in the general's eyes, "However, it was stopped by some people in the country because it was too inhumane." ”

"Now at this time, what do you care about inhumanely, if Germany loses, the entire empire will collapse!" Malfoy suppressed his emotions and said, "Go and transfer all these weapons in the domestic inventory to the front line!" Also, full recovery of logistical supplies! ”

"Yes!"

The battlefield was filled with gunsmoke, and as time passed, the patience of both sides gradually wore off, and the intensity of the battle increased exponentially.

Germany began to concentrate its superior forces at home, and even the mechs and battleships on the Eastern Front were moving here.

West Francis also continued to move troops from the rear, from the past 11 divisions to the current 56 divisions, including almost half of the entire West Francis troops.

The entire battlefield is like a large "meat grinder", and all the soldiers sent to it will be churned into pulp.

Under the rainy sky, there is a dark scorched earth and a cemetery full of corpses.

Death and fear gradually spread on the battlefield.

"Leo, do you have a fire?"

In the trenches of the Verdun Line, an old man with gray hair and a look of his forties with a cigarette in his mouth spoke to the young man who was called Leo on one side.

He was holding a gun at the moment, wrapped tightly around his coat, trembling slightly.

Hearing this, Leo quickly groped around his body, then took out a box of matches and handed it to him.

The old man took the match tremblingly, he seemed to have no strength in his hands, and even a few strokes of the match were unsuccessful.

Leo reached out and took the match from his hand, and struck one for him, and the flame burst into flames, lighting up the dim trench.

The old man stuck his head out and placed the cigarette in his mouth on the burning flame to try to light it, but he could not burn it anyway, until the match was burned out, and it was only a little black.

"It's too wet." Leo said.

The old man took off his cigarette and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

"It doesn't matter if you can't light it, a few days ago, Bligh was lighting a cigarette in the trenches, and he was fired into a cold cannon and blown into minced meat. This group of miscellaneous pieces is really getting more and more accurate. The old man said with a deep look.

"Leo, you say, when will this war end?"

Leo didn't speak, he slowly raised his head to look at the sky, the gloomy dark clouds obscured the sky, black and oppressive, just like his heart at the moment.

The clouds hadn't cleared these days, and he hadn't seen the sun for a long time, and he didn't know if it was day or night, but it didn't matter anymore, and they didn't have time to sleep at all.

But the battle overnight was not actually the most painful, the most painful was the continuous heavy rain.

The rain turned the battlefield into a hell that even the most imaginative writer could not describe:

There are no toilets, no dormitories, no beds, only a military uniform that cannot be changed for hundreds of days; When it rains, all the rain accumulates in the trenches, and they can't get out, because if they do, they will inevitably be attacked by enemy fire.

So they only soaked in the water of the trenches, soaked in the water with their bodies, and there was a huge amount of feces and urine, and countless corpse residues, and they slept in the soak of feces and corpses.

Every time the enemy cannon sounded, the ground shook for hours, and I felt like my whole person would be blown into the ground, accompanied by flying shrapnel and the bloody mud falling from my comrades.

It would have been fine if it had been summer, but it's March, and it's still rainy, and it's terrible cold.

Some of their comrades-in-arms even had their legs necrotic amputated due to prolonged underwater immersion.

It's fine just soaking, but how can you not be injured on the battlefield, the wound is soaked in water, and it is almost uncontrollable and rapidly deteriorates and even dies.

If you are lucky, you will only have an amputation, and those who are not lucky will die directly from various diseases.

Leo actually envies these people, because they are a hundred, and they still have to survive in this purgatory-like environment.

He didn't have a good rest for many days, which made his brain very chaotic, his thoughts were a little confused, and in the most painful times, he even wondered why he was on this battlefield.

A cold wind looked from Leo to the old man on the side, "Old Dirk, why are you on this battlefield?" West Farland shouldn't have raised the conscription age yet, right? ”

Old Dick silently wiped the rifle in his hand, and the gun was not good for the gun if it was wet.

A piercing cold wind passed through the trenches, carrying a biting chill, and Leo subconsciously wrapped his coat tightly.

Even though the coat was already wet, it was the only thing they could survive the night.

They did not dare to start a fire, because the billowing smoke was tantamount to telling the enemy where they were, and Leo had no doubt that if the fire was lit, a shell would fly in the next moment.

Leo couldn't imagine how smelly he was now, because everyone around him was the same, and he couldn't tell the difference.

Old Dick wiped his gun and said slowly, "I am Parisian, I own a café, I have a wife and a twenty-three-year-old son, and a nineteen-year-old, the eldest of whom goes to the École Polytechnique de Paris, and the other who goes to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. ”

"That's the best school in West France." Leo said in amazement.

"Well, they've been working hard for a long time." Old Dick said in a low voice.

He was depressed, and Leo finally noticed something strange about him.

Then, he said slowly, "A few years ago, the bombing of Paris destroyed my café and my wife died in it. In revenge, my eldest son chose to take a leave of absence from school to join the army and died on the front line, and then, my younger son also went, and a few months ago, I received a notice of his death.

Now, I'm here too. ”

Leo fell silent, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought up this topic. ”

"It's okay, it's a fact." Dick muttered softly, "It's not going to disappear because you don't ask."

Leo fell silent, silently pulling a book out of his bosom.

"That's the book you've been reading lately, and you've always had it with you." Dick said in a deep voice.

"Put it in your heart, aren't a lot of it written like this, the protagonist was shot, and then it happened to be blocked by something like a pocket watch in the heart."

"Can that stop the fire?" Old Dick smiled, "On this battlefield, more people are killed by explosions than by guns." ”

Leo shrugged, "Better than nothing." ”

He looked at the book in his hand, and although his coat was full of moisture, the book was unexpectedly well preserved, and there were no wrinkles caused by the water.

"There's a sentence in this book that sticks out to me." Leo whispered, "A grain of sand in the era is a mountain when it falls on a person's head." ”

"Sounds reasonable."

"What is the story of this book?" Dick asked curiously.

Leo thought for a moment, "It tells the story of a black mage and a white mage, the two of them used to be friends, but they parted ways because of different ideas, and finally fought on an important occasion, and finally the white mage won. ”

"Sounds like a very simple story."

"But it looks different." Leo said.

"Why did they go their separate ways?" Dick asked.

"In the world of the book, magic is not allowed to appear in the human world, and the black mage wants to break this rule, rule mankind with magic, establish a huge magical empire, and finally put an end to war"

(End of chapter)