Chapter 125 General Foch

When the news of victory reached Paris, the city defense headquarters cheered, the staff excitedly hugged Charles, and people from the back kept scrambling to shake hands with Charles.

Charles looked for Gallieni in the crowd, but he couldn't find him.

Lieutenant Colonel Fernan replied: "The general is being questioned in the House of Representatives, I will go and tell him the good news!"

...

When Gallieni returned to the headquarters from the House of Representatives, he was smiling all the time.

This was very rare for the serious Gallieni.

The staff who knew him knew that even when the German army was repelled, Gallieni only replied lightly: "That's when they realized that Paris was just a place full of exhaust gas, dirty water and garbage."!

However, today he put a smile on his face, which made the headquarters, which was usually very depressed, relaxed, just like a house that had been closed for a long time suddenly opened the window and blew in fresh air with the fragrance of flowers.

Everyone thought that Gallieni was like this because Charles commanded the flying brigade to win the first air battle in human history.

But only Gallieni himself knew that he was still proud of the House of Representatives. He scolded those hypocritical members face to face and tore off their fig leaves!

Nothing could be more satisfying than this!

Compared to defeating the enemy, Gallieni hated the insects in these countries more. They devoured the country's resources, enslaved the French people, and did things to destroy the country all the time, but they kept saying that they were for France!

Gallieni sat in his seat and looked through the combat records, but his mind was recalling the excitement in the parliament.

"General!" Lieutenant Colonel Fernan reminded: "We shot down a total of thirteen enemy planes and three balloons, and killed hundreds of infantry and at least two artillery pieces!"

The latter two items were not sure. The pilots who dived and shot had no time to count how many enemies were killed, but it didn't matter!

Gallieni simply said "Hmm": "Very good!"

"General!" Lieutenant Colonel Fernan added: "No casualties in our army!"

Galieni was a little surprised. He looked up at Fernan and asked: "The enemy's planes have nothing. What kind of casualties do you think we will have? Will they crash into us?"

"But General..." Lieutenant Colonel Fernan raised his head behind him: "You, don't you want to say anything?"

Galieni glanced at the staff of the headquarters and saw that they were looking at him with expectation. So he understood that as a commander, he should have a summary at this time.

Or, they hope to give Charles some affirmation.

Galieni said "Hmm", closed the combat record in his hand, and looked at Charles who was checking the supply list, and called: "Lieutenant Charles!"

"Yes, General!" Charles quickly put down what he was doing and ran to Gallieni.

Gallieni threw the combat record in front of Charles with an expressionless face, and said with a slightly dissatisfied tone: "Where is the 'asymmetric combat' you mentioned? I didn't see any trace of it at all!"

The staff officers were stunned. Not only did they not get praise for winning a great victory, but they were blamed instead?

They didn't know that this was exactly how General Gallieni used people.

For an ordinary person, this victory is definitely worthy of praise, and he should even be awarded a medal.

But for Charles, this victory can only be said to be so-so. Excessive praise will make him think that he has done a good job and be satisfied with the status quo.

Charles didn't think so much. He felt that Gallieni's question made sense. In the final analysis, this battle was actually a charge to scare off the Germans with air combat, nothing more.

"General!" Charles replied: "I think if we want to fight an 'asymmetric war', we may need the cooperation of the infantry!"

"No problem!" Gallieni agreed without thinking: "I will be responsible for contacting the infantry. I will urge them to get to Ypres as soon as possible. How do you want them to cooperate with you?"

"No, General!" Charles said shockingly: "I hope they can't get to Ypres in time!"

"What?" Gallieni looked at Charles in surprise. He thought he had heard it wrong: "You want cooperation, but you don't need them?"

The staff officers also cast doubtful eyes on Charles.

Everyone hopes that the reinforcements will arrive sooner, and the Ypres defenders are even more anxious, but Charles hopes that they can't arrive?

Charles nodded affirmatively: "I understand that it is General Foch who led the troops to reinforce Ypres..."

"Do you have any opinions about General Foch?" Gallieni asked, and was secretly shocked.

General Foch was a famous figure in the French army. He almost established and guided the combat theory of the entire French army, but he was despised by Charles.

Charles did not despise Foch. He wanted to draw a clear line with Foch. If Foch was allowed to command this battle, although it would not fail, it would suffer heavy casualties like in history.

Foch's combat thinking can be summarized as "spiritual victory" and "offense first". He believed that as long as the soldiers showed their fearlessness and launched an attack on the enemy, they would surely win.

"As long as you don't admit defeat, you won't lose the battle!"

"The will to conquer is the primary condition for winning the war!"

"Any defense is unnecessary. The limit of attack is victory!"

...

These combat ideas are obviously wrong, and they are very wrong, but they were the truth in the era of line infantry and before the invention of machine guns, and they were proven to be correct on the battlefield again and again.

Therefore, Foch became a famous scholar, and some people even praised him as "the terminator of World War I and the prophet of World War II."

Charles did not make too many comments on Foch, he knew that this would cause disgust and unnecessary trouble, because it was denying the entire French army, except Pétain.

(Note: Pétain was an officer who advocated defense, so he was excluded during World War I until he proved in actual combat that defense was the mainstream. The brackets are limited to World War I. This is also the reason why Pétain was able to emerge quickly. Unfortunately, he led the French army to defense and encountered World War II, which required offense)

Charles chose a relatively conservative answer:

"General, General Foch always commands troops to attack!"

"And in this battle, I just need defense, and I need the enemy to attack our defense line!"

"Only in this way can our artillery work and there will be "asymmetric warfare"!"

Gallieni hesitated, and he also considered this point. If the French army and the German army rushed each other on the battlefield, the artillery would probably have no place to bomb.

Thinking of this, Gallieni nodded, he looked at Charles meaningfully, and said: "I understand, it's just this battle, right?"

Then he turned his eyes to the map, looking at it and said: "This is easy, we just need to...let the mountain torrents break the bridge, um, that's it!"

(The picture above is Marshal Foch)