Chapter 133 Grenade

After the family had dinner under candlelight, Djoka persuaded Charles while Camille was washing dishes in the kitchen.

"I don't object to your persistence on the tank, Charles!" Djoka said with a bit of anxiety: "I don't even object to your 'not participating in competition', but you seem to need allies. You can't fight the whole world alone, even if you are excellent!"

Then he added: "The means that the enemy can use may be beyond your imagination. They are hard to defend against. Sometimes you have to choose a side!"

"I understand, father!" Charles picked up the prunes on the plate and stuffed them into his mouth.

Camille said that the prunes are almost out of season, and they should be caught and tasted, otherwise they will have to wait until next year.

"And..." Djoka hesitated and said: "Sometimes we shouldn't dwell on the past, we should look at the current situation and the future!"

Djoka was talking about Charles being deceived to Antwerp. Grevi did want to harm Charles before, but there were too many alliances in the business world. He thought that he should ally with Grevi now if it was beneficial.

More importantly, Dejoka knew that nobles like Grevi were very good at intrigue and infighting, which was in their blood.

If they formed an alliance, they would not have to worry about "accidents" like last time.

This was a kind of identification based on fear, similar to Stockholm syndrome!

"I will not form an alliance with Grevi!" Charles said without any hesitation: "They will eventually be eliminated by the times, and it is not a wise choice to form an alliance with them!"

"Then, who else can we form an alliance with?" Dejoka asked back.

It was obviously impossible to form an alliance with Schneider. It was well known that Joffre and Gallieni were at odds. If you chose Gallieni, you could not choose Joffre. At the same time, arms giants like Schneider would not take Charles seriously. If you wanted to form an alliance with him, you would only get humiliation.

Charles hesitated for a while and said calmly: "Don't worry, father, I will let my allies come to me!"

"What?" Dejoka did not understand what Charles meant.

"You will understand, father!" Charles stood up and ended the conversation, grabbing a few prunes.

He found that the taste was not bad, but he had not put it in the options before. Sometimes you should open up and expand the range of choices.

Back in his room, Charles took out a pen and a ruler and drew a sketch.

The wooden handle grenade, the principle is very simple, you can make it by hand, and it can be divided into offensive and defensive types according to different charges.

It didn't take long to finish the drawing. Although it was not very standard, it didn't need to be so accurate.

Then add a page of text for simple annotations, and also copy a copy for yourself. After finishing, pin it together with a pin, and go downstairs to hand it to Dejoka who was still sitting at the dining table in a daze.

"Father, send this to register industrial property rights tomorrow!"

Dejoka took the document and flipped through it, hesitant to speak, but finally nodded and said nothing.

Charles understood what Dejoka meant:

"What we lack is not industrial property rights, Charles, nor money. We have a lot of money now! But some things can't be bought with money!"

Charles didn't explain, and he would understand it naturally when the time came.

...

The next day, Paris had a rare sunny day. The sky was blue, and the sun tore through the clouds and shone freely, casting long shadows on the speeding cars.

"Do you believe it, Lieutenant?" Laurent said, "It's raining heavily in Ypres now!"

"Oh?" Charles asked curiously, "Did you receive the intelligence from Ypres?"

"Of course!" Laurent nodded, "Every detail, the general hopes that you can understand the battlefield on the way back! It's just that everything is normal now, nothing happened."

Charles suddenly realized that this was Gallieni's way of dealing with Charles's vacation.

The intelligence of the battlefield will continue to be transmitted to Laurent, and once there is any special situation that needs to be handled by Charles, it will be sent to Charles immediately.

A good approach!

There should be no major events in Ypres recently.

If the problem of air supremacy is not solved, the German offensive will undoubtedly be thwarted by the French 75 guns.

On the one hand, the German army has the advantage of hilly terrain. If the French army in the plain and muddy area launches a counterattack, it is almost the same as seeking death!

Charles found that he seemed to have saved many people.

In this historical battle, the German and French armies pushed back and forth on the Ypres Plain, each with more than 100,000 casualties (130,000 German casualties and 100,000 Allied casualties), but now it ended with only more than 10,000 casualties.

The ending was the same, but the casualties were less than 200,000!

Killing people to save lives by fighting to stop the war, is it a kind of irony?

…

Perhaps because the battlefield was basically stable, the headquarters was no longer as busy as usual. Gallieni sat at his desk, chewing bread and staring at the map, his consciousness had flown to the front line.

This was his habit for many years. He almost never went to the cafeteria for meals, even though it was downstairs.

"General!" Charles handed over the backup grenade sketch and said, "I think we need this kind of equipment!"

Galieni glanced at the sketch, but didn't take it seriously. He immediately turned his eyes back to the map and asked, "What is this?"

"Grenade!" Charles replied, "It is used to replace the explosives thrown by grenadiers!"

Galieni raised his head with an "oh" and a cautious look on his face.

Soon he threw the bread aside, holding the map in one hand and the text description in the other.

After looking at it for a while, he raised the document in his hand and asked Charles half-doubtfully: "You mean, it doesn't need to be ignited, just pull the string to detonate?"

"Yes, General!" Charles replied: "Delay for a few seconds so that the soldiers have time to throw it out!"

Galieni immediately understood the importance of this thing, and he nodded affirmatively: "You are right, Lieutenant! We do need this thing, do you have a sample?"

"No, General!" Charles replied: "I just designed it and am registering industrial property rights. I think if the army needs it, I can put it into production immediately. It is not difficult..."

"Need it!" Gallieni nodded repeatedly: "Of course it is needed!"

Galieni is a practical general. He will send staff to the front line from time to time to understand the actual situation. He believes that this can ensure that the command is not out of touch with reality.

Therefore, he knew that the soldiers on the front line were turning out the explosives from the grenadiers' era and throwing them at each other in the trenches with the enemy.

But explosives have many disadvantages, such as being easily damp and needing to be ignited.

And Charles actually designed a grenade specifically for throwing, which does not require ignition and is easy to throw... This is simply designed for trench warfare!

"We need at least 10,000 grenades..." General Gallieni nodded affirmatively.

Charles couldn't help laughing, 10,000 grenades?

The French front-line army of one million people, each equipped with five grenades, would require five or six million grenades, and ten million grenades would not be enough, and this has not yet calculated the subsequent consumption!

(The above picture shows the simple grenades made by the Allies in cans at the beginning of World War I. The German army already had the prototype of grenades, such as ball grenades with clockwork or pull-type, but the Allies were in the state of homemade grenades at the beginning, and it took more than a month before they urgently produced grenades to supply the front line)