Chapter 125 General Foch

When the news of victory reached Paris, the city defense headquarters erupted in cheers. The staff officers excitedly hugged Charles, and people from the back kept scrambling to come forward to shake hands with Charles.

Charles looked for Gallieni among the crowd, but could not 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!"

…

Gallieni had a smile on his face as he returned to headquarters from the House of Representatives.

This was very rare for the serious Gallieni.

The staff officers who were familiar with him knew that even when the German army was repelled, Gallieni simply replied: "That's because they realized that Paris is nothing but a place full of exhaust gas, dirty water and garbage."!

However, today he put a smile on his face, which was uncharacteristically so, and it made the usually extremely depressed headquarters feel relaxed, just like a room that had been closed for a long time suddenly had its windows opened, letting in fresh air with the scent of flowers.

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

But only Gallieni himself knew that he was still proud of what happened in 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 with defeating the enemy, Gallieni hated the inhabitants of these countries even more. They devoured the country's resources, enslaved the French people, and were doing things to destroy the country all the time, but they always said that they were doing it for France!

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

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

The last two items are not so certain. The dive-shooting pilots had no time to count how many enemies they killed, but that doesn’t matter!

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

"General!" Lieutenant Colonel Fernan added, "No one in our army was killed or injured!"

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

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

Gallieni glanced at the staff officers at the headquarters and saw that they were all looking at him expectantly. He then understood that as a commander, he should make a summary at this time.

In other words, they wanted to give Charles some affirmation.

Gallieni hummed, closed the combat record in his hand, and looked at Charles who was checking the supply list, and called out: "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 don't see any trace of it at all!"

The staff officers were stunned. After winning a great victory, they were not praised but blamed instead?

They didn't know that this was exactly how General Gallieni employed 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 considered mediocre. Excessive praise will make him think that he has done a good job and thus be satisfied with the status quo.

Charles didn't think too much about it. He felt that Gallieni's question made sense. This battle was, after all, just a charge to scare off the Germans with an air battle, nothing more.

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

"No problem!" Gallieni agreed without thinking: "I will be in charge of 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 startlingly. "I hope they won't get to Ypres in time!"

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

The staff officers all turned their puzzled looks to Charles.

Everyone hoped that the reinforcements would arrive soon, and the defenders of Ypres were even more anxious, but Charles hoped that they would not arrive?

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

"Do you have any objection to General Foch?" Gallieni asked, with a hint of surprise.

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

Charles did not dislike Foch, he wanted to draw a clear line between himself and Foch. If Foch were allowed to command this battle, the army would not fail, but would suffer heavy casualties as in history.

Foch's combat thinking can be summarized as "spiritual victory" and "offense first". He believed that as long as the soldiers displayed a fearless spirit and launched an attack on the enemy, victory would be achieved.

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

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

"Any defense is unnecessary, the ultimate attack is victory!"

…

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

Therefore, Foch became a famous figure, 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, as he knew that this would cause resentment and unnecessary trouble because it would be a denial of the entire French army, except for Pétain.

(Note: Pétain was an officer who advocated defense, so he was marginalized during World War I until it was proven in actual combat that defense was the mainstream. The parentheses refer only to World War I. This is also the reason why Pétain was able to emerge quickly. Unfortunately, he led the French army to the defensive, and encountered World War II, which required offense.)

Charles chose a relatively conservative answer:

"General, General Foch always leads his 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 be effective and we can achieve 'asymmetric warfare'!"

Gallieni hesitated. He also considered that if the French and German armies rushed each other on the battlefield, the artillery would probably have no place to bombard.

Thinking of this, Gallieni nodded. He looked at Charles meaningfully and said, "I understand. It's just this one battle, right?"

Then he turned his eyes to the map and said as he looked at it: "This is easy, we just need to...let the flash flood destroy the bridge, yeah, that's it!"

(The picture above shows Marshal Foch)

(End of this chapter)