The mud clung to everything.
It swallowed boots, choked engine treads, and turned every movent into a labor.
The so-called "training ground" south of Reims had once been a cavalry field now it was a graveyard for the dreams of bureaucrats and the suspension systems of obsolete tanks.
But to Moreau and de Gaulle, it was what they had, and it was where it had to begin.
A Renault FT made noise as it skidded down a shallow slope, veering off its intended line and into a ditch.
Its treads spun helplessly, flinging mud in every direction.
The driver killed the engine and kicked open the hatch with a loud clang.
Moreau stood on a low rise overlooking the drill zone, his coat speckled with dirt.
"Get the chains," he shouted down. "One more inch and that tank's part of the landscape."
Two soldiers ran forward, slipping in the muck, dragging a heavy tow chain behind them.
Beside him, de Gaulle stood with arms crossed, his expression unreadable as he watched the scene unfold.
"That's three bogged-down tanks this morning," he said.
"Better than four," Moreau replied. "They're learning the terrain."
"They're learning it hates them," de Gaulle muttered. "And so do the machines. These relics were obsolete when we were lieutenants."
"They were museum pieces when the ink dried on Versailles," Moreau said. "But they're all we've got."
"Unless you can grow a battalion of Char D tanks from the soil," de Gaulle said, "we're going to be stuck improvising."
"Then we improvise," Moreau said. "They need to fail before they can function."
They watched in silence as the crew freed the Renault and dragged it back into position.
The driver saluted them halfway up the hill mud-covered and grinning, as if surviving the exercise had been a small victory in itself.
By the ss tent that evening, morale had thawed, if only slightly.
The n sat hunched over tin bowls of overcooked lentils and bread that could dull a bayonet.
They talked in low tones, half out of exhaustion, half out of uncertainty about what they were becoming.
Moreau found Captain Chauvet nursing black coffee, a file open beside him, eyes scanning drill notes.
Moreau sat without asking.
"How's your company?"
Chauvet didn't look up. "Half of them still think they're infantry. They spread out when they should concentrate. Fire at everything. Hesitate when they should push."
"That's expected," Moreau said. "They've never trained for movent. Not like this."
"They're not the only ones struggling," Chauvet said. "I've had officers tell this is a waste of ti. One called it a 'dead-end exercise in vanity.'"
Moreau stirred his coffee. "They're right to doubt it. Change isn't just new, it's treason to them."
Chauvet finally looked up. "Why'd you pick for this?"
"Because I saw your warga record. You broke formation, circled the enemy supply lines. Twice."
"They told I lacked discipline."
Moreau shrugged. "They weren't wrong. But they also lacked imagination."
The next week brought more drills.
De Gaulle led two field exercises personally, correcting formations with a voice that carried across wind and mud.
He walked alongside tank crews, demanding they think in terms of tempo and angles, not mass and weight.
"You're not statues with engines," he barked at one gunner. "You're hamrs that strike from the side, not the front."
When radios still hadn't arrived, Moreau had the signal corps simulate communications with flags and runners.
"Coordination is thinking, not hardware," he said. "Don't let the lack of a wire excuse poor timing."
Each day bled into the next.
Tracked vehicles broke down.
Engines failed.
Tires burst.
But amid the ss, patterns began to erge.
Drivers anticipated terrain.
Infantry began timing their dismounts.
Artillery practiced split deploynts and rapid shifts.
They weren't good yet but they weren't green either.
Rumors of their progress, of course, began to reach Paris.
In a smoke-filled room at the War College, General Blanchard tossed a copy of a field report onto the table.
"Three successful maneuvers," he said. "Unrecorded, unsanctioned, and outside standard doctrine."
"They're playing war gas with tractors," one colonel muttered.
"They're redefining tempo," another officer said cautiously. "Their units are responding faster than ours in simulated engagents."
Blanchard waved it away. "Let them play. No real war will be won by outrunning artillery. France defends. France endures. That's what we are."
"And if the Germans don't play by that rule?"
Blanchard's eyes narrowed. "Then we build bigger walls."
Back in Reims, walls weren't on anyone's mind.
What the division lacked in infrastructure, it tried to make up for with montum.
But the obstacles were real.
Moreau spent an entire morning fighting for fuel rations, only to be told that their depot was "not prioritized for live-fire drills."
He signed the request anyway, handed it to the quartermaster, and said, "Prioritize this: if we're not burning fuel, we're just a museum display."
Even de Gaulle, never one to complain aloud, was starting to feel the friction.
During an evening walk across the site, he paused by the motor pool where soldiers were hamring new brackets onto an old Renault chassis.
"This is a joke," he said, quietly.
Moreau stood beside him. "It's a start."
"No. A start would be two proper tanks. Radios. Fuel. Ammunition not past its shelf date."
Moreau looked out at the horizon. "You wrote that mobility must beco a habit before it becos doctrine. They're forming habits."
"They're forming blisters."
"That too."
There was silence, broken only by the clank of tal and the occasional shouted instruction from the field.
"Do you think we're making any difference?" de Gaulle finally asked.
Moreau didn't answer imdiately.
Then: "Enough to be noticed."
They were.
A week later, five crates arrived from a military warehouse outside tz.
Inside radio sets, heavier than expected, but functional.
No paperwork.
No ceremony.
Just a note: "Courtesy of friends."
They installed them the next morning.
Within days, communication between infantry and support units beca twice as fast.
The drills ran tighter.
Response ti dropped.
For the first ti, Moreau heard silence after a simulated enemy contact not because the n froze, but because they moved without shouting.
That sa week, a general arrived unannounced.
Not Beauchamp.
General Albin Louvet, from the Inspectorate.
Accompanied by a single aide, he observed one drill in the morning without speaking, then asked for tea and sat under a tent with both Moreau and de Gaulle.
"I won't pretend I approve," Louvet said. "But I've seen worse."
"Comforting," Moreau said dryly.
Louvet ignored him. "Your second maneuver was better than expected. The flank moved faster than our line units in the north."
"No obstacles help," de Gaulle said. "If we had real opposition, it would have been slower."
"And if you had real tanks?" Louvet asked.
"We'd be writing doctrine, not improvising it."
Louvet stood, handed them a folded note, and left without shaking hands.
Inside, a simple instruction:
Continue. Quietly.
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