Chapter 304 South to Haizhou

No matter what era, it is necessary to make various preliminary preparations to launch a large-scale battle. It is definitely not that the coach fights on a whim, especially in contemporary wars that have entered firepower advantages. Due to the large number of equipment of technical weapons, the consumption of ammunition has also increased exponentially.

And this has led to the need to prepare a large amount of ammunition supplies in advance, especially the feed needed for mules and horses.

Today's army's war is not in the era of cold weapons. When it comes to cold weapons, people and horses need to sting. But now with the reinforcement of a large number of actual weapons, especially the number and weight of artillery and the increase of rapid fire, not only do artillery itself need more horses to pull, but the consumption of shells is also large. This has led to a significant increase in the number of logistics horses transporting shells.

In the army that has been heavily dependent on mules and horses, the increase of mules and horses represents an increase in feed, and horses eat more than people. In the regular troops with a considerable number of cavalry in ancient times, horses ate more feed than people ate.

Although the modern army has rarely played large-scale cavalry group charging, in fact, the army has a large number of horses. Compared with the Feng army itself as an example, although a standard infantry division only has more than 700 riding horses (cavalry, officers), it still has more than 2,000 logistics horses. This adds up to more than 3,000 mules and horses that eat more than the soldiers of a good army!

A large amount of food/feed eaten by military horses and personnel is a huge pressure on the military's logistics system, but this pressure is much smaller than ammunition.

The rate of fire of weapons these days has far exceeded that of the Franco-Prussian War. Although many warlords in China seem to be naive and unable to appear on the international stage, in fact, the fire intensity and ammunition consumption of domestic warlord wars have far exceeded those of the Franco-Pruss War.

In addition to the slight shortage of large-caliber artillery, small-caliber artillery, machine guns and bullets are actually not much different from the Russo-Japanese War.

Especially in the direct war between Wang Yingkai and Zhao Dongyun, in a Tangshan battle, the Feng army fired an average of more than 300 shells per artillery.

In addition to the subsequent Battle of Langfang, the Battle of Jingshi and the Battle of Bazhou, the Feng army fired more than 500 shells per artillery within a month and a half of entering the customs.

The number of shells stored by the Feng army before the war was only 700 rounds per battle.

It can be said that the direct war in just over a month has been the pinnacle of the contemporary domestic army. Although it is not comparable to the German army shooting down more than 1,000 shells in a month and a half during the First World War, it is no less than the Russo-Japanese War.

However, the peak state of the Zhifeng War only lasted for less than two months. As the Feng army won in Zhili and continued to go south, the intensity of the Feng army's battle began to decline rapidly. In the battle of Jinan, the Feng army fired only 50 shells each, and other small-sized battles were rare and large-scale battles. Shelling.

The main reason here is not that the artillery of the Feng army has decreased and the density of firepower, or that the Lu army, Anhui army and other enemies on the opposite side will be defeated without firing a few shells, but because as the Feng army goes south, the supply line is getting longer and longer, especially there is no railway in Shandong, which is up to six. The 700-kilometer supply line is far beyond the supply capacity of the contemporary Feng army or even any modern army.

According to the military logistics capacity of this era, the critical distance of a standardized modern army logistics supply, and the distance from the railway/sea supply station is theoretically about 50 kilometers. Once this distance is exceeded, then rely on the army's own carriage and other transportation Strength is difficult to maintain the logistics and transportation task of the troops, and this is still the premise that it is the best army and has good organizational and operation ability. In fact, taking the German and French armies among the current great powers as an example, their critical distance is more than 40 kilometers at most, and the words of the Feng army may be worse.

The nearest railway supply stations of Fengjun are Langfang and Tianjin, and then rely on canals and foot transportation to go south. The whole process is a tragedy. It is naturally impossible to rely on the transportation of the army's own heavy troops. It is a large number of civilians hired and recruited by the Ministry of Munitions that maintain the operation of this long supply line.

The Feng army has only more than 30,000 troops fighting on the front line in Shandong, but there are more than 40,000 people under the jurisdiction of the quartermaster department that provides them with logistics transportation.

The distance of the supply line will undoubtedly make it more and more difficult for the Feng army to get supplies. Although the generals of the Feng army on the front line will also requisition supplies on the spot, only food and feed can be collected, but shells and bullets can never be collected from the people.

This has led to fewer and fewer shells and bullets that can be used by the front-line troops to fight, so that the intensity of a series of battles in Shandong is far lower than that of the Zhifeng War.

This is not because the two armies fought harder, but that everyone was fighting at home at that time, and the Beijing-Feng Railway provided logistics transportation along the way, so there was no shortage of all kinds of materials, especially shells and bullets, which could lead to the fierce battle of the Tangshan Campaign.

In the face of the difficulties of logistics transportation, especially the less and less supplies received by the Feng army in the direction of Shandong and northern Jiangsu. In order to solve the logistics transportation problems in this direction, the solution adopted by the Feng army is sea transportation.

Although after shipping to Haizhou and other ports, there is still more than 100 kilometers of transshipment distance from the front-line troops, which is also far beyond the critical distance of Feng's logistics ability, it is much better than picking horses from Tianjin.

The command decided to open up a maritime supply line, and the front-line troops naturally implemented the plan, and it was Wu Peifu's 19th Brigade of the 10th Division under the jurisdiction of the Second Army of Xu Bangjie.

Gold will shine there. This sentence can't be used on Wu Peifu. This person started from a small artillery platoon leader to a team officer step by step, and was promoted to battalion commander and commander of the 10th Division Artillery Regiment. After entering the customs this year, the Second Army was established. Xu Bangjie, the commander of the 10th Division, also served as the commander of the Second Army, but After the Battle of Jinan, with the first mixed brigade and the second independent heavy artillery battalion also joining the combat sequence of the Second Army, the scale of the Second Army became much larger than before, so Xu Bangjie naturally had no energy to continue to serve as the commander of the 10th Division.

Therefore, Zhao Dongyun officially promoted Ren Cugao, the brigade commander of the 19th Brigade, as the division commander of the 10th Division, and awarded him the rank of major general and lieutenant general. At the same time, he transferred Colonel Wu Peifu, the commander of the 10th Artillery Regiment, to serve as the commander of the 19th Brigade and was promoted to major general of the Army.

Wu Peifu can also be regarded as the second senior general from the artillery in the Feng army after succeeding Cun Gao. Although all arms are complete in today's Feng army, in fact, most of the senior generals are from infantry. Fengjun now has more than 200,000 people, not to mention hundreds of generals above, but there are also dozens of them. However, there are only three cavalrymen, Meng Enyuan, Hua Zhenji and Lv Chengtong. Among them, Hua Zhenji and Lv Chengtong still serve in the First Cavalry Brigade and the Second Cavalry Brigade, and the people of other arms in these two positions are really difficult to grab. Secondly, there are only two senior generals from artillery at present. One is Ren Cung Gao, the leader of the artillery standard of the former third town, and the second is Wu Peifu.

And it is more difficult for officers from artillery to cross the threshold of major generals than cavalry, because there are two brigade commanders on the cavalry as a channel for promotion, but for artillery officers, if they want to rise from the position of colonel of artillery regiment to the rank of major general, they can only be the same as other infantry colonels. It is quite difficult to compete for positions such as the commander of the infantry brigade and the heads of various departments of the command department.

It is not surprising that the commander of the infantry regiment in the Feng army has been promoted to brigade commander, but so far, only Ren Cunggao and Wu Peifu have been promoted to the commander of the infantry brigade.

To be honest, Wu Peifu was also a little surprised by his promotion. If it hadn't been for Ren Cung-gao, the former boss who strongly recommended him to the president, he would not have had a chance to become the commander of the 19th Brigade.

It's just that he doesn't know that his name is relatively loud in Zhao Dongyun's heart. Although he doesn't have much feelings about the so-called historical celebrities after coming to this world, since he knows that he has Wu Peifu under him, and although Wu Peifu in this time and space lacks some experience in the original time and space However, he still showed good military talent, so there was no reason for Zhao Dongyun not to reuse him.

Since he was promoted to the commander of the 19th Brigade, under the leadership of the old officer Ren Cunggao, Wu Peifu led the 19th Brigade all the way south from Jinan and successively conquered many prefectures and counties in Tai'an, Qingzhou and Yizhou. Although it attacked the city and pulled out villages along the southeast, covering hundreds of miles, to be honest, there was no big war. I have played.

Since the Battle of Jinan, the remaining Lu army in Shandong has actually been negligible. Especially after the destruction of more than 3,000 Lu troops again in the direction of Tai'an, the Lu army brought back to Shandong by Zhang Huaizhi has actually been destroyed by the whole army. Even Zhang Huaizhi himself was defeated with hundreds of guards after being broken in Jining. Escape back to Anhui. In this case, although the 19th Brigade of Wu Peifu, which marched along the southeast, also fought several small-scale battles with the remaining Lu army and the local armed forces in Shandong, there were only a few hundred enemy troops, and they were all defeated by one blow.

This came all the way from Tai'an to Yizhou, as if it was a siege, it was better to say that it was a direct armed march.

However, after he had just defeated the local troops organized by hundreds of local officials in Yizhou and took control of Tancheng in Yizhou, he received an order from the division. Ren Cungao ordered him to lead the 19th Brigade to turn east to conquer Haizhou and go straight to the seaside port. He also said that the project must be dispatched from the command headquarters. When the troops arrived in Haizhou, they took the area directly and took control of the coastal port.