Chapter 318 New Two Divisions

Since the assassination of Yuan Shikai in 1906 and triggered the uprising of the four major warlords in Beiyang, Zhao Dongyun has actually embarked on a road of death.

It's like sailing against the water, but there are some differences that if you don't advance against the water, you will retreat, and if Zhao Dongyun doesn't continue to move forward, then there is no way back at all, and the only end is death.

Zhao Dongyun's strength is the most powerful among many warlords in Beiyang, which led Wang Yingkai, Wang Shizhen, Duan Qirui and others to unite against Zhao Dongyun and establish a de facto anti-Zhao alliance last year.

In this case, Zhao Dongyun was forced to develop forces and expand his army more urgently, and this move undoubtedly further stimulated Wang Yingkai, Duan Qirui and others, and also led them to adopt a series of tit-for-tat policies. At the beginning, Wang Yingkai's 11th and 12th divisions were the most obvious examples.

In order to continue to compete for the position of the boss of Beiyang surrounded by strong enemies, and considering the limited development potential of the three eastern provinces in recent years, after seeing Duan Qirui's rapid rise in the south, he did not hesitate to choose to fight first and decisively enter the customs, which directly triggered The war between the Feng army and the anti-Zhao alliance.

In several battles after entering the customs, although the Feng army under Zhao Dongyun won one after another, the pressure of the Feng army did not decrease at all. Duan Qirui's rapid development in the south is like a knife hanging overhead and can fall at any time. At the same time, due to the continuous outbreak of the war and further collapse of the Soviet finance, the war has lasted for four months from June to October, and there is no sign of the end of the war in a short period of time, which has led to a more dangerous collapse of the Soviet finance.

In this case, Zhao Dongyun can't stop if he wants to!

Either carry out a decisive battle to suppress Duan Qirui's development momentum, or watch Duan Qirui, Wang Shizhen and others slowly develop, and then kill themselves in the Northern Expedition.

And Zhao Dongyun chose to continue!

The Xuzhou Campaign is also a direct product of this domestic strategic situation!

But on the other hand, the Xuzhou campaign has greatly increased the pressure of the Feng army again, including the shortage of troops, the shortage of ammunition, the difficulties of logistics, and the most critical shortage of military expenditure.

Faced with the above difficulties, Zhao Dongyun once again took out the posture of becoming a benevolence if he did not succeed. Now he can't care about the subsequent overissue of paper coins causing inflation, and he doesn't care about the continuous large-scale war to continue to harm his ruling area. What he wants is victory. If the war fails, then It all failed.

And this is the deep reason why Zhao Dongyun insists on continuing to expand his army in today's difficult situation!

It's just that not everyone will consider the problem from the highest perspective, and not everyone can have the same determination to succeed and become benevolent as Zhao Dongyun. Many people remain skeptical about continuing to expand their troops in today's difficult situation.

However, even people like Zhao Dongping can doubt it, but they can't stop Zhao Dongyun's decision!

"In addition to supplementing the shortage of troops, the new recruits of the Ministry of Education will be transferred to prepare for the 14th Division and the 15th Division!" Zhao Dongyun's mouth is the expansion plan of the two divisions.

This surprised the following high-level generals again. Not to mention Zhao Dongping, a person who is in charge of money, even a pure military staff general like Fang Biyong is cautious. The financial difficulties of the Soviet system have never been a secret. Basically, the Soviet civil and military officials know it, and in this case, if it is expanded One or two mixed brigades of the army are still acceptable, but will it be too big to expand the two integrated infantry divisions?

It's just that Zhao Dongyun will listen to the opinions of his subordinates when making these major decisions, but in fact, whether it is the appointment of senior generals, strategic deployment or the expansion of the army, he has always been arbitrary. Today's occasion can be discussed on the surface, but in fact, he has issued an order directly without the discussion of his subordinates.

Zhao Dongyun did not care much about the expressions of many subordinates present. He only heard him say, "The supplementary work of the soldiers of these two new editors must be completed by the Ministry of Education within two months. The required officers can be transferred from the divisions, brigades and headquarters institutions without affecting the combat effectiveness of the troops. The vacancy of grassroots officers can be filled by the last two accelerated graduates of Fengtian Military Academy.

"As for the ordnance needed by the army, due to the limited output of the Fuchang, we also have limited funds for outbound purchases, so this rifle is temporarily transferred to the Fuzo 88 rifles in each patrol force, and each patrol regiment will temporarily replace the old rifle first!"

"In terms of machine guns and mortars, a small amount can be allocated for preliminary training within a month, and then it depends on the situation, artillery!"

Speaking of this, Zhao Dongyun also dragged a long ending: "Like a machine gun, first extract a small amount for training, and then slowly replenish it!"

Zhao Dongyun's plan to build two divisions was naturally not a momentary effort**, but after many days of careful consideration, he also considered many problems and found solutions or alternatives one by one. Although he made the decision to expand his army, he did not expect to fill the newly expanded troops at once. Editor, and then pull out to fight a decisive battle with Duan Qirui. He just wants to make a start. At worst, he will be equipped with uneven heavy weapons as cannon fodder troops.

Now he controls many provinces in the north, Shandong and has a population of more than 100 million. How can hundreds of thousands of cannon fodder soldiers be pulled out among so many people!

In World War II, the German army attacked the Soviet Union. When the Soviet army continued to collapse in the first few months, Stalin was still short of guns and cannons, but how did they play?

The two soldiers used a rifle. After the soldier with the gun died in the battle, the second soldier picked up the gun and continued to fight. Even if there were no bullets, he was not afraid. As long as he could consume the enemy's bullets and shells, the soldier would have played its due value as cannon fodder.

And the cost of using this kind of cannon fodder soldiers is very low, because their survival period in war rarely exceeds one month. Well, at that time, even the military pay will be saved. As for the pension, have you heard that warlords paid pensions to the families of soldiers during the melee? Whether others send it or not, Zhao Dongyun doesn't send it anyway.

Although Zhao Dongyun has the intention to use the newly formed troops as cannon fodder troops, the most basic conditions are still required, and the process of building an army will not be much easier.

Among the many problems of the new army, the easiest to solve is the soldiers. Although Zhao Dongyun controlled the huge three eastern provinces before entering the customs, the area was large enough, but at that time, the population of the whole eastern three provinces was only thousands. In fact, it was not difficult to recruit enough soldiers from it, so Fengjun just entered Before Guan took down the capital, he had begun to recruit troops in various places in Zhili.

Following, with the gradual south of the Feng army, the recruitment station of the Feng army has also been opened all the way to all the three provinces of Zhili, Shandong and Henan. The recruitment work in recent months can be said to be quite gratifying, especially in the three regions of Nanzhili, Shandong and Henan. Due to the large population base, even 1% of the people come As a soldier, you can easily recruit hundreds of thousands of recruits, so although the actual recruitment ratio is far less than 1%, Feng Jun has recruited at least 100,000 recruits in recent months.

A considerable part of these recruits are used to supplement the existing troops, especially the surrendered and reunited divisions, such as the 1st Division, the 8th Division, the 11th Division, and the 1st Mixed Brigade. These troops are basically less than half of the full strength, and the missing soldiers are the latest Supplemented by the newly recruited soldiers.

You can see that although the shortage of heavy weapons in the Feng army's troops is very large, it can be seen that there is no big problem for the addition of new recruits to the Feng army.

For the same personnel, officers are much more difficult to supplement than soldiers, especially middle and senior officers! Although the Feng army accepted many surrendered officers who were originally in the direct line, Henan, the Lu army and even the Anhui army, the direct appointments were mainly senior generals and basic officers.

In order to prevent surrender officers, when accepting direct officers, Fengjun has a complete set of processes. For generals above, such as Bao Guiqing, commander of the First Mixed Brigade, and Lu Yongxiang, commander of the First Division, lure more senior generals of the enemy army to surrender. Therefore, Zhao Dongyun retained these two original positions and still let them serve as the commander of the first mixed brigade and the division commander of the first division. Otherwise, they will directly put them under house arrest or expel them, so many people who nostalgic for power will no longer consider surrendering to Zhao Dongyun.

In addition to senior generals, intermediate officers, that is, the rank of officers, cannot be arranged randomly. Of course, it is impossible to retain the original position, but they basically retain the original rank and then transfer to other troops of the Feng army. A small number of officers will serve as battalion commanders, but most of them can only serve as deputy positions. For example, deputy regiment chiefs, brigade staff officers, staff officers and section chiefs at all levels in the military headquarters and command headquarters.

And there are not too many concerns about the basic officers at the rank of lieutenant, because these lowest-level officers are actually not qualified to intervene in the internal faction disputes in the North Sea. They are just drifting with the tide, but in principle, they can directly call these people directly and then be appointed as platoon commanders and company commanders, but in fact, due to Feng The military's tactical system is quite different from other warlords in Beiyang, so these officers are often sent to Fengtian Military Academy for temporary retraining. After a month of short-term training, they will be assigned to the troops.

However, although there are many dedicated officers, the huge gap within the Feng army is still quite large!

The supplement of grassroots officers mainly relies on graduates of the Feng Military Academy, especially the graduates of the accelerated class. Although the Fengtian Military Academy once abolished the accelerated class and started the formal class, in fact, various famous accelerated classes have always existed. In addition to the retraining accelerated classes specially for honest officers, there are also needles. There are crash courses for soldiers after they are promoted to officers, in addition to the March crash course for social recruitment.

In addition to traditional crash courses such as walking, riding, artillery, engineering and heavy, there are actually crash classes of various professional subjects, such as communication classes, surveying and mapping classes, balloon classes, etc.

The various famous crash courses range from January to March or half a year. Although the professional quality of these crash courses is very limited, they still excellently complement the gap between the increasingly scarce officers of the Feng army, especially the grassroots officers.

In addition, the 1906 formal class of Fengtian Military Academy will also graduate early, so in the near future and in the next two months, the gap of the grassroots officers of the Feng army can barely be filled.