1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 1986
After a short rest for an hour, a 12-member team led by Sun Bing set off from this temporary station under the cover of night, while the rest of the personnel stayed here to continue to move materials and build fortifications and bunkers.

It is not the first time for the marines participating in the operation to enter the area controlled by the Qing army to carry out combat missions. In the past, Haihan dispatched fleets to sweep the coasts of areas occupied by the Qing. While attacking the Qing army, it will also take away the population who settled near the coast.The methods adopted by the Qing army on the border of Ming Dynasty every year, the Haihan army will also follow the gourd painting. The long coastline makes the Qing army hard to defend. It can only promulgate decrees to allow coastal residents to move back to the inland areas to settle as much as possible. Passive loss of population.

These Marine Corps members have participated in such "flesh-cutting" operations, and they are not completely unfamiliar with the environment in the Qing Dynasty-occupied area.Going to the Qing army camp requires crossing nearly ten miles of mountainous terrain. Fortunately, the amount of snowfall has not been heavy in the past few days, and there is only a thin layer of snow on the ground, which does not have a great impact on the field march.

However, when Sun Bing and his party walked in the silent forest, there would still be creaking noises under their feet due to trampling on the snow. Sun Bing arranged for the team to extend the distance to avoid too concentrated sounds.Although the Qing army is unlikely to deploy night guards in this season's wild environment, it is still necessary to be as careful as possible. After all, exposure of the whereabouts may cause the operation to be terminated early.

Although the straight-line distance from the temporary stronghold to the target area is not too far, the actual mileage of the mountain march is twice as long as the straight-line distance, and there are many sections up and down the hillside. In addition, marching at night without lighting, the speed is relaxed. It was relatively slow, and it was already late at night when we arrived near the destination.Fortunately, the journey went smoothly without any trouble.

Sun Bing unscrewed the kettle and took two mouthfuls of cold water. The cold feeling in his throat cheered him up a bit. He raised his hands and rolled up his sleeves and looked at the time again. The small fluorescent pointer on the dial made him confirm that the The time spent by Fan Xing was a little bit longer than planned, but fortunately, after the winter, the dawn was relatively late, and they still had a little time to rest.

Sun Bing looked out from the gap in the forest, and there were little lights flickering on the plain in the distance. Sun Bing knew that they were the embers of the bonfire between the Qing army camps.But at this time, we can't see the specific situation, and we probably have to wait until dawn before we can make further observations.

"Rest in batches and make plans after dawn." Sun Bing quickly made a decision.

Before dawn, Sun Bing ate some dry food to replenish his physical strength. His height and weight are higher than ordinary people, so his food intake is larger than most people. Others eat three meals a day, and it is estimated that it will be enough for him at most. Eat two meals, and this also caused him to carry more food than others when performing field combat missions to last the same time.But fortunately, his physical strength is not bad, such a big man is not in vain, and his carrying capacity is far better than that of ordinary people. In addition to the extra food, he even has the energy to bring an extra battle base of ammunition.

After replenishing the food, Sun Bing took out his sleeping bag with ample leeway, got into it and took a nap for a while.Such a big heart can only be possessed by veterans who have experienced battles. Seize all the gaps during the battle to nourish your spirit and restore your physical strength, so that you can maintain your best condition when fighting the enemy.

Sun Bing got up after not lying down for too long. He took the initiative to replace a subordinate who was in charge of security, and then stared in the direction of the Qing army camp, quietly waiting for the dawn.

As the sky gradually brightened, the Qing army camp in the distance also began to reveal the whole picture.Perhaps because the Qing army had full confidence in the fort defense line in the south, there were no fortifications such as walls or trenches on the periphery of the camp.

Sun Bing took out the binoculars, carefully wiped off the snow on the lens barrel with the suede, and then raised it to observe the Qing army camp in the distance.

Of course, these tents of the Qing army are far inferior to the battlefield tents used by the Haihan regular army. Most of them are triangular tents made of coarse cloth and fur. The large military tents use high-quality canvas and special brackets. A tent can accommodate at least 30 to [-] people, and it is far more comfortable than the small tents of the Qing army.

However, the Qing army still had strengths that Sun Bing envied. For example, the horses inside and outside the camp that he saw now were at least several hundred. The horses here alone should have surpassed Haihan's in Jinzhou. The total number of horses owned by the garrison troops.

Such a stock of war horses is still an elusive goal for the Haihan army, and the mobility gained by the Qing army also greatly compensated for their disadvantages in weapons and equipment, allowing them to quickly put troops on the front line Any point, and this is precisely what the Haihan army is currently difficult to do.

The terrain of Jinzhou is narrow, and a considerable part of it is mountainous and hilly, and most of the plains are used for agricultural development. There is no suitable environment for the development of animal husbandry. There is only one military horse farm that has raised hundreds of horses. It has almost reached the upper limit of the load, and there is no way to continue to expand the breeding scale for the time being.

Therefore, in addition to Jinzhou, the military also raised some military horses in Fushan County, Shandong to meet the combat needs of the Haihan Army in Northeast Asia.This year, Haihan also added a new place to raise war horses, which is North Korea across the sea. If Haihan wants to raise horses in the Datong River Basin, it should not encounter resistance from North Korean officials.However, the military horse farm over there is still under planning, and it is estimated that it will have to wait until next year at the earliest when it is put into use.

But the Qing army did not have these troubles. There is enough grassland in the Western Liaoning Plain to accommodate thousands of horses. The cost of training horses is much lower than that of Haihan. Such an advantage in arms made Haihan feel helpless.

Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages. Although the Haihan army is not as maneuverable as the opponent on land, when it comes to dominance at sea, the Haihan army has left the opponent out of sight, and has even lost sight of the sea. ability to fight.Had it not been for such an absolute advantage, the military would not have taken the risk of projecting Marines directly from the sea to areas behind enemy lines.

Smoke began to rise in the camp area, and the Qing army left the tent one after another, but perhaps because this army was composed of troops drawn from various cattle records, unlike the Haihan Army, which had a unified training arrangement, the camp was still There were a lot of tents that didn't move, and it looked like not everyone was going to get up for breakfast.

The work of monitoring the movement of the Qing army camp was not done by Sun Bing alone. The headquarters distributed multiple telescopes to them for this operation so that they could monitor a larger area at the same time.Although they don't need to fight the enemy, their work is not easy. From dawn to sunset, at least three to four telescopes must be kept to monitor the camp area at the same time, and they must also pay attention to the surrounding areas of the camp.

The main purpose of this kind of monitoring is to observe the change of defense of the Qing army, to see if the team using the new musket can be found from its daily change of defense.But this is actually a bit of luck, because they don't know how big the team is, where it is stationed, and whether it will arrange to play.

However, Sun Bing knows that reconnaissance missions are like this. Only after the layers of fog are peeled off can it be possible to obtain truly valuable military information. It is impossible for the enemy to actively provide those key information to him. He can only be patient and pay attention to various details. , it is possible to collect the required intelligence information.

Beginning in the morning, the 12 people including Sun Bing worked in groups of four. One group monitored the Qing army barracks, the other group was responsible for the surrounding security, and the other group rested and stood by. The three groups rotated every hour or so.The content can be described as very boring, but everyone is performing their tasks in silence, and they will only talk a few words in a low voice when changing guards, and the content is also to hand over the work at hand.

Although it has not yet entered the midwinter season, there have been several snowfalls, and the temperature in the field is quite low. If you squat in the woods for a little longer, your hands and feet will be a little numb from the cold.Sun Bing breathed heavily on his hands silently and rubbed them a few times to make his hands warmer, then continued to observe the situation of the Qing army barracks with the binoculars.

According to the information Sun Bing knows, this military situation is one of the two camps behind the Qing army's fortress defense line. The "Xi Daying" is located at the western end of the defense line, which is far away from where I am now, at least about fifty miles away.

However, the Marine Corps chose "Eastern Day Camp" as the primary reconnaissance target. Apart from being close to the Yellow Sea, it is easier to sneak in from the sea. Another important reason is that the Haihan patrol team that was attacked was near the eastern end of the fortress defense line. What happened in the area.

Considering the convenience of deploying and supplying the musketeers of the Qing army, there is no doubt that their garrison is more likely to be located in the "Eastern Camp".And such a force, no matter how big its establishment is, is hard-won for the Qing army, so it will definitely be given more favorable treatment, such as setting aside an exclusive garrison for it in the camp.

Such an inference is of course very reasonable, but the problem is that this "East Day Camp" is not a small place. Thousands of Qing troops and the logistical supplies that serve them, military followers, etc., are all stationed here. , If you count the stables, warehouses, military supply department, command headquarters and other related institutions, the area occupied is estimated to be three to four square kilometers.As far as we can see, the houses of at least two villages are located within the range of "Dong Daying". Of course, the villagers of these villages have not lived here for a long time, and their houses have been destroyed by the Qing army. Requisition without compensation, as a temporary residence for senior military officers or for other purposes.

Even if Sun Bing's team had four members and four telescopes monitoring the camp at the same time, it was still difficult to cover everything.Especially the villages in the distance, from the perspective of the binoculars, only the surrounding conditions can be seen, and that is one of the places where Sun Bing suspected that the Qing army's musketeers might be stationed.

Finally, when it was time to take a rest after changing shifts, Sun Bing handed over the binoculars to his subordinates, and explained to him several places that needed to be monitored, and then went to the side to rest.For him, there is no physical problem for this kind of surveillance operation, but after using the telescope to observe the environment for a long time, his eyes feel very tired. He even feels that the things around him are a bit blurred, and he feels that his eyes are no longer in focus. up.

Sun Bing knew that his eyes were too tired, so he quickly closed his eyes and rested for a while, then took out his small notebook to study his morning surveillance records.

Before Sun Bing joined the army, he didn't know many characters, let alone write, but after enlisting in the army, he received literacy education in the army, and gradually learned to read and write, and he himself knew that after he was promoted to a certain level in the army, he would have In terms of cultural requirements, if you can't even write a combat report, then your life as a company commander is probably over.So he himself was quite attentive. As early as the beginning of the year when he set out to fight in Manila, he began to learn to record some key points during the battle.

The pen is a pencil that can only be obtained by officers above the company level. Sun Bing likes this gadget very much. It is much more convenient to use than a writing brush, and it is easy to carry.The only thing I don't like is that the writing on the paper with this pencil is easy to blur. Sometimes I carry the note with the content on my body for a few days, and when I take it out again, I can't see the content clearly.

Sun Bing's monitoring was to record while observing. In addition to paying attention to the musketeers, he would also take advantage of this rare opportunity to observe the Qing army's establishment, garrison habits, attendance arrangements, and so on.After returning to the rear after the mission, this information will also become an important reference material for the military.

After reading his records, he took out the map again, compared it with the camp in the distance, marked the approximate area of ​​the Qing army camp on the map with a pencil, then marked his own location, and drew a line from the seaside to the temporary camp. Direction traveled to current location.

Being able to read maps and make maps is also one of the requirements of the Haihan Army for senior officers. Sun Bing's current level is still far from map drawing, but relying on ready-made maps to do some corrections and labeling work is not good for him. It's not too difficult either.

With these records and annotations, he can use this to adjust the existing surveillance measures when he rests at night, so that his subordinates can focus more on several key areas.

Throughout the whole day, Sun Bing took four surveillance missions, but no one saw the Qing army equipped with muskets appear within the surveillance range.But Sun Bing was not discouraged, he also knew that this matter could not be rushed, and tomorrow he could see if he could get a better view by adjusting the surveillance location.

(End of this chapter)