The Iron-Blooded Army of Beacon Fire

Chapter 299 Preparation and Farewell
A week later, with the birth of the Army Commando Corps in name, the station of the special agent camp also became completely different. It became very lively in just a few days. At the same time, there was also a sense of high spirits in the station. , it can also be said to be a positive and enterprising atmosphere.

On that day, He Wei's promotion and appointment were announced, and after the Army Commando Corps officially issued an order to form the unit, the recruitment speed of the Secret Service Battalion also became more efficient because of the official designation.

With a solid new designation, and a powerful unit designation like the Army Commando Corps behind them, the efficiency of the recruitment of the officers and soldiers of the special agent battalion near major factories has been greatly improved. In just a few days, He Weiyuan was recruited The 1,000 new recruits planned to be recruited were fully recruited, and the camp area of ​​the special agent camp became extremely lively due to the arrival of these 1,000 high-quality workers. The officers and soldiers in the camp were all smiling.

The excitement in the camp is naturally not only due to the increase in the number of people, but more importantly, the officers of the secret service camp and the veterans brought out by Jinling are also due to He Wei's promotion and the formation of the Army Commando Corps, a force directly under the Central Military Commission. What He Wei felt the same way was the joy and excitement brought about by the landing of the boots.

The reason for this is naturally related to some characteristics of the national army. In the personnel system of the national army, the commander of an army and the officers and soldiers under his command have considerable personal dependence.

The officers and soldiers of a unit are loyal to the commander of the unit, and the commander of the unit must in turn seek welfare, promotion, and future for the officers and soldiers under his command. In other words, if the leader of a unit has a bright future, then other The prospects of the officers and soldiers under his command will not be bad. On the other hand, if the future of the commander-in-chief of an army is gloomy, how can the officers and soldiers under his command have a great future and good development?

At best it is said that a rising tide lifts all boats. At worst it is said that one person attains enlightenment and a chicken or a dog ascends to heaven. Although it may sound unpleasant, but the words are rough and the reasoning is not rough, the inner essence is still the same.

Of course, this kind of personal dependence system that exists in the national army is actually common in the militaries of all countries in the world. This is related to the characteristics of the military. It is difficult for the military's power granting and acceptance relationship to get rid of personal dependence and community of interests.

The military system adopts vertical leadership and is an appointment system rather than an electoral system. This determines that the military has a natural personal dependence relationship. At the same time, in order to ensure the smooth flow of military orders, the military cannot design too many supervision systems. Avoid reducing efficiency.

In addition, this kind of dependence relationship also has a positive role in uniting superiors and subordinates during combat. It can be said that in a special war machine like the army, such personal dependence relationships are unavoidable. However, in the world where there are many factions, fellow villagers, regions, teachers and students It is more obvious among the national army with complicated relations, and He Wei and the officers and soldiers of the special agent battalion are naturally not immune to this.

When the news spread that He Wei was promoted to lieutenant colonel and the Army Commando Corps was expanded and formed based on the special agent battalion, the officers and veterans who fought with He Wei from Jinling were indescribably excited. He Wei is happy, but at the same time, many officers and soldiers are also wondering whether they can be promoted or promoted with the expansion of the secret service camp, and "live and prosper" with He Wei.

In the past few days, the topics among the officers and soldiers of the special agent battalion have been roughly inseparable from this theme. Most of the private topics among the second lieutenants and lieutenant platoon leaders were whether they could get half-level or first-level promotions and be promoted to lieutenants or captains.

While the warrant officers of each company are responsible for the duties of their respective companies, they can't help but study with each other whether they can go one step further, get rid of the embarrassing status of a warrant officer as an officer but not an officer, and be promoted to a second lieutenant, a full officer, and a platoon leader. Go ahead.

As for the sergeants, they were all in small groups wondering whether they could get a promotion in the upcoming expansion of the secret service camp. A corporal would be promoted to a sergeant, a sergeant would be promoted to a staff sergeant, and a staff sergeant would be promoted to a warrant officer.

The same is true for several company commanders under He Wei. Although they didn't say anything, they all had considerable expectations for what kind of positions they would play in the soon-to-be-formed Army Commando Corps and what kind of tasks they would be assigned. .

Although He Wei didn't say anything about all this, he saw it all, and he was naturally happy about it. Whether you are an officer or a soldier, it is human nature and a good thing to want to make progress.

In a sense, the source of the army's combat effectiveness comes from this. What He Wei has to do is to properly organize the Army Commando Corps and build this unit up.

Since He Wei returned to the secret service camp that day with orders and documents for receiving equipment from Minister He, he spent most of his time locked in the office, and most of the affairs in the camp were handed over to several company commanders. During this period, He Wei did not participate in any of it, whether it was going to the military depot to receive the allocated weapons, or the arrangements for collecting and storing a large number of weapons in the armory in the camp, or the troops on duty to guard weapons and ammunition. All matters were left to Fu Chen. Fang Jing, Hu Zhaowu and others will handle it.

And he was wholeheartedly studying the general establishment and organizational structure of the Army Commando Corps.

Since Minister He Wei had won the right to draft the establishment of the Army Commando Corps, a force directly under the Central Military Commission, He Wei naturally could not waste this opportunity. After a few days of hard thinking, he also reviewed and summarized the battles from Xinkou to Jinling. After learning the experience and lessons, He Wei also roughly sorted out the general organization list of the Army Commando Corps.

As the Minister said, the actual size of the Army Commando Corps will be controlled at the level of a strengthened regiment. Based on this tone, He Wei will regard the battalion as a second-level combat unit under the Army Commando Corps, with three commando battalions under the entire Corps.

As for the establishment of the battalion level, He Wei came with the goal of surpassing the Japanese brigade and crushing the Japanese brigade-level units. Each assault battalion was scheduled to have three infantry companies, one mortar company, and one A heavy machine gun company and a battalion headquarters company.

An infantry brigade of the Japanese army consists of three infantry squadrons, a heavy machine gun squadron and an infantry artillery squad. The assault battalion organized by He Wei is aimed at the Japanese brigade. Whether it is artillery firepower or machine gun firepower, it will strive to eventually achieve Fight against the Japanese infantry brigade of the same level.

In addition to the three core assault infantry battalions of the Army Assault Corps, He Wei also plans to organize an artillery battalion equipped with various artillery for the Assault Corps.

Needless to say, the purpose of establishing this artillery battalion is that the Japanese army's first-level unit has a wing artillery squadron equipped with a 75mm mountain cannon and a rapid-fire artillery squadron equipped with a 37mm rapid-fire cannon, which completely overwhelmed the battlefield of the Anti-Japanese War. Chinese army infantry regiment of the same level.

The Army Assault Corps is also a regiment-level unit. Based on the principle that the Army Assault Corps must have the firepower and equipment that the Japanese army has at the same level, and even be stronger and better than the Japanese army, He Wei naturally gave the Army Assault Corps the firepower and equipment. An artillery battalion was incorporated.

Of course, this is only a preliminary structure, and more detailed organization conditions are included, such as the organization of infantry companies, infantry artillery companies, mortar companies, as well as the equipment and specific organization of each company under the assault battalion. He Wei has not yet determined the situation, as well as the organizational situation of the Army Commando Corps Headquarters itself and the organizational situation of its directly affiliated units. On the one hand, He Wei still needs time to further improve, and on the other hand, there is an equipment issue.

The equipment negotiated at the Ministry of Military and Political Affairs that day has recently been brought back to the camp by He Wei for storage. This batch of equipment totals 24 Czech-made VZ26 37mm rifles, There are Czech ZB light machine guns, forty Czech ZB heavy machine guns, one hundred German-made twenty-shot speed machines, twelve French-made Brand mm mortars, and a large number of rifle ammunition. , mortars and grenades.

In addition to this batch of weapons and equipment allocated by the Ministry of Military Affairs and collected by the Secret Service Battalion from the military depot, the Secret Service Battalion also has a batch of weapons and equipment brought back from Jinling. Most of the light weapons in these equipment are weapons and equipment carried by the officers and soldiers themselves, and there are probably some Hundreds of rifles, dozens of fancy machine guns and submachine guns, dozens of Belgian-made FND light machine guns and Soloton MG30 machine guns.

The heavy weapons among these equipment were all equipment brought out by the artillery company of the special agent battalion when they retreated from Jinling.

There are two Brand 81mm mortars and an Austrian-made 47mm tank defense gun. Of course, in addition to these equipment of the special agent battalion artillery company itself, the officers and soldiers of the artillery company are also using When Jinling retreated, they also brought out the artillery captured from the Japanese army during the annihilation battle at Xiaguan.

During the annihilation battle in Xiaguan, two Japanese artillery brigades were successfully raided by the raiding troops sent by He Wei. They suffered heavy casualties and lost all their artillery. In the end, they were even used by the artillery company of the special agent battalion to attack the Japanese army. It caused extremely heavy casualties to the Japanese army.

During the retreat in Jinling, Chen Xinsheng, the commander of the artillery company of the Secret Service Battalion who was born in the Artillery Section, was really reluctant to discard the captured mountain cannons, so he desperately organized the officers and soldiers of the entire company to bring out these mountain cannons. Currently, there are still 94 Type 75 mm that are intact and usable. There were six mountain cannons, two damaged mountain cannons, as well as a large number of Japanese mountain artillery observation and communication equipment and a small number of artillery shells.

Judging from the total number of weapons in He Wei's hands now, the firepower of the equipment he has can be said to be very powerful. The rifles, machine guns, and automatic firepower are all complete, and there are even mountain cannons. However, He Wei is not satisfied with the equipment on hand.

For example, the submachine gun he wants to equip his troops has not been available yet, and the same is true for the tank defense cannon used to counter Japanese tanks.

More importantly, there was no movement on the mg34 machine gun and the French Brand mm mortar that he asked Ding Lunshi to purchase. With the equipment on hand being incomplete, He Wei really had no way to deal with the future Army Assault Corps. To comprehensively refine the organization, we can only draw up a general situation as much as possible, and then refine it in detail when the desired equipment is available, so that we can build our own troops.

While He Wei was busy sorting out the general organization of the Army Commando Corps, a sudden news surprised him.

On this day, Major Zhao Huzhen, commander of the tank company of the Army Armored Corps, who had been resting at the spy camp, suddenly came over. The purpose of Zhao Huzhen coming to see He Wei was to say goodbye.

After inquiring in detail, He Wei learned the inside story. It turned out that the armored corps to which Zhao Huzhen belonged had canceled its designation and officially carried out a large-scale expansion in January this year. It was expanded into the Army's 200th Division, which would introduce a large number of combatants from Soviet Russia. Vehicles and artillery were allocated to the division, which gradually expanded into a "mechanized division with a large number of tanks as its core."

Zhao Huzhen was preparing to say goodbye and leave this time because Du Yuming, the commander of the 200th Division, learned that the tank company and tank defense artillery unit of the Army Armored Corps that had stayed in Jinling to participate in the war were now stationed in Wuhan, and the equipment and personnel were still intact. After the calculation was completed, he was overjoyed and sent a telegram to the Ministry of Military Affairs to order Zhao Huzhen to return to the army.

Because of this, Zhao Huzhen, who had lost contact with his old employer for a long time, finally found his old army, and then established contact with the 200th Division in Hunan Province, determined the time for its return to the old army, and transferred the Armored Corps to The battle experience of the troops staying in Jinling was submitted to Du Yuming, the commander of the 200th Division, in the form of a battle report.

In two days, Zhao Huzhen will lead his troops to the 200th Division station in Xiangtan, Hunan Province. Therefore, he came here today precisely to say goodbye to He Wei.

However, after saying goodbye, Zhao Huzhen actually brought a letter of thanks to He Wei.

The author of this letter of thanks is none other than Du Yuming, the current commander of the 200th Division of the National Army and He Wei's old senior student in Huangpu Phase I. The content of this letter is mostly about He Wei's battle in the defense of Jinling. Thank you for your care and protection.

Of course, like Wang Yaowu he met before, Du Yuming also expressed his appreciation for He Wei in his letter, and extended an olive branch to He Wei with the frankness of an old Shaanxi person, stating that the 200th Division was undergoing great development. The future is bright and promising, and I hope He Wei can come and work in the 200th Division.

He also promised that He Wei would be appointed as Lieutenant Colonel Staff Director or Lieutenant Colonel's actual officer as soon as he took office. The words in the letter were quite sincere and sincere.

Looking at the letter, He Wei actually felt that if it was just because he had protected the armored troops staying in Jinling, Du Yuming might not express his gratitude and invitation in eloquent words.

Most likely it was Du Yuming who knew about He Wei's past and recent military exploits and developed a love for talents, so he recruited He Wei as a polite corporal.

Looking at He Wei who was staring closely at the letter of thanks, Zhao Huzhen on the side said energetically: "Brother He, Master Du was very moved when he learned that you protected our tank troops during the Battle of Jinling, so he wrote this letter of thanks. He asked me to forward it to you, and he also sent me a special telegram asking me if you were interested in serving in the 200th Division. When I told him that you had been appointed as the commander-in-chief of the Army Commando Corps, Commander Du called me back and expressed his regret. "

"Brother, why don't you just give up your current job? Let's go to the 200th Division together. That's a mechanized force. It has a monthly budget of nearly 1 million and can support six or seven infantry divisions! "

(End of this chapter)