The Iron-Blooded Army of Beacon Fire

Chapter 293 Thoughts brought about by catching young men

Since getting on the line with Ding Lunshi and handing over the purchase of weapons, He Wei has finally solved a worry. Although his future and position are uncertain, he still needs to prepare the weapons and equipment for his troops in advance.

If he can really independently control an army under the operation of Minister He, he will have already prepared weapons and equipment, and can fully expand and reorganize the training after the troops are fully replenished. However, if the equipment is not prepared in advance, the training and expansion of the army will be difficult. It will be affected a lot.

In short, although He Wei has not yet revealed what his future will be like, it is best to prepare the necessary weapons and equipment first, among other things.

Of course, even if He Wei failed to control an army as he wished and overturned, he would not be afraid that these weapons and equipment purchased in the name of He Shaozhou would fall into his hands.

The current Chinese army is extremely short of arms and equipment. The central army is short of it, and the local troops are also short of it. It can even be said to be extremely short. As long as you have arms and equipment, you can change hands in a matter of minutes.

If He Wei really changes hands with these privately purchased arms, not only will he not suffer any financial loss, he will even most likely make a fortune. There are many ways to change hands, including the black market and even foreign companies selling them on behalf of others, allowing He Wei to make a steady profit without losing any money. to get rid of this batch of arms.

Time soon came to February. During this period, He Wei and the spy camp were still mainly resting and recuperating. Of course, He Wei did not lead his officers and soldiers to eat and drink in the station every day. He was supposed to do what he was supposed to do. He did not miss a single thing, and gained a lot of information and lessons that were useful to him and the army in the future.

One of the most important things is to conduct cooperative joint training with He Shaozhou's 103rd Division. In fact, this so-called joint training is mainly because He Shaozhou asked He Wei to help the 103rd Division train troops.

During the Battle of Jinling, He Shaozhou had already seen the combat effectiveness of He Wei's troops. This time he was recently promoted to division commander and was preparing to do something big. He praised He Wei's training methods.

Therefore, He Wei was specifically asked to help him train the troops and make some suggestions for the next training and education of the 103rd Division.

In this regard, He Wei had absolutely no reason to refuse. He went to the 103rd Division's troops several times in person to see in person the specific situation of the 103rd Division, which was being replenished, and carefully inspected the 103rd Division. Troops of the 103rd Division.

He Shaozhou was the commander of this division, and it suddenly changed from a miscellaneous unit of the Guizhou Army to the main force of the Central Army. The replenishment must be indispensable. The replenishment of weapons and equipment, recruits and officers were completed in less than a month. .

Needless to say, weapons and equipment, Minister He is the great master. The 103rd Division has almost the best equipment in the country's army. All the rifles and machine guns are imported, which can be said to be very sophisticated. The number of new recruits added is also very high. More than 10,000 people.

But during the inspection process, He Wei discovered a big problem among the newly added soldiers.

Because although the number of recruits supplied to the 103rd Division is sufficient, the quality of these recruits from the rear division area cannot be complimented. Every one of them is skinny and thin. Their physical condition, let alone training, may not even complete the training. A normal person's daily activities are problematic, and his mental state is also extremely poor. Many people's feeling about He Wei can be described in eight words - "He looks like a dementia and cannot be coached."

Therefore, He Wei asked many new recruits about the specific circumstances of joining the army and replenishing the army. The answers he got made He Wei extremely angry and even worried. At the same time, he also took the opportunity to ask these recruits to learn about the current situation. The supplementary mechanism of the national army is understood.

It turned out that the recruits supplied to the 103rd Division came from several division-administered supplementary regiments set up in Guizhou, and all of them were Guizhou soldiers.

According to the current military service system, to supplement frontline soldiers during the Anti-Japanese War, provinces have military district headquarters; special regions have division district headquarters; and each county has a national militia. After the national militia was abolished, it was changed to a military department.

According to regulations, the commander of the national militia is concurrently served by the county magistrate, and the deputy commander and deputy regimental officers are appointed by the headquarters of the military control area. In addition to the chief and deputy commanders, the national militia has a chief clerk, a secretary, a supervisor and a clerk.

According to the provisions of the Military Service Law, recruits are drawn one from the third grade and two from the fifth grade. The National Militia invites the heads of various departments of the county government, local councils, well-known gentry, etc. to supervise the drawing. Those who are successful in the lottery will be announced on a list, called up regularly, and sent to the division area to enlist. The division area will issue uniforms and assign them to the regiments, battalions and companies under the division area to conduct short-term military training, wait for orders, transfer to formal troops, and replenish the supply of soldiers.

Under this supplementary system, the recruitment process for new recruits is to enter the National Militia through drawing, and then transfer from the National Militia to the military division area for training. The overall supplementary system is similar to that of the Japanese and German armies. However, in terms of specific implementation, this A relatively good supplementary system has turned out to be a high-risk area for corruption.

The National Militia is a fertile vacancy, with a lot to be gained. The regimental commander, deputy regimental commander, district, township, town, bao, and Jia chiefs, etc., all work together in collusion, cheating on each other, extorting, and selling young men.

The so-called selling method is that if a family that has been allocated a quota of young men does not want its men to serve as soldiers, they can use money to redeem them. After paying the money, they can be exempted from being drafted. The younger ones will pay two to three hundred yuan each. Yuan, as many as seven to eight hundred yuan. The proceeds from bribery are divided among the top and bottom. After the county government accepts the bribe, it transfers the able-bodied men to the fire brigade. The protection corps, a unit that is similar to a labor force, is euphemistically called deferred service, which is justifiable. It saves the strong men who have paid for redemption from being sent to the front-line troops. Then, these people can go home after spending a few days in the fire brigade and protection regiment.

In order to avoid military service, many families who were selected to have a male child even borrowed money from various places to buy their own male son. After some wealthy landlord families or merchant families were selected, some would also do this in this way. To avoid military service, some would spend money to buy young men from poor families to replace them as soldiers.

As for the shortage of young men who were sold, the bribed Baojia and policemen would be used to fill the gap, and they would catch stragglers everywhere to fill the gap. They would even block the roads at the intersections of villages and towns and catch pedestrians to fill the gap. All of a sudden, there was a lot of confusion, and many people passing by were in a hurry. Pedestrians were caught inexplicably on the road.

Corruption and corruption are also intertwined. What the young men sent to the division management area experienced was just the beginning of a disaster. It should have played a role in training new recruits. The division management area that implemented standard enlistment coaching for recruits not only failed to play the role. It should have an educational role, but it deducts a lot from the recruits. According to the recruits who were questioned by He Wei, the recruits in the division area were mistreated and were not given enough food and clothing. They were not given medical treatment when they were sick, and they were not buried when they died. According to the regulations, the average monthly medical expenses per soldier was RMB 3,000. The fee is twelve yuan per soldier. These fees are all funded by corruption in the division management area and are not distributed to the lower levels for use. As for training, there is no training at all. The recruits are almost treated like prisoners and animals and are imprisoned in the house all day long.

After completing the theoretical so-called recruit training in the division management area, the recruits of each supplementary regiment began to march toward the scheduled supplementary troops under the leadership of the troop sending cadres.

And this journey was also a miserable road. During the march, all the new recruits were tied up with ropes through their sleeves and out of their collars. They were connected in a string and were guarded by the escort as they moved forward. In order to prevent them from escaping, the military stations responsible for housing new recruits on the advancing route were as black as the crows in the national militia and division areas. They also treated the recruits harshly, severely depriving them of basic benefits such as food and even giving them to dead recruits. The money to bury the coffin for the funeral must be embezzled.

Under such circumstances, the new recruits who were being replenished would not think about joining the army. Almost everyone was looking for an opportunity to escape during the journey. Therefore, on the way to the replenishment unit, many recruits took the opportunity to run away. In order to make up for these shortcomings, the people who escorted the new recruits arrested people on the march to fill them in. In the end, most of the new recruits who supplemented the regiment were bought, cheated, and captured.

The 103rd Division only accepted a few recruits who were weak and recruited through fraud and fraud. When He Wei learned these shocking facts, he was very angry.

Such recruits, even if they are added to the army, cannot safely serve as soldiers. As long as they have the opportunity, they will definitely run away and become deserters. At that time, it will be the front-line troops that will be affected, and a large number of soldiers will flee from the front-line troops. At that time, the rear will inevitably be asked to replenish new troops. What will eventually form will be a vicious cycle of those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those with reinforcements, those who flee, those who flee, those who flee, those with reinforcements, those with reinforcements, those who flee, must be forced to replenish troops, will inevitably be required to recruit new troops.

Therefore, He Wei specifically reported the matter to He Shaozhou, but He Shaozhou also expressed that He Wei was helpless about it. There was nothing he could do except reporting the specific situation, because almost all the military divisions in the rear were doing this, and the entire rear army recruitment Institutions are almost always black.

Even He Shaozhou, the nephew of the Commander-in-Chief, had no solution, and the recruits added to the 103rd Division were actually pretty good among the recruits in the rear. This motherfucker still took advantage of Minister He, a lot. The supply situation of the troops was several times worse than that of the 103rd Division.

He Shaozhou also told He Wei that he had visited Chen Cheng's civil engineering troops, which were also stationed in Wuhan, and the replenishment of the civil engineering troops was also like a grandmother.

He Shaozhou also told He Wei a joke about the Civil Engineering Department. An infantry regiment of the 54th Army of the Civil Engineering Department stationed in three towns in Wuhan. Due to the serious desertion of new recruits, the staff shortage in the grassroots units has remained high. , the grassroots cadres of the regiment were afraid of being blamed for fleeing, so they arrested soldiers everywhere. Those near the station did not dare to arrest for fear of being exposed, so they sent people to the highway to intercept them.

As a result, a deputy platoon leader of another infantry regiment belonging to the same division as this regiment took a few days off to go home to visit relatives. On his way home, a company under the regiment was sent out to arrest young men and was arrested as a "fugitive young man". Well, this man was very alert. He was afraid of being murdered if he told the truth, so he pretended to be submissive and joined the company, and then waited for an opportunity to escape. Two days later, the division headquarters sent someone to the regiment for inspection, and then he walked out of the line and told the inspection personnel. True love is put back to its original place.

Faced with such a thing that sounded like a joke but actually happened, He Wei didn't know whether to cry or laugh.

Anyway, from the replenishment troops of the 103rd Division, He Wei gained a new understanding of the current replenishment mechanism of the national army, or in other words, a new understanding of the poorness and lower limit of this replenishment mechanism.

This was true, but what needed to be done had to be done. With the 103rd Division stretched like this, He Wei also gave He Shaozhou some training ideas.

Judging from the situation of the recruits who currently account for the majority of the 103rd Division, the first task of these recruits who cannot even meet the basic standards of healthy adult males should be to restore their physical strength and recuperate their bodies, and then talk about training.

Therefore, He Wei proposed that the recruits of the 103rd Division be rested and reorganized. A group of more than a thousand veterans and officers who had withdrawn from Jinling were selected and given to He Wei for training. When the recruits were almost rested and recuperated, this group of veterans and officers were They will also be trained by He Wei to become qualified sergeants and junior officers.

At that time, they can take on the task of training the new recruits. This is also a helpless move in the face of extraordinary circumstances. He Shaozhou also readily agreed to this and said that he would select a group of key veterans and officers as soon as possible until He Wei's promotion. After getting the news, these people were sent to He Wei for training, and the ammunition and expenses required for the training were all paid by the 103rd Division.

This job is also a trivial matter for He Wei. If his promotion and future are smooth under the operation of Minister He, and he gets what he wants, then he will also have a vigorous military training, and then help He Shaozhou train a group of soldiers. The cadre of sergeants and officers was just incidental.

However, the situation of the 103rd Division also reminded He Wei that if He Wei succeeded in taking control of a force, the size of this force would definitely be larger than the current spy battalion, or even much larger. In other words, He Wei's troops must be expanded by then.

As a regular army within the battle line of the Central Army, He Wei and his troops must replenish their troops if they want to expand, and they must follow the current regular replenishment mechanism of the national army, that is, they will be recruited from the military division area. In other words, the recruits He Wei will receive by then will be basically the same as the weak recruits supplied to the 103rd Division, and may even be worse than the 103rd Division.

In this regard, He Wei did not mean that he did not want to recruit strong men like this to supplement his troops.

With the current way of replenishing the national army, if the army needs to be expanded on a large scale, it can only be done through the recruitment of strong men from the rear division area. He Wei will be happy to accept this, but he definitely does not want to use his subordinates to supplement the troops. The way the troops are replenished depends entirely on this.

After all, the training cost and training period for these young recruits are quite long, and the transformation and generation of combat effectiveness is also relatively slow.

Therefore, He Wei's countermeasure was to immediately recruit troops by himself and start recruiting some new soldiers on the spot.

(End of this chapter)