What kind of person is Sobel?

Zheng Yingqi often thinks about this question in his spare time - there is no doubt that from Sobel's various actions, this man, who is only 28 years old this year, wants to connect E well.

[He wants to take a group of excellent soldiers to the battlefield together, and use their own excellence to offset the high battle loss rate of the cruel war. 】

Zheng Yingqi understands Sobel's thoughts, not only Sobel, but also Winters, who is respected by the soldiers, Streyer, the commander of the 2nd Battalion, and even all the officers of the 2nd Battalion, all want to turn everyone into a group of excellent soldiers, but everyone has their own different identity, in their own identity, the same original intention and different means, the harvest is not exactly the same, and it is even very likely to be the opposite.

……

Thanksgiving came, Colonel Zinke gave the whole regiment a three-day holiday, everyone in E Company made various plans for the three-day vacation, and Zheng Yingqi was even dragged by a platoon of comrades to make vacation plans - but at the end, the commander of the 2nd Battalion, Strayer, ordered that the 2nd Battalion would use the three-day vacation to conduct a memorable training.

The holiday was in vain, and while others were enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday, all the people of the 2nd Battalion were taken by Strayer for a three-day field exercise.

The subjects of the exercise included long-distance marches, raids on enemy positions, and night gas attack drills.

All the food for three days, only at this time it was still the standard K-level dry food for paratroopers.

The various exercises went very smoothly, and E Company naturally beat D Company F Company, but the three-day K-level dry food actually made everyone complain in various ways, during which Zheng Yingqi saw many people quietly throw away the K-level dry food distributed and did not want to eat it, although the K-level dry food did not taste very good, but Zheng Yingqi couldn't figure it out, this thing ...... It's going to be thrown away!

He shook his head silently, if this K-level food was on the battlefield in China, no matter whether it was the Japanese army or the Eighth Route or the National Army, who would be willing to throw it? Who wants to waste?

Of course, those who threw away the food paid the price for their rash actions – and after training hungry, they had to bite the bullet to eat it.

At the end of the three-day exercise, the most memorable training began.

Under the barbed wire of the creeping training, the entrails of the newly killed pigs were covered with a thick layer, and the machine guns were constantly firing at the top of the barbed wire - all of them were required to climb over the 20-meter-long barbed wire.

When the final exam questions were revealed, Zheng Yingqi looked around and looked at everyone with pale faces, showing a very strange expression.

A very creative way to train!

Strayer watched the reaction of his three companies, which was not surprising, and gave him a very interesting feeling, saying:

"The battlefield we are about to go to, cannons, bombs will blow people into this hell scene in front of your eyes, bullets will fly over our heads and around us, screams will keep ringing, and we need to fight in this kind of hell, if you can't even pass this level, then...... What right do you have to wear the Silver Wing badge? ”

Looking at the pale faces of the soldiers, Strayer asked, "Which company came first?" ”

Sobel shouted: "Report to the chief! Let E Company come first! ”

"Boys, please set an example for them!" Strayer said to everyone in Company E with satisfaction.

Man is a very strange creature, obviously all this was arranged by Strayer, everyone knows that Strayer said very reasonable, the battlefield is like this, but Sobel, who took the initiative to ask for his life, was still hated by the soldiers - especially Sobel said:

"Jacob, you give them a demonstration first."

"Yes."

Zheng Yingqi came out of the ranks, climbed down with standard movements, and then began to crawl forward, in the horrified looks of everyone, Zheng Yingqi crawled through the 20-meter barbed wire fence as usual, the continuous roar of bullets, thick internal organs and blood all over the ground, did not make his movements sluggish, still so agile, after coming out of the other end, Zheng Yingqi bypassed the machine gunner and returned to the queue - but the people around him involuntarily stayed away from Zheng Yingqi.

"What are you waiting for? First in a row! ”

At Sobel's urging, the rest of the people in the row had to drill the barbed wire.

In the military, crawling is divided into two concepts: crawling like a baby and wriggling like a snake.

Wriggling like a snake is naturally the most non-standard action, but all people, facing a short 20-meter barbed wire, want to wriggle like a snake, snakes can squirm quickly, but people ...... But it's unusually slow.

The first thing many people do after getting out of the barbed wire is to vomit, violently vomiting, just for a while, the training ground wafted the smell of sour vomit, but everyone seemed to not smell, they just wanted to take off their military uniforms as soon as possible, and then take a shower happily.

Zheng Yingqi, who looks as usual, still stands out among them, and many people may think that after confirming their eyes, Jacob is indeed a wolf!

All the people in Company E squirmed through the hell field under Sobel's brutal insistence, including all the officers—Zheng Yingqi thought that if Sobel could go through the hardships like this, or everyone in Company E would have a different opinion of him.

But from beginning to end......

Sobel has always been a spectator, and after the training, the clean Sobel did not use his pickiness to restrain the soldiers of the entire E Company this time, and he had a rare human favor - but his reasonableness did not let the soldiers remember, but the soldiers remembered one thing:

Thanksgiving drills, Sobel with his tyranny, bullied them again!

……

By the end of November, the Tokoa training camp was over, and after Tocoa's training of E Company, everyone was proficient in their weapons. Under Sobel's rigorous training, everyone in the platoon was able to do any job - and every soldier understood the duties of the corporal and sergeant, and could substitute him if necessary.

From Zheng Yingqi's point of view, these soldiers are already qualified soldiers.

On leaving Tocoa, Gordon proudly said:

"I think that after Tokoa's training, I don't have to worry about any hardships anymore!"

Zheng Yingqi did not strike at this comrade-in-arms who sometimes seemed gloomy - he thought to himself: That's because you haven't seen war.

Two days before leaving Tokoa's training camp, Colonel Zinke, the commander of the 506th Regiment, came across an article in Reader's Digest to the effect that a Japanese army had set a record of 100 miles (161 km) marched in 72 hours on the Malay Peninsula.

So, when leaving Tocoa, the 1st and 3rd Battalions took a train to Fort Benning, Atlanta, while the 2nd Battalion, fully armed and on foot, went to Fort Benning.

The route chosen by Strayer covers a total of 190 kilometres, of which 160 kilometres are country roads.

[3 days, 190 km ......]

Zheng Yingqi wanted to laugh, it's only one hundred and ninety kilometers in three days, and these countries on wheels are really ......

They really can't understand the myth of running on two legs on four wheels!

The full-armed march began with the full confidence of the whole battalion, and during this 190-kilometer march, Zheng Yingqi also saw Sobel's unreliability - or the fact that the US army does not pay attention to the leading role of officers, and relies more on the mature non-commissioned officer system, in this difficult march, Sobel still has nothing to praise, and even every time he roars and urges, he is accumulating a trace of resentment and dissatisfaction.

The march was hard.

The muddy roads, the bitter cold of the night, and the occasional bone-scraping wind, rain or snow made the march full of poignant jokes - the riflemen were better, the machine gunners and the mortar squad were even more uncomfortable, and the heavy weight made the fighters nearly collapse, and Sobel would only shout and shout, or use mockery, sarcasm to deal with the units that were delaying the march.

Compared with Sobel's unreliability, Winters, the 1st platoon commander, performed as a "capture" of the hearts of the soldiers, not only asking the soldiers in the platoon to help each other, but even taking the initiative to help other fighters carry the weight - at his request, half of the rifles of a squad would be handed over, and the remaining half would take turns to help the machine gun and mortar squads that were difficult to move, and he also organized a help group to help the fighters who fell behind and delayed the march.

Under his leadership, the whole battalion helped each other in this way, and the speed of the march was greatly improved.

[In our army, this kind of mutual help is actually passed down, and under the words and deeds of the squad leader, this kind of help is a natural thing, but here, this kind of help is precious, precious, and rare......]

The march lasted 75 hours, but in fact it took only 33 and a half hours for the march, with 586 men in the battalion, and on the last day, many of them came back with the support of their comrades-only 12 of them were unable to complete the journey because of illness.

Of course, in the face of reporters, Colonel Zinke had this to say: "No one is left behind, and even if he falls, his face is facing forward." ”

Zheng Yingqi snorted silently, pretending not to know that there were 12 people left behind!

Only the 1st and 3rd platoons of E Company were left behind in the whole battalion, and as a reward, these two platoons were at the forefront when they entered the city, and Zheng Yingqi became the first to be the vanguard because of his best performance - their company commander walked on the edge of the line, proudly holding his head high, and even deliberately slowed down his pace when entering the city, allowing himself to enjoy a little more cheers from the citizens.

But no matter which soldier passed in front of Sobel, the deep gap could not be filled.

……

The 506th Regiment at Fort Benning began real paratrooper skills training - many people felt that paratrooper training was very hard, but for E Company, the training at the Fort Benning Paratrooper School was the easiest, because they did not need to spend most of the day on physical training, only the actual combat training of the airborne troops.

No one is the most torturous thing than physical training, and this is the way it is recognized, no matter which unit it is.

There was a joke during this period that the training at the paratrooper school was graded, starting with A-level at first, and then B, C, and D-level, but only the 1st Battalion conducted A-level training for two days, and the 2nd and 3rd battalions directly skipped A-level training - the joke came out of the 1st Battalion.

Those non-commissioned officers who came to train the 1st Battalion thought that these people were like paratroopers who had been trained before, but when they were physically trained, they found that they were not even worthy of carrying shoes for people in physical training! The people of the first battalion even said rampantly:

At your level, go to the 2nd battalion, just so that the 2nd battalion can be an instructor for you.

After a few beatings, these non-commissioned officers naturally reported the situation to their commanders, so they skipped the A-level training directly.

After the initial training, the expected D-class training begins - D-level training is a combat skydive, once they have completed five skydives, they will receive the paratrooper's Silver Wing badge, the night before the skydive, the paratroopers carry their parachute bags over and over again, for fear that they will not pack their own lives on this thing.

After seeing the tense atmosphere in the platoon, Zheng Yingqi couldn't help but tell two jokes.

"It is said that the qualified rate of parachutes is only 99.99%, no matter how the military procurement personnel emphasize the need for 100% safe parachutes, but manufacturers always say that 99.99% is their greatest effort, but later, after the military changed the detection method, the qualified rate of parachutes became 100%!"

"In what way?"

Even Winters was intrigued.

"Randomly select the parachutes produced and let the quality inspectors of the parachute suppliers jump by themselves, and the safety rate has risen directly to 100%!"

The whole first row burst into laughter, and someone couldn't wait to ask, "What about the second joke?" ”

"According to the statistics of a certain parachute manufacturer, the parachutes they produce have only a 100% positive rating, and there is never a bad review! None of the users said they had a problem with their umbrella! ”

"Is this a joke? This is clearly an advertisement for an unscrupulous manufacturer. Gordon said disapprovingly.

Zheng Yingqi patted Gordon's shoulder seriously and said, "Because of the problematic umbrella, users can't give bad reviews." ”

As soon as the words fell, the entire dormitory was filled with laughter, and even Sobel, who had just walked in, smiled.

Under the effect of Zheng Yingqi's two jokes, the tense atmosphere of this night was much better.

Of course, there will be all kinds of nervous people when you jump in the actual combat for the first time, but with the accumulation of the number of times, many people proudly say: "Even without a parachute, we dare to jump!" ”

……

After receiving the Silver Wing badge, Colonel Zinke gathered everyone together and announced the order of the day—because of the excellent evaluation, this regiment has become one of the best regiments in the United States Army.

But the training has been going on, they have changed several training camps, some camps are poorly built, but some camps are very well built, and even can enjoy cinemas and other services - but no matter which training camp it is, the performance of the 506th regiment is the most excellent, and after being excellent again and again, finally, many troops noticed this airborne regiment with unprecedented performance on the training ground.

It is said that on the above, many divisions wanted to include the 506th Regiment in their operational sequence - however, in the end, the 101st Airborne Division was fortunate enough to include the 506th Regiment in its operational sequence, and everyone in the 506th Regiment believed that it was an honor for the 101st Division to have them.

On June 10, 1943, the 506th Regiment was incorporated into the 101st Airborne Division.

And in September 1943, the unit, which had been training for nearly a year and a half, finally embarked on a passenger ship leaving the United States with other friendly troops, and headed for their final destination, the United Kingdom.