On the twentieth day of the Federation's entry into the war, in the open area on the south side of the Ulster-Wessex border, Weiss wore a vest, was bare-chested, wielding a military shovel vigorously, and a lot of mud and sand stuck to his head, but he didn't care at all. Around him, more than 400 officers and soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the Baston Student Regiment, including the battalion commander, Major Salgott, were "digging the ground" at this time.

Not far away, another group of people was doing the same thing. In comparison, they are more numerous, the age distribution is more scattered, and the momentum seems to be a little less.

"Good! It's time! Trumpet! ”

Brigadier General Wise, commander of the 139th Reserve Division, gave an order, and several heralds blew the lights out at the same time.

Blowing out the lights in broad daylight is not a comical mistake, but a pre-agreed stop signal. Hearing the sound of the trumpet, the "plowing operation" on both sides stopped.

Brigadier General Wise rode forward and led a group of officers to the 1st Battalion of the Basston Student Regiment to carefully inspect the communication trench they had dug, and then to the 1st Regiment of the 139th Reserve Division to carefully inspect the fortifications dug by the reservists. After comparing the two sides, he made a fair judgment: although the officers and men of the 1st Regiment of the 139th Reserve Division worked very hard and made significant progress in technology, the communication trench dug by the 1st Battalion of the Baston Student Regiment was still superior in terms of overall effect, quality of details and excavation efficiency!

According to the "battle bet" in advance, Brigadier General Wise asked the division's baggage battalion to send 500 canned fruits to the winning side.

Leading his men to win this unique military skills competition, the battalion commander, Major Boone Salgott, had a proud look on his face. The battalions of the Baston Student Regiment followed the deployment of Colonel Capes, and while preparing for battle, they assisted friendly troops in organizing training. Although the cadets lack actual combat experience, they have incomparable advantages in military theory, military command, military organization, and military psychology. As far as the reserve units lacking junior officers and professional noncommissioned officers are concerned, the arrival of the cadets has well made up for the lack of organizational training forces, and the actual results have also been well received by the officers and men.

In the adjacent defense area with the Baseton Student Corps, the 139th and 142nd Reserve Divisions were stationed. These two divisions were in slightly better condition in terms of strength and training than the 157th Reserve Division they had encountered earlier. In addition to this, north of the border, the 107th and 124th garrison divisions are stationed - the federal army is usually divided into three levels: combat, guard, and reserve. In peacetime, combat units generally maintain 50-80 per cent of their strength, garrison units 10-30 per cent, and reserve forces retain only a small number of officers. Once the period of imminent war begins, the units at all levels are gradually expanded to full strength with regular personnel as the backbone, and the combat units are the best in training and equipment, followed by the garrison units, and the reserve units are the weakest.

The linkage between the Baseton Student Corps and the 139th and 142nd Reserve Divisions is currently only a "friendship role" between commanders. Colonel Capes's proposal to reorganize the border defense line was approved by the 8th Garrison Command, but the border defense line involved the new defense area in Wessex, and they could not call the shot, so they submitted a report to the Northern Front Command, the Union Army's highest front command on the Northern Front. Thankfully, during the wartime, the efficiency of the federal military was surprisingly high, and the Northern Front Command quickly issued orders to units stationed near the border to repair and expand their combat fortifications on the spot. However, the Northern Front Command requested all units to first conduct a topographical and geostructural survey of the defense area, put forward a plan for the construction of field and permanent fortifications, and report it to the 4th Army Corps Headquarters for consolidation and adjustment, and then the Northern Front Command arranged and dispatched all kinds of building materials and necessary equipment and equipment needed for this work.

The ideal is plump, but the reality is often very skinny. On the Wessex front, more than 200,000 soldiers of the 3rd Army Corps of the Federation were engaged in the battle, and nearly half of the troops of the 4th Army Corps followed behind to assist, plus tens of thousands of Wessex troops temporarily under the unified command of the Federation Army, the logistics system of the Federation bore the combat consumption of nearly 500,000 foreign troops, and thousands of tons of ammunition, food, medicine, and other supplies were transported to the front line every day. As far as the current operational situation is concerned, the priority of supplying building materials and equipment is certainly in a relatively secondary position, and the construction and expansion of a modern defense line will inevitably require a huge number of steel, cement, and various weapons and equipment. With peacetime efficiency, it is difficult to accomplish without three or five months, but the Normans will give the Confederation enough time?

With the token in hand, the responsible commander will not sit back and wait for the equipment and supplies to arrive, but will find ways to make the best use of the existing resources. Military surveying is one of the main courses in the third year of the Badston Military Academy, and Capes arranged for the Patton cadets to form survey teams to conduct technical surveys with federal forces in the border area. The headquarters of the 4th Army also tried to obtain a map of the military deployment of the border defense line from the Wessex military, and this seemingly meaningless "waste paper" was of great help: using the markings of various hidden facilities on the military deployment map, the Union army discovered a number of hidden warehouses hidden by ruins or sand, seized a large amount of war materiel, and found some underground fortifications that could be reused.

The military survey work was a great success, and it made a good start in the preparation of the national border defense line. Under the active efforts of Colonel Capes, the troops, without waiting for a final plan, began to dig a large number of communication trenches between the Union line on the south side of the border and the old Wessex line on the north side of the border, in order to combine the two lines.

In addition to digging as many trenches as possible, federal forces stationed north of the border began to sort out the broken lines left behind by Wessex forces. The establishment of this line of defense dates back to the outbreak of the last major war, when the Kingdom of Wessex and the Free Confederation of Ulster had not entered into a military alliance, and the Norman Empire was plagued by internal ills and was not as powerful as it would have been. As a result, the Wessex army took great care to construct a border line that seemed strong enough at the time, equipped with steel lifting batteries and underground transportation, and later added anti-aircraft weapons to defend against flying warships, and a major renovation had been carried out in previous years. The Norman army was able to occupy this line with ease only because they attacked from behind, and the Wessex army was already beaten to the ground; The Confederates were able to crush this line of defense with a devastating force, on the one hand, by concentrating the most devastating air and ground firepower, and on the other hand, the Norman army stationed here was like the end of a strong crossbow, with neither the strength nor the determination to hold the line. Otherwise, foreign troops would not have flowed up and down the Wessex Line like a stream.

A few days later, the first shipment of construction materials from the rear arrived at the border defence. It seems that whether it is in the Northern Front Command or the Quartermaster Baggage Department, there are still many people who have not been blinded by the temporary victory, and know that only by being stable in the rear can they be invincible. Taking advantage of the national mobilization, they urgently requisitioned construction materials from several neighboring federal states and requisitioned civilian transport capacity for transportation.

With steel and cement, the troops stationed on the border defense line can finally show their strength. With the experience of organizing surveys in the past, the garrison divisions and reserve divisions extended invitations to the Baston student corps. This time, Colonel Capes personally went out and took the Baston cadets to investigate the scene and give advice. In fact, this dude is not only a veteran graduate of the Gaston Military Academy, but also a well-known civil engineer in the federal army, in addition to being proficient in materials and construction, he also has a lot of research on ballistics and explosives. Therefore, for how to rely on the existing fortifications to strengthen the defense, his observation and analysis is in-depth, meticulous and thorough, and his countermeasures are reasonable, well-founded, and comprehensive, properly handled, and really gave a wonderful and vivid on-site teaching to the students who were originally ready to do a big job!

With Colonel Capes, Weiss learned a lot and realized that he still had a lot to do with the basics. At the same time, he did not abandon his independent thinking: the fortress-like permanent fortifications, the defensive fire relied mainly on rapid-fire guns of small and medium calibers. Although these artillery pieces can use grenades and shotguns to produce different effects of group killing, so as to deter the attack of enemy ground forces, the experience of the modern war history of the earth's civilization shows that firearms that can fire continuously have an irreplaceable role in artillery, and are necessary and necessary for defensive operations. However, the only semi-automatic weapon currently installed in the federal army is a semi-automatic pistol issued to the gendarmerie department and some officers, and automatic weapons only exist in the military's technical reserve and in the laboratories of some military industrial enterprises.

If the Norman army attacked in a big way, and its attack method was the same as the Union army "trampling" the Wessex border defense, using air and ground heavy artillery to directly level the fortifications, then there was really not much difference between the continuous fire of guns on this defense line, which is also an important reason why semi-automatic and automatic weapons are not favored by the armies of various countries. But if the Norman army did not have an overwhelming superiority in firepower, but relied on ground forces to hold the line hard, then the situation was very different with or without continuous-fire guns.

Before the Baston student group left Aocheng, West contacted Jose to inquire about the trial production of automatic firearms - half a year ago, he handed over the technical drawings of automatic firearms designed based on the Maxim heavy machine gun to Jose, and asked him to bring them back to the family gun workshop of Clumber Haysen for research and development trial production, and in the past six months, after repeated adjustments, the 1.4PIR caliber A-type sample gun has been basically completed, which can achieve the predetermined shooting effect, and the 3.2PIR caliber B-type sample gun has continued to have small problems, and it needs to be continuously adjusted and improved. At that time, Weiss told Jose to produce as many A-type guns and matching ammunition as possible under the condition of prioritizing the completion of military orders, so that he could apply to the military for battlefield tests of new weapons at the right time.

Now is the "right time".

The federal forces deployed along the Ulster-Wessex border are in full swing in training and preparation, while on the front, the Alster-Wessex coalition continues to go on the offensive, but the recent gains are significantly smaller than in the previous period. The 3rd Army Corps besieged the industrial city of Anglong with the 9th and 11th Corps, but with four times the strength of the Norman defenders and full support from the 4th Fleet, it was unable to succeed. The wind on the battlefield seems to be beginning to turn.