Fort Riverwater has been shrouded in a tense atmosphere these days. After the red and green flags marched eastward, news of wars with the barbarians came back intermittently, and it was at this time that they learned that the supposedly strong barbarian tribe in the east was called the Kama tribe. However, both the Kama tribe and the Maca tribe are just a barbarian tribe to the people of the East Coast, and they are still preparing for the war at their own pace.

In mid-February, the Army's 104th Company was mobilized and has been training hard near Fort River. After the end of the war, under the leadership of company commander Xiao Baitu, this reserve force, which did not perform well in the last Eastern Movement, regularly carried out a large number of physical, platoon and shooting training, and continued until this year. After this purge of the 104th Company, the mental outlook and technical and tactical level of the 104th Company have been greatly improved, and although it is now not as good as the main standing company, it is not the same as that of the year.

The 104th Company was training, and the other two local units in South Africa, the South African Cavalry Company and the South African Field Artillery Company, could not be left behind. The commander of the South African Cavalry Company was Leonid, a veteran cavalry officer, a middle-aged officer with a weathered face who had seemed to have been smoothed out after years of scrambling in the East Bank army. Li Xiaowei, the female crosser he once pursued, finally married a crossover under the admonition of the executive committee, intentionally or unintentionally, after changing her boyfriend, and Leonid finally married a young lady of the Rodriguez family under the introduction of her old boss Xu Yu.

After getting married, Leonid devoted himself to army training, and when he was at home, the cavalry units under his command were always the first in each confrontation training, which Xu Yu admired very much. A few years ago, there was a knife incident in the Executive Committee building. Leonid, who was assigned to South Africa, continued to take charge of the newly formed South African Cavalry Company under the supervision of Mo Ming, a comrade of the National Power Alliance. The South African Cavalry Company, a cavalry unit with Shaanxi thieves as the backbone, was trained by Leonid. Today, it has become one of the most important armed forces in the Fort River. Whether it was tracking and hunting down barbarian tribes, scouting enemy intelligence, or attacking enemy formations that were about to collapse, the South African cavalry company showed excellent quality. At the end of February, the South African cavalry company, which had been expanded to 110 cavalry, went to the east under the orders of Liu Ang, who stayed behind, to attack and kill the scouts of the Kama tribe and train in battle.

The South African Field Artillery Company is also a technical branch of the Fort Hezhong area that has been a key part of the construction in recent years. At present, it has two six-pounder guns, two eight-pounder guns, and one twelve-pounder gun, and has 45 regular artillery personnel, all of whom are experienced gunners who have undergone many years of rigorous training. Originally, it was according to the East Coast military system. Each field artillery company only has four guns, but because the South African field artillery company is a local army, the military system is not perfect, so Mo Ming later asked the South African artillery company for a precious twelve-pounder army gun from the mainland, as the treasure of the South African field artillery company.

The South African Field Artillery Company, which has five guns, is currently concentrating on a range on the eastern outskirts of the city for various trainings. They were also trained by the South African Engineering Battalion and the Baggage Battalion, which were composed of some militiamen and Eight Bannermen. It is worth mentioning that both units are temporary units with no military status and no uniform uniforms. Unlike the South African Cavalry Company and the Field Artillery Company, although these two units are local units, the soldiers are full-time professional soldiers, and their salaries are paid by the local treasury of Fort River. And these two so-called engineering battalions and baggage battalions. To put it bluntly, it is actually just a local militia arm, which was temporarily formed because of the war. After the fight, the establishment was abolished, and the salary was naturally very small compared to the regular army. The South African garrison command prepared tools (sapper shovels, shovels, pickaxes, etc.), a small number of weapons, rations and pickles, and they came to report for training and provide logistical support for the front-line soldiers.

During the training period, each soldier was paid only 1-2 yuan per month, and the officers and non-commissioned officers were slightly higher. Except for a small number of officers and non-commissioned officers who led the two units, which were made up of the Fort in the River militia, most of the soldiers were indigenous freedmen of South Africa from the Eight Banners. These freemen were not able to enter the samurai class for one reason or another, so their lives were very unsatisfactory on weekdays, and their lives were tight. When the war came, Mo Ming made a big stroke, and selected more than 300 able-bodied people among these people to be incorporated into the newly established South African engineering battalion, and then selected more than 600 people to be assigned to the South African baggage battalion responsible for logistics and transportation in this war.

With the East Coast Army now far exceeding the firepower output density of contemporaneous Europe, the corresponding pressure on logistics is also increasing. Moreover, with the large-scale installation of artillery, the requirements for road traffic are becoming higher and higher. Therefore, it is imperative to form specialized engineering units and baggage units, and this is why the War Department insisted on retaining the engineering and baggage units in the previous major disarmament.

With intense training going on all over the castle, the days passed like this. On 5 May, Mo Ming, the new supreme commander of the South African Theater of Operations, the leader of the South African Pioneer Team, and the commander of the South African Security Command, returned to the port of Hezhong on a troop transport. He was accompanied by the elite 1st Company of the Army, which had recently been transferred to the South African garrison, and an artillery company assigned to the Army Command (1st Company of Independent Field Artillery, four guns). As for the 103rd Company of the Army, it arrived in the port of Kawanaka in mid-May.

The 1st Infantry Company of the Army, with Chang Kaisheng as the company commander, is known as the first company of the whole army and has been stationed in the capital area for a long time. Well-equipped, well-trained, or a special Dalian team formation. The so-called Dalian Corps establishment is a new establishment that the War Department is currently studying. Because many grassroots officers responded that the current establishment of 16 people per platoon (1 platoon commander and 15 soldiers) was a little weak in the queue salvo, the War Department took the 1st Company as a pilot and changed the number of people in each platoon to 21 (1 platoon commander and 20 soldiers). Coupled with some expanded gunsmiths, men, medics, heralds, standard-bearers and other personnel, the scale of the first company of the army reached an unprecedented 240 people, far exceeding the scale of 180 people in an ordinary company.

In addition to its large size, the 1st Company of the Army was the first company in the army to be equipped with a 32-C flintlock rifle. Unlike the 32-B rifle, which is currently installed on a large scale, the 32-C rifle has a bayonet fixed device in the original strip under the barrel, where a special steel bayonet can be fixed. As for the position of the throughbar, it was moved to the side of the barrel. The 32-C flintlock rifle was fitted with a newly finalized Type 41 steel bayonet and reached a terrifying length of 1.75 meters, which meant that soldiers could finally stop throwing away their rifles, pulling out their sabers and fighting people in close combat. They could take the bayonet out of its scabbard, secure it with the hollow handle of the bayonet with internal threads and the fixtures with threaded and raised bayonets, and then engage the enemy.

In order to facilitate the loading of ammunition when shooting, the bayonet is removed and placed in the scabbard at the waist, which can be used as a dagger at this time. And when the officers gave the order to put on the bayonets for hand-to-hand combat, the soldiers took out the bayonets and fixed them, so that the musketeers also had the ability to fight hand-to-hand. The installation of bayonets is still due to the increasing precision of machine tools in the first local machinery factory, and most of the hollow shanks and bayonets they produce can match the bayonet, and the pass rate even exceeds 75% under the processing of skilled masters.

As soon as the 1st Company arrived at the Fort in the River, the 2nd Company, which had long been ready to go, immediately escorted a group of baggage troops in small boats to the castle construction site in the upper reaches of the Berg River. In this area, named Fort Gouda, all the Red and Green Banners, all the South African Cavalry Company, and the Eight Banners Artillery (four guns) are now concentrated. The barbarians are currently only haunted by scouts or small units, scouting for information and harassing the construction progress of the construction site.

But their efforts were doomed to be in vain. First of all, a moat had been dug on the side of Fort Gouda a few months earlier, and the water was fed in by the nearby Berg River. There were also three barbed wire fences stretched on the inner bank of the moat, and a large number of Eight Banner warriors were stationed in it, and these small indigenous troops were dumbfounded when they looked at this well-fortified position, and they couldn't say anything at all. On the contrary, they were accidentally attacked and killed by the South African cavalry company that attacked, and the losses were not small.

Inside the barbed wire fence is the city wall that is in full swing. Nearly 3,000 men, women, and children under the red and green flags have gone into battle, and only a small part of them have been roughly completed, and it will take another year and a half to complete them all. However, the barbarians on the other side obviously will not give them this time again, and judging from the recent situation, perhaps the war will start completely after the autumn harvest.

The building materials needed for the construction site of Fort Gouda and all kinds of materials needed for people's daily life are transported upstream from the downstream by small wooden boats. The supply line, which is more than 200 kilometers long, is not affordable to be transported by large freight wagons without good road facilities, even if all the places along the route are flat grasslands. Therefore, water transport is the best shortcut, not only the volume is large, but the key is that it is relatively safe, after all, there are rivers to block, and it is not so easy for the enemy to attack the transport fleet on the east bank.

On May 15, the 2nd Company escorted the baggage battalion to bring a large amount of supplies to the Fort Gouda construction site. At the same time, the autumn harvest operation of Fort River has also been carried out for several days, and after the autumn harvest is over, more than 2,000 people from the 1st Company, 103rd Company, 104th Company of the Army, the 1st Company of the South African Field Artillery, the 1st Company of Independent Field Artillery, and the samurai of the Eight Banners will be reinforced here one after another to ensure the smooth completion of Fort Gouda. (To be continued......)