Chapter 13 New Heavy Machine Guns Implement two commanders

"Speaking of boats, you still need to build more dredging boats. Fan Chengkun and his naval scouts conducted an actual reconnaissance of Weishui, and our large ship did not go far into Weishui, and it would not work. There are a lot of shallow beaches, and our flat-bottomed boats can go to Weinan without being strong, and our newly built steel-hulled boats can't reach Weinan if they are fully loaded. After we occupied Shaanxi, if we wanted to play the role of Weishui transportation, we had to use sand dredging ships to open the waterway. Zhang Zhimu said.

"How many dredging boats do you need? It was because Weishui was not conducive to navigation that Emperor Yang of Sui dug a canal on the south bank of Weishui. Besides, Weishui, like the Yellow River, has too much sediment and can easily accumulate sediment. After digging, it will be silted. Li Yunhe said.

"We will build a few more sand dredging boats, as long as the river is not closed, we will continue to dig, as long as we can ensure the navigation from Xi'an to Tongguan, then the significance is terrible." Zhang Zhimu said.

"Tang Jingyao has to build a few more sand dredging boats over there." Li Yunhe said, "Also, Tang Jingyao will report to you the results of their investigation of the Hutuo River in the next few days." This person is very serious, and the plan to build a dam on the Hutuo River has been demonstrated for a long time. Mr. Lu Bingyi's disciples also followed him to measure. ”

"There is no contradiction between us building sand dredging ships, tugboats and steel-hulled ships, and I think we will expand the Lingshui Wharf shipyard. If the railway from our kiln gang to Lingshui wharf is opened, the transportation will be much more convenient. There shipbuilding you can also expand. ”

Zhang Zhimu only felt very relaxed when he was with Li Yunhe. With him in Zhang Zhimu, it is much more worry-free, and generally leave things to him and don't care. Li Yunhe can be said to be one of the busiest people in Yaogang.

Li Yunhe: There are two kinds of 12.7 caliber heavy machine guns. One is water-cooled, the kind with circulating water; The other is air-cooled. The water-cooled ones are mainly used on ships, and because they can be refrigerated by water circulation and fed by metal bullet chains, they can shoot almost continuously. It is a very good suppression weapon against both sea and land targets.

However, Zhang Zhimu felt that the sound of this machine gun was too loud, and he asked Li Yunhe to equip each machine gunner with special earmuffs, which were the kind used by artillerymen.

Li Yunhe asked a little worriedly: "What should I do if I can't hear the command with earmuffs?" ”

"In the future, you can just let them wear ear tips with headphones. Commands can be given through a headset. Zhang Zhimu said.

At this time, Li Wei, who was busy at the shooting range, surrounded them, and Li Wei said: "Mr. Zhang, it's no problem for our weapons to sweep the world now." Such a heavy machine gun is simply too terrifying to be needed. Our kind of heavy machine gun is enough. ”

This kind of machine gun is mainly used on ships, Li Yunhe has participated in naval battles, and he knows that with this kind of heavy machine gun, it is almost impossible to deal with wooden ships at sea. In addition, this machine gun also has a certain lethality against targets behind the wall, and it is even more like cutting grass against a group of charging war horses. Zhang Zhimu said, "But this kind of heavy machine gun does not need to be equipped too much, just a few of them can play a deterrent role." ”

Li Wei nodded and said, "Mr. Zhang, I still care about artillery. When will all our 130 shells be replaced with *** charges? The guy topped the original few shots in one shot. Really motivated. ”

"You have to ask Li Yunhe about this, it is estimated that the production line will be able to produce ***** next year. I just don't know what the yield is, this thing is limited by the benzene extracted from coal tar. It's useless to say anything if you're not stupid. Zhang Zhimu explained.

Li Yunhe came over and said, "If it's just your 130 guns, the shell tube is enough." But if you use *** charge even for 120 heavy mortars, it depends on the consumption. I think the 120 heavy mortar is still smokeless**. This ensures the supply of shells. ”

"Yunhe, when can a heavy machine gun like yours be loaded on the Xiurong?" In fact, Zhang Zhimu himself knew that he was asking nonsense, and if Li Yunhe hadn't tested this kind of heavy machine gun well, he wouldn't have invited him over.

"It's already in production, so it's just a matter of installing it. When they sail in the spring of next year, they will definitely be able to use it. Li Yunhe pointed to the soldiers who were fiddling with the heavy machine guns and said, "Those are all sent by Xiurong to learn how to use this heavy machine gun." ”

Zhang Zhimu couldn't help but nodded, those soldiers were really wearing navy uniforms, but they made their clothes very dirty during training, and Zhang Zhimu didn't notice.

At the end of the year, it was the busiest and most lively time in the kiln.

The busiest and happiest is Lu Chengxiang, this time the managers of the kiln gang branches in various places have rushed back to the kiln gang to report the work, except for Quanzhou, Guangzhou, Jingdezhen, Wuchang, Changsha a few too far away or just established semicolons, all the branch managers are back.

Don't look at Lu Chengxiang's usual smiling appearance in Yaogang, but the managers of all branches are not afraid of him. However, it is not accurate to say that they are afraid, they are more in awe of him. Because he followed Zhang Zhimu to start a business, he participated in almost all the things that Zhang Zhimu went south to the north in the early days of Yaogang's business. He is almost always in charge of the business of the kiln. In particular, his shrewdness in business and management is unsurpassed. Without these two hits, even if Zhang Zhimu gave him a chance, he wouldn't be able to get up. This person should say that it is very good to have both ability and political integrity, and he met a big owner like Zhang Zhimu who trusted him very much, and the owner himself was very capable. Only in this way is Lu Chengxiang like a fish in water, and the business of Yaogang is also thriving.

Lu Chengxiang has a full set of Shanxi businessman management methods, and also draws on the bold employment of Zhang Zhimu, so that all branches have a certain degree of autonomy. After studying with Zhang Zhimu, Lu Chengxiang also rewarded the managers of these branches generously according to the performance of each branch. Therefore, at such an annual meeting, the managers of the branch are in a hurry to come back to report. Especially when they are outside all the year round, they have also heard about the earth-shaking changes in the kiln, but they rarely have the opportunity to come back to see. I have long been itching to go back to the kiln to see it.

This time, Lu Chengxiang is also very generous, and those who don't go home live in the Yaogang Hotel. This is something that the managers of these branches did not expect. Lu Chengxiang told them that this was arranged by Zhang Zhimu personally, and Zhang Zhimu said, you have worked hard outside, and you should enjoy this treatment.

These managers who are working hard outside are very moved, and they all feel that they are working hard outside and can be recognized by their families, which is the greatest comfort. These managers are leaders on the outside, and this time they are back, they are like children together, they don't have to pretend to be serious with their faces strained, and in addition to reporting their work every day, they just drink and watch plays and visit everywhere. I can't make back all the things I lost outside.

When Zhang Zhimu spoke to them, he said to them: "Everyone has seen the changes that have taken place in our kiln gang when they come back this time, and now our kiln gang has been built in the best place of the Ming Dynasty, and Shanxi under our management is also the best place for the people to live." These brilliant achievements have a great credit to all of you here, it is your hard work outside, turning the products produced by our kiln gang into silver, and earning back a lot of silver, so that we can have the opportunity to build the kiln gang and manage Shanxi. I would like to thank you all for the people of Yaogang and Shanxi. After speaking, Zhang Zhimu bowed to the managers of this branch. At this moment, all the branch managers stood up and applauded Zhang Zhimu to express their gratitude and respect.

This scene was even more unexpected for them. Based on this, the managers of the branch felt that the grievances and tribulations they had suffered outside were worth it. In fact, people are not afraid of hard work, what they are afraid of is that you will not be recognized by the leader for your efforts. Zhang Zhimu is well aware of this.

Of course, the rewards of the kiln are also real money, which is very affordable. Zhang Zhimu knows that the allure of money and the cohesion of his career are indispensable.

Lu Chengxiang led the branch managers to summarize the past, it was the award of the award, the punishment of the punishment, and the rearrangement of the key tasks for the new year. One of the most important tasks is to train people, and each branch is equipped with more than two assistant managers. This is to prepare the company for the future.

However, this time, the managers of the branch also put forward requirements, and many families who are not in Yaogang or Shanxi have asked to arrange their children to go to school in Yaogang, and some even ask to settle their homes in Yaogang. Lu Chengxiang agreed to everyone without hesitation. There are also many managers who have other difficulties, and after raising them, Lu Chengxiang also arranged to solve them. Lu Chengxiang assured them that he would back them up. This gives them a lot more peace of mind.

The expansion of the army has finally been completed. After Zhang Zhimu, Chen Yufeng, and Ouyang He studied, it was decided to add General Ningde as deputy commander of the army. In this way, the officers of the Yaogang Army were:

Commander Liu Yun

Deputy Commanders: Li Wei, Li Jing, Liu Chenghuang, Ningde

Commander of the First Infantry Army Zhao Jinli

Commander of the Second Infantry Army Shi Xiu

Commander of the Third Infantry Army Lin Feng

Commander of the Fourth Infantry Army Wei Xiang

Li Feng, commander of the First Cavalry Army (originally the army with Hukou and Qin Peng, was a cavalry general before)

Commander of the Second Cavalry Army Wang Meng (the original cavalry from Yulin)

Liu Chenghuang concurrently served as the commander of the cavalry, and Li Kui served as the deputy commander of the cavalry.

At present, an infantry corps has four infantry divisions, an artillery division, and an attached command and communications hospital, with a total of 40,000 men.

A cavalry corps consisted of three cavalry divisions, an artillery division, and an attached command and communications hospital, totaling 30,000 men.

Li Wei concurrently served as the commander of the artillery engineering corps, with four heavy artillery divisions under his command. There are more than 10,000 people in total.

Li Jing is also the commander of the special forces, with two special forces brigades under his jurisdiction and 1,500 people.

Zhang Zhimu got the list of completed troop reorganization sent by Ouyang He, and his heart was heavy, which means that there are now more than 200,000 regular troops in Yaogang. Now it can be said that the soldiers are strong. With such an army, there is no problem in sweeping the world.

It happened that Lu Chengxiang was also talking about things in Zhang Zhimu's new office, and Zhang Zhimu asked: "Mr. Lu, we are now more than 200,000 troops. This military expenditure is a lot of money every year. ”

"Don't worry about military spending, we can afford it. To tell the truth, the cost of raising one soldier is the cost of raising ten soldiers for Li Zicheng. But one of our soldiers fought against a hundred. So let's do the math. If you calculate the monthly salary of each soldier three taels of silver, 200,000 people are 600,000 per month, and 7.2 million a year. Add to the officer's salary, and it needs to be increased to eight million taels. The cost of eating horses and feeding clothing will be 10 million taels. And that's not even counting the consumption of our weapons. Lu Chengxiang snorted with his nose and said, "Hmph! That is, we can afford to raise such troops. In this way, military spending accounts for half of our income. The military expenditure of the entire Ming Dynasty is a fraction of ours. Hehe! By virtue of this, what do they compare to us? ”

"It seems that our current output value also exceeds the output value of the rest of the entire Ming Dynasty combined." Zhang Zhimu said with some surprise.

"That's right, without us, not only Shanxi people can't eat, but many places can't eat, and there are too many people who rely on us to eat." Lu Chengxiang said, "Mr. Zhang, in fact, I don't worry about spending money on war, as long as I win the war, I can still earn money." For example, in the battle we fought with Li Zicheng, not to mention how much silver we captured the horses. ”

Zhang Zhimu Yile, this Lu Chengxiang will calculate profits and losses at any time. Not to mention that without Lu Chengxiang here, he would have to think about it.

Lu Chengxiang saw Zhang Zhimu Lele and said, "Mr. Zhang, don't be happy when you come." It's not impossible to fight. In the future, we should not fight the battles we have lost, they all want to fight them sooner, and I agree with you, we are better prepared to fight later. In this way, it will be possible to fight a war at a small cost, and such a battle will definitely not be lost. ”

"Huh! Mr. Lu, you are studying the economics of war, and according to your calculations, we will be able to fight the war for a long time. Zhang Zhimu said with a smile that he simply admired Lu Chengxiang.

"I don't understand your war economics, I know that if you don't count anything, you will definitely lose." Mr. Lu said very seriously.

"Mr. Lu, if you have time, you can summarize how you calculate and fight wars, and then I will invite you to give a lecture to the students of our military academy, which is called the economics of war. I'm going to make our officers economically minded when they go to war. In this way, our officers will be counted as fighting. At that time, they knew that they should not destroy as much as possible, and they should snatch when they should rob. Only when the war is won by calculation can the war be finally won. ”

"Good! I also think that they should know how much each bullet is worth and how much silver each shell is worth, so that they know how to use weapons in vain. Mr. Lu was very supportive of Zhang Zhimu's proposal.

In the process of Chen Yufeng and Ouyang He's expansion, they took a little thought about the selection of political officials. After the expansion of the army, in order to maintain the combat effectiveness of the troops, those officers who could fight in the war were promoted and arranged to be military commanders. If political chiefs are arranged casually, they have no qualifications in the army, and their work will not be easy to carry out, and it will even affect the arrangement of the entire political chiefs. There was no choice but to reluctantly arrange for many military chiefs with a higher level of education to be political chiefs, and with a few such political chiefs, the entire contingent of political chiefs would have confidence. However, the political chiefs arranged by the headquarters can only be arranged at the division level, and even some regiments have also been arranged. As for other lower-level units, it is necessary to make specific arrangements after the political chief officer takes office.

For this matter, Zhang Zhimu asked Chen Yufeng and them to gather all the officers above the division level to the kiln post for study. Zhang Zhimu personally gave them a lesson and explained why they had to engage in a dual-chief official system.

In this study, even Liu Yun, Li Jing, and Ningde have all returned, plus division-level officers, and there are dozens of senior generals in Yaogang. Fan Chengkun and his officers above the captain level also rushed back to Yaogang to participate in the study.

In this study, Zhang Zhimu proposed for the first time that the purpose of our army is to "let the people live a dignified life of abundant food and clothing" in the places we have liberated. ”

This is a simple and easy-to-understand purpose that soldiers can understand, so that soldiers can understand why they are fighting.

On the first day of the study class, Zhang Zhimu looked at the rows of high-ranking officers in the audience and asked, "I want to ask you a question, with the current equipment of our army. We don't need to send a division led by you, we just send a regiment to attack a county town, do you think we can be sure of taking it? ”

The officers below all laughed, they felt that Zhang Zhimu's question was too ridiculous.

Zhang Zhimu didn't wait for everyone to answer, and continued: "I see everyone laughing. In fact, I also know that with our current level of firepower, we can shoot down the city gate or city wall with a single artillery blast, machine gun cover, and infantry charge. Isn't it? ”

This time, the officers stopped laughing, and they were all listening to Zhang Zhimu's next words.

Zhang Zhimu said: "Then why, we still don't send troops to fight Li Zicheng?" Have you thought about it? ”

This is also a problem that the officers have not understood for a long time, and they have long wanted to send troops to fight.

Looking at everyone's concentrated gaze, Zhang Zhimu said again: "In fact, there is a problem that we must solve first. That's why do we go to war? If we don't understand this problem, we spend a lot of silver, and we have to die a lot of people, what are we going out to fight for? In fact, many people have talked to me about this problem. Now, in addition to the people of Shanxi, who are still living decently, the people in many places are still living a life of lack of warm clothes and food, and we can't just watch it. So I want to make it clear today that our army is different from other armies, and our purpose is to 'let the people live a life of abundance, food, and dignity.' Our army must become a cultured army, a civilized army, and an army with its own goals of struggle. There is another question I would like to ask you, we caught a lot of Li Zicheng's soldiers, and soon they became our soldiers. Do you hope that this will be the case when our soldiers are captured by Li Zicheng and them? ”

The officers below all replied, "No, I don't want to." ”

"Yes, we don't. Because most of Li Zicheng's soldiers have no food, they are soldiers just to eat, and whoever gives them food will do it. But our soldiers must not do this, we must train them to be fighters with ideals and goals. But I know that our officers are tired, and you have to not only train the soldiers to fight, but also urge the soldiers to learn the culture. Because you all know the benefits of learning culture. Many of you are illiterate from the army, forced to learn to read, read newspapers, and write letters home. If you are allowed to do ideological work again, you will not be able to bear it alone. That's why we decided to set up a dual official system in our army. That is, there is a military chief and a political chief in each team. The two chiefs are equal. When you say who will listen to whom when the time comes, I tell you, the military commander is responsible for fighting a war. Life is carried out by political and ideological work, study, etc., and the political chief officer is in charge. In order to guarantee the absolute loyalty of our troops, I would also like to inform you that the political chief also has the responsibility of supervising the troops. Nor do I deny that the political commanders will take away some of the rights of your military commanders. For example, the promotion of a junior officer must be agreed by both the chief officer before it can be reported to the superior for approval. ”

The officers below began to discuss, they had long heard that they were going to have a dual-chief official system, and this time it seemed that it was true. Most of them are unwilling.

Zhang Zhimu watched everyone discuss for a while, and said firmly: "This matter was decided by us after repeated research. Whether you like it or not, you have to do it. I want our senior officers to be politically savvy. We must not only fight the world, but also rule the world. To tell the truth, we don't need to expand the current scale of the military road when we go out to fight Li Zicheng, it turns out that whether the army is fighting Shaanxi or Henan, we can defeat it. But whether we can manage it well or not, I dare not say. What I want to tell you today is that I don't want you to be just a reckless man who can fight, and you, as high-ranking generals, will have the ability and ambition to govern one side in the future. I hope that the soldiers and officers you bring out are all all-round civil and military talents who can fight the world and rule the world on horseback. We have not been able to send troops, and I hope that our senior generals must know how much money we will spend every year. At present, the main task we are doing is to do a good job of the two-chief official system, and I hope that all the generals will take the initiative to establish a good relationship with the political commissars, cooperate with each other, and do a good job. I also tell you, if anyone is against this, they are deliberately looking for trouble at work. There is only one result, dismissal! I hope that everyone will take the initiative to do this work as their own business. This is a major event related to the future fate of our kiln. I hope you take it seriously. As for the division of labor between the two chief officials, Li Yan, director of our Political Department, will introduce it to you, and I hope you will put forward your own views on this matter. That's what we've been working on these days. ”

Zhang Zhimu's speech, the soft truth was spoken, and the hard order was also spoken. Chen Yufeng, Ouyang He, and Li Yan all felt that Zhang Zhimu spoke very well. With Zhang Zhimu's speech at the bottom, Li Yan and their work will be much easier to do later. Besides, Chen Yufeng and Ouyang He personally participated. Li Yan's job is much easier.

Besides, Li Yan's reputation is there, and he is also a person who is very good at doing work. Through discussion, let everyone come up with ideas on how to do it. As a result, the task became the work of the officers themselves, which was much easier.

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The Song army occupied Hokkaido, and Yuankou landed on the island of Kyushu. Opening up the Japanese battlefield. --Progress of "Memories of the Southern Song Dynasty".