This kind of red tape is not sensitive, Grandpa Guan is so busy that he can't wait to break it in half for a minute.

But now the busiest person in the entire Western Theater is not Commander-in-Chief Guan, but a military doctor.

Guan Zhuofan ordered that all the officers and men of the army be thoroughly examined, and those who did not meet the requirements, regardless of Huayang, were all left in Chattanooga to take care of their families.

Not to mention the Chinese soldiers, most of the American soldiers in the federal army are northerners, and it is inevitable that they will not be able to adapt to the soil and water when they enter the hot south, and those with poor physical fitness will easily fall ill and infect each other, and a large-scale non-combat attrition will occur, which will greatly affect combat effectiveness.

Long, long-distance movement operations, far from rear bases, non-combat attrition is especially annoying.

Thanks to strict health regulations, the Xuan army had a low percentage of non-combat attrition. But, firstly, the battle of Chattanooga did not last long, and it was not considered a real test on this issue; Second, what he is now commanding is not a Xuan army, but the entire Western Theater, and Guan Zhuofan has no idea about the situation of other regiments in the theater, and it is far from quenching his thirst for the commander-in-chief to take care of the sanitation work of various troops, so he simply came to the bottom of the pot to draw salary.

There will definitely be some people screened out, and the total number of soldiers will be reduced somewhat. However, the Northern Army has an absolute advantage over the Southern Army in terms of troops, and it has nothing to do with the overall situation if it is less than a few percent.

On the Memphis side, Sherman handled it himself, and on Chattanooga's side, the Xuan Army and the Kunbran Army were close to 80,000 people, and the military doctors were so busy with this workload that they were going crazy.

One type of military supply related to this is salt.

Salt is a kind of material that has arrived in full in zuihou, and the reason why it is not "in condition" like shoes is at the latest. But Guan Zhuofan asked for too much: the dosage of the whole year.

Salt is such a thing. It is an absolute strategic material in any country and in any era. Even with the industrial capacity of the northern United States, there is a limit to the amount of output, and it is really not as much as you want. So although he knew that Commander-in-Chief Guan had a big temper, he still had to ask carefully: Have you finished eating?

Commander-in-Chief Guan is honest: The extra amount of half a year is not for food.

Oh, so what is it for?

It's for bathing.

Bathe?!

Guan Zhuofan is not joking, the weather in Georgia, where the Northern Army is about to enter, is hot. Rainy days are muddy, sunny days are soil, and the woods and grasses are full of poisoning insects. These bugs can burrow through any cloth and bite people more fiercely than fleas. After scratching, the skin is prone to infection and ulceration, and it can also transmit malignant diseases. Bathing in salt water can cure this problem, and keeping the body salted can also be effective in preventing bites.

There's also something that can deal with this little bite: lard. The insects are afraid of this kind of thing, so they smear lardskin fat on their bodies, and the insects stay away.

But the weather is hot, and this thing is easy to spoil if it is stored for too long, so it is still salt.

The War Department will be skeptical: Is that really the case? Something that we Americans don't know. How do you Chinese know? Of course, I didn't dare to say this to Commander-in-Chief Guan. However, Commander-in-Chief Guan was aware of everything and answered for them in his stomach: I look at it historically.

Doubt is suspicion. No one wants to be McDowell's second, but Zuihou still managed to meet Kwan Zhuofan's request.

Commander-in-Chief Guan was rarely polite, repeatedly expressed his gratitude, and swore that if it could not be used, it would never be wasted, let alone resold it, and it would definitely be returned to the federal government, let's count it.

Hehe, let's listen to it.

The newly replenished soldiers also arrived, and Guan Zhuofan reviewed them one by one.

Of course, they are all Americans, and the Chinese workers in California are still on the way.

There were 4,800 people and six regiments assigned to the Xuan army.

At that time, the establishment of the regimental level of the federal army was relatively small, and the number of posts was not uniform, and the number of posts in these six regiments was considered to be too much, but it was still much less than the "regiment" of the Xuan Army, which was called "brigade" to the outside world.

The first are two reinstated veteran regiments.

It's great. The people in the War Department and the War Department knew that Commander-in-Chief Guan did not like to ask for new soldiers, so they hit the idea on the veterans who had already retired. The soldiers of both regiments were veterans with extensive combat experience, and they had just been re-recruited for service shortly after they had been discharged from military service - not by force, but by choice. During the war, it was difficult to find work, and the salary of a soldier was higher, and many veterans who had been discharged from military service were willing to re-enlist. Therefore, the combat effectiveness of these two regiments is the most guaranteed.

The only condition was that they would be given two weeks off after the Battle of Atlanta.

It's nothing. After the Battle of Atlanta, it was supposed to take a little rest and recuperate, not to mention, the Chinese recruits recruited from California must have arrived at that time.

Next are the two recruit regiments.

Guan Zhuofan is not very interested in recruits, but he can't help it, and he pays attention to tying when he buys things. In addition, there is haode in it, and he also wants to turn it back to China, so he also proofreads it himself.

The two regiments of zuihou are more interesting: two black regiments.

Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, the federal government began recruiting free blacks. The Declaration was promulgated

After that, blacks, including a large number of southern fugitive slaves, joined the army, and by this time there were quite a lot of blacks serving in the northern army, tens of thousands, and by the end of the war, the number would be close to 200,000.

There are a large number of black soldiers, but most of them are engaged in logistics, engineering and other work, and the actual participation in front-line combat is actually very limited, the reason is not that blacks are unwilling to fight, but that white officers and soldiers have deep-rooted discrimination and distrust of blacks.

Some people don't think that blacks have combat effectiveness, some people think that blacks will rebel against whites as soon as they get guns, and more people just think: how can I be with slaves! The editorial board of The New York Times simply shouted: I would rather lose the war than win this glorious and noble war through the participation of blacks in the army.

There have been cases of white soldiers of the Northern Army firing at their own black comrades, and even artillery shells flying towards the black regiments during the battle - maybe by mistake, maybe not.

But the Union Army had to accept blacks, and blacks had to go to the front because it was politically correct.

Blacks joining the army can strengthen their liliang, but that's not the most important thing. More importantly, the participation of blacks in the army, as part of the emancipation of black slaves, was the best declaration of the substantial change in the status of blacks, and it was a sharp weapon to break the morale of the enemy army, which could further promote the escape of black slaves in the south and weaken the potential of the Confederate war. It will also be a big plus internationally.

The problem was that the high-ranking generals at the front were reluctant to accept the Black Corps.

For example, Thomas, Guan Zhuofan asked him, I have two black regiments in my hands, do you want to take one of them. This man, who has always been decisive in killing, twisted and twisted, he, for a long time, and did not give a clear answer - of course, this is equivalent to a reply.

You know, Thomas was also a staunch opponent of slavery, and broke with his own slave-owning family for this.

The point is sympathy, but he, like most senior white generals, did not trust the fighting power of blacks.

Therefore, when the War Department and the War Department tried to ask the Western Theater if they could accept the Black Combat Corps, they did not hold out much hope, but they did not expect Guan Zhuofan to agree, and they wanted both of them.

Guan Zhuofan and most of his white colleagues have completely different views on the combat effectiveness of black people.

It's hard to say that blacks are necessarily combative, but blacks who join the fighting units of the Union Army are definitely combative.

Blacks do not have the obligation to serve in the military, all blacks who join the army are voluntary, and they all have the enthusiasm to participate in the war, which has been screened first, and those who can finally join the combat regiment are only a few thousand, not one in a hundred or one in ten, and the basic quality is guaranteed.

What further increased the combat effectiveness of the black soldiers was the opposite of the Confederate policy.

Fearing a mass exodus of slaves, the Southern Congress legislated that once black soldiers of the Northern Army were captured, they would not be treated as prisoners of war, but would either be executed or re-sold as slaves, and the white officers who directly commanded the black regiments would be hanged.

In this way, the black soldiers were forced to have no way out. The black regiment fought extremely fiercely, and until Zuihou was left, they would never surrender, because surrender was a dead end. Moreover, a tooth for a tooth, the black regiment never left prisoners, and all the Southern troops who fell into their hands were executed.

The most important thing is that Guan Zhuofan knows better than anyone in this era what kind of combat power a slave can burst out when he turns into a liberation fighter.

*(To be continued......)