The pine and cypress, surrounded by the gray memorial monument, the rectangular monument made of granite is angular, thick and solemn, the thousands of soldiers of the Yuezhou battalion are silent, only Wang Kefan's voice echoes in the field.

"When the Gongyi battalion was just formed, your Tan Shuai only had about 200 people under one outpost, the first battle of the Songjiang water bandits, the second battle of Hao Shaoqi, the third battle of Boerhui, the transfer to Jiangxi, Tingzhou rescue, rescue Ganzhou, so that after one battle was fought, there was the Chu army and the Yuezhou battalion behind...... Who has participated in Tingzhou Rescue? Raise your hand, please! ”

In the Yuezhou camp queue, more than 200 people raised their arms.

"Put it down...... I remember that when we moved to Jiangxi, there were more than 800 people in the Yuezhou battalion, but now there are only more than 200 people standing here, and 600 people have been separated from us. Wang Kefan pointed to the monument behind him, and suddenly raised his voice and said: "What does the severed head mean today, it is difficult to start a business!" The Yuezhou battalion's record of winning a hundred battles was won by the blood and sacrifice of thousands of soldiers. Over the past few years, the Yuezhou battalion has lost a total of 1,765 people and more than 2,000 people have been disabled due to injuries. ”

Wang Kefan never shy away from the defeats and casualties that the Chu army had fought. Half of the casualties of the Yuezhou battalion in recent years came from the Battle of Nanchang, and there was not much difference between such a tragic victory and a defeated battle, not to mention the tens of thousands of taels of pension silver, there were more than 2,000 dead and disabled veterans alone, and this loss was really too great.

The main reason for such a large number of casualties was that the enemy advanced lightly and neglected to take precautions, and was successfully attacked by the Eight Banners cavalry of Tunbul. divided and surrounded the Yuezhou battalion, and in the end could only defend the Ganjiang camp and fight hard with the Qing army. As a front-line commander. Tan Xiao, Dong Qiaoxuan, Tan Chang and Lin Yonggang are all directly responsible.

The field became more and more silent, the air seemed to be frozen, most of the soldiers looked sad, Tan Chang and a few others were very nervous, and their hearts were pounding and pounding.

"The earliest Gongyi battalion was not considered a strong army, and every time it fought with the Tartars. Everyone went to the battlefield with the determination to die, and they fought hard to win the battle again and again...... At that time, it was dangerous and hard, and he was squeezed by He Tengjiao to eat the last meal but not the next meal. When he hit Bolhui, the front was dead. Behind the desperate construction of the wall to repair the fortifications, the officers and soldiers worked together, and the bags of stones and clods ran on their backs, and Tan Shuai wore his back to pieces. The fleshy bones were about to be exposed. Someone should remember what he looked like at the time. ”

Wang Kefan seemed to be immersed in the memories of the past, and calmly stated: "When I broke through from Fuzhou, Jiangxi, I walked more than 300 miles in three days and two nights, and more than 500 people fell behind. Are you tired to death? No, it's not out of breath yet. As long as you have a stutter and drink and a good rest for a while, you can relax and keep up. But we can't wait. I had to throw them somewhere, and cut off their heads after being chased by the Tartars......"

Experienced leaders do not often use future happiness to encourage their subordinates, but use past sacrifices and hardships to motivate their subordinates. The vision of the future is illusory, even if the description of a piece of light or even the sky is falling, it cannot be immediately held in the hand, but the sacrifices and hardships of the past are real, and only then can they be truly convincing. Compared with the martyrs lying under the monument, those who survived are the lucky ones, and there is no reason to slack off, no reason to complain, and no reason to violate military discipline.

All the veterans who have experienced the transfer to Jiangxi have red eyes and heavy snorts at the moment, and they have no choice but to abandon their comrades on the battlefield, leaving only deep guilt and entanglement, which cannot be resolved for many years.

"More than 500 people, all brothers who share life and death, are all comrades with the same heart and one heart (as mentioned earlier, the word comrade has been around for a long time in ancient times), why did you abandon them at that time? Because military orders cannot be violated, military discipline is the most ruthless! It's a pity, probably because they have been winning battles in the past few years, and some people's tails are cocked, and they don't know how many bowls of dry rice they can eat! I know that some of you are very unconvinced, thinking that the Yuezhou battalion won the battle and was criticized, saying that I Wang Kefan was biased and whipped fast cows, and I wanted to say that it was all fart! ”

Wang Kefan was rarely angry, his face turned pale, and he scolded loudly: "Did you really win the battle this time? Why are there almost three thousand casualties? Because your defense line is like paper paste, it will be broken by a stab by the Tartars, you want to withdraw but can't retreat, you can only stubbornly defend the Ganjiang camp, if it is not for the friendly army to rescue, you will be finished! The lessons and lessons of this battle must be profoundly summed up for me, and those who violate military orders and discipline must be investigated to the end, no matter who they are......"

Tan Xiao stood upright with a stern expression, but Tan Chang's face suddenly turned white.

Tan Chang has a share in the leak, and what is even worse is that he still has corruption, although the amount is not large, it only embezzled two food expenses from the surplus of the army, a total of more than 300 taels of silver, which is not a matter at all in other officials' and soldiers, but it is very strict in the Chu army.

"Damn, I don't know who bites Lao Tzu's eggs! If you find this guy, you must have killed him alive...... "Tan Chang is Tan Xiao's brother, he has been loved by him since he was a child, and he served as a battalion officer in a small battalion in the Yuezhou camp, and he is the descendant of Tan Xiao's lineage. Usually he is relatively tight on himself, but the food expenses of the army balance are not reflected in the account books, and he thinks that he has deducted it unknowingly, but he didn't expect to be stabbed in the logistics department.

He was distracted for a while, so he didn't pay attention to what Wang Kefan was talking about, and faintly heard the phrase "Establish a Soldiers' Comrades Association", and before he could figure out what it meant, Wang Kefan ended his lecture.

After the soldiers of the Yuezhou battalion were disbanded and returned to the battalion, Wang Kefan, Tan Xiao, Zhou Guodong, Teng Shuanglin, Wang Ding and other senior generals of the Chu army walked towards the river together.

"May I ask the military gate, what does this 'Comrade Soldier Association' do?" Zhou Guodong asked, and the others also looked at Wang Kefan together. At the end of the lecture just now, Wang Kefan suddenly announced the establishment of a comrade soldiers' association, and everyone had not heard a single word in advance, and they felt confused.

"The Comrades Soldiers' Association was established to supervise officers at all levels, including myself." Wang Kefan explained: "The members of the Soldiers' Comrades' Association must be soldiers and low-ranking officers, mainly responsible for maintaining the military discipline of the Chu Army, supervising the money and grain economy in the army, and if it is operating well, it can also unify the thinking of the whole army through the Guò Soldiers' Comrades' Association, and twist all battalions and departments into a single rope." The Chu army has reached the size of 100,000 people, and the source is relatively complex, and there is a unified organization of soldiers, which is easy to manage......"

The Soldiers' Comrades Association of the Chu Army, which was born out of the soldiers' committee in the early days of the Red Army, has obvious differences. The Tongguò Soldiers' Comrades' Association, mobilizing ordinary soldiers at the grassroots level to supervise officers and participate in the maintenance of military discipline is only the initial goal on the table.

The current Chu army is not fundamentally different from other Ming official armies, they are all recruit-based armies that serve as soldiers and eat food and pay their lives.

In the short term, Wang Kefan can guarantee the control of the old eighth battalion of the Chu army, but sooner or later in the future, Tan Xiao and other generals will be full-fledged, and Wang Kefan's control will gradually weaken.

The organizational structure of the feudal army determines the height of his growth, and when the Chu army is now, it is not far from the transparent ceiling above his head...... The Yuezhou battalion was surrounded by the Qing army in the Battle of Nanchang, and more than half of the casualties still did not collapse, on the one hand, because of tenacious bravery, but the more important reason was that they were afraid of the pursuit of the Qing cavalry, and did not dare to escape from the camp, so they could only fight to the end.

The reason why the Eight Banners are terrifying is because they have just turned from the fishing and hunting nation, and they still have a fierce beast nature, and their will to fight is much more tenacious than that of the Ming army...... Under normal circumstances, the elite troops in the Ming army will collapse if they suffer more than two percent casualties, and those who can still continue to fight if they are more than thirty percent are terrific and strong. Although the Chu army is stronger than them, the soldiers in the army are also peasants, and they all have a cowardly and docile side in their nature.

Wang Kefan hoped that through the "Soldiers' Comrades Association," the soldiers of the various battalions of the Chu army would be gradually included in it, the ideological and political work would be strengthened, the organizational structure of the Chu army would be changed, and the army would gradually transform into a modern army.

It is difficult to achieve the goal of surpassing the times too much, and it is enough to reach the level of the peak of the Beiyang Army, and the Chu Army must at least be an organic whole, and the commanders at all levels can carry out normal transfers, command and dispatch will be smoother, and partial setbacks will not cause the collapse of the whole line...... Reaching such a level, it is possible to use more complex tactics and easily defeat the so-called Eight Banners.

However, in order to prevent confusion, this process must not be rushed, and comrades soldiers are not allowed to interfere with the normal leadership of officers, especially military command. In a sense, the Soldiers' Comrades Association is a weakened party branch and an important tool for Wang Kefan to manage the Chu army.

The purpose of the establishment of the Soldiers' Comrades Association cannot be explained too thoroughly to Tan Xiao and others at once, but it cannot be completely concealed from them, and their understanding and support must be obtained, otherwise after the work is rolled out, it will encounter strong resistance.

……

It's already 3,000 words, so I'll go into two more words to explain the origin of the word "comrade". During the Spring and Autumn Period, Zuo Qiu Ming's explanation of comrades was: "If you are united with virtue, you will be concentric, and if you are united with one heart, you will be comrade." It is also said in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, "The friends you make will also be comrades." ”

I thought about the name of the Soldiers' Comrades' Association for two whole days, and began to prepare for the gourd's drawing, also called the Soldiers' Committee, and later wanted to call it the Soldiers' Federation, and finally I felt that the word "comrade" was more appropriate. (To be continued......)