Officers drawn from the Anqing South Battalion and the Anhui Revolutionary Army were mixed with the Gurkha Guards for training. Many of them have gone through a formal army secondary education, but the instructors are often the second knives who have returned from studying abroad. The number of students studying abroad is the largest, and the quality is often the worst.

When the Qing Dynasty recruited young children to study in the United States, ordinary families were reluctant to let their children go to the United States. Legend has it that foreigners are all born with Ru Mao drinking blood, what can you learn from there? After the rise of the Westernization Movement, Liu Buyun, Fang Boqian and others in the Beiyang Naval Division returned to China and became second-class officials such as the chief soldier, which made the eyes of those old bureaucrats who had been in the officialdom for half their lives red, and it turned out that studying abroad was much faster than being promoted to the imperial examination! Since then, studying abroad has become a common practice, because it is close to Chinese customs, and it defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War, so Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, encouraged students to study in Yueben. First, the cost is low, and second, the text is easy to understand.

The more than 20,000 people who studied abroad cannot be said to be all mixed up, but very few of them have really achieved success, either because they were encouraged by Sun Wen to prepare for revolution, or they spent time in dance halls and flower streets and willow alleys with their braids up.

After these international students returned to China, many of them were hired as instructors in military schools, and the level of teachers was not very good, and the students were naturally not much better. The officers of the Anhui Revolutionary Army learned very superficial things in the army middle school, and they were partial to theory, and they did not understand many tactical movements.

Training with the Gurkha soldiers made them improve rapidly, and many things that they had learned but did not understand were immediately understood by watching the demonstrations of the Gurkha Guards. The Gurkhas are generally nervous and not smart enough, but they are very persistent and tenacious. Each technique is practiced countless times until it is thoroughly mastered. The officers benefited a lot from being with them.

What they admired the most was the high degree of discipline of the Gurkhas, in the mountain lurking combat training, Gu Mazi saw with his own eyes a hornet stung the face of a Gurkha who was ambushed in the bushes, but he just frowned and gritted his teeth and remained motionless, and when the training was over, his face was already the size of a duck's egg, and his eyes could hardly be opened. Others who were pricked with bamboo sticks and cut their skin by gravel were not the same thing at all, never complaining about being tired, and never looking for an excuse to avoid training.

Lu Kai, Gu Mazi, He Tianshou and other officers who led the troops were completely convinced, why are they the elite of the world, it is not that they are smarter than the Chinese, in fact, the Gurkhas are notoriously dull in their brains, but they are willing to endure hardships surnamed Ge tenacity, plus the British [***] officers do have a set of training illiterate and semi-literate soldiers. The small British Isles can expand into an empire that will not fall and rule the world for 30 million people for 300 years, which is absolutely impossible without some real skills.

The old man of the rope plate didn't say much, and he picked the technical actions of the [***] officer very carefully, and the slightest mistake would be pointed out and corrected over and over again. Fortunately, the Chinese are smarter than the Gurkhas, and most of these officers have military education, and their understanding ability far exceeds that of the Gurkha recruited from the mountain tribes, often a little thorough, to the great relief of the Sopan battalion commander.

The soldiers of the Gurkha Guards also had a deeper understanding of the Chinese, and they found that these young officers had the same quiet surname as them, could bear hardships and stand hard work, and had great respect for their superiors, and did not admit defeat, and dared to continue to challenge after being defeated.

After more than two months of running-in, they all developed respect for each other, and the first batch of trained officers had quickly approached the level of the Gurkha Guards in addition to not having experienced the baptism of the Great War.

The Anhui Army Middle School was renamed the Anqing Army Non-commissioned Officer School, recruiting cadets from the new army and young students, and then after a year of training, they were enriched to the grassroots level as non-commissioned officers.

The buildings of military academies are easy to build, and there is no shortage of weapons, but instructors have become a big problem, and those instructors who have returned from studying abroad are generally not of high quality, and many of them have been in China for two years before returning to China to get troubled.

The well-trained officers of the Gurkha Guards are okay, but it is not good to let them be instructors to teach students, first of all, the language is not understood. Experienced officers only need the instructor to break down the movements and correct the deficiencies in the details of technical movements and commands, and these things can be understood by each other as long as one action and one eye contact. Teaching students who have never touched a gun or soldiers who have little literacy will not work.

Chai Dongliang has now been appointed by Yuan Shikai as the Jianghuai patrol envoy, nominally controlling Anhui and Jiangxi provinces, Li Liejun has also become his subordinate, in fact, he controls the entire Anhui, including Jiujiang in Jiangxi, such a vast area of 4,000 troops is definitely not enough, and it is imperative to expand the army, but if the military academy is not done well, it will not be able to train enough qualified middle and lower-level officers and staff officers, and no matter how many troops there are, it will have no combat effectiveness.

The existing instructors are incompetent, it is unlikely that they will be able to raise their level in a short time, and there is no other way than to re-recruit instructors.

The question is, where to recruit instructors and what kind of instructors to find?

The book friends put forward several candidates, the first is Jiang Baili, for this strategist, Chai Dongliang is also very admired, the problem is that military strategists are not necessarily good instructors, because he felt the impetuousness of the school's academic style, he shot himself in front of more than 2,000 students. Such a surname is indeed not suitable for being an instructor. In addition, he has just taken office as the president of Baoding Army University, and he is not something that can be invited casually.

If you can't do it in China, you can invite foreign instructors, and the book friends have a soft spot for German instructors, and they have suggested hiring instructors in Germany.

The quality of the German Army is undoubtedly the best in the world, but this is based on the high quality of education in Germany. When Prussia was just emerging and young Germany was not yet fully united, Bismarck suggested that Kaiser Wilhelm I introduce universal compulsory education in Prussia when the domestic economy was on the verge of collapse.

Ten years after the implementation of compulsory education, the Franco-Prussian War broke out, the results of which shocked the world, France, the first power in Europe, was defeated by Prussia, Paris was captured, Alsace and Lorraine were ceded, and France paid an indemnity of 5 billion gold francs.

The squadron is usually composed of illiterate and semi-literate people, and many of them are wandering ruffians and "battalion strings" between various military camps, and no matter how high the level of German instructors is, such a quality can make their heads as big as a fight.

A good man is not a soldier, a good iron is not a nail, who will be a soldier if a child of a good family is a soldier?

Suddenly, Chai Dongliang's wit moved, remembering a British mercenary composed of Chinese that the commander of the Gurkha battalion, Suopan, had mentioned to him.

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Located at the mouth of the east coast of Scotland, Edinburgh is ideally located in the heart of the Southern Lowlands and the capital of Scotland, full of Scottish charm.

Edinburgh Castle and Palace of Holyroodhouse were both important royal residences in Scotland at either end of the Royal Mile, making the Royal Mile an important road in medieval Edinburgh. Centered on the Royal Mile, the old Attenborough neighborhood is formed.

It's early May, when Edinburgh is at its most beautiful, with the streets lined with soldiers in traditional tartan skirts playing the most Scottish bagpipes. In front of the window of a two-story building facing the street, a middle-aged white man of forty years old rubbed his eyes and stood at the window greedily breathing a few breaths of fresh air after the rain.

The pain in his head distracted him, and after looking at the scenery outside for a while, he sat down and smoked a cigar and continued to write something in his notebook. A chubby blonde woman walked into the room and said softly, "Dear Bruce, you need to rest more, writing for a long time will be bad for your body." ”

The man had chestnut curly hair and slightly dark skin, making him look less like a Scotsman and more like a Latin from southern Europe.

Bruce smiled: "I'm fine, the deadline agreed with the bookseller is approaching, and if we can't finish it smoothly, we will lose a lot of money." ”

The blonde woman smiled and said, "Honey, you didn't write this book for money, did you?" Was it stimulated by Barnes? ”

Bruce picked up a cigar and said hatefully, "I trained those lovely kids with him, but this damn guy actually said in the book that he was the only one!" Damn it, I'm going to have to write a book to expose his big words! ”

The blonde woman stroked his cheek and said, "But dear Bruce, you have been injured in the head and liver, and you can't overexert yourself. ”

Bruce's thoughts were taken back to twelve years earlier, when he was a British major in Weihaiwei, and together with another major, Barnes, he was responsible for training 1,200 Chinese mercenaries recruited from the area. These men were customarily named the "First Chinese Army", while the local Chinese referred to them as the "Huayong Battalion".

In that crazy summer, the Qing army and the Boxers besieged the embassies and churches of all countries in Yanjing, and Bruce was ordered to lead the first batch of 192 Chinese mercenaries to Yanjing to relieve the siege. On the outskirts of Tianjin, Bruce saw the firepower of the Qing army, which was armed with German Mauser guns and Krupp cannons, and rained down on them. Fortunately, the soldiers of the Qing army had extremely bad marksmanship, and the artillery could not be fired accurately, otherwise the coalition troops would have been stoned to death with shells.

It was during this battle that Bruce was wounded in the head and liver by shrapnel from a cannonball and was carried off the battlefield by soldiers. To his great annoyance, Major Barnes, who had taken over his command, was in the limelight with these valiant soldiers. At the Laolongtou Station in Tianjin, the Huayong battalion defeated the northwestern cavalry of the Qing State several times their size with bayonet white-knuckle combat, and when they attacked the Tianjin Dongjuzi Ordnance Institute, they were the first to capture the Dongjuzi. More than 20,000 new Mauser rifles and more than 100 Armstrong, Krupp, and Grussen cannons were captured, and the Eight-Nation Coalition relied on these materials to replace them with weapons of a unified standard. When attacking the city gate of Tianjin, it was the first Huayong battalion to break through the high city wall.

Almost all the battles in which the British army participated, their results were the most prominent, so the British political axe specially made a military badge for them, with the city gate of Tianjin as the emblem, in recognition of their exploits.

After the capture of Yanjing City, the Eight Nations Division occupied, the Germans and Russians occupied the area and killed rivers of blood, the soldiers annihilated, looted and did all kinds of evil, the British army was no better, those Sikh soldiers transferred from India did all kinds of evil to burn, kill, loot and annihilate ordinary people, and when they met the regular Qing army when they were fighting, they were as timid as rats. In the battle of Yangcun, the Sikh cavalry was frightened by the artillery fire of the Qing army, and hid in the sorghum field, and waited until the Qing army in front of the Qing army was defeated, they ran out of the sorghum field to grab the credit, and after being bombed by the artillery fire of the Yue army, the war horse was frightened, and the position of the Russian [***] team was broken by mistake, so that the Qing army that had been surrounded took this opportunity to escape.

Not only did the area occupied by the Huayong battalion not disturb the people in any way, but they also established a market where the Chinese could buy and sell freely, and the Huayong battalion unceremoniously disarmed the troops of other countries who dared to make trouble here. On several occasions, the Germans went to the market and took a few random melons and fruits, but they were caught by the soldiers of the Huayong battalion and were not allowed to leave without paying. So much so that the surrounding Chinese villages and towns sent people to the British army headquarters to request the dispatch of the Huayong battalion to maintain local law and order. Without the excellent performance of the Huayong Battalion and the Gurkha Regiment, the British Army would have become a joke of the Great Powers!

Because of his outstanding military achievements and strict military discipline, at the coronation ceremony of King Edward VII, twelve soldiers of the Huayong Battalion were specially selected to participate, and the king personally awarded the medal. The Times, which has a huge influence around the world, commented: "No matter what the future holds, when it comes to the active fighting spirit of the Hua Yong Battalion, they certainly have a reputation for being brave and fearless." ”

Like the Gurkha Legion, the surname is calm, decisive and resolute, and has a smart mind that the Gurkha Legion does not have, these Chinese are born warriors. The emergence of the Huayong Battalion has undermined all arguments that Chinese are not suitable to be soldiers. The Germans also trained a Huayong battalion in Qingdao, and the German prince Heinrich once personally received them, but what is surprising is that the army trained by Germany, as the first power in Europe, did not show any commendable results on the battlefield except for leaving a number, which made the British laugh off their teeth.

It was undoubtedly a great pride for Major Bruce to train such an elite that shocked China and foreign countries, but what he never expected was that Major Barnes wrote the book "Serving in the Huayong Battalion - Combat Records of China's First Army in North China", and took all the credit on his head, as if this army was trained by him alone.

How could this not make Major Bruce angry, so he wrote a memoir despite the fact that his injured head could not think for a long time.

The blonde woman smiled and said, "Bruce, I'll bake you some of your favorite cookies." ”

An Indian servant came up and said in stammering English, "Sir, you have been visited by a man who claims to be from London. ”

Bruce said hatefully, "What does this damn guy want to do? ”

(To be continued)