Missouri Riverside, Pacific Town. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoThe small town has been in ruins after more than ten days of repeated battles. Most of the original houses were made of wood, most of which were burned down during the fighting, and the few houses that survived were demolished by the American sappers who arrived later, and the timber used to build the houses became the sleepers for the railroad. In the rumbling artillery fire in the distance, the entire town was surrounded by a tense and busy atmosphere. Wagons brought rails and various building materials to the sappers who were working. Shirtless American soldiers were busy unloading. The railroad has been built to Pacific Town, where it is connected to the town's railway station - one of the few buildings in Pacific Town that has not been destroyed. Now it is being urgently expanded, and the engineering department of the US military is preparing to build more than a dozen waiting tracks and unloading platforms, as well as a large number of warehouses. According to the plan, this will be the logistics transfer center of the US Southern Route Army and the location of the Missouri General Station.

A locomotive rumbled into the station with a dozen flatbed cars, dropped the flatbed trucks, hung up another wagon, and turned around and drove away. Around the dropped flatbed truck, a large group of people and horses suddenly rushed to unload. A few athletic American GIs jumped on the flatbed truck first. The carts were covered with tarpaulin, and they looked huge, and a cart was loaded with a piece of goods, which was firmly tied to the cart with ropes. The car was accompanied by a number of U.S. troops in white sailor uniforms and skilled workers in overalls. They were standing right next to the mysterious cargo, and the train had just stopped. They immediately set out to untie the ropes, tore off the tarpaulin, and immediately showed the object covered under the tarpaulin to everyone's eyes.

"Boat! It's a ship! ”

"Oh God. It's the ship on the train! ”

"Now the logistical problem has been solved!"

"This must be a victory......

"God bless America!"

The station erupted in loud cheers, and the bottleneck of the westward expansion finally ceased to exist! Originally thought that the temporary railroad would be laid down to Kansas City, but their "genius commander" actually came up with the idea of using a train to tow the ship from the road to Pacific Town - bypassing the St. Louis River, which was firmly controlled by the Chinese army!

Castis. Admiral Lee stood on the balcony of the third floor of the railway station building, watching a train with parts of a ship approaching the station. The idea was the Chief Adviser to the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department and the owner of the General Machines Company, Thomas Brown. Mr. Edison's idea is really genius -- Mr. Edison, the great inventor and great capitalist in history, and Mr. Edison, who is still a great inventor and great capitalist, is a great inventor and a great capitalist in history. Admiral Lee stood side by side. Seeing that the "assembled ship" designed and produced by his company was transported by train, Thomas. Edison couldn't help but smile all over his face. With his right hand, he clenched his fist and knocked his left hand hard, "Admiral, our assembled iron ship has been transported!" Give me a month and my workers will be able to assemble 1,000 200dwt barges and 100 steam tugboats. ”

Thomas. Edison's "deadweight tonnage" and displacement are not the same concept. Rather, it refers to the weight of the cargo that these river barges can carry. 1,000 barges of 200 tons dwt can carry a full 200,000 tons of cargo at a time! If it is replaced by a horse-drawn carriage, it will be at least 200,000 units! The daily consumption of mules and horses to tow 200,000 wagons is astronomical, and it is not comparable to the coal consumed by tugboats. So with these 1,000 laden barges, the logistics of millions of U.S. troops fighting around Kansas City are no longer a problem.

"A month is too long, we don't have that much time!" Castis. Admiral Li waved his hand, "You will be given three weeks at most, and you will need 20 tugboats and 200 barges in two weeks." ”

"Okay. We must complete the task, even if we don't sleep. "Thomas. Edison thought about it for a moment, then nodded in agreement. Now is the war that will determine the living space of the yellow and white races. Everyone should do their best - the workers also understand this reason, if they can't pay some overtime, even if they don't sleep, they have to assemble the ship. If you finish it one day earlier, you can let the army move west one day earlier, and I heard that the northern front is already fighting very fiercely, so let the army on the southern front go up one day earlier. Just one more chance of winning!

……

Omaha City, Nebraska.

It's pretty much the same scene as Pacific Town. It's also being staged here. Omaha City was an important logistics hub during the last Battle of the Missouri-Kansas City, and the Conseil Bluffs salient, which had made countless Americans and British hate, lie across the Missouri River. After the end of the battle, Donghua's sappers also erected a railroad pontoon bridge on the Missouri River, and the railroad was paved all the way to Des Moines, a few hundred miles away (in fact, there was not much work, because Des Moines already had a direct railroad to Cantel Bluffs, and the sappers only rebuilt and repaired it).

After the Battle of Missouri and Kansas City, Omaha City and Conseil Bluffs on the other side of the river were still the focus of the Chinese army's defense, and an entire army group was stationed there for a long time, and the warehouses, stations, and pontoon bridges over the Missouri River in Omaha City were constantly expanded, ready to play a role again in the next Armageddon. Now, it's time for them to come alive again!

Ammunition, food, canned food, military dry food, military uniforms, raincoats, gun parts, gun oil, fodder, ...... All sorts of unexpected materials were unloaded from the train cars like flowing water. It was transported into the warehouse by the logistics officer who was already red-eyed. Outside the warehouse, there were already crowds of mules, horses and trucks waiting to distribute the supplies. Hundreds of thousands of officers and soldiers fighting on the front line are consuming a lot of supplies to maintain their offensive. There were also large groups of heavily armed officers and soldiers, who also took the train from the south around Kansas City, a steady stream.

The movement of millions of troops across hundreds of kilometers certainly cannot be driven on foot alone. The great war that took place in North America was almost always carried out along the railroads and rivers, and it was precisely because of the developed railways and water transportation in central North America that the scale of the war became so huge! Of course, the industrial machinery of the Ming Dynasty, Donghua, the British-American Empire, the United Kingdom, and Mexico was also a necessary factor in this war, which was almost the first world war in history, and while it consumed a lot of the lives of young people, it was also consuming materials and money like flowing water!

The world before the Second Industrial Revolution would have been unable to sustain millions of people in a war at such a level of ammunition and material consumption. From a certain point of view, the "golden decade" before the outbreak of war became a period of preparation for world war!

Han Si's headquarters was located in an abandoned luxury residence not far from the Omaha train station, and a huge military map hung in the original hall, which was two people high. On the map, the red and blue arrow flags representing the tactical flags of each regiment and above were fiercely confronted around Des Moines. On the map, you can almost smell the fierce battle.

"Han Shuai, now the entire Des Moines battlefield can be described in one sentence, that is, the repeated encirclement battle of the inner and outer three layers. In the innermost part was our Twelfth Army, which was defending the city of Des Moines, and the perimeter had been completely abandoned, and the whole army retreated to the core defensive ring on both sides of the Des Moines River to hold on, where there were strong buildings relying on the city of Des Moines and carefully built fortifications on the Des Moines River, which could definitely be called easy to defend and difficult to attack.

On the periphery of the U.S. encirclement, our troops tried to build a larger encirclement network, with the First Army occupying Denison, the Second Army occupying Boone on the upper Des Moins River, and the Third Army occupying the area around Fort Dodge upstream of Boone. In addition, the Fifth and Sixth Armies advanced to Kreston southwest of Des Moines and Albia southeast of Des Moines, respectively. In this way, the five armies of our Northern Army launched a semi-encirclement of the enemy around Des Moines with a north-south flank attack. ”

The one who was briefing Han Si on the situation of the former enemy was Marshal Chen Yucheng of the Donghua Kingdom, who was Han Si's deputy and the deputy commander-in-chief of the Northern Route Army. Before Han Si arrived, the counterattack of the entire Northern Route Army was launched under his command. However, he had no opinion on Zhu Juan's letting Han Si lead the entire Northern Route Army. He had already made himself a marshal and a duke here in Jujuan, and he was at the end of his life, and he went one step further...... It's simply impossible! Moreover, under the various group armies in the Northern Route Army, there were troops from the Ming Dynasty, Japan or Korea, and many group army commanders were army generals from the Ming Dynasty or Japan. It was difficult for Chen Yucheng to command them, so he still had to let Han Si, the great god, come and control them.

"But the enemy has countered our attempts at encirclement," Chen continued, pointing to the Ottamwa area, about 140 kilometers southwest of Des Moines (about 37 kilometers west of Albia), "and a large number of American troops from the Mississippi River valley in the lower Des Moines River have been deployed in Ottamwa, seemingly intending to outflank or attack the Sixth Army in Albia." In addition, large U.S. forces were found in Ames, north of Des Moines, and Webster City, east of Fort Dodge. It is conservatively estimated that in a radius of 200 kilometers with Des Moines as the core, the army assembled by both sides may have exceeded 1.5 million, and it will soon reach 2 million! (To be continued)