Chapter 42 Reorganization of the Army

The students in the audience listened to it one by one, and the theories that were vague and slightly perceptible in the past were now lit up by the "principal" in front of them.

How do they know that what Chen Zeyu is talking about now has been deleted. Chen Zeyu wanted to talk to others about the idea of combining all branches of the armed forces in combat, but in this era, limited by the types and performance of combat weapons, the army's combat methods mainly rely on artillery and logistics, and there is nothing new in the rest.

Only Chen Zeyu himself knows that the future trend of warfare will be as the artillery firepower becomes more and more fierce and the firepower of infantry units becomes stronger, and the positional line operations that have always been used by various countries will gradually be replaced by in-depth skirmishers.

In terms of the speed at which automatic burst weapons appear in the world now, Seris is in a unique position.

While the two armies of other countries were still arguing over who would have equipped the Maxim heavy machine gun earlier, the army of the Republic had begun to gradually popularize the machine gun to the smallest combat unit at each squad and platoon level.

"Mr. Principal, according to your operational theory, the infantry at the forefront will rely heavily on the cover of the rear artillery, especially the artillery fire in depth and cover tactics you mentioned, which will obviously test the soldiers' trust in their own artillery......"

In the classroom, as Chen Zeyu spoke heartily, several Germans who were originally crowded in the classroom to listen to his lecture also participated.

"Yes, soldiers must trust them and put their lives in the hands of their comrades. I think my soldiers can do that! ”

Chen Zeyu still cared for these three "older students" with special identities, and focused on a few issues that interested them.

After the course ended, Chen Zeyu chatted with three former German military officers.

He was still very interested in the experience of several of them in the Battle of Sedang, and the students around him also listened to them with relish. Everyone became familiar with and trusted each other in the original restraint and restraint......

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By the end of 1893, Chen Zeyu had carried out the first major reorganization of the army in the history of the Republic after the army had recently replenished a large number of graduates from the military academy.

Since the formation of the Chinese League 10 years ago, excluding militia and reservists, the number of regular armed forces in the army in the Republic of Seris has expanded to a full 200,000.

Today, this army unit has been completely reborn from a quasi-guerrilla force.

Many of the senior officers who made up the upper echelons of the army were teenagers who had studied at German military academies in the early days. Now, after several years of growth, they have all been entrusted with important tasks by Chen Zeyu.

In addition to the earliest Yang Yu who was hired by Chen Zeyu to the Ministry of National Defense, Chen Zeyu still has some impressions of the first few who graduated from the German Military Academy with him.

Among them, the most outstanding qualities are Liu Chao, Yang Junyao, Zhang Xudong, Fan Wenfang, Ma Wenyu, and He Liang, some of whom are from the Berlin Army Academy in Germany, and some are from the Munich Military Academy.

Among them, the best Fan Wenfang and He Liang, Chen Zeyu are ready to let them serve as military academy instructors for a long time, and the others have now become the first batch of officers above the division level in the Republic.

In addition to the fact that all officers at and above the battalion level have been replaced by non-commissioned officers and students studying in Germany and graduates of local military academies, a large number of veterans in the remaining armed forces who originally had outstanding combat qualities have also entered military academies one after another to complete at least half a year of military crash course study.

A Liang, the boss of the Li family who had been accompanying Chen Zeyu, was one of them, and with his excellent skills and fluent foreign language, Li Xiaoliang became the first batch of official graduates of this military academy, and now he has become a glorious army officer of the Republic.

In addition to training officers through various means, the Republic has not relaxed its requirements for grassroots soldiers in the army.

In the various military subdivisions of the republic, training methods that can even be called brutal to various degrees have been popularized by the War Department.

Under Chen Zeyu's instructions, the troops began to frantically consume ammunition on the training ground, and cultivated the marksmanship of the grassroots soldiers at any cost.

In addition, each soldier is required to be familiar with his or her equipment, and to be able to repair and disassemble at least any of the everyday firearms.

Platoon commanders at and above the deputy class level must also regularly go to military schools to conduct training in radio communication technology, general mapping and surveying, trench and fortress construction, and other corresponding combat techniques.

In addition to the improvement in the quality of officers and men, the army's original equipment has also been upgraded by leaps and bounds.

Not only have the original Type 1888 rifles used by grassroots infantry been replaced with more advanced Ben-1890 rifles, but Ben-LM-1 machine guns and 50mm mortars have even been directly equipped to the most basic squad combat units.

With regard to the formation of large-unit combat groups in the army, Chen Zeyu temporarily abandoned the corps and regimental levels and directly adopted the largest combat unit at the division level.

In the process of reorganizing the national army units of the Ministry of National Defense, the original 200,000 regular troops were divided into eight army integrated divisions.

Each integrated division is composed of 23,000 people (3 brigades 7,000 * 3 + 1,000 teaching guard battalions + 800 artillery regiments directly under the command + 200 logistics communication surveyors), from top to bottom, in order of division-brigade-battalion-company-platoon-squad.

The squad is composed of 10 soldiers; The platoon level is 10 * 5 = 50 people; The company level is 50 * 5 = 250, and a cooking class of 10 people = 260 people; The battalion level is 260 * 3 = 780 plus 12 people in a battalion special service squad and 8 people in a communication surveying and mapping squad = 800 people; The brigade level is 800 * 8 = 6400 and there are 250 people in a special service company, 50 personnel in the staff headquarters and communication mapping platoon, plus 300 people in the artillery battalion directly under the command = 7000 people.

The integrated division is composed of three brigades, plus a 1,000-man teaching guard battalion for the future expansion of the officer body, an 800-man artillery regiment directly under the command, and 200 logistical, communications, surveying, mapping, and staff personnel, for a total strength of 23,000 personnel.

If such a large division-level establishment is known to the outside world, it will certainly shock the jaws of military researchers in various countries.

In his previous life, when Chen Zeyu studied the history of the eight-year war, he always had many doubts, because in the frontal battlefield in China at that time, there were many occurrences such as several brigade-level combat units of the Nationalist Army being defeated by a Japanese wing, and a Japanese division and regiment defeating several armies of the Kuomintang head-on. It was not easy to break up a brigade of the Japanese army, and then it was discovered that the Kuomintang had actually used several group armies.

So much so that at that time, whether in the occupied area or in the rear of the national army, the morale of the Chinese military and civilians was greatly hit, and the equipment of the Japanese army at that time was indeed not comparable to the Kuomintang army, so that to a certain extent, the myth of the invincibility of the Japanese army was created.

Later, after careful research, Chen Zeyu discovered the greasy in it.

The earlier Japanese military was originally based on Prussia, which had just undergone the Meiji Restoration, at a time when Prussia was unifying the German Confederation in Europe. Perhaps it was the envy of the military power of the Prussians, which opened the basic national policy of Japanese economics and military science of Britain and military science of Germany.

In the early days, the Japanese army was similar to Prussia, and the army adopted a three-three system, with no more than 8,000 troops in one division.

At first, due to lack of financial resources, Japan was unable to equip each of its divisions with a sufficient number of independent artillery establishments like Germany, and after establishing a small number of divisions, Japan once reduced the number of other divisions to less than 7,000 men.

Later, in order to meet the needs of warfare, the armies of various European countries expanded the number of divisions, gradually increasing the number of soldiers in a division to about 16,000 to 18,000.

Unlike other countries, the Japanese side, after also expanding the number of grassroots units, has pioneered a great expansion of the number of divisions and regiments, increasing the number of divisions to six wings on the basis of the three brigades under the jurisdiction of one division and regiment in the past.

In this way, with a wing (brigade) of 6,000 people, the number of soldiers in a division of the Japanese army reached nearly 40,000, which was equivalent to 3 to 5 divisions of the Kuomintang army at that time. The relative Japanese army is equivalent to the military strength of the entire theater of the national army, so it is no wonder that the Japanese army seems to be more resistant to beating under the same establishment.

Although the newly-born republic did not need to learn from the Japanese method, it still "appropriately" expanded its divisional establishment in accordance with Chen Zeyu's intentions.

Thinking of the fact that an infantry division in other European countries is only about 6,000 to 8,000 people, He Liang, who has just become the new commander of the integrated division, Liu Chao and other non-commissioned officers and students studying in Germany are all smiling.