Song Zhewu's plan for the expansion of the Fourth Route Army was as follows: All division-level units of the Fourth Route Army were upgraded to corps, and all units at all levels below were to be upgraded in this way, except for the squads, and all the other units at all levels were postponed and upgraded.

The Fourth Route Army, which was originally a super-large division, was expanded into a three-division army. In order to maintain a certain degree of superiority in firepower, the artillery units of all divisions and divisions were directly assigned to units directly under the corps, and the artillery battalions of 1,000 regiments were concentrated in the division for unified command. Due to the expansion, the artillery units of the divisions are generally insufficient, and there are many problems in purchasing artillery now, so they have to put it on the first place. After the expansion, the number of personnel in each division dropped significantly, and each division had just over 10,000 people.

In this way, according to the sequence of the Jin Sui Army, Xu Fang and Zhao Fengwu were formally organized into the 17th and 18th armies, and the garrison corps concurrently served by Li Wentian was renamed the 19th Army.

The cavalry was organized into two armies, Wei Guanghui as the commander of the Outer Mongolian garrison, and Han Guang as the commander of the other army; The teaching corps was upgraded to the military level, and the external name remained unchanged; The garrison brigade of the Air Force Corps was upgraded to a garrison division; The 1st and 2nd Guard Brigades directly under the original headquarters were combined into the Guard Division, with Ye Changgui as the commander, and the Special Brigade was incorporated into the Guard Division, which was also the only unit of the Fourth Route Army that did not make a big move; The Mountain Brigade was upgraded to a Mountain Division. After the reorganization, Song Zhewu had nine infantry corps, two cavalry corps, three divisions and one teaching corps.

With a major war imminent, such an expansion and readjustment of the troops will inevitably have an impact on the combat effectiveness of the troops, but there is no way to do it. Song Zhewu meant to take advantage of this anti-Chiang expansion to carry out the expansion, although the number of troops could not be increased for a while, but he must first "grab" the number of the unit and put up a shelf. In this way, even after the end of the Central Plains War, Chiang Kai-shek would not be embarrassed to deny his troop structure, otherwise if he wanted to increase the number of troops in the future, Chiang Kai-shek would probably not be very happy, and he would even explicitly oppose it. And it can also be used as an excuse to buy time for his troops to enter the war late.

With regard to the change in the establishment of troops, Zhang Yafei first asked: 'Changing the establishment of the troops in this way before the war will seriously affect the combat effectiveness of the troops, and can his first division not be reorganized for the time being?' ’

When Song Zhewu had just discussed the issue of expansion with Xiao Guodong, Tao Rong, Li Wentian, and Wang Xu, these people were unanimously opposed to Zhang Yafei's opinion, for the same reason as Zhang Yafei, that is, they were afraid of affecting the combat effectiveness of the troops.

Song Zhewu knew that not only Zhang Yafei, but also other people would have the same idea, so he repeated the words of persuading several chiefs of staff.

After listening to Song Zhewu's explanation, everyone also felt that this could only be done now, after all, Song Zhewu focused on the things in a few years, not just the present, after the Central Plains War, it was difficult to imagine that Chairman Jiang, who was bent on weakening the military power of local forces, would be extrajudicial and graciously allowed the Fourth Route Army to expand its army on a large scale. At this time, since Yan Xishan sent this pillow, it was not necessary, although it was not very suitable, but after all, it was very needed by the Fourth Route Army.

Song Zhewu looked at everyone and said solemnly: "You all already know the purpose and significance of our occupation of Shanxi, and the plan for the occupation of Shanxi has been formulated by Chief of Staff Xiao and Chief of Staff Tao, Chief of Staff Li, Chief of Staff Wang and the Operations Department a long time ago, and after continuous improvement and improvement, it has now been basically completed. ”

"The so-called basic completion is because any plan needs to be constantly adjusted over time and changes in circumstances, and any immutable plan is rigid and rigid, nor will it be a successful perfect plan, in other words, any plan needs to be continuously improved when formulated, and it needs to be constantly adjusted according to the actual situation."

"You should all know the idiom of the dove occupying the magpie's nest, I won't explain its meaning, what I want to tell you is that the code name of our plan to occupy Shanxi is the "Turtledove Plan", and now I would like to ask Chief of Staff Tao to introduce to you the specific implementation steps of the "Turtledove Plan". In addition, none of you here today should take notes, and the specific corresponding plans of each ministry will be issued separately before the implementation of the plan. ”

The "Turtledove Plan" has been planned for half a year with Tao Rong as the main body, not only has almost all the details of the steps been repeatedly deduced, but even some of the preliminary preparations for the plan have been carried out for several months, such as the long-distance running drill of the troops.

As soon as Song Zhewu's voice fell, Tao Rong took out a thick battle plan from the brown briefcase she carried, stood up and hung up a military map of Shanxi with her own hands, and explained it to everyone present......

In addition to Wei Guanghui's cavalry corps, this plan involved all the units of the Fourth Route Army, and even included the Air Force Corps, the scientific research institutions under the Fourth Route Army, the Taihang Administration, and the Xinghua Company, that is to say, almost all the personnel of the Fourth Route Army were included in this plan.

The most crucial thing about whether or not the "Turtledove Plan" can be successfully realized is the sudden surname of the plan, and in order not to show the slightest flaw before the implementation of the plan, it is necessary to find a series of reasonable reasons, and some reasonable reasons have been found so far, such as the Fourth Route Army as the general reserve, and the fact that the troops are being expanded and cannot be put into the battlefield soon, and so on.

Another key point is to have internal response, and how to resettle the internal response, otherwise it will not be possible to quickly occupy several large cities in Shanxi, such as Taiyuan, Datong, Jinzhong, Changzhi, Linfen, Yuncheng, Jincheng, etc. But if you want to arrange more internal responses without arousing the suspicion of Jin Suijun, it is very difficult.

If we want to arrange internal responses, these internal responses must have reasonable identity cover, and it is okay to place a small number of personnel in the short term, but the key is that if there are fewer people, we cannot form a powerful response force, which will not play a big role in achieving the goal of the campaign, and even because the identity of the internal response is exposed in advance, it may also destroy the entire plan. Therefore, for the dispatch of various parts of Shanxi, Xiao Guodong and Tao Rong were very careful, and they would rather not be dispatched for the time being without absolutely reasonable identity cover, and of course the results were very slow.

It is precisely because of this that up to now, except for Taiyuan, Jinzhong, Datong, and Suiyuan, the number of personnel of the Fourth Route Army in other cities is so small that it can not be called an internal response, but can only be regarded as an internal line for collecting intelligence.

Among the several cities that have already arranged internal response, Taiyuan is the best and most arranged city in internal response, this is because Xinghua's new factory site is selected in Taiyuan, and some personnel of the special brigade have been secretly inserted in the factory when the factory has just begun to relocate, and once all the factories are relocated, there will be more than 3,000 workers alone, and it is not a problem to place a few hundred people in advance, and before the plan begins, it is also possible to find a way to make surprise arrangements for the military personnel to secretly replace some of the workers.

Although the resettlement in Taiyuan was the best done in Shanxi, Song Zhewu still felt that it was not enough. This is because Taiyuan is too important, it is not only the provincial capital and the largest city of Shanxi, but also the economic and political center of Shanxi, but also Shanxi is even the city with the strongest industrial base and the most developed education in the north.

It is precisely because of the importance of Taiyuan that if you want to take it completely, you must not only have a sudden surname, but also basically control Taiyuan at the beginning of the implementation of the plan.

And Taiyuan is far away from the two starting points of the Fourth Route Army into Shanxi, more than 200 kilometers away from Jingcheng, and more than 400 kilometers away from Laiyuan, the important towns on these two roads are stationed by the Jin Sui Army, even if there is an internal response, it can be passed quickly, if you want to prevent the Jin Sui Army left behind in Taiyuan from getting the news, it is okay in a short time, and the best situation is that there is a night of time, and it will be very difficult to take a long time.

And once the Taiyuan garrison gets the news that the Fourth Route Army has forcibly entered Shanxi, it will inevitably defend Taiyuan with all its might. Although the city of Taiyuan has thick walls and a complete city defense system, the Fourth Route Army really wants to attack it, although it is not a problem to take it down, but in this way, it is not only a matter of time, but also Taiyuan will be broken, and even because it will inevitably hurt civilians, it will also have an adverse impact on the future governance of Taiyuan and Shanxi, which is very different from Song Zhewu's idea of wanting a complete Taiyuan. Therefore, the question of how to strengthen Taiyuan's internal strength has become the most critical issue at present.

Because the "Turtledove Plan" is about to be implemented, many preliminary preparations have entered the implementation stage, and these senior generals must be allowed to understand the details of the plan in detail, so Tao Rong explained very carefully and took more than an hour to finish.

After Tao Rong sat down, Song Zhewu paused for a while, and after letting everyone think carefully about the plan, Song Zhewu took a puff of cigarette, frowned slightly and said: "Chief of Staff Tao has already introduced the "Turtledove Plan" to everyone, Shanxi is about 290 kilometers wide from east to west, about 550 kilometers long from north to south, and the total area of the province is 156,300 square kilometers. ”

Then, Song Zhewu stood up, came to the map of Shanxi, looked at Taiyuan and said resolutely: "But no matter how difficult it is, we must achieve it, because Shanxi is the future and hope of our Fourth Route Army." The key to whether we can occupy Shanxi and grasp Shanxi is whether we can quickly seize a complete Taiyuan, which must belong to us. ”

"Therefore, our strength in Taiyuan must be greatly strengthened. Although we have already installed a large number of personnel in Taiyuan in the early stage, including many special brigade personnel among the workers in the new factory in Taiyuan, these forces are far from enough, and our strength in Taiyuan needs to be strengthened......"

(To be continued)