Xiao Zhenlei smiled and poured a glass of red wine for everyone, and everyone toasted together as a celebration, and everyone's faces showed excited smiles. △¢ Novel,

After that, Xiao Zhenlei said to Chen Huizu: "Brother Guangpu, I will leave you three million taels as a backup, and I will take the rest with me, and in ten days, I will have to leave for Europe!" ”

Everyone fell silent for a moment, and Song Shijie asked, "Sir, do you have to go to Europe?" If you don't preside over the overall situation here, we don't have a bottom in our hearts! ”

Xiao Zhenlei smiled: "No way, I can't go if I don't go, the army is a money-burning machine, the company's research institutions are also money-burning machines, our organization needs a lot of funds for development, members need to survive, need to support their families, for our career, we must make more money, we need more advanced technology, this to Europe, I am to make foreigners' money, at most half a year I will come back!" Don't be careful, I'll arrange a qiē before I leave, you just need to follow my deployment, and we can contact you at any time, I will send you a telegram every other day, if you have anything to decide, you can send me a telegram immediately, and I will tell you as soon as possible how to deal with it! In addition, after I leave, the development of our organization should not be too obvious, and the development of members must always be carried out in secret, and we must not let the Qing court find any clues."

Everyone saw that Xiao Zhenlei already had a plan and made arrangements for follow-up work, so they all gave up dissuasion.

On January 1, 1910, Xiao Zhenlei drove back to the Nanqiao barracks, and after more than a month of intense construction, the construction of the barracks has entered the final stage. As soon as the rooms in the barracks were painted, Xiao Zhenlei ordered the soldiers to move out of the town hall and the ancestral halls of the major families in the town. Moved into the barracks, because it had just been painted. The rooms in the barracks were not yet plastered with lime, so care had to be taken not to stain the walls for a long time after the stationing.

According to the internal establishment of the 46th standard, there are a total of 3,600 people in the whole standard, and there are only more than 2,600 people at the beginning, Xiao Zhenlei asked the standard department to send people to recruit soldiers in various places before he left last time, and after more than a month of recruitment, all the missing soldiers have been recruited, and these newly recruited soldiers have also entered a normal training state. However, he did not order the withdrawal of the standard personnel responsible for recruiting soldiers, but demanded that the recruitment continues, how many are recruited, and the next recruited soldiers will also undergo the same military training, but they will not be counted as formal establishments, and their functions will be counted as reserve troops, but the salaries and benefits of the soldiers of these reserve soldiers will not be much worse than those of soldiers with formal establishments, and if there is a war in the future, the main force will lose soldiers. Troops will be drawn from the reserve forces to replenish them, or in the event of an emergency, when the strength of the main force is insufficient, all the reserve troops will be mobilized to the battlefield to form a second main force regiment.

Heavy machine guns, mortars and artillery and other weapons and equipment that are lacking in the units within the establishment. In the past month or so, they have been shipped from the secret arsenal in Zhenhua Company, and now these weapons are being familiarized and trained by the troops, according to Xiao Zhenlei's plan. Before the Xinhai Revolution began, every combat squad in the whole army had to be armed with a light machine gun. In order to improve the firepower output and combat ability of the smallest combat unit, but now the drawings of the light machine gun have been drawn by Xiao Zhenlei according to the memory of his previous life. And it has been handed over to the secret arsenal for manufacturing, but there are still several manufacturing technical difficulties, and now the researchers in the secret arsenal are trying to find a way to solve these problems, it should not be difficult to solve, just time.

Light machine guns have been invented at this time, but they are basically heavy, whether it is continuous fire output and firepower, or the performance is too far from the later light machine guns, and in terms of maneuverability, it is far inferior, the reason why it is called light machine guns is that the mobility performance is required to be able to keep up with the mobility of small units such as the squad platoon, at this point, the only few light machine guns in this era can not meet the requirements, which is the reason why Xiao Zhenlei decided to get the Czech light machine gun out.

Xiao Zhenlei believes that once his army is equipped with light machine guns to the squad platoon, and the soldiers go through strict military training, their combat effectiveness will definitely be among the best in the world in one fell swoop, of course, in terms of heavy firepower, Xiao Zhenlei's 46th standard is far inferior to the same combat units in Germany, France, Russia, Japan and other countries, this is because once the armies of the great powers reach the regimental, brigade, divisional and other levels of combat units, they will basically be equipped with large-caliber field howitzer regiments, battalions, etc., The caliber of some field howitzers has even reached more than 150 millimeters, and the firing range has reached more than 10,000 meters, while Xiao Zhenlei's 46th standard now only has 75 mm mountain artillery, and Xiao Zhenlei's artillery battalion is far inferior in terms of range and artillery power, but the domestic army basically does not surpass him in heavy firepower, and even the vast majority of the artillery equipped by the army of the six towns in Beiyang is only 75 mm mountain artillery.

Back to the barracks in the past few days, Xiao Zhenlei first watched the heavy machine gun squad shooting training of each infantry platoon, these heavy machine guns are imitations of Makqin heavy machine guns, due to the relationship of time, coupled with the urgent need for heavy machine guns in the army, so Xiao Zhenlei drew the drawings of the later Browning heavy machine guns and handed them over to the gunsmith for manufacturing, let them first imitate some Makqin heavy machine guns and hand them over to the army for use, as for the production of Browning heavy machine guns for the time being, this heavy machine gun will be used as the army's standard heavy machine gun in the future, In order to make the bullet universal, this was considered in the manufacture and design, and the 7.92 mm caliber bullet was used, but there was another large-caliber model of the Browning heavy machine gun produced later, and the bullet used was 12.7 mm, which was specially designed to deal with thick armor and strong bunkers, as a strong fire support during the battle.

After a period of shooting training, some shooters in the heavy machine gun squad have learned these shooting skills such as two consecutive shots, three consecutive shots, etc., which makes Xiao Zhenlei very happy and relieved, although they are not very proficient, but this is a good sign. With enough time, this army can definitely be trained to become a world-class powerhouse. You know, until now, few great powers have paid attention to the huge role of heavy machine guns in battle.

On the other hand, heavy machine guns are very ammo-consuming weapons once fired. In the later heavy machine guns, the rate of fire was as high as thousands of rounds per minute, if you don't use two and three shots, a box of bullets will be exhausted in a blink of an eye, the role of skillfully operating and using heavy machine guns for combat is very obvious, and you can provide fire support in time without letting the firepower of the support be broken, which depends on the ability of the machine gun shooter.

Next, Xiao Zhenlei watched the training of the mortar squad, a mortar squad equipped with two mortars, a total of 15 people. The squad leader is fully responsible, the two deputy squad leaders are divided into two groups, each with six people responsible for a mortar, in a group, a soldier is responsible for carrying the barrel during the march, a soldier is responsible for carrying the bracket, a soldier is carrying the base, two soldiers each carry a shell box, and a soldier is responsible for safety alert and cooperation with the deputy squad leader. At camp or other rest times, the parts and shells of these mortars are kept separately by the fighters in charge, and the person who keeps them is responsible for which parts go wrong. When the battle is about to be fought, all members of the team cooperate with each other to complete the assembly and fixation as quickly as possible for artillery bombardment.

The training of the mortar squad may have been under the guidance of Cai Guodong and special training. Each mortar squad already had a strict procedure for assembling and firing the artillery, the process was broken down in detail, and within each squad there were soldiers who specialized in observing the firing range and calculating the angle of the shelling and the modulation of the firing elements. There are also soldiers who are responsible for assembling parts and fixing them, but in peacetime the soldiers of each group learn this knowledge. After all, the battle is not without casualties, once there are casualties in the battle. So isn't there no one else in charge of the project that the soldier is responsible for? So can this mortar still be accurate? Therefore, every soldier in each mortar squad must be familiar with every technical skill, and once a soldier in charge of a certain link is killed or wounded, another soldier is required to continue his duties, or to observe the firing range and artillery situation, or to make adjustments to the shooting elements, and so on.

However, it is not easy for artillery to achieve qualification, because there are many disciplines involved, such as learning coordinates, calculating the angle of artillery fire for the range, and fine-tuning various shooting elements, but fortunately, there is still enough time.

In the end, Xiao Zhenlei took advantage of some training to visit the artillery battalion, and the artillerymen first carried out the training of the artillery shooting steps, dismantling the series of artillery firing processes into several steps, each person was responsible for one or several steps, and the people of the entire artillery group coordinated to complete a complete set of artillery opening procedures, and these artillerymen needed to learn more than the mortar artillery soldiers.

Like mortars, each artilleryman of the artillery battalion has its own responsible work, and a small group can only fire a mountain cannon under the command of the commander and shoot it accurately.

On January 5, 1910, Xiao Zhenlei convened a meeting of battalion-level commanders and above, and for this reason, the troops directly under the standard department: the commander of the artillery battalion, the commander of the cavalry company, the commander of the engineer company, and the commander of the baggage company all rushed over from the secret station.

At the meeting, Xiao Zhenlei first raised a safety issue, "Now all kinds of weapons have been put in place, there are imitation Makqin heavy machine guns in the barracks, and the soldiers of the heavy machine gun squad are shooting and training with other personnel, which is easy to be seen or discovered by irrelevant people, and now the project of the barracks has not been completely completed, and there are construction workers in the construction, and there are many people, so the confidentiality work should be strengthened, if the news is leaked, although we will not be destroyed, we must pay attention to it, After the meeting is dismissed, all battalions, companies, and other units should immediately begin to rearrange the safety work of standing guard, on alert, and on patrol, especially at night, the level of patrols and guards should be raised, and arrangements should be made for a mechanism for changing passwords at any time, and telephones should be installed at the gates, in the offices and dormitories of all company commanders and officers at or above the level of company commanders, and that any problems can be notified to the company-level units as soon as possible.

"Yes!" Cai Guodong and Fan Zhiyong stood up and saluted a military salute.

Xiao Zhenlei pressed his hand and motioned for them to sit down, and said: "The second point, the problem of training, now that all battalions have light machine guns, heavy machine guns, mortars and mountain artillery, I hope you will come up with a complete set of training programs, such as light and heavy machine guns to support infantry with fire tactics, mortars and mountain artillery to support infantry with artillery fire, such as infantry artillery coordination tactics, trench warfare tactics, etc., and the training cannot be delayed for a day, no matter what situation or bad weather, Training tasks must be arranged every day, if it really doesn't work, but also arrange exercises, if it doesn't work outside, it will be carried out indoors, and another point, if the weather changes badly, causing the people in our defense area to suffer natural disasters, we must go all out to support and disaster relief work, and do everything possible to save people's lives and property losses!

Third, the issue of discipline, this issue I have repeatedly emphasized, during this period of military discipline has been greatly improved, I have not heard a nearby resident to complain, the gendarmerie during this period of time did not catch the soldiers and officers who violated discipline, this is very gratifying, this is the result of our joint efforts, but I still want to say that military discipline can not be relaxed for a moment, anyone who violates military discipline will be punished, anyone who goes through the back door is useless, never talk about human feelings! The gendarmerie must be vigilant and always in combat mode!

Fourth, after the meeting, I will go to the secret barracks to inspect the construction of the camp and the training of the soldiers over there, and those of you who come from the secret barracks will go with me, and I will not inform you of the time for preparation there, I just want to see what your barracks are like in normal times, don't give me a false one!

Fifth, I will leave here in a few days, take a boat in Shanghai and set off for Europe, it will take about half a year to turn around, I am not in this time, the 46th standard is supported by Cai Guodong to work in an all-round way, he has the absolute command of my absence, I hope that all units will obey his command and orders, do you have anything else to say? ”

No one spoke, Xiao Zhenlei immediately announced the dismissal of the meeting and returned with the officers who came out of the secret barracks.

After inspecting the secret military camp for three days, Xiao Zhenlei brought Li Biao and Xiang Tiejun sent back to Shanghai Tang, on the grounds that he was invited by the German side to go to Germany for a military exchange visit, and he needed to be accompanied by these two people, the purpose of which was nothing more than to take these two unknown eyeliners away, so as not to stir up trouble in the military during his absence. (To be continued......) u