The Beiyang Military and Political Department was newly established, and this agency is responsible for the training, logistics, and combat matters of the new army in the entire Beiyang system, so it has begun to influence the modernization process of the Chinese army since the day it was born.

After the establishment of such a powerful body, there are naturally a lot of complicated things, and the heads of various ministries are extremely busy, and Zhao Dongyun is naturally included.

The coaching office is mainly responsible for education and training in the Military Affairs Department, although the main affairs are handled by Feng Guozhang, but Zhao Dongyun still has the title of supervising the machine gun matter, and he can't interfere in other things, but he can still get involved in things related to machine guns.

And his title of supervising the machine gun matter is also a bit nondescript, saying that it is a supervisor, but in fact, what Yuan Shikai asked him to do was 'founding', that is to say, what Zhao Dongyun had to do was not to supervise others to train machine gun troops, but to set up machine gun units himself.

And this task is not an easy one!

After arriving at the Military Administration Department and meeting Feng Guozhang, and drinking with a group of colleagues from the Military Administration, Zhao Dongyun did not go to the Military Administration Department the next day, but went straight to the military camp outside Dongguan again.

Today's Dongguan military camp is not only a small number of troops stationed, but also a large number of standing army troops, and the newly built machine gun battalion under Zhao Dongyun is also here.

Soon, he brought Lin Yongquan, Zhao Dongping and others together for a meeting!

"This time, it is not easy to form three new machine gun battalions, the required personnel and ordnance are a huge number, and your burden will be very heavy in the next few months, you must be mentally prepared for this!" Zhao Dongyun said.

According to the usual situation, in fact, if the machine gun battalions are to be organized, they should be directly organized and trained by various units, just like artillery, and the artillery units should be organized and trained by each town itself, not that all the artillery units should be gathered together for training.

But the current situation is somewhat special, on the one hand, there are still too few machine gun units in the Beiyang Army, and there are too few people who know how to fight machine guns, at best, there is only Zhao Dongyun, a half-hanger, and then there are several leaders and sentinels who have also been trained by Zhao Dongyun in the past six months.

It is difficult to rely on these people to train a machine gun battalion, let alone disperse them all to each unit for training, if this is the case, I don't know that it will take the year of the monkey to be able to establish the machine gun team of the three battalions, so Yuan Shikai just obeyed Zhao Dongyun's construction, first concentrated training, and then assigned to each unit after the machine gun team is slightly completed.

However, even if it is a centralized training, Zhao Dongyun does not plan to say that he will train three machine gun battalions at one time, he plans to gradually expand the scale of training, and the reason for doing so is that in addition to the factor of scarcity of talents, there are also reasons for ordnance and military spending.

In terms of military spending, the conversation between Yuan Shikai and Zhou Xuexi yesterday has made it very clear that the money is there, but it will be given for three months, and this first batch is only 40,000 taels of silver.

This first batch of funds was 40,000 taels, and Zhao Dongyun had no way to rely on 40,000 taels of silver to build three machine gun battalions.

In addition, there is also the ordnance factor, the construction of three new machine gun battalions, according to the previous battalion of 24 machine guns, three battalions would need 72 machine guns. In addition, it is necessary to reserve a small number of spare and replacement machine guns, so the number of new machine guns purchased should be at least about seventy-five.

In addition to the machine gun itself, there are bullets, and everyone knows that the machine gun is a large consumer of bullets, so the number of bullets purchased at the same time is also indispensable.

However, Zhao Dongyun couldn't get his hands on such a large amount of ordnance in a short period of time, so he could only take his time.

After looking around at everyone, Zhao Dongyun said: "Among the many problems, the ordnance problem should be solved first, the newly established machine gun battalion needs machine guns, and there are still pistols for military assistants and machine gun shooters; There are also rifles used by ammunitionmen, guards, logistics teams, etc.; In addition, officers' sabers, binoculars, flags, military music, ordnance shovels, etc., all need to be purchased one by one.

In addition, it is necessary to take into account that the follow-up machine gun units will be assigned troops, so it is also necessary to match the intended troops. ”

Although Yuan Shikai asked Zhao Dongyun to concentrate on training machine gun battalions, he did not intend to let these machine gun units become independent troops, they should be assigned to the following troops after all, but the armaments of each unit in the Beiyang system are different, not to mention artillery, it has little to do with Zhao Dongyun, but pistols and rifles are related.

At this time, Lin Yongquan spoke: "In this case, in addition to machine guns, we may need to buy a variety of rifles and pistols!" ”

Zhao Dongyun said: "I have already told Lord Duxian about this, according to Lord Duxian's meaning, except for the need to prepare a battalion with Japanese-style rifles reserved for the standing army Zuozhen, the rifles used in the rest of the newly built battalions are all used 79 rifles. ”

The rifle problem is not big for the machine gun battalion, because whether it is a pistol or a rifle for the machine gun battalion, it is actually only a secondary weapon, mainly used for self-defense and in case of emergency, just like the engineering battalion and the baggage battalion are also equipped with rifles, which is an unprepared need.

And this point is also a special situation of the Beiyang New Army, whether it is reasonable or not, anyway, the Beiyang Army is doing this.

"Except for the first battalion of Japanese-style guns, the rest use 79 rifles, if you need to be assigned to a town association with different ordnance in the future, you can directly change it, anyway, you won't need many guns!" The latter sentence is the point, anyway, rifles are secondary weapons, now I am training with a 79 rifle, and if the subordinate troops are using other rifles in the future, just change them directly, no need to worry about it now!

"As for the machine gun, you see how to solve it!" Compared with pistols and rifles, machine guns are the big head.

Lin Yongquan said: "In terms of machine guns, the Maxim machine gun we use now is good, I think we should continue to buy it?" ”

Zhao Dongyun listened: "Do you mean a German-style or a Russian-style machine gun?" ”

Although the 20 or so new machine guns in the machine gun battalion are all 7.92 mm German-style gun bodies, the gun mounts are divided into German-style and Russian-style, and even British-style gun mounts.

Therefore, Zhao Dongyun can only stick to the last bottom line in the end, that is, the caliber must be unified, and there is no way to consider the design of the gun carriage and other details.

Therefore, although the newly built machine gun battalion is all 7.92 caliber Makqin, the gun carriages are very different.

Lin Yongquan said: "The German machine gun is used in the construction of the department, one is that the original performance is reliable, and the different gun mounts are also inconvenient for training, in addition to the new machine guns using the same regulations of the German machine guns, in addition, I also built a batch of German-style gun mounts to replace many existing miscellaneous gun mounts!" ”

Zhao Dongyun nodded: "I was negligent in this matter of the gun carriage, but it is still necessary to unify the gun carriage, of course, it is not necessary to buy it from the original factory, those domestic manufacturing bureaus can't make a machine gun, but it's still possible to build an iron frame!" ”

Saying that, he continued: "So it's decided, continue to purchase seventy-nine caliber Makqin machine guns to form a unified configuration!" ”

At this time, he looked at Zhao Dongping who was sitting on the side, Zhao Dongping has changed a lot in the past half a year in the military career, first of all, he is more energetic, and he looks stronger than before when he puts on a military uniform, and he can't see that he is just a young man less than twenty years old.

"On the matter of ordnance purchase, you should continue to do it, don't rush to settle down with those small foreign banks, take a look more, look for more, such a big list Those big foreign banks will definitely not let go!" Zhao Dongyun personally commanded, and Zhao Dongping, who was spared, was pitted by those arms dealers.

With so many machine guns plus rifles, pistols, binoculars, and matching bullets, the price of the entire batch of arms orders is at least 50,000 or 60,000 taels of silver, although it is less than the large order of more than 1 million taels of silver signed by Yuan Shikai and the foreign bank some time ago, but it is not small, and it is enough for those oceans to stop fighting and even ignore the arms ban.

Last year, the arms embargo in the Xinchou treaty was still the same, even Yuan Shikai did not dare to break it openly, at that time, Zhao Dongyun could only smuggle machine guns secretly, but now it is less than a year, this arms embargo has already existed in name only, Yuan Shikai openly asked the Japanese to buy enough equipment to equip two divisions, and now he plans to buy a large number of German weapons from the Germans.

In this case, Zhao Dongyun naturally has no need to make a small fuss about smuggling as he did last year, and he can completely negotiate business with those foreign banks in an open and honest manner.

There is basically not much to discuss about the purchase of ordnance, they don't have much choice due to reality, and this has little to do with the majority of the commanders below, what kind of weapons are not used!

But the next thing is more relevant to the officers below, that is, the recruitment and personnel appointments of the newly established several machine-gun battalions.

Zhao Dongyun was silent for a while and said: "Although it is very difficult to organize and train the machine gun team of the four battalions, in order not to take a long time, the shelves of the four battalions in the early stage must be set up first.

At present, the newly built machine gun battalion is a shelf, with four battalions under it, and the original front and right teams of the machine gun battalion are assigned to the first battalion, the left team is transferred to the second battalion, the rear team is transferred to the third battalion, and the fourth battalion is temporarily missing. ”

Zhao Dongyun's method is to use the original troops as the backbone and expand them into three battalions, so that all the other battalions will not be restarted, and the method of forming a new army by transferring old troops and then cooperating with the new troops to form a new army is also an old trick of Beiyang's army expansion, and Zhao Dongyun is only using this method now.

The officers below also understand and support this approach, but they are obviously more concerned about Zhao Dongyun's next words, because since there is a new first battalion, second battalion, and third battalion, then there must be a relevant commander, this glance is the position of the three pipe belts, including Lin Yongquan, the seven or eight officers below are all looking at Zhao Dongyun, expecting him to be able to say his name next.