Zhao Dongyun said: "It is enough to put a team in one place and add four machine guns!" ”

Hearing Zhao Dongyun say this, everyone's faces changed slightly, and even Wu Changchun was slightly dissatisfied: "These two places are difficult to defend head-on, how can a team of people hold them, as for the machine gun, it can't be used if it can't be fired a few shots, how can it face the continuous charge of the enemy army!" ”

Zhao Dongyun also knew that it would not be easy to convince them, and he immediately said: "You all know that there is a trial machine gun team in my battalion, in addition to the four old Makqin machine guns, there are also four newly purchased new Makqin machine guns, with these four new Makqin machine guns in hand, as long as the enemy does not launch an attack with more than 2,000 people, then I have the confidence to defend!"

The southern flatness of the four and fifth places certainly gave the southern army the convenience of attacking, but on the other hand, it gave great convenience to the defenders.

After that, he got up: "You still have a lot of questions about the machine gun, you might as well come with me to see the test firing of the machine gun!" ”

The reason why he invited everyone to watch the machine gun test firing was not only to convince Wu Changchun and others, but also to let the exercise referee know that the machine gun team under him Zhao Dongyun was not a shelf.

After all, this is just a drill, although it is a live-fire exercise, but it will not really shoot the bullet at the opposite friendly army, and in the face of the machine gun, which is relatively new, it is necessary to let the referee correctly understand the power of the machine gun, so that the referee can fairly judge the role of the machine gun in the exercise.

On the No. 4 height, the soldiers of Zhao Dongyun's front team were trying to dig a trench, and in front of the trench was an obstacle formed by a large number of wooden stakes.

In the eyes of several referees, obstacles such as wooden stakes and horse rejection in front of the battle have very limited effects, and they cannot stop the advance of the enemy infantry at all, but the trenches dug by Zhao Dongyun's soldiers are quite interesting, and there are also fortress fixed fortifications in these years, but I have never seen a situation like Zhao Dongyun, digging the entire mountain into a section of ditches, these ditches are as deep as one person high, and you need a ladder to climb out of the trench to counter-charge.

In addition to these deeper trenches, some of the salient points of the trenches are the construction of several heavy machine gun fortresses with sandbags, and the heavy machine guns in this machine gun fortress are the goal of the group, yes, this time they came to judge the real effectiveness of the machine guns.

With Zhao Dongyun's orders, some simulated targets for the attacking army were soon placed on the offensive surface of the south, that is, some tree stumps and the like, and then, with Zhao Dongyun's nod, two heavy machine guns, one on the left and one on the right, began to fire fiercely with live ammunition.

Almost as soon as the two machine guns were cross-fired, the stakes were as if they were being hit by a torrential rain, and then there were more and more bullet holes, and finally they were torn to pieces by the bullets carried by the storm.

In front of a position in the middle, many officers with binoculars were speechless, and those present were all veteran professional officers, and those middle and senior officers who could serve as referees were drawn from various armies, and they could even imagine in their minds what would happen if this was a real battle without even thinking deeply:

Hundreds, if not thousands, of the Southern Army were crowded on this seemingly gentle ramp, and when they shouted and launched a charge to try to completely crush the opponent, suddenly two dense bullet rains were fired from the left and right, and the bullets were constantly connected like a scythe of death, constantly harvesting the lives of the soldiers of the attacking troops.

Under such a diagonal cross-strafing fire, how many soldiers' lives does the attacker need to pay to rush through?

If there were more than a dozen guns on this front, how dense would the fire be?

Although Wu Changchun and others could not imagine that during the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese army paid the price of nearly 60,000 or 70,000 casualties in order to conquer a small Lushun, although they did not know that the heavy machine guns of the German army during World War I killed and wounded tens of thousands of Allied troops in one day.

But they could still imagine that breaking through such a line of heavy machine guns would require more casualties than any general could bear.

At first, they thought that this kind of dense fire could not last long, but when they saw the heavy machine guns firing continuously, they immediately put this idea behind them, because as long as there was enough water to cool down, the Maxim machine guns could continue to fight for a long time, until there were no bullets or mechanical problems.

Thanks to Zhao Dongyun's live-fire exercise in order to prove the combat effectiveness of the machine gun, a group of officers in the Wuwei Right Army knew the strong defensive ability of the machine gun in advance, especially after the referees of those exercises recognized the lethality of the machine gun, which led to the entire exercise later.

On the nineteenth, the Southern Army and the Northern Army have been prepared, and at the same time, Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Wang Yingkai and other Beiyang bigwigs and some important ministers have arrived one after another!

At noon on that day, the exercise officially began!

Since it was an exercise, it used empty cartridges, but because it was a live-fire exercise, the artillery teams of both sides carried out a large number of live-ammunition shelling of the predetermined exercise area, which made a group of court dignitaries very satisfied.

The next exercise process is a bit boring for these adults, because at this time, the exercises of both sides rely on many exercise referees to collect the orders of the commanders of both sides in a timely manner, and then report to the exercise referee office, and finally determine the casualties, victories and defeats of the two sides according to many exercise rules, so except for some live ammunition on the first day of the exercise, both sides of the exercise use empty ammunition at other times, which is a very boring process for ordinary people.

On the afternoon and evening of the 19th, both the north and the south were very cautious, and the attacking southern army did not immediately launch a large-scale attack, but sent a large group of cavalry out to reconnoitre, and at the same time prepared artillery positions, raised artillery balloons, and many other preparations.

In addition to the No. 4 and No. 5 positions that Zhao Dongyun valued, the construction of Pingshanzhuang's own fortifications was also the focus, and Zhao Dongyun also carried out small-scale troop adjustments according to the intelligence of the Southern Army obtained from reconnaissance.

However, Zhao Dongyun's small-scale adjustment fell in the eyes of Duan Qirui and others who were observing the exercise, but it was a little incomprehensible, Duan Qirui looked at the sand table in front of him, and the sand table marked the deployment of troops in the north and south with various small flags, and Duan Qirui could see at a glance in the middle of this troop deployment that Zhao Dongyun had too few troops deployed on the No. 4 and No. 5 heights.

And what made him even more puzzled was that Wu Changchun actually deployed the six guns of the artillery team to the rear of these two positions, so that the artillery ventured forward, did they know that as long as the southern army came to a large-scale raid, then the entire northern army could be declared defeated?

Wang Shizhen on the side glanced at the sand table, and then said to Duan Qirui: "Brother Duan, it seems that your junior is not small, just two teams and a few machine guns will dare to defend such an important place!" ”

Feng Guozhang on the side also showed a hint of doubt: "His machine gun team is very fast to practice, and it will be an army in less than a month, but I don't know how effective it is!" ”

Duan Qirui was also a little worried about Zhao Dongyun's troop deployment, according to Duan Qirui's opinion, this time the northern army was already in a weak position, and there was only one way to block the southern army that was several times more likely to go north, that is, to defend Pingshan Villa, relying on the fortifications and complex terrain in Pingshan Villa to consume the morale and strength of the attacker.

But Zhao Dongyun is now taking the risk of putting his troops in front, once he encounters defeat here, then it will cause a chain reaction, and there is no way to defend Pingshan Villa at that time.

Under the incomprehension of everyone, the referees of the exercise successively reported the command and other situations of the two sides, and many referees in the court made judgments according to various rules.

"The artillery battalion of the Southern Army continued to shell the No. 4 and No. 5 heights!" The referee of the exercise said: "It has been decided that the defenders stationed on the fourth and fifth places will suffer twenty casualties!" ”

"The Northern Army carried out continuous artillery bombardment on the No. 9 and No. 10 areas of the Southern Army, causing a rout in the front and rear camps of the Southern Army!"

As in other battles of this era, the artillery was always the first to appear, and after thirty minutes of continuous shelling by the artillery of both sides, at 8:20 a.m., the Southern Army, which had already gathered a lot of reconnaissance, also discovered the Northern Army on Heights 4 and 5.

"The left and right battalions of the southern army on the front road have lined up and are ready to attack the fourth and fifth heights!" Although the official battle had just begun, the commander of the Southern Army was obviously aware of the threat of Northern artillery in these two places, so he aimed the first wave of attacks at these two places, preparing to eliminate the Northern artillery in these two places, and even planned to deploy at least one team of artillery here after capturing them.

However, the voice of the referee in the next exercise was to silence a group of senior generals in the court: "The left and right battalions of the southern army advanced to 300 meters in front of the No. 45 position, and encountered fierce strafing fire from the machine gun team of the second battalion of the northern army, and ruled that the left battalion of the southern army on the front road suffered 150 casualties and the right battalion suffered 170 casualties. ”

As the exercise referee went in and out, another exercise referee continued to speak: "The southern army continued to attack on the front road, encountered continuous strafing from the machine gun team of the second battalion of the northern army, and encountered the infantry fire of the second battalion front team, advanced to 200 meters, and ruled that the casualties of the two battalions on the front road of the southern army reached 500 people!" ”

At this time, several senior generals who were observing the exercise finally couldn't help but speak, and Feng Guozhang even spoke directly: "How is it possible, how long has it been, at most two quarters of an hour, even if the two battalions on the front road of the Southern Army can't help fighting, but it is impossible for more than half of these more than 1,000 people to be killed or injured in just two quarters of an hour!" ”

Obviously, the judgment of the exercise referee has aroused great doubts, and Wang Yingkai, who acted as the referee of the exercise at this time, said: "Yesterday, I have personally seen the terrain of the No. 4 and No. 5 heights, and I have also watched the drill of the machine gun team of the second battalion of the Northern Army. ”

"If this is a real battle, if the attacker throws thousands of people into such an open slope to attack in a dense charging formation, and the defender relies on trenches and eight heavy machine guns to defend, the attacker may be annihilated!"