Facing Zhao Dongyun's gaze, Cao Kun and Fang Biyong were silent, and after a while, Fang Biyong spoke first: "Although the transportation regiment of the Quartermaster Department is also an active force, compared with the active troops in the field army, there is still a bit of a gap, if they are directly transferred to active duty personnel, can they integrate well with the existing troops?" ”

Cao Kun on the side also said: "If the transport regiment can be transferred from the Quartermaster Department to supplement the division-level troops, this is naturally feasible!" ”

He still didn't say a word, that is, after the Quartermaster Department transferred these transport regiments, should it continue to form transport troops in the future, and how to solve the cost of forming these transport troops?

However, these things had nothing to do with Cao Kun, the general of the field army, so he closed his mouth after saying this.

After discussing for another half an hour, Zhao Dongyun finally said: "Everything that should be said has been said, so it is decided, a part of the active transport regiments will be transferred from the Quartermaster Department to supplement the troops, and as for the vacancies after the Quartermaster Department transfers these transport regiments, it is appropriate to increase the militia regiment to fill them." ”

The transport regiments in the Quartermaster Department are not the same as the Civilian Regiments, River Operations, and the like, and many of the transportation regiments in the Quartermaster Department are active duty troops, mainly responsible for the supply and transportation of ammunition on the front line, while those transportation units of various names such as the Civilian Husband Regiment and the River Operation are not active troops, but conscripted civilian soldiers.

Although these civilians will also pay some subsidies, they are much less than the salaries of active soldiers, and sometimes even the Quartermaster Department will forcibly recruit civilians to carry out transportation tasks in the local area.

The Feng army in these years, like other warlord troops, is not a tall army, do not take a stitch from the masses, do not disturb the people and other lofty slogans have little to do with the Feng army, the so-called do not disturb the people, at most it is not large-scale looting, the so-called do not take a stitch from the masses, at most it is to buy things will give Zhang military tickets, as for whether these military tickets can be exchanged for money from the government controlled by the Soviet system, only God knows.

The troops often requisitioned livestock, grain, horse-drawn wagons and other materials in the localities, and even forcibly requisitioned the men for transportation, and a considerable number of these requisitioned men were not paid, and even the rations had to be brought by the men themselves, and these conscripted men were actually serving in the conscription.

The Feng army under the control of Zhao Dongyun was actually still an army with a strong feudal atmosphere.

When Zhao Dongyun made a decision to transfer the transport regiments of the Quartermaster Department to supplement the field troops, the Command Headquarters quickly issued relevant orders, and a number of transport regiments under the jurisdiction of the Quartermaster Department located in Hezhou, Dangtu, Jinling and other places were directly dismantled, and the relevant personnel were directly supplemented into the Third and Ninth Divisions.

As a result, the number of the Third and Ninth Divisions skyrocketed by more than 2,000 in a short period of time, and they became the so-called ideal formation troops in the heart of Qin Linjun.

This ideal type of establishment, also known as the 1908 type in the official text, is derived from the 1907 type of establishment, which was only implemented last year, and the combat units have not changed at all, an infantry squad is still 14 people, a platoon still has only one light machine gun, and an infantry company still has only two 60 mm mortars.

There was no change in the number of front-line combatants and technical troops, but the strength of artillery and baggage was greatly increased, and the total strength of a division in 1908 increased to 18,000.

Since the combat establishment has not moved, only logistics personnel have been added, so even if it is not of much impact on the 3rd and 9th Divisions that are in the midst of the battle, it is enough to directly replenish the personnel.

In just a few days, the strength of the 3rd and 9th Divisions, which had joined many quartermaster logistics personnel, swelled to more than 18,000 people.

Since the impact was not great, and there were still quite a few transport regiments on the side of the Quartermaster Department, Zhao Dongyun quickly issued a second order, that is, to expand the three units of the Fourth Mixed Brigade, the First Division, and the Fourteenth Division of the front-line operations to the 1908 type.

When the above-mentioned divisions swelled to a full strength of 18,000 men, the Fourth Mixed Brigade, which had only more than 5,000 men before, was directly supplemented into a transport regiment, and its total strength swelled to more than 7,900, nearly 8,000 men.

Of course, it's worth noting that the vast majority of these increases are made up of logisticians, and the number of combatants remains the same.

In fact, to put it simply, the Feng army transferred many logistics units that originally belonged to the quartermaster department to the field troops.

It had no effect on the total size of the Feng army.

The 1908 model of the Fengjun army was a bit of a change from the past, with one infantry squad still having 14 men, an infantry platoon with the three infantry squads mentioned above, and a light machine gun and a six-man platoon. Each infantry company has three infantry platoons, two mortar groups and company headquarters, and each infantry company has a full strength of 183 people.

An infantry battalion has four infantry companies under its jurisdiction, in addition to a mortar platoon, a baggage platoon, and a heavy machine gun platoon, with a total strength of 903 men, and the battalion headquarters has two 80-mm mortars and two heavy machine guns.

The infantry regiment consisted of the three infantry battalions mentioned above, as well as a sanitary platoon, a baggage company, a mortar company with four 80-mm mortars, and a heavy machine gun company with nine heavy machine guns. The total strength of the regiment was 2,709 men, and the technical weapons of the regiment included 36 light machine guns, 15 heavy machine guns, 24 60-mm mortars, and 10 80-mm mortars.

An infantry brigade has two infantry regiments, and the brigade headquarters does not have any other subordinate units on weekdays except for a command headquarters, and under normal circumstances, an infantry brigade has 6,368 men. However, in actual battles, many auxiliary units of the division headquarters are often assigned to infantry brigades, and then a mixed brigade-sized combat unit is formed, which is solely responsible for fighting in one direction, so depending on the situation, the total strength of a brigade-level combat detachment in wartime may reach between 8,000 and 9,000 people.

In the case of an infantry division, it has two infantry brigades, an artillery regiment with 36 field guns and 16 mountain guns, a mortar battalion with 16 120-mm mortars, a cavalry regiment with three companies with a total of 600 cavalry, a baggage regiment with three battalions with a total of 1,800 men, an engineering battalion with 600 men, a sanitary company, a communications company, a divisional guard, and a division headquarters. The total strength reached 18,061 troops, more than 1,000 mounted war horses, more than 3,000 logistics horses, and 1,000 Western-style heavy transport carriages.

The division used more than 13,000 mounted rifles, more than 3,000 revolvers and semi-automatic pistols, 36 75-mm field guns, 16 75-mm mountain guns, 16 120-mm mortars, 40 80-mm mortars, 100 60-mm mortars, 60 heavy machine guns, and 150 light machine guns. In addition, there are many auxiliary equipment such as artillery balloons, telescopes, and armory shovels.

Such an infantry division of the Feng Army is a typical two-brigade and four-regiment unit in the armies of contemporary powers, and such a division will have to spend more than 4 million yuan a year on maintenance costs alone, not counting the cost of various ammunition and equipment for the battle.

As far as the current Soviet finances are concerned, at most they can only raise a few such divisions, and they can't afford to raise more at all.

For the current Soviet-based Feng army, more cheap troops are needed, such as the 8th, 11th, and 13th divisions, although the three units under the jurisdiction of the Third Army are certainly not comparable to the Third Division in battle, but they are cheap to form, and it is more than enough to fight the provincial armies of other warlords.

According to the scale of the above-mentioned divisions, Zhao Dongyun also began to order the Feng Army Command to start the formation of the 17th Division.

For the 17th Division, he did not say that he directly had too many expectations, and in order to speed up the time for the formation of the army, he did not plan to start training again, but to integrate and form several existing units.

To this end, Zhao Dongyun took the 7th Mixed Brigade deployed in Shijiazhuang as the backbone, and then replenished the new troops and equipment, in order to make the new 17th Division an army.

Following the 17th Division, Zhao Dongyun formed the 18th Division with the 10th Mixed Brigade deployed in Mukden as the backbone, and also supplemented a small number of troops to expand the Fengjun's ability to control Fengtian.

Zhao Dongyun successively formed the 17th Division and the 18th Division with the 7th Mixed Brigade and the 10th Mixed Brigade as the backbone, which also made many Fengjun generals see some of Zhao Dongyun's plans for the future Fengjun, that is, to gradually abolish the establishment of the mixed brigade and let the Fengjun troops gradually and slowly transform into troops dominated by many infantry divisions.

The establishment of mixed brigades was originally a temporary measure, and it was necessary to save them only in the case of insufficient military spending and equipment, and now the military expenditure of the Feng army is relatively sufficient, and if we look at the overall domestic situation, it is no longer suitable to form and maintain too many mixed brigades for the contemporary Feng army.

Because the soldiers of a mixed brigade are basically about half of a division, but the technical weapons, especially artillery, are far less than half of an infantry division, but the most expensive thing to raise the army in contemporary times is not the purchase price of weapons, but the salary cost of personnel.

At present, even during the war, the salary expenses of the military personnel accounted for more than 70% of the military expenditure.

The cost of a mixed brigade is enough to be as much as half a division, but to be honest, even if two mixed brigades go together, they can't actually beat an infantry division of the same size.

After considering all this, it is impossible to understand why Zhao Dongyun wanted to upgrade a large number of mixed brigades to infantry divisions.

While Zhao Dongyun wantonly rectified the Feng army in the back, trying to continue to expand the scale of the Feng army and improve the combat effectiveness of several main forces, the fierce battle between the Feng army and the Anhui army in Jinling and the Dangtu line continued.

On the Dangtu side, the 4th Mixed Brigade and the 33rd Regiment of the Feng Army fought very hard, and at present they could only hold on to the outlying areas of Dangtu and Ma'anshan, and the losses in personnel and technical weapons were relatively large.

Compared with the predicament of Dangtu, although the progress of the war in Jinling is slow, it is still relatively smooth.

After the 3rd, 9th, 14th, and 1st Mixed Brigade launched an outlying offensive against Jinling, which lasted for more than 10 days, they had successfully broken through into the Jinling city.