The Taiping army and Siam's 'misfire', Beijing did not even glance at it. It's like the 'wolf is coming', making a fuss like this every year, paying attention to it once or twice, three or four times, who cares.

Now, a large number of national defense forces have begun to move towards Xinjiang without concealment, and trains are whistling on the tracks, full of soldiers from all over the world. With cannons and carriages full of munitions and ammunition, a long train is speeding between Xinjiang and the hinterland, and on the vast land of the great northwest.

February in Xinjiang is still the season of dripping water and ice. Jiangnan is already the spring river plumbing, and here, the coldest time of the year is far from over. The fierce north wind outside the transfer station carried the snow, and the faces were painful; The withered yellow grass on the ground was lying southward, and even the jackdaws that occasionally flew in the sky seemed to be oppressed by the cold weather and did not dare to make a sound, flapping their dark wings, and throwing themselves towards a saltwater lake in the east.

This is the numbered Xinjiang .0027 transfer station in the east of Alashankou - Dongshankou Station.

Alashan Pass is located in the northeastern corner of Yamato, between the Alatau Mountains in the west and the Baluk Mountains in the northeast. The mountain pass is about a mile wide, three or four hundred miles long, and is connected to Alahu Lake in the west and Aibi Lake in the east. For more than 2,000 years, Alashankou has always been a transportation artery connecting Xinjiang and Central Asia.

In later generations of China, people who knew a little about Xinjiang knew about this place. It is the western bridgehead of the Chinese section of the New Eurasian Land Bridge, which has attracted worldwide attention. It is the only national first-class port in western China that integrates railways and highways. Although the current Alashankou is lively, it is far from being compared with later generations.

After the armistice between China and Russia, Xinjiang's products and people's livelihood have recovered significantly. Alashankou serves as a transportation artery connecting the Ili River Tacheng. Naturally, it has become one of the regular gates in Xinjiang. The Xinjiang government used the Eighth Construction Corps and the Ninth Construction Corps to reorganize the mountain roads in Alashankou from east to west in a year's time.

Along with the crossing tax collection station, there were also road construction posts and munitions transfer stations. Of these two units, one was built inside and one inside the mountain pass. Don't say anything outside the mouth. The road construction post and the munitions transfer station in the mouth are very separated. The road post was built close to the mountain pass, close to the tax collection station, and the quartermaster post was at the westernmost end of Lake Abbey.

It's the off-season for trade in Xinjiang, and war is on again. The toll booths and road construction posts on the edge of Alashankou have all been turned into stopovers on the material transfer routes, while the munitions transfer station at the west end of Lake Abbey has been guarded by a reinforced detachment.

As a standard three-level military transfer station, Higashiyamaguchi Station is still quite large, not to mention that it has only one reinforced squadron to garrison, but this reinforced squadron is equipped with four heavy machine guns, although two of them are old-fashioned multi-barreled heavy machine guns. Also armed with two six-zero mortars and small-caliber rifles of all configurations. And all the buildings of this transfer station are made of stone mixed with reinforced concrete, and the small cannonballs can't move, and the one-foot-high wall makes this transfer station like an unshakable mountain peak towering east of Alashankou.

The winter is cold and snowy. The gusts of wind blew away the remnants of snow and swept them on the face, like a knife cutting meat, but military law is like a mountain, and it is your turn to stand guard, and no one can take off this responsibility.

Zhang Jianxun is 25 years old. Less than two years after graduating from the military academy, he grew up on the edge of Ili City, and his ancestral home is Hunan. The ancestor was an official eunuch, and his grandfather was a waiter in the Daoguang period. After committing the crime, the whole family was exiled for thousands of miles to fill the army and went to Ili. In his lifetime, it has been forty years. may have been neighbors with Lin Zexu.

Grandfather is a six-department squire, of course, the Zhang family is considered to be a scholar. Although he has fallen down, Zhang Jianxun's juniors have received a relatively good education since they were young. The difference is only in good or bad conditions. In the nine cities of Yili, there are many like the Zhang family. At the beginning, there were 120,000 Han people in the entire Ili.

Until Xinjiang Hui changed. The Ili Han people are eight out of ten. Zhang Jianxun's father and uncle were both lost in that turmoil. His uncle, after Liu Xian marched into Ili, responded to the call and was one of the first Ili people to join the Qin army. fought bravely on the battlefield, and was literate and hyphenated, and when Liu Xian left Xinjiang, he did a thousand generals. When the new Qin made a comeback after nine years, Zhang Jianxun's uncle happily joined the Qin army without any psychological burden, and was later promoted to captain, but three fingers were blown off in the Sino-Russian War, and he had to retire to the local army.

Zhang Jianxun has only three cousins of the same generation, and he is the second. The eldest is a scholar and is now engaged in new learning, while the third child and he signed up to join the army together when the Sino-Russian war was at its most critical in that year, when the Xinjiang Military Region was in short supply, and now he is a local policeman, and only Zhang Jianxun remains in the army. And five years ago he was admitted to the military school.

It's a pity that after his three-year military academy career ended, the world was peaceful, and even the bandits in Xinjiang disappeared. Now a lieutenant!

"Smack." A bang. The forward outpost under a dirt hill in front of the transfer station opened the door, and two people walked out of the room. He wears a thick leather hat on his head. The army coat on his body was wrapped tightly. He also wears a pair of leather gloves on his hands. "Li Cai, Wang Wenke, you two are back. Here we go. ”

Li Cai and Wang Wenke, who were shivering in the cold, immediately came to their senses as soon as they heard this. "Alright, stationmaster." Wang Wenke immediately turned his body all the way and saluted Zhang Jianxun and the squad leader beside him. But he and Li had just gotten down from the post, and before they entered the room, Zhang Jianxun, who was standing on the post, suddenly shouted. "All on guard."

"Someone's coming."

It's really better to come early than to come at a good time. Zhang Jianxun and squad leader Yang Fugang just walked to the sentry post on the post, looked ahead, and felt that there seemed to be a black shadow looming, raised the binoculars and looked again, it was not a team of carriages and horses.

The snow on the gravel-paved avenue had accumulated more than half a foot thick, and it was no longer possible to see what it had been. The snow was falling in front of them, and a flaming red military flag was exposed from the wind and snow, and then a group of convoys slowly drove from the east, and the last thing fluttering in the convoy was a blood-colored red flag.

"It's from the new 22nd Division, right?" Yang Fu used Zhang Jianxun's telescope to look at the military flag, and when he was leaning against the flagpole, he seemed to write the words 'twenty-two'.

This reorganization division was newly built the year before last, and it has already been fully opened to Urumqi. Because the army was built for too short, it was called the new 22nd Division. In fact, the five newly expanded integrated divisions of the Wehrmacht Army are the five infantry divisions after the reorganization of the 20th Division, which are all called the 'New XX Division'.

"Watch out!" Zhang Jianxun still didn't take it lightly. Another collision between China and Russia is coming, and who knows if there are any dogs in Xinjiang for the Russians to be dogs. The military region issued a first-class combat alert notice a few years ago, and Zhang Jianxun did not dare to take it lightly.

"Yes."

Today, the garrison squad on duty all appeared at the post with their guns, and their guns were ready to be put on guard. At the same time, Zhang Jianxun also used a signal flag to send a signal to the transfer station.

"There is no brigade flag, and it is estimated that it will be a detachment at most." Yang Fu was not as vigilant as Zhang Jianxun, and after putting down the binoculars, he didn't forget to laugh with Li Cai on the side.

There is also a deputy stationmaster in Dongshankou Station named Zhang Yunyan, who is hung with the rank of second lieutenant. After listening to the report of his subordinates, Zhang Yunyan was very surprised, how could there be a baggage team in this snowy weather? It's really damn bad. "What part are they? What is the flag? ”

"Without a brigade flag, it can only be a squadron-level team of the new 22nd Division, and the escort team should be a detachment leader." The soldiers who came to report quickly reported the signal flag alarm to Zhang Yunyan.

"Blow the trumpet. All assembled! Like Zhang Jianxun, Zhang Yunyan's first reaction was to be prepared. Then he ordered the room to add food and dinner tonight. If the person who came was really from the logistics unit of the New 22nd Division, then he would have to praise 'due diligence'.

Zhang Yunyan got up and in addition to the dormitory, he also went to the next door and knocked on the door, "Lao Tian, go down, a convoy has arrived." ”

"Good Ratcha. Wait, right away. A loud voice rang out in the room.

"Which part?" The door opened, and a man of small stature, but extremely energetic, walked out. Tian Yingjie, another second lieutenant at Higashiyamaguchi Station, is the leader of the fire team. I stood at night last night and was making up for it in the dormitory. "It's amazing that this ghost weather dares to go on the road."

"Hehe, it's the new 22nd Division. It's a detachment! Zhang Yunyan replied while shrinking his neck. At the coldest time in winter, Alashankou can make it fall to thirty or forty degrees, and now it is also minus ten or twenty degrees, which is really cold.

The snow was rolling down, and like all the baggage teams that were now escorting military supplies, most of the people in this unit in front of them were not soldiers at all.

The main force of this grain transportation is Ding Zhuang, who is recruited by the militia or the imperial court, and there are about 100 of these people, all of whom are in their right years. The second is the baggage of a detachment. The rifle was tightly wrapped in a cotton sleeve, and a pistol and a short knife were attached to the waist. In this very cold weather, the rifle was exposed for a long time, and the wind and snow blew in, and it turned into ice in a moment's work. The infantry that can't be used is not as good as a burning stick.

This batch of supplies is grain and canned food. Each wooden box, covered with seals, is neatly stacked on the flatbed.

The ox carts carrying grain were full, and from the deep ruts in the ground, it could be seen that these grain carts were definitely not light. And all the personnel of the transport team, whether it was a soldier or a militiaman, Ding Zhuang, all the personnel were unkempt, their faces were frozen white, and their lips were cracked.

"Sun Ping, deputy squadron leader of the first squadron of the three brigades of the 044 brigade of the 22nd Division, was ordered to escort the grain and grass to Lebush, this is the approval document, please check it!" (To be continued......)