After receiving the telegram, the 10 patrol battalions of the five surrounding counties, including Dangtu, Xuancheng, and Wuwei, as well as the "reserves" in the secret camp of Jiulian Mountain, were all concentrated in Wuhu as quickly as possible. Of the twelve patrol battalions guarding Anqing, the remaining three were all concentrated in Wuhu. To say that Wang Wenli and Li Tianxiang did have two brushes, they were stunned to recruit more than 23,000 young men in just half a year, and they were all determined to be "bandits". Since the beginning of spring, there have been continuous floods in the south of the Yangtze River, and Wuhu is not much better, there is too much to eat. As long as you have a bite to eat, you can do whatever you want. If it weren't for the conscription of the new army and the famine year, the end of these people would only be starving to death in the wilderness. Loyalty is not a problem at all, he is a farmer, willing to endure hardships, and his training is also extremely hard.

Compared with Beiyang, which has been an army for many years, the hastily expanded Anhui New Army is certainly inferior to the Beiyang veterans in terms of experience and quality, and can only put some thought into equipment. I thought about the establishment and composition of the Japanese army and the US infantry division during World War II in the future, and invested heavily in the equipment. After the expansion, the Anhui New Army has 14 people per squad, equipped with a ZB30 light machine gun, and the non-commissioned officers are equipped with a Stern submachine gun and a Mauser 20 rounds each. Each platoon has 3 squads, under the jurisdiction of two infantry squads and one fire support squad, equipped with an improved Type 89 50 mm grenadier canister, 45 men per platoon, 150 men per company. It has two infantry platoons, one artillery platoon, 60 mortars and 2 2 Makqin 1908 with baffles and wheels. Each battalion has three infantry companies and one artillery platoon, equipped with 4 92 infantry guns, and the whole battalion has a total of 500 people. Each regiment has four battalions, an artillery company, and a guard platoon, with an artillery company of 150 people, equipped with 82 mortars, 8 Grussen 57 howitzers, a Maxim machine gun, and a guard platoon of 50 people, equipped with three ZB30 light machine guns and a Maxim 1908, with a total of 2,200 people in the regiment. Each division had a battalion of 75 guns, with three companies per battalion and six guns each, for a total of 54 75mm Skoda mountain guns. Each division has four infantry regiments, an artillery regiment, a baggage battalion, a cavalry regiment, an engineer battalion, and a divisional guard company, totaling 13,400 men. In terms of establishment, it is slightly larger than Beiyang, but it is equipped with a large number of submachine guns and mortars, and the number of Makqin's extremely strong is also more than that of the Beiyang Army of the same period, and the equipment is not mentioned.

According to Hu Rui's Jihua, the Anhui New Army will be expanded into two integrated divisions and two mixed associations according to the existing 34 mixed associations and 26 patrol battalions, as well as two local garrison regiments composed entirely of new recruits. Commanders are the key to army expansion. In order to ensure the smooth progress of the expansion of the whole army, the trainees of the third phase of the training battalion and some of the outstanding cadets of the fourth phase were all supplemented by the grassroots units. This group of more than 500 grassroots officers, together with the non-commissioned officers previously selected from veterans of the New Army and patrol battalions, basically ensured the supply of officers and established Hu Rui's military ranks. In terms of personnel organization, the two divisions and the two mixed associations, which are the main forces, are arranged in strict accordance with the pattern of one veteran and one new recruit, so as to prevent a major decline in combat effectiveness after the expansion of the troops. Artillery and other scientific and technological arms are preferentially selected from the veterans of the patrol battalion and the artillery battalions, and they have experienced the baptism of the "bandit movement", and the newly recruited recruits can shoot and throw bombs. Among the vigorous reorganization movements, the most special ones were Wang Tianda's guard battalion and the newly established heavy artillery regiment of the New Army.

If you talk about the guard battalion, Wang Tianda will definitely not be able to help but daxiao three times. He had four companies in one guard battalion, including an artillery company, armed with 82 mortars and MG08 machine guns. Only other non-commissioned officers and officers were armed with Desden Charge and Mauser 20-shot guns in the guard barracks. The new army's little family foundation is almost all here, and the equipment alone is enough to make the new army jealous and hateful, but this is not over.

At the beginning of the year, Hu Rui shamelessly copied the "Phoenix" brand bicycle, which had been popular all over the country for decades, and handed it over to Wuhu Industrial Park for trial production after appropriate improvements. When the first batch of 300 prototypes left the factory, they immediately attracted the attention of all walks of life in Wuhu. Look at the stuck, stupid old-fashioned bicycles running on the street, it's simply incomparable. Not to mention the delicate appearance, the quality is particularly good, light and labor-saving. The most humane thing is that there are also male and female styles, which can be regarded as the first time in Wuhu. Some of the good tabloids immediately linked the launch of the new bicycle to the women's liberation movement that was in full swing at the moment, and inadvertently advertised it for free. For a while, all the characters with heads and faces in Wuhu grabbed their heads one after another, exhausted all kinds of ways, and tried their best to buy one. Otherwise, I'm really embarrassed to go out and meet people. In just half a month, the Phoenix bicycle was copied to a high price of 300 oceans per car without picking a style, which is a price that can buy two or three sets of haode houses for poor households. The first batch of 300 Phoenix bicycles was in short supply, and all walks of life in Wuhu stretched their necks and waited for the advent of follow-up vehicles. Wait, wait, wait, until October, I still didn't see a shadow. Among the people who were waiting for the monkeys, there was no lack of people with hands and eyes who were able to reach the sky, and asked the relationship, hey, the second batch of more than 1,000 vehicles were all wrapped up by the new army. The second batch of Phoenix bicycles produced in Wuhu Industrial Park was improved accordingly according to the requirements of the new army. For example, the frame has been reinforced, and the lights and rear seat telescopic pack brackets have been added to facilitate the transportation of ammunition and provisions. The improved Phoenix bicycles are all equipped with the guard battalion, one for each person! The rest could be distributed to the correspondents of the various ministries, which caused the eyes of the new army to be red. Wang Tianda didn't know how to restrain at all, laughed wildly and led his subordinates to ride a brand-new bicycle in Wuhu to swagger through the market, and he was definitely the most sassy existence in the new army!

The Republic of China version of the "Bicycle Rapid Reaction Force" was born. According to Hu Rui's concept, in the future battlefield, in offensive operations, the guard battalion will move away from the main battlefield, quickly enter the enemy's hinterland under the cover of artillery fire, and carry out roundabout intersperse. In defensive operations, as a general reserve, it is free from the rear of the defensive position, ready to block the breakthrough in the position at any time. In normal times, he also serves as Hu Rui's personal guard, and his equipment is naturally extraordinarily preferential. It is not that Hurui did not think about equipping the guard battalion with trucks and armored vehicles to form a real rapid reaction force. Previously, Wuhu also introduced a batch of Ford trucks from the United States, and Hu Rui recruited a group of scientific researchers to explore and develop an armored vehicle based on the territory of Ford trucks. But the number of pickup trucks is very small, and the driver and maintenance parts are even more lacking, so the artillery regiment can only be tightened first. In China, the automobile manufacturing industry is still stuck in a blank slate, not to mention the production of necessary gasoline and related maintenance parts. Everything depends on imports, even the gasoline that is burned has to be imported! In addition, the performance of trucks in this period is generally not high, the load capacity is low, the travel is short, the failure rate is high, and the price is even more outrageous. Although the Americans did not dare to treat Hu Rui as a wronged boss in order to open up sales channels in the Yangtze River Basin, it was really not cost-effective to go back and calculate the cost performance, and they had to be controlled by others. Under the scoundrel, Hu Rui had to give up.

As for the newly established heavy artillery regiment of the new army, it is definitely the only scorpion in the whole country. Two 150-mm heavy artillery battalions, three 105 heavy artillery battalions, five heavy artillery battalions, one engineering baggage battalion, and one guard company of the whole regiment are formed on the battlefield, and if the solid eyes really deal with them according to the establishment of an artillery regiment, they will definitely be beaten and vomit blood. Originally, the SFH18 150 howitzer equipped by the German army during World War II had a negative rifling of 149 and 30 times the diameter of the body, and the maximum range of the bottom row of the rocket was only 19KM. After Hu Rui's improvement, the double diameter is slightly larger, the gun carriage and gun wheel are also lighter, and the maximum firing range can reach 19KM when the full charge is fired, and the cost is relatively cheap. The LeFH18 Type 105 howitzer was also modified accordingly in order to adapt to the environment of the Chinese battlefield. It can be said that five artillery battalions can make up an artillery brigade, but heavy artillery is a brand new product in the new army, and no one has ever touched it before. Except for the two hundred people sent to Germany to study, the others knew nothing about these big guys. Therefore, it can only be squeezed according to the establishment of a heavy artillery regiment, and wait for the relevant Jishu personnel to be trained (historically, until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu government also imported a 14 times diameter 105 mm field gun from Germany, which initially became an exploration of field heavy artillery. Even the equipment of the 75 artillery regiment in the establishment of three cities and six towns across the country has not been unified. ）。

Hu Rui turned the whole of Wuhu into a huge barracks, and all the troops were being reorganized. After the expansion of the troops, it will take a period of running-in and training before it can initially form combat effectiveness, so Hu Rui has drawn up a 12-day high-intensity soldier drill in detail, and it is scheduled to send troops to recover Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai around October 24. However, one unit was an exception, and after only three days of actual military exercises, they hurriedly marched towards Jiujiang, making up for the rest of the training courses along the way. Hu Rui clearly remembers that on October 23, Ma Yubao, the 53rd standard commander of the Jiangxi New Army, rebelled, Jiujiang was recovered, and then Ma Yubao became the governor. The two river defense fortresses of Madang and Hukou were stuck on the neck of the Yangtze River, so Hu Rui, who was jealous of relying on the waterway to transport arms and supplies, felt like a fish in his throat. Therefore, we had to take the risk of sending the Anhui New Army to the Second Mixed Association before the recovery of Jiujiang, and set off first to capture Jiujiang! Be sure to catch these two fortresses stuck in the neck of the Yangtze River in your own hands!

In order to ensure that the Second Mixed Association could successfully take Jiujiang, Hu Rui took the four patrol battalions in Wuhu (one artillery battalion, one cavalry battalion, and two infantry battalions) plus two patrol battalions in Xuancheng, which had seen blood, to form the Second Mixed Association of the Anhui New Army (two infantry regiments, one artillery battalion, one cavalry battalion, one baggage company, one engineering company, and one reinforced guard platoon), with a total of 5,800 people, of which veterans accounted for the vast majority.

Accompanying the Second Mixed Association on the expedition to Jiujiang was a small surface ship unit. The entire lineup of this small fleet consisted of three armored gunboats, which were disassembled into sections after completion and handed over to German freighters to be transported to Wuhu for reassembly and launching. These three inconspicuous gunboats are a reference to the tank boats used extensively in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union during World War II (gunboats with a displacement of less than 500 tons are mounted on the turrets of tanks, and have a certain ability to sail near the sea depending on the tonnage. Now the DPRK Navy and Russian border guards are still equipped. designed. Built by Krupp, the cost of the three armored gunboats, together with armament and insurance, was 600,000 yuan, which was roughly equivalent to the cost of a Yongfeng-class sailing gunboat. It is much more cost-effective than the high price of the Chuzi-class river gunboat ordered from the Nagasaki shipyard in Japan during Zhang Zhidong's tenure as the governor of Liangjiang (the Chuzi-class river gunboat was the most numerous ships built during the late Qing Dynasty's naval reconstruction, with a total of six ships and a cost of 3.93 million taels each, which can be called the most expensive gunboat in the river fleet. As an inland river gunboat with a displacement of 750 tons, the price given by Little Japan is too tricky. ）。

Each armored gunboat has a full load displacement of 330 tons, diesel engine power, a maximum speed of 16 knots, and a cruising range of 1200 nautical miles 10 knots. Armed with four 45x 75 mm naval guns (two in a set of two, mounted in a fully enclosed turret), one twin 7.92 mm Maxim machine gun (mounted on the rear bridge), and four 47 mm Grusen machine guns. The three armoured gunboats were numbered from one to three with the suffix "PT (Pinyin initials for Chinese gunboats)", and the gunwales were painted with white paint on the bows. Collectively, these three gunboats can be seen as enlarged versions of the Soviet 150-ton offshore tank boats. Different from the river gunboats and Sichuan gunboats that were common on the Yangtze River during this period, these three boats have a very simple appearance. There was no piled up superstructure (a series of unequal treaties were signed at the end of the Qing Dynasty, which introduced the shili of the Western powers into the Yangtze River inland river. At that time, there were frequent teaching cases on both sides of the Yangtze River, and in order to maintain order in the concession areas and the safety of factories and overseas Chinese settlements along the Yangtze River, various countries deployed river gunboats in China one after another. It is equivalent to a mobile consulate, because it has to carry a large number of marines, so these small gunboats have two or even three decks, plus low freeboard, this kind of river gunboat looks very strange. There is no deck except for the turret, which is similar to a submarine conning tower, and there are no other deck buildings. Although the flat bottom of the ship sacrifices the stability in high sea conditions, it also takes into account the needs of inland river and offshore navigation. The most amazing thing is that these three boats of less than 500 tons actually have armor protection, the turret is welded by 20 mm average armor with a 30-degree angle, the horizontal armor belt is 40 mm thick, and the dome armor is arranged. Coupled with the low ship shape and simple deck construction, the probability of being hit by a ship's guns is low. Half of the crews needed for the three armored boats were selected from the officers and men of the former Beiyang Naval Division scattered in China (after the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing court disbanded the Beiyang Naval Division, and a large number of naval personnel were scattered throughout the country to fend for themselves), and they were generally recruited from among the retired personnel of the German Navy, adopting the mode of mixed Chinese and German crews.

Not to mention the Haizi-class cruisers of the Qing Army's cruiser fleet during the same period, that is, compared with the Jiangyuan-class and Chuzi-class of the Qing Army's inland river fleet, the three armored gunboats of the Wuhu New Army did not have an advantage in terms of tonnage or armament, and the three together could catch up with the tonnage of a Chu-shaped ship. However, it invisibly opened a precedent for the surface ship unit of the Wuhu New Army, and shone in the subsequent actions such as lifting the siege of Wuchang, attacking Nanjing, and clearing pirates. After many difficulties, when the navy of New China crisscrossed the ocean, cleaving the waves. No one will forget that three armored gunboats, less than 500 tons, were the original originators of this fleet.