Lao Chiang also confirmed that the command of the 71st Army had been inadvertently taken away by the Red Party, and he was immediately so angry that he didn't eat all day. The angry old Chiang even wanted to revoke the number of the 71st Army for a time, but because the pressure of the Japanese army was still very great, Lao Chiang did not dare to completely tear his face with the Red Party after all, but with this as the fuse, the rift between the two parties began to expand rapidly

It is precisely because of this that Lao Jiang, who had praised Hu Weidong before, began to find ways to stumble on the 15th Group Army, first sending people to secretly negotiate with the headquarters of the 15th Group Army, asking Hu Weidong to let the ** prisoners of war who were exchanged for return to their old units, but Hu Weidong naturally refused. Chairman Chiang, who was always ashamed and angry, simply took advantage of Hu Weidong's exchange of prisoners of war with devils and directly questioned him publicly on the charge of "privately communicating with people in Japan," which caused an uproar for a while, but Hu Weidong did not take this trumped-up stigma to heart. As long as he can make good use of this opportunity to exchange prisoners of war and replenish his troops with soldiers, weapons, and ammunition, Hu Weidong believes that the 15 th Group Army will certainly be able to fulfill the great trust placed in it by the central authorities and the great men, and fight a great victory with the Eighth Route Army that has once again set a new record since the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression

Although a full 250,000 original ** officers and soldiers were exchanged, not all of them could be incorporated into the 15 th Group Army, especially those miscellaneous armies, the quality of the soldiers was even more uneven, but fortunately, the quality of the miscellaneous army in the Fifth Theater was relatively high, and Zhang Zizhong's 59th Army and the Gui Gang 7th Army were both elite troops whose combat effectiveness was not inferior to that of the Central Army's aces. Even the Sichuan army, which has a very low evaluation, has already proven itself in the bloody battles of the past year. Therefore, even after eliminating the old and weak and separating those who were suspected by the intelligence officers, Hu Weidong still received 1780,000 usable troops, plus the 20,000 or 30,000 troops transferred from the Shandong base area, and the 15 th Group Army, which had suffered heavy losses in soldiers not long ago, not only quickly recovered its strength, but also increased its strength a lot. Even if we count only the field units directly under them, the strength of the troops has reached more than 300,000, and if we include the Japanese and the marine divisions, which were actually under the direct command of Hu Weidong, the total strength of the troops exceeded 400,000

With such a large expansion all at once, the average quality of the officers and men of the 15 th Group Army will inevitably decline. After all, even if the first officers and soldiers who have been supplemented are veterans of a hundred battles, they have not been exposed to the advanced tactics and super firepower of the 15 th Group Army before, and even if they have rich experience in actual combat, it will take a while to learn and adapt, and in addition, political work must also be strengthened, according to Hu Weidong and Su Yu's preliminary estimates, it will take at least a month to basically take shape, and there is no other choice for the Red 15 th Army to quickly replenish prisoners of war like it did at the beginning, and now the 15 th Group Army has developed to such a scale. Naturally, I didn't dare to take such a big risk needlessly.

In addition, the rapid expansion of the armed forces has also caused a certain degree of strain in weapons and equipment. At present, the number of guns of various types in the Red Party Army has exceeded 1.2 million, and the number of artillery pieces is far from being comparable two or three years ago, but not to mention that there is still a huge gap in the 81 type gun family necessary for the standard equipment of Hu Weidong's ideal infantry squad platoon, even the 24 semi-automatic (hereinafter referred to as "24 and a half") that was put into production earlier can not only meet the needs of two-thirds of the 15 th Group Army, and the gap in the "Red Star" series of mortars is even greater, and even the original units of the 15 th Group Army, For the time being, there are also 2 integrated divisions with old-fashioned mortars. Therefore, the newly built 71st Army could only use Japanese equipment first, and it happened that so many had been captured before before and had not had time to dispose of it. Although there is a considerable gap between Japanese weapons and the new weapons produced by the Central Plains Border Arsenal. But it's still slightly better than the original level of self-made weapons.

Moreover, they are also equipped with submachine guns that are not used by the Japanese army, and with the help of this melee weapon, the powerful firepower is enough to balance the advantage of the Japanese army's more accurate shooting (not to mention that with the expansion again and again, the average shooting level of the devils has decreased a lot compared with the first year of the Anti-Japanese War). Although the border arsenal had long cleared it out of the key production projects, the total amount it produced in 1938 still exceeded 400,000 units. More than the total production of rifles. Originally, the Type 24 submachine gun produced by the Arsenal in the border area was mainly sold to **, but once the troops needed it, no matter how much it was, it could be quickly satisfied, after all, this submachine gun that cost less than $10 was really too cheap

One way or another. For this reason, Hu Weidong first vigorously grasped logistics work, hoping to reuse the powerful firepower to temporarily make up for the adverse effects of the decline in the combat effectiveness of the troops. Compared with the previous fierce wartime, this unprecedented scale of exchange of prisoners of war ordered a truce between the Chinese and Japanese armies that were still in a bloody battle for more than a month, Hu Weidong can just mobilize the masses in the base area and even some patriotic people in the national control area to help rush the transportation, before this method was not used is to consider that the devil's air liliang is stronger than the ** during the Liberation War, and the attack is more ruthless, in order to minimize the casualties of the civilian masses, Hu Weidong does not want to use this trick as a last resort, but now this rare "peace" In fact, Hu Weidong's "delaying tactic" of exchanging prisoners of war to gain time was not only to prevent the devils from desperately fighting with the 15th Group Army before the main force of the Eighth Route Army went south, but also to take the opportunity to solve the problem of logistics and supply.

Hu Weidong was deeply moved by the fact that more than 5 million migrant workers had been mobilized in the western Henan border region to support the front, and the total number of people in the Shandong base area and the national control area between the two places exceeded 8 million, accounting for almost one-eighth of the total population of the three places. Of course, thanks to the efforts of countless party members and cadres under Zhang Hao, secretary of the Central Plains Bureau, to publicize and mobilize, it is now the objective condition of agricultural idleness that cannot be ignored, but even so, it is enough to show that the Chinese people are not as ignorant and selfish as many "elites" say. However, this scene has never appeared in the Kuomintang region, and the gap between the degree to which the two parties have won the hearts of the people and their ability to organize and mobilize is obvious; anyone with a little insight can know that the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression is only a matter of time, and the cause of the Red Party will certainly succeed

!