Chapter Eighty-Six: The Nanyang Theater was established

After the Huo Jiajun occupied the whole island of Borneo, established Borneo Province, and set the provincial capital in Dong Wanlu! In particular, after the railways and highways around the island began to extend to the whole province from this starting point, this trend of great development became more and more obvious! Moreover, the continuous flow of internal immigrants from the Qing Dynasty provided sufficient population resources for the development of the area!

After more than a year of uninterrupted construction, this city, which is mostly built on the water, has become the political and economic center of the entire Nanyang provinces and cities! Bananas, sugar cane, bird's nests, and various agricultural and sideline products shipped from here every year have contributed a high amount of tax revenue to the Huojia Military Administration!

Of course, in order to defend this important coastal province and city, the Fifth Division of the Huojia Army directly stationed a whole regiment of regular troops here, plus a second-line garrison of 5,000 people, and more than 60 coastal defense heavy artillery! It can be said that the defense here is already impregnable, enough to withstand the siege of 100,000 troops for three months without any problems!

"Haha, Lao Huo wants to kill me! Farewell for two years, you guy is not bad at Nanyang!" Wu Guangzong, commander of the 1st Marine Division, hugged his old friend he hadn't seen for many years, and laughed with joy on his face.

"I'm nothing, but you! Now I've tanned a lot, it seems that the beaches of the Pacific Island are still very nourishing!" Huo Jianguang hugged him fiercely, after this guy who grew up with him since childhood, he joked.

Both of them are orphans adopted by the Huo family, they grew up together since childhood, and they are very close!

"I'm going to listen to your command this time!" Wu Guangzong said with a smile after letting go of his hand.

Just yesterday, all the armies of the Nanyang provinces received a circular from the General Staff Headquarters of the Huo Jiajun on the formation of the Nanyang Theater and the unified command of the military headquarters for the current operations against the Netherlands and Portugal! The new commander of the Nanyang Theater is Huo Jianguang, commander of the Fifth Division, and there are two deputy commanders, namely Huo Donglin, commander of the 10th Division of the Army, and Liu Lianfang, commander of the 40th Division of the Army! The political commissar is Yuen Long, political commissar of the 39th Division, and the two deputy political commissars are Niu Zhiguo, political commissar of the 43rd Division, and Sui Wenhe, political commissar of the 5th Marine Division! The chief of staff is Liang Zhanshan, commander of the 20th Division, and the two chiefs of staff are Chen Jienian, commander of the 2nd Marine Division, and Zhang Zhe, commander of the 39th Division!

Hearing his words, Huo Jianguang smiled faintly, "Hehe, this is just a temporary organization set up by the General Staff Headquarters for this Nanyang operation, and after this battle, I'm afraid this Nanyang Theater will be disbanded! Besides, you guy is also the deputy commander of the theater now, what is there to envy!"

"Hehe, yes!" Wu Guangzong also smiled, the theater system was indeed set up temporarily, but after the end of the war, as the territory occupied by the Huo Jiajun became larger and larger, in order to unify command operations and regional defense, then the implementation of the military region system became an inevitable choice! At that time, the responsible person of the military region will probably not be too far behind the entire leadership of the Nanyang Theater this time! However, it is still too early to say this, and their primary task now is to win this war!

"Let's go! everyone is here!" Huo Jianguang roughly understood his thoughts from his gods, but now was not the time to think about these!

"Well, okay! I haven't seen these guys since I left Taiwan more than a year ago, and I will definitely take this opportunity to get together this time!"

Most of the senior officers of the Huo family army come from three aspects, one of which is the 550 people trained by Huo Shan at the earliest, but they have been exposed to military training for a very short time, so there are not too many officers at the division and regiment level! The other is the Huo family's 5,000 people's regiment, because they received the Huo family's specially appointed moral officer training in the early days, so they almost all have good military qualities, and the literacy rate is also very high, and most of the officers are orphans adopted by the Huo family since childhood, and there is no problem in loyalty! Therefore, after they came into contact with Huo Shan's new military theory, their military quality improved very quickly, and up to now, almost most of the division commanders, political commissars, and chiefs of staff of the Huo family's more than 40 divisions came from the militia group! The last one was the Huo family's escort force on the sea! Their status was the same as that of the Huo family, and they had no problem in loyalty, but because of their special situation, most of these people had entered the naval academy in Saipan and the marines stationed on various islands in the Pacific!

The headquarters of the Fifth Division of the Army was built on a small hillside 50 kilometers outside the city of Dongwanlu and was connected with the outside world by a flat road! Of course, the defense here was also very strict! Nearly 1,000 troops from the division's Jǐng Guard Battalion were stationed here! Therefore, the entire division headquarters was built very large, and a small hall specially built for all officers to hold meetings and classes was enough to seat 200 people! The first meeting of the Nanyang Theater was chosen to be held here!

"According to the Military Order No. 18811128 of the General Staff Headquarters, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions, the 5th Army, the 10th Army, the 20th Army, the 39th Army, the 40th Army, the 42nd Army, and the 43rd Army Division! A total of 220,000 regular troops in 12 standing divisions, as well as 60,000 second-line reserve troops in 12 5,000-man garrison regiments, formed the Nanyang Theater. Yuen Long and nine other people formed the Theater Command to take unified command of the Nanyang Operation! General Staff Headquarters, November 23, 1881!" Huo Jianguang looked at the more than 100 officers standing in the audience and said slowly.

"Let's do it, everybody!"

Slowly glancing at the people around him, Huo Jianguang continued: "Comrades, today, December 1, 1881, our Nanyang Theater was officially established here! Although we have an armed force of nearly 280,000 people, which is indeed stronger than the enemy, so many of us are indeed distributed on tens of thousands of islands in the South Sea! Even if we have the advantage in weapons and equipment, we still cannot take it lightly! Therefore, before the war is launched, we must draw up a meticulous battle plan! We must take the islands of Java, Sumatra, and all the islands around them in the shortest possible time with the least losses! and deter all the surrounding powers and forces that have different intentions toward us with great strength!" After a pause, Huo Jianguang continued: "Now I invite Comrade Liang Zhanshan, the new chief of staff of the Nanyang Theater, to give us a specific analysis of the battle situation and read out the new combat order!"

Hearing his words, Liang Zhanshan, who had just taken office, stood up, walked to the large Nanyang military map hanging on the wall, picked up the whip placed next to him, and stretched out his hand to draw a large circle on the islands of Sumatra and Java! Then he said solemnly: "We have just received information from the Military Intelligence Agency that the Dutch have withdrawn all their garrison troops on the surrounding islands to these two large islands! In addition, they have trained nearly 30,000 expatriate armed forces, and they have officially formed an army last month! That is to say, before the start of our first phase of the war, we will have to deal with not only the remaining 12,000 colonial troops of the Dutch, but close to 40,000 regular army, so our troops put into battle in the first phase will be appropriately increased! Among them, the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions have canceled the original battle plan, and you must enter the battle as soon as possible, cooperate with the 20th Division of the Army hidden in Sumatra, and quickly deal with the more than 10,000 Dutch troops on the island, and then the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions will set up defensive positions on the northeast coast of the island, stationed on the front line of Banda Aceh, Medan, Dumai, Tranaipura and Palembang, and the 20th Army Division will be stationed on the southwest coast of the island to guard the line of Renden, Shivuga, Padang, Bengkulu, and Tanjong Garan! With regard to Java Island, the original attack mission of the 40th Division of the Army will be cancelled and the 3rd Marine Division and the 4th Marine Division will be the main attacking force instead! In addition, after the capture of Java Island, the 4th Marine Division will be divided into two regiments and stationed together with the 40th Division of the Army to garrison the Nusa Tenggara Islands, thus increasing the thickness of our forces there! The 5th Marine Division will remain in Borneo Province and cooperate with the 5th Division of the Army to garrison the whole island! The combat missions of other units will remain unchanged! The report is complete!

After the new order was issued, the expressions on everyone's faces were also different, and the four divisions of the Marine Corps were of course very happy, originally they were in the 20th Division of the Army and the 40th Division of the Army, after taking Sumatra Island and Java Island, they would go to the theater to take on the defensive task, but now after the new order was issued, they were able to enter the battle in advance, which was really an unexpected surprise!

However, the 40th Division of the Army was a little unlucky, and its original main offensive mission was gone! Now it has become an all-out defense! If the attack direction of the combined Dutch and Portuguese forces is Sumatra or Java, then it is very likely that they will not be able to win a single battle in this battle!

As for the commanders of the other divisions, there is no change between them, they were originally tasked with garrisoning, and before the Western coalition forces break through Sumatra, Java, and Nusa Tenggara Islands, this narrow chain of islands will basically not endanger the safety of other South Sea islands! Therefore, in the face of the strong strength of the Huo Jiajun, this war is likely to have nothing to do with them!