It is no wonder that these Beiyang officers have ugly faces, and in three days, the systematic exercises have shown many officers in Beiyang a formidable and terrifying Northwest Army, not to mention weapons and equipment, but personal quality, and the Third Army has really shown its perverted strength.

Fully armed, each person's weight is about 32 kilograms, much higher than the northwest average of 24 kilograms, higher than Beiyang, Beiyang does not have a weight, guns and ammunition are good, the rest, you can take it if you want to, you can take it if you don't want to.

From weapons to personal belongings, the Northwest all showed specialization, a small sleeping bag, tarp, water bottle, sabers, shovels, personal items, etc., on the back, forming a tight and sturdy backpack, carrying it behind the back, freeing both hands, and weapons and ammunition are also carried in sufficient quantities, at least enough to fight a high-intensity war.

The day's exercise began in the armed off-road, the whole army, in regiments, after 15 kilometers of armed cross-country, entered the state of war in five minutes, and then dug trenches and fortifications, and it took only five hours to cross a distance of 15 kilometers, and built a simple fortification enough to withstand the attack of artillery below 100 mm.

When I saw this scene, all the Beiyang troops stopped talking, and the civil fortifications began to circulate in China from the beginning of seeing the use of the northwest, and the more attention to this aspect, the more they understood the army, the more they paid more attention, because it had an immediate effect.

From simple individual fortifications to combined joint fortifications, the right height, the shelter of the earth, gave the unprotected infantry a strong defense. When there is no preset battlefield, dig out a battlefield. This is a remarkable feat.

Most of the officers of the Beiyang Army brought by Yuan Shikai to Baotou were generals who could lead troops. They are also relatively knowledgeable soldiers, since they know the trenches, they began to study, and in peacetime training, they also pay more attention to civil engineering, and they have not been taught by the northwest, but the blood and fire of frontal attacks have taught them some, and they have used them in training and battles, and the effect is excellent.

Just in the beginning. When they saw that the Third Army began to build trenches, they thought it was old-fashioned, nothing new, and with the passage of time, the smiles on the faces of these Beiyang officers slowly dissipated, and even in the end, they became stunned, is this still a soldier, is it simply not human.

Man is more dead than man. Comparing goods and throwing them, this sentence is not bad at all, the civil work industry in Beiyang is, at best, a trench formed on the front line. The average placement of forces, with just a personal bunker and machine-gun positions behind them, is already the limit. It can provide a great advantage to positional warfare, and those soldiers who can't read a single word. You have to teach it by hand, otherwise you don't understand it at all. Sometimes they don't even go around big rocks, they struggle with one stone, and they don't care about time at all.

Like the Third Army, everyone knows what they do, no matter where they are done, they are done very well, especially those military shovels, which look no different from ordinary small shovels, but they are extremely sharp, digging up the soil, it is also fast and many, a single pit is quickly completed, and then it is deepened and perfected, and one person is effectively integrated into the team, when after a few hours, after a simple adjustment, it constitutes a complete military fortification.

This speed, this efficiency, is simply unheard of, and some Beiyang officers suspect that this is not designed, for this exercise, countless trainings have been carried out, in fact, countless times of training are there, but not for this exercise, whether it is the Third Army, or the Northwest Army, civil engineering training, is the simplest, the most basic level of training, only proficiency can make perfect, in the squad, platoon, company, battalion as a unit, after countless times of subtle classification exercises, will be integrated into a regiment, division, army level exercises, the largest scale, will use simple quick-setting cement to build a real can withstand the attack of 155 heavy artillery, real semi-permanent fortifications, but it takes a little longer, about 18 to 24 hours.

Civil fortifications of this scale, of course, could not be displayed in the three-day exercise, and the staff officers of the Third Army who were responsible for leading the Beiyang officers to explain just said casually, which made the Beiyang Army slightly uncomfortable, because some of them were too unbelievable, and the statement about whether the Northwest Army was a preset battlefield was raising its head at one time, but then, it was beaten down by real examples.

It seems to have seen through the idea of the Beiyang Army, the marching exercises were carried out five times in three days, except for the first three times, the last two, all of which were assigned by the Beiyang Officer Corps, the first three showed roads, canyons and forests, and the back two were mountains and rivers, which was the most test of the ability to build trenches, whether it was the first three times, or the last two times, the third army was successfully and smoothly completed, so that the possibility of presetting the battlefield is almost none, and it is impossible to have, really preset the battlefield, and these are mastered, on the battlefield, Most of the environment is familiar, and there is no deception.

Because of this, Beiyang is quite recognized for the strength of the Third Army, and the marching training and civil engineering exercises that show personal quality are only the tip of the iceberg of the strength of the Third Army, and then, shooting exercises, group drills, combined drills, company and platoon tactics, battalion tactics, and even division-level tactics, the soldiers of the Northwest Army have excellent physical fitness, far above Beiyang, on the one hand, it is a natural quality, and the Northwest has paid attention to this point from the very beginning, after all, the army is a place of battle, and physical fitness is the foundation of everything.

Physical fitness is the foundation, just the foundation, the northwest does not only have physical fitness, weapons are the most powerful root of the northwest, starting from the company and platoon tactics, all kinds of technical equipment in the northwest, artillery and light and heavy machine guns, has become the mainstream to attract the attention of Beiyang officers.

Yan Xishan's Third Army, almost played with light and heavy machine guns, the Third Army's perennial training consumption, are more than 50% of other armies, in special times, even more than doubled, Yan Xishan is very smart, his such an increase, not a random addition, on the one hand, select quality people, on the other hand, scientific training, so even in the Northwest Army sequence, can be in the use of light and heavy machine guns, and the Third Army wrestling, there are only a few elite shooters, but like this, In the Third Army abounded.

Looking at at least more than 1,000 light and heavy machine gun shooters, when they can hold light machine guns and shoot the bull's-eye, those knowledgeable Beiyang officers almost all changed their faces, as the best support firepower for the company platoon battalion, the amount of light and heavy machine gun equipment, in the past three years or so, the number of Beiyang has also increased, from the original 24 in a town, to between 56 and 80.

On the one hand, limited by funds, light and heavy machine guns are far more expensive than ordinary rifles, on the other hand, logistics pressure and technical soldiers are difficult to train, a qualified machine gunner needs to be fed with a large number of bullets, and it seems that a light and heavy machine gun that can shoot countless bullets with a pull of the trigger is not easy to play.

The most common mistake that recruits make is to pull the trigger and not let go, so that a shuttle bullet will be completely shot out in a short period of time, and it seems that the fire is fierce, if there is no strong force to suppress the machine gun, this will almost hit the sky, and the veteran machine gun shooter generally maintains the rhythm, a few or dozens of rounds, and maintains a certain accuracy.

Such a shooter is a baby bump in the North Ocean, and artillery plays a huge role in attacking fortified positions, but for positional warfare and battles with a fast transition between attack and defense, machine guns are the most trustworthy and kill the most.

Their baby bumps, in the Third Army, are just everywhere, the real elite marksmen, are counted in thousands, with machine guns as rifles to play, this is an absolute stunt, such a shooter, like a marksman, has a deterrent effect on the battlefield, and he will cause greater damage to the infantry.

In addition to the excellence of the shooters, there is another point, the Beiyang officers noticed that the equipment rate of light and heavy machine guns of the Third Army is somewhat high, and after a little inquiry, they stopped talking, 105,000 troops, the total armament of light and heavy machine guns is actually 5,000, and the average of more than 20 people is a light and heavy machine gun.

Unlike Beiyang, all weapons are self-produced, the cost of weapons, ammunition and equipment is quite low, in addition to the economic strength, to fight such a war, compared with a little ammunition, talent is the most important, just take the current Baotou minimum living standard, 180 yuan per month, pay 20 years of salary, plus some one-time subsidies, once sacrificed, it is tens of thousands of yuan, compared with it, consume a little more ammunition, it is really nothing.

On the last day, in addition to the marching exercise, it was to show artillery fire, the number of artillery fire in the northwest once again shocked the eyes of the Beiyang officers, high-explosive anti-personnel shells, with 155 heavy artillery, a cannon down, dozens of square meters, a desperate area, under the indiscriminate attack of high-speed steel balls, unprotected infantry could not resist these steel balls at all. In addition to the 155 guns, there were also more than 108 guns with a sea-like layout, mortars and small artillery that were flexibly used, changeable night strategies and raids, and all the combat methods they had thought of and had not thought of were displayed in front of them one by one.

These artillery pieces are powerful in scale and powerful, and there are no blind spots at all, and they are perfectly connected with each other, forming a three-dimensional and mixed combat system, and when combined, they form a unique position and attack system of the Third Army, which is invincible. (To be continued......)