readx; Before the war, the Chinese Army had 60 infantry divisions, half of which were fully combat-ready and half were peace-ready, and there were still four cavalry divisions, two armored divisions, two motorized infantry divisions, and 10 artillery brigades, and the total number of these field troops was about 1.2 million people. In other words www.biquge.info the total strength of the Chinese army before the war was about 1.5 million.

After the outbreak of the war, China carried out emergency mobilization, and changed the number of peaceful divisions that were not yet fully established to full strength, reaching about 1.6 million. First of all, it is worth mentioning that the mobilization carried out by both China and Ben is limited to the military, not a nationwide general mobilization, and the mobilization order is only reflected in the increase in the number of troops, and for other areas far away from the war zone, it will continue to maintain the same as before, which also makes a large number of people can drink tea and drink melon seeds in a good way, and they will shout twice: "Kill those little people!" ”

When they don't have to go to the battlefield themselves, the people always hope that the political axe can be tough, and they are eager for the army formed by the children of other families to level the world.

The families of the officers are all looking forward to their sons being able to contribute to the rejuvenation of China on the front line, and they can be promoted for meritorious service, especially the families of military and political dignitaries who have a large number of disciples to join the army. It can be said that these people support their own children to participate in the war. Although they can often hear the people of the National Socialist Party say that they are fighting for the revival of China, these rural parents who don't even know the words don't know what the revival of China is, they only know that Chen Jingyun gave them land, and in order to protect these lands, their sons went to fight as soldiers, and it was right to fight for Chairman Chen. But no one wants their son to be killed or wounded in battle.

In order to keep the morale of the front-line soldiers high, the military naturally cannot let the military families in the rear affect the morale, the military's post office has always maintained a system of inspection of the correspondence between military families and soldiers, of course, the nominal use of military secrecy, but those letters that will obviously affect the morale of the army will also be seized, thrown directly to not, but will be delivered after the war.

At this moment, Tang Qiang just looked at the letter sent by his father in his hand, and sighed after reading it. In the past few years, although Tang Huikang has still served as Chen Jingyun's private industrial consultant, but his influence has inevitably gradually decreased after losing his actual position, especially as he gets older, he doesn't have a few years to live, Tang Huikang doesn't want to go to the Tang family after he slips out of the circle of powerful families and becomes second-rate, so he has been paving the way for his son Tang Qiang in the past few years, wanting Tang Qiang to climb higher, but although Tang Qiang has experienced the Russian war and made a lot of contributions, he still has not been able to cross the threshold of the general. Russia's war is staring at a large number of people in China, and although the Chinese army has been stationed in Russia for a long time, but the only ones who really participated in the war were the counteroffensive Omsk and later in Omsk to meet the Russian Defense Forces. In order to train the troops, and to let more people feel the atmosphere of a large-scale war, the General Staff will rotate a group in two or three months, so that the officers will not be able to accumulate seniority and military merits in Russia.

Tang Qiang stayed in Russia for more than half a year and failed to cross the threshold, and was finally forced to transfer back to the Nanjing General Staff to serve, but after the situation in Lushun was tense, Tang Huikang once again used his influence, and even wrote a letter on Shen Gang's desk, and was stunned to transfer Tang Huikang from the General Staff to the Northeast Armored Cluster, and this time he was not in the rear headquarters, but directly to the First Motor Infantry Division as the commander of the 11th Regiment, that is, to go straight to the position of the major general.

Tang Huikang sent a handwritten letter to Tang Qiang: Lao Tzu has thrown out all his favors this time, if you can't get a major general this time, then you won't have a chance in this life!

Tang Qiang knew that his father had no chance in his mouth, not that Tang Huikang could no longer give him activities behind his back, but because of his age, the current squadron has long been regularized, and the rules and regulations in all aspects are already quite perfect, and the retirement system has made a large group of officers feel a huge pressure. In order to make room for young officers, the military instituted a strict retirement system.

In the retirement system, there is naturally no change in ordinary soldiers, and after the three-year service period is over, they can retire and get employment arrangements, and those who are willing to continue to serve apply for conversion to non-commissioned officers to continue to serve. After reaching the rank of non-commissioned officer, he is already a professional soldier with the surname of a volunteer, and he has served until the age of 40 at the longest, and he is the highest 'sergeant major' of a non-commissioned officer.

However, many non-commissioned officers want to be officers, and there is only one way to become an officer, that is, to apply for military academies, in order to provide non-commissioned officers with promotion opportunities, the major military academies of the military will give certain preferential treatment to non-commissioned officers under the age of 25 to apply for military academies. Therefore, most of the young non-commissioned officers want to apply for the military academy in the first two years, and only after they exceed the age will they honestly continue to be non-commissioned officers, accumulate years of information, and when they climb to the level of sergeant major, the salary will not be much less than those captains.

In the past, there was no retirement system for the officer class, and as long as they did not make mistakes, it was normal for them to remain old if their physical condition permitted, and in the past, there were many lieutenants and officers who were thirty or forty-four years old, and there were also many colonels who were fifty or sixty years old. In order to keep the officers young, and also to give military academy graduates and young officers more room for promotion, the officer retirement system was implemented three years ago.

The retirement of an officer is calculated by age, for example, ensigns and lieutenants are both thirty years old, captains are thirty years old, captains are thirty years old, majors are forty years old, lieutenant colonels are forty-five years old, colonels are fifty years old, and major generals are fifty years old. The lieutenant general is sixty-five years old, and the admiral is seventy years old. After the above age, it is specially designed for reserve. Of course, there are some exceptions, such as those with technical surnames, which allow the length of service to be relaxed, but these exceptions do not apply to traditional officers.

Tang Qiang is not young anymore, he is already thirty-seven years old this year, although this age is still more than ten years away from the maximum age of the colonel's 50-year-old service, but there are a large number of young officers in the army, and the young officers who came out of the Fuzhou Military Academy during the Unification War are all young people who are about 10 years old and about 20 years old. At that time, Tang Qiang was twenty-seven years old when he graduated from the Fuzhou Military Academy, so a large group of brothers and sisters around him were younger than him, and this group of people constituted the main body of the officers of the National Army at that time. There are a lot of colonels in their twenties and thirties in the army, all of them are waiting to continue to rise, and compared with these people, Tang Huikang's combat exploits and qualifications are not outstanding, and he is even at a great disadvantage in terms of age. In this case, when the boss considers promotion, he will naturally promote those young people, and if he Tang Qiang does not make meritorious contributions in this battle, and then wastes a few years in a less important position, then he will be completely out of touch with the term general in his life.

Tang Qiang, who knew his own situation, had made up his mind, and he had to play in this battle no matter what.

Seeing that the top boss pondered after reading the letter, the captain and adjutant beside him did not speak, but not long after, a lieutenant hurriedly walked in outside, still holding a telegram in his hand: "Regiment seat, the division headquarters has come to order!" ”

Tang Qiang stood up and took the message from the communications officer, the message on it was simple and clear, that is, ordering Tang Qiang's 11th Regiment to immediately march east and arrive in Fengcheng.

Zuo Yugang's armored group did not rush to the front line immediately after the battle, but gathered in the surrounding area of Shenyang, and then slowly moved to the Benxi area in the east of Shenyang. The Eighth Army and the Tenth Army in the Northeast Theater were deployed in the front line area of the Yalu River, and they were mainly concentrated on the front line of Dandong and Sinuiju.

The reason why the fighting between the two sides was concentrated on the line between Dandong and Sinuiju was naturally inseparable from the terrain and traffic situation in the northeast and northern Korea, which was mountainous, especially in the northern part of Korea, and it was not convenient for the movement of the armies of both sides under this kind of terrain. Topographical factors are one thing, but more important is transportation, simply put, railways.

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There is a railway from Pusan to Pyongyang to Dandong in Korea, and the railway in the northeast region is centered on Shenyang, and there is the Shen-Dan railway from Shenyang to Dandong, that is, the military railway built by the Institute during the Russian War. In addition, there is a railway from Shenyang to Gaizhou, then to Dalian Bay, and then to Lushun. These were all part of the original South Manchurian Railway, and as soon as the war broke out, it was naturally taken over by China, and as for the garrison troops stationed along the railway, the number was too small, and all of them had been driven out or annihilated as early as the day of the outbreak of the war.

In this small railway network in North Korea and the northeast region, Shenyang is undoubtedly the center, and around Shenyang, there are several strategic points, the rear of Gaizhou, Yingkou area. Dandong and Sinuiju areas on the front line, as well as Lushun and Dalian Bay.

From a strategic point of view, in fact, Lushun's strategic importance is the lowest, and China wants to conquer Lushun, but the capture of Lushun will not bring a fundamental change to the strategy of China, and attacking Lushun is more of an attitude, and the main combat areas of the two sides are still concentrated in Dandong and Sinuiju. As far as the army is concerned, as long as Dandong is occupied, then the army can go all the way north to Shenyang after crossing the Yalu River, and at the same time it can also attack the Liaodong Peninsula, cross the Liaodong Peninsula and capture Gaizhou and Yingkou, and encircle the Chinese troops in the Liaodong Peninsula. As far as the Chinese side is concerned, after capturing Dandong, it will completely stabilize the security of the northeast region and the Liaodong Peninsula, and the next step is to seize the initiative and attack the DPRK at any time.

Therefore, Dandong has become the focus of contention between the two sides since the outbreak of the war, and the two sides have gone from 20,000 to 70,000 or 80,000 at the beginning, and now, the Chinese Army has invested six infantry divisions, one cavalry division and four artillery brigades on the Dandong front, and these troops are under the jurisdiction of the Eighth Army. At present, China has only 12 corps numbers, and basically only one corps is deployed in each general direction, and there are only two corps in an area as large as the Chinese troops stationed in Russia, while the rest of the country basically has only one corps command in several provinces.

With the continuous expansion of the army's control area and the continuous increase in the total number of troops, in fact it is far from enough to have only 12 armies in the army, and it has been proposed that the headquarters at the army level be fixed, taking one army under the jurisdiction of three divisions as an example, then China's existing army can be organized into 20 infantry corps, two cavalry corps, and one armored corps. In addition, a group army was formed to replace the current corps-level command. Large-scale operations are carried out by forming a theater of several armies. It's just that such a proposal has only been said in the past two years, and in line with the factor of controlling the troops, Chen Jingyun is not very afraid to move the troops casually, after all, this move is not a joke, more than 20 armies need more than 20 lieutenant generals, and then the higher-level group army can only have five or six at most, which is not a good thing for Chen Jingyun to control the troops. Therefore, Chen Jingyun would rather let the twelve armies control the troops separately.

The Eighth Army on the Dandong front was an example, the Eighth Army had only four infantry divisions to participate in the battle at the beginning, and with the expansion of the Dandong Campaign, after the two sides slowly increased their troops, the number of troops around Dandong had reached six infantry divisions, one cavalry division and up to four artillery brigades, and for the convenience of command, according to the past practice, these troops were all under the command of the Eighth Army.

As a result, the total strength of the troops under the command of the Eighth Army has reached as much as 130,000. There were more troops than when the Third Army attacked Qingdao. In order to solve the problem that the army headquarters does not have so much energy to directly command so many troops, Li Lianyang, commander of the Eighth Army, also followed the example of the Russian War and ordered some senior division commanders to be the temporary commanders of the campaign, and then attached them to the artillery brigade and other units to form a campaign corps of about 20,000 or 30,000 men. In other words, the command work that should belong to the army command headquarters was directly placed in the hands of the campaign commander, and the campaign commander was allowed to replace the work of part of the army command. The military headquarters, on the other hand, focused on planning the overall situation rather than on detailed tactical command.

In fact, this kind of temporary appointment is already similar to the division + army + group army model proposed in the past two years, the difference is that the army under the group army model is justifiably fixed, while the current campaign commander model is a temporary establishment, and the commander is not an inherent army commander, but a senior division commander concurrently.

The Eighth Army had been fighting fiercely with the Yue Army on the front line of Dandong and Sinuiju for more than half a month, and the battle had spread from the small city of Dandong at the beginning to an area of 50 miles around Dandong as the center.

When Shen Gang ordered a full-scale counteroffensive, Zuo Yugang's armored group was also ordered to leave Benxi and close to the Dandong area, and the specific battle goal was naturally not known to Tang Qiang, the colonel and regiment commander, all he had to do was to lead the troops south according to the order.

The 11th Regiment led by Tang Qiang marched extremely fast, as the only two motorized infantry divisions in the whole army, the first division also began to change its equipment after the ninth division in 1919, and then began to transfer several motorized infantry battalions into Russia in 1920, and joined the first armored regiment in Russia and the second armored regiment to participate in the war together with other armored and motorized infantry units at that time. And these armored battalions and motorized infantry battalions that were transferred to fight in Russia did not return to their formation, but continued to maintain their reading strength, and then the General Staff simply merged the two armored regiments and reorganized them into the second armored division.

The 1st Armored Division and the 1st Motorized Infantry Division, which were originally stationed in Hebei and Inner Mongolia, could only resume their establishment on their own. And this time, the armored cluster is under the jurisdiction of the 1st Armored Division, the 1st Motorized Infantry Division, and the 9th Motorized Infantry Division.

The 1st and 9th Motorized Infantry Divisions both have glorious traditions, and they are still called the 1st Army Division and the 9th Army Division after being motorized. In the civil war of that year, the Ninth Division under the leadership of Zuo Yugang has always been the absolute main force, and going north and south can be described as killing God and killing Buddha and killing Buddha, and Zuo Yugang, the commander of the Ninth Division at that time, was also promoted all the way to important positions such as army commander and deputy chief of staff operations because of such outstanding feats, and now he has been entrusted with the important task of serving as the commander of the armored group. Otherwise, how could Shen Gang be promoted, you must know that when Zuo Yugang was only the commander of the Ninth Division, none of his army commanders and superiors had a good impression of Zuo Yugang, if it weren't for Chen Jingyun's support behind him and his real military exploits, Zuo Yugang would have been driven down long ago.

The First Division, like the Ninth Division, was also the ace unit in the past, and when it was changed to a motorized infantry division, it became the first two divisions.

At present, the first division has three motorized infantry regiments, one motorized artillery regiment, and other baggage regiments, engineering regiments, and other auxiliary units are all motorized. And in order to increase the combat capability of the motorized infantry division, an additional tank battalion was also attached.

In fact, the current motorized infantry division in China is actually motorized on the basis of the infantry division, equipped with a large number of automobiles and three-wheeled motorcycles, and equipped with some tanks, emphasizing the ability to move quickly.

In addition, the firepower was also assigned in accordance with the 1922 establishment standard, and the light machine gun equipment was put on duty, and the firepower of the vehicle-mounted machine gun was strengthened. In fact, there is not much essential difference between the firepower of the motorized infantry division and the 3rd Infantry Division, which was organized and reorganized in 1922.

However, the biggest advantage of the motorized infantry division is the ability to maneuver, the army motorized the first and ninth divisions, in order to allow these two divisions to keep up with the advance speed of the armored division, accompany the armored division to advance forward, and provide infantry cover for the armored troops, otherwise the army would have made so much effort to motorize these two divisions and do something.

The 11th Regiment under the command of Tang Qiang was also equipped with a large number of cars and three-wheeled motorcycles, and after receiving the order, he led the 11th Regiment directly along the railway line to the predetermined area, and the whole army was walking by car or motorcycle, which was faster than those infantry divisions could not imagine. If the traditional infantry division wants to run hundreds of kilometers away in a short time, it can only take a train, and the light infantry on foot is nothing, but those heavy weapons and equipment cannot keep up, especially the artillery in the artillery regiment can not keep up at all, and the light infantry without heavy fire support will not play a role even if they run to a distance of hundreds of miles.

However, Tang Qiang's 11th Regiment only took one day to move hundreds of kilometers, and not only infantry, but also other regimental artillery and other heavy firepower and ammunition were all with the army. If it was a plain area, Tang Qiang's regiment would even be able to march more than 150 kilometers or more in a day.

After arriving in Fengcheng, Tang Qiang did not rest, but immediately went to the division headquarters in Fengcheng to participate in the combat meeting.

After arriving at the headquarters, looking at the many colleagues who were familiar or unfamiliar, Tang Huikang walked up to find a few people he knew well, and after saying a few words, they said that this meeting was not presided over by the division, but by Lieutenant General Zuo Yugang, the commander of the armored cluster, Tang Qiang was also slightly surprised, Lieutenant General Zuo personally presided over the meeting today, I am afraid that the time has come for the armored cluster to go to the front line. And I've been waiting for more than half a month, isn't it just waiting to go to the battlefield?

He came a little early, and waited until half an hour later when the guards at the door shouted: "The commander has arrived!" ”

As soon as these words came out, more than 20 officers in the huge conference room stood up together, and then looked at the door, and saw Zuo Yugang striding in as far as his eyes could see, followed by several major generals, Tang Qiang saw that his boss, Major General Guo Chengdong, the commander of the First Division, was also following behind, and the other Major General Fang Dashan, the commander of the First Armored Division, and Song Junpeng, the commander of the Ninth Division, were also there.

"Sit down!" After Zuo Yugang went to the main seat and sat down first, he waved his hand to let the generals sit down, and at this time, most of the middle and senior officers above the regiment in the armored cluster were sitting here.

"As we all know, the Eighth Army on the Dandong side fought very hard, and the casualties were also large, and since the start of the war, the Eighth Army in Dandong has had 5,000 soldiers martyred!" Zuo Yugang said such an opening remark with a calm face: "Dandong is fighting very hard and needs support!" But! ”

Zuo Yugang looked around and continued to say aloud: "We are not going to Dandong!" Then he stood up and personally picked up the baton, pointing to the north bank of the Yalu River, dozens of miles away in the northeast of Dandong, and said: "We are going here, and then force the Yalu River!" ”