Chapter 178: Go forward with my gun, I’ll be waiting for you in the Vanguard!
The recruits were actually not very strong, and carrying a 105mm howitzer in one hand required almost all of their strength.

And because the recruits were carrying the shells with one hand, more strength was required.

The weight of the shells caused the recruits’ faces, which were originally sallow due to malnutrition, to slowly turn red.

The recruits didn’t even dare to breathe at this moment, for fear that they would lose their energy due to breathing and fail to lift the shells, causing them to fall on the straw-covered ground.

Qin Yangming, who was standing in front of the recruit, naturally saw that the recruit was barely able to pick up the shell, and it was not as strong as he claimed.

Qin Yangming also saw the respect, desire, expectation, and determination in the eyes of the new recruits…

And the raging rage and deep-seated hatred buried deep within!
Many new recruits in the Pioneer Regiment’s new camp have this kind of look.

Qin Yangming didn’t even need to ask, he could guess what happened to the other party.

“Whoo~”

Qin Yangming let out a sigh of relief and raised his hand to take the shell from the recruit.

The artillery shell that the recruit needed to use all his strength to lift with one hand was like a stick in Qin Yangming’s hand.

Qin Yangming’s palms are very big. A 105mm artillery shell in Qin Yangming’s hands is just like a 70mm artillery shell in an ordinary person’s hand. He can easily pick it up with one hand.

“Captain Qin, can I join the Vanguard?”

When the recruit saw Qin Yangming take the shell, his face was full of desire.

Not only that, other recruits nearby all turned their eyes to Qin Yangming.

Even the squad leaders of the new recruits did not stop them.

Not only the new recruits want to join the vanguard regiment, even the squad leaders also want to join Qin Yangming’s vanguard regiment.

For a moment, Qin Yangming didn’t know what he should say.

If we agree to the new recruit’s request, what if other new recruits also want to join?
It’s impossible to absorb all the new recruits in the entire new recruit regiment into the vanguard regiment, right?
Not to mention the impact on the Vanguard Regiment’s combat effectiveness of suddenly adding so many new recruits who were not trained by the Vanguard Regiment.

The new recruits regiment of the 386th Brigade is responsible for providing new recruits to all the troops of the 386th Brigade. All the vanguard regiments are leaving.

What about the other troops?
Normally, when the Eighth Route Army recruited soldiers, they would first examine the young and strong ones.

That’s right, it’s an inspection.

It does not mean that any young and strong Eighth Route Army soldier who meets the standards will be directly recruited into the army and become an Eighth Route Army soldier.

In the beginning, the conditions for becoming a real Eighth Route Army soldier were very strict.

Moreover, the Eighth Route Army had a strict rule for recruiting soldiers, which was that if a family had only one child, that child would absolutely not be allowed to join the Eighth Route Army.

In addition to not allowing only sons to join the army, there are also young people who have just gotten married, or are preparing to get married… and children under the age of fifteen. Only those who volunteer to join the Eighth Route Army can join the Eighth Route Army.

At the beginning, when the Eighth Route Army was recruiting new soldiers, as long as one of the above conditions was met, one could not join the Eighth Route Army.

The Eighth Route Army does not recruit soldiers like the so-called Central Army in the mountain city who directly conscript men.

The so-called Central Army in the mountain city never cares whether you are an only child or have just gotten married when recruiting soldiers.

As long as you can hold a gun, you will be directly drafted into the army. It doesn’t matter whether you join the army voluntarily or not. It’s completely conscription.

However, even if you meet all the recruitment requirements of the Eighth Route Army, you will not directly become an Eighth Route Army soldier after joining the Army.

New soldiers need to first join the local militia for preliminary training, which is the district team in each region.

Those young and strong people who are not qualified to join the Eighth Route Army directly can also choose to join the district team.

At this time, the district squad was generally equipped with a small number of rifles, and their main weapons were basically swords and spears. Their main tasks were to collect intelligence, transmit intelligence, collect food, and at the same time take care of some of the main force’s retreat, but they could not take some of the seriously injured Eighth Route Army soldiers with them and had to stay where they were.

And when the Eighth Route Army needed manpower to transport supplies, they helped mobilize the villagers to transport supplies, or when the Japanese launched a large-scale mop-up, they organized the villagers to hide in the mountains.

The district squad’s combat mission is mainly to target traitors. Unless there are special circumstances, the district squad will not directly fight against the Japanese.

After completing basic training in the district team, you can enter the county brigade.

Of course, those soldiers who do not meet the Eighth Route Army’s recruitment requirements cannot join the county brigade.

Because the county brigade is mainly responsible for carrying out combat missions.

Then these newly recruited soldiers will receive more intensive training in the county brigade.

The county brigade’s main task is to collect and organize the intelligence sent by the district squad, collect food, weapons and equipment, and escort the supplies to the main force as an auxiliary.

The main task of the county brigade was to ambush small groups of Japanese devils and to assist the main force in combat and help the main force in blocking the enemy when the main force was fighting.

Some relatively powerful county brigades would even take on the task of attacking the Japanese artillery towers.

It can be said that the tasks of the county brigade are much more dangerous than those of the district squad.

Finally, when the main force needs new recruits to expand, or when a new recruit regiment is formed, soldiers will be directly drawn from the county brigade to join the main force.

It can be said that the initial recruitment of the Eighth Route Army was very standardized and had a complete recruitment plan.

It doesn’t mean that as long as you are young and strong, you can directly join the Eighth Route Army.

But later on, the Eighth Route Army developed more and more bases, and many of them were relatively scattered or small.

The Eighth Route Army’s manpower began to be stretched thin. In order to protect the base and resist the Japanese, the Eighth Route Army began to expand its troops on a large scale.

The recruitment plan of district squad, county brigade and finally main force is somewhat inappropriate.

The recruitment plan of district squad, county brigade and main force is indeed very good, and the combat effectiveness of the soldiers drawn from the county brigade is not low. At least they have been on the battlefield and seen blood.

To some extent, these soldiers drawn from the county brigade are also experienced veterans.

Instead of new recruits who know nothing, can’t even use a gun, and are afraid of the sound of cannon fire.

After these soldiers joined the main force, they had little impact on the combat effectiveness of the main force. As long as a squad had three or four veterans leading it, it could be said that there was basically no impact on the combat effectiveness.

Although this solution is very good, it has a very big disadvantage.

That is because the training cycle is too long!

First from the district team to the county brigade, and then to the main force, even the fastest time would take three months!
On average, it takes about four months.

In other words, it takes four months to train an ordinary young man into a qualified Eighth Route Army soldier.

But how could the Japanese give the Eighth Route Army time to train new recruits?
Not to mention four months, there might not even be two months.

Under heavy pressure, in order to prevent the base from being taken away by the Japanese again due to insufficient troops.

The Eighth Route Army could only expand its army rapidly, directly recruiting young and strong people to join the army, and using the method of veterans leading new recruits to train new recruits while fighting.

In particular, some county brigades with good strength were directly expanded into basic regiments.

Generally speaking, after fighting two battles, new recruits can quickly transform into veterans.

However, the casualty rate was too high when new recruits who knew nothing were directly added to the battle led by the main force.

After a high-intensity battle, it is unknown how many recruits will be killed.

Those recruits were real people, not just numbers. Many military commanders blamed themselves for the high casualties among the recruits, believing that it was because of problems in their command and training that caused such high casualties among the recruits.

Especially those basic regiments that were directly expanded from county brigades, which had few veterans.

In some county brigades, it is good enough to have two real veterans in a squad. However, they are suddenly expanded into a basic regiment and then take on the tasks of a basic regiment, resulting in higher casualties.

Since the rapid expansion of the Eighth Route Army’s various units, a large number of new recruits have been infused into the units, causing the units’ combat effectiveness to decline rapidly.

As a result, a large number of core regiments suffered heavy losses in the last Japanese raid due to lack of combat effectiveness.

In order to reduce casualties among new recruits and prevent the combat effectiveness of each unit from being seriously reduced due to the addition of a large number of new recruits.

Therefore, the Eighth Route Army Headquarters decided to set up a new recruit regiment in each military region, column, division and brigade to be responsible for the training of new recruits.

After a month of military training by a special recruit regiment, the new recruits will be added to various units.

At the same time, because of Qin Yangming, each unit of the Eighth Route Army had a large number of heavy weapons.

However, these heavy weapons are not something that can be easily used by just any soldier.

Soldiers who use heavy weapons require special training, especially artillery and heavy machine gunners.

As for light machine guns, each unit already has them and also has its own light machine gun shooters.

Each unit can train light machine gunners on its own.

But heavy machine guns are different.

Heavy machine guns and light machine guns are two different things. Someone who is good at using a light machine gun may not necessarily be good at using a heavy machine gun.

In particular, many troops did not have heavy machine guns at the beginning, not even heavy machine guns, let alone heavy machine gun shooters.

For those troops that don’t have heavy machine guns, let alone using them to shoot, they may not even know how to maintain them.

Especially the Japanese Type 92 heavy machine gun, which was extremely complicated to operate and difficult to use.

If you don’t have the ability, you can let the light machine gunner act as a heavy machine gunner.

But now that the Eighth Route Army has the ability to train heavy machine gunners, it naturally needs to train specialized heavy machine gun shooters.

In addition, there are artillery and heavy machine guns. Some units of the Eighth Route Army may have one or two.

But as for the artillery… If Qin Yangming hadn’t been there, Li Yunlong’s new regiment would have had about 3,000 men and only one mortar…

From this we can see how much the Eighth Route Army lacked artillery.

A unit without any artillery naturally has no artillery.

After all, artillerymen are truly high-tech talents. Even in the mountain city troops that conscript men, the treatment of artillerymen is unique. Those who drink the blood of soldiers dare not drink the blood of artillerymen.

After all, these days, if you know how to use a cannon and can use it well, you are definitely a top student.

You don’t want it, but there are many people who do.

But the Eighth Route Army only had so many artillerymen, and it was impossible to disperse them to various regiments to help those troops train their artillery.

It can only be trained uniformly by the brigade, military region, or column, and then distributed to various troops.

So now that the Eighth Route Army is expanding its units, there are three main sources of new recruits.

One is the old method, transferring soldiers from the county brigade into the main force.

But this method is no longer feasible now. The various units of the Eighth Route Army are expanding on a large scale, and all the soldiers that could be mobilized from the county brigade have already been mobilized.

Another way is that each unit recruits new soldiers, trains them and then supplements them into its own troops.

For example, the new recruits camps set up by the Pioneer Regiment, the Independent Regiment, and the New First Regiment.

The advantage of this method is that the new recruits trained by one’s own troops will have a strong sense of belonging to the troops, and they will be easy to cooperate with each other, get used to the combat methods of their own troops, and be easy to command.

The disadvantage is that this method is very challenging for the strength of each unit. If the strength is not enough, rashly recruiting a large number of new soldiers will not only fail to increase the combat effectiveness, but will greatly reduce the combat effectiveness of the troops.

In particular, some troops only have enough weapons and equipment to meet the needs of their original troops. If they recruit a large number of new recruits, the new recruits will not even have basic rifles and will not be able to form any combat effectiveness.

After all, not all troops have such powerful strength as the Vanguard Regiment, the Independent Regiment, and the New First Regiment.

For example, Kong Jie’s new Second Regiment did not set up a recruit camp due to its strength reasons.

The third method is to supplement the new recruits from the new regiments trained by the military regions, columns, and brigades.

The recruit corps is mainly responsible for providing new recruits to those troops that are not strong enough to form new recruit battalions or new recruit companies. It is also responsible for providing technical arms such as heavy machine gunners to various troops.

After all, as soon as the soldiers of the new recruit regiment finish their training, they will be issued a rifle and then transferred to various troops, which directly solves the problem that various troops do not have enough weapons and cannot equip the recruits with guns.

Therefore, the new recruits of the 386th Brigade are the main source of troops for the rest of the 386th Brigade, and are also the main source of technical arms for other troops.

If the vanguard regiment directly took away all the new recruits, the military commanders of other troops would definitely come to the brigade commander to complain…

So Qin Yangming was in a dilemma at this moment.

If they agree, they will face the problem of a large number of soldiers with new recruit patterns asking to join the Vanguard Corps.

If you don’t agree, how can you refuse?
The soldiers who can enter the new recruits’ corps can be said to be the formal Eighth Route Army soldiers in reserve.

Strictly speaking, as long as the soldier is willing and his military commander is willing, the soldier can choose to be transferred to other troops.

However, the new recruits are a little different. As long as the soldiers are willing and the receiving military commander is willing, the new recruits can be directly transferred to other units.

Just when Qin Yangming was struggling about what to do.

Zhangye suddenly ran over.

“Captain, there is an emergency. The assault platoon has discovered a small group of troops approaching Baihu Ridge quickly!”

Zhangye’s words directly helped Qin Yangming out of the predicament. Just when Qin Yangming wanted to turn around and leave with Zhangye to see what happened.

Qin Yangming thought of something and took out the Mauser pistol hanging on his waist.

“In principle, I have no objection to you wanting to join the Vanguard Group.

You are all good soldiers. As long as you can meet my requirements, I will allow you to join the Vanguard Group!”

As Qin Yangming spoke, he solemnly handed the revolver in his hand to the recruit.

“I’ve had this gun for a long time, and now I’m handing it over to you.

Go forward with my gun, I’ll be waiting for you in the Vanguard!”

The recruit looked at the Mauser pistol in Qin Yangming’s hand, and quickly grabbed his clothes and wiped it hard with both hands. After the recruit thought he had wiped off the dirt that didn’t exist on his hands, he stood up straight and carefully took the Mauser pistol from Qin Yangming’s hand!
“Captain Qin, I promise to train well, pass the assessment of the Vanguard Group, and join the Vanguard Group with this gun!”

“Well, comrade, tell me what your name is!”

“Reporting to Comrade Qin Yangming, my name is Ding Ergou!”

“Okay, Comrade Ding Ergou, I’m waiting for you to join the Vanguard Group!”

(End of this chapter)