The teams transporting supplies are getting longer and longer. From a distance, it looks like long queues going on day and night.
In fact, the best route to transport supplies from the main island of Ryukyu to Yuwan Mountain is to dock the ship at Setouchi Village and then take the nearest and best winding road directly up the mountain.
However, the current strait is full of mines, and there are several stranded enemy warships in the reef area outside Setouchi Village. About a thousand Russian troops are relying on the warships to resist, so Setouchi Village has lost its role as a supply center at this moment. .
All supplies must be disembarked from the west and east coasts of the island, and must be delivered to the mountains after a large amount of manpower and countless tedious routes.
Xiao Letian stood on the rock and looked at everything in front of him with a telescope. He sighed and said, "If you want to maintain an army of 30,000 to fight here, you must have a logistics support force of more than 50,000, which consumes a lot of money every day." Four hundred thousand silver coins! This is just a siege!"
"If there is a war of the same magnitude as before, a day's military expenditure will cost at least two million silver dollars... This is war! This is a waste of money!"
Xiao Letian put down the telescope without looking back and directly asked Wang Huaiyuan behind him, "Are there any statistics? How much have we spent so far?"
Wang Huaiyuan said with a grimace, "There is no latest data. Our detailed statistics were released three days ago. We have spent thirteen million silver dollars on this ambush battle from the early preparation to the enemy officially taking the bait and entering the main battlefield." , the expansion of the fortress on Tangwan Mountain alone accounts for half of the cost..."
"In the past few days of war, half of our ammunition storage has been consumed, especially artillery shells, not to mention rifles, bullets, explosives, medical supplies, food... and of course mines, the cost of the Zhiyuan , as well as purchasing fishing boats and merchant ships from the private sector for sinking at sea..."
"The expenses for the past few days alone can't be paid without seven million silver dollars! Hey... This battle was fought. The cage locking the enemy was made of pure silver. Too much money was spent... "
Even though Xiao Letian was a wealthy man, he sighed in distress when he heard this figure and shook his head, "Has the cost of supporting the Far East Volunteer Army been calculated?"
"My Prime Minister! That's another account, okay? Money is being spent like water over there. Lord Long wants a hundred thousand Mauser. The import cost of a Mauser is about 70 silver dollars. The cost of our own manufacturing is also around 50 silver dollars..."
"The rifle that Lord Long wants costs more than 7 million dragon-marked silver dollars. Where are the bullets? Not to mention the others. I don't think there is much left of the 30 million military expenditures that Prime Minister you prepared for Lord Long before. …”
If you don’t become a householder, you don’t know how expensive firewood and rice are! The more he calculated the accounts, the more frightened he became. War is a gold-eating monster. No matter how well Xiao Letian was mentally prepared in advance, he still had to take a breath when the real figures were placed in front of him.
"We can't continue fighting like this. From now on, the hot war in Tangwan Mountain must be controlled. All strategies are based on siege. As long as the enemy doesn't go crazy, no more large-scale attacks are allowed... We must give the Far East Leave some supplies!"
Xiao Letian is right. More money and less money is just one aspect of the problem everyone faces. The more important factor is that money may not necessarily buy things.
On the surface, both Tanggu and Ryukyu have a Mauser rifle production line, but everyone knows that these two production lines are actually just assembly workshops.
The Chinese can produce some external equipment such as gun stocks, triggers, bayonets, and straps, but the Chinese cannot produce barrels and firing pins so far.
The steel for the barrel is now produced in Prussia, and the rifling has been cut in Prussia. The firing pin is also shipped in Hamburg and then sent across the ocean to Xiao Letian.
This kind of transaction efficiency is naturally much faster than buying and selling a whole gun, and the cost is also greatly reduced. But it feels very uncomfortable to control key parts in the hands of others, even if the other party is one's ally.
Xiao Letian had a hunch that if the results of the battle on Tangwan Mountain were disclosed to the world at this moment, the British and French who were stimulated would definitely take action against him.
Those merchant ships floating on the sea are likely to become the focus of the enemy. They will block the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca, and then send troops to search the ships one by one. They will seize all those transporting gun barrels and firing pins to the Chinese. merchant ship.
If that happens, Xiao Letian will immediately fall into the embarrassing situation of having money but not being able to buy weapons. And this will happen almost 100% of the time.
"We still have to consider the battle in the Far East. The limited supplies cannot be wasted. Let's send more to the Far East... Send people to contact the Americans and ask the Carnegie family for help. We are willing to spend 15% more of the cost, as long as the United States guarantees us Just supply arms..."
"Don't have any problems with the Pacific route. This is our lifeline... Let our college students and the political attack team go!"
After the Prime Minister gave an order, groups of Ryukyu university students who had been waiting on the sea for a long time took action. These future senior Chinese intellectuals, with extremely excited faces, lined up neatly and began to disembark from the boat, heading straight for Tangwan Mountain.
Along the way, all the soldiers looked at them in disbelief: "Hey, hey, hey... Ma Xiaobao, that's the youngest son of my neighbor Ma's family! He is an honors student at the Maritime University, why is he also on the battlefield..."
"That's right, that's Longze Yishan, a child from Fusang neighborhood, very close to my home... I know that child too, and the one over there..."
"You brats, what are you doing here if you don't go to school?" the veterans asked.
The child said proudly, "We are a newly formed political attack team, and the rest of the war will depend on our abilities! We are going to the battlefield, heading straight to Tangwan Mountain!"
"What?" Everyone was stunned. Although the Chinese army has a tradition of scholars serving as soldiers, that is only the case in military universities. Many students coming back here are students from ordinary universities!
The veterans present all know these children. Some of them are studying translation, some are studying literature and history, some are studying science, and some are studying physics and mathematics... I heard that these majors will become scholars and scientists in the future, and they go to the battlefield. What are you doing?
Everyone was puzzled, but no one dared to question the Prime Minister's decision. After these children walked into the forefront of the trenches under the stunned eyes of the 30,000-strong army, the rest of the matter was shocking.
Each of the children took out a tinplate trumpet from their backpack, placed it on the edge of the trench, and began to chatter in Russian. It sounded like a group of foreign birds.
The Chinese marines couldn't understand what the children were saying, but the Russian soldiers on the mountain were all dumbfounded. Although the Russian accent below was not standard, everyone could understand it.
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