Gan Xinrong, battalion commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment, Army Major, graduated from the sixth infantry course of the Army Officer Academy.
He is very young, only nineteen years old this year, and he is relatively handsome and not too tall, so that he looks like he is only fifteen or sixteen years old.
However, this situation is not a strange thing in the Chu Empire Army, because most of the officers and even senior generals in the Chu Army are relatively young.
This has a great relationship with the history of the rise of the Chu Empire Army.
In fact, in the early days, especially during the Funiu Mountain period, when the Chu army was still in the Funiu Mountain Baoxiang camp, its officers were relatively older, many of them middle-aged people in their thirties and forties.
But as the size of the Chu army gradually expanded, this situation changed.
First of all, the Chu Army established an officer academy very early. From the early camp-accompanying academy to the officer academy, there were crash courses, advanced courses, and formal courses.
The crash course is an academic system specially established for soldiers and non-commissioned officers who have made meritorious service in the army. In the early days, it was a one-month academic system, then three months, and now, it has become a half-year academic system.
And these meritorious soldiers who have been admitted to the crash course are often relatively young, mostly in their teens and twenties.
The refresher course is specially designed for low-level officers who are promoted to the front line in the early stage and have low educational level. The current academic duration is half a year.
They will improve their command level through rotational training, and will also accept a small number of young low-level officers who voluntarily surrender to the Ming army. The average age of this group is older, but they are generally only in their twenties and thirties.
Formal class, this is the class with the strictest enrollment, the longest academic system, and the most subjects studied in the Military Academy. The academic system has been from three months in the early days to half a year. Now the academic system of the Military Academy has been extended to two years, and the Ministry of Military Affairs It has been decided that by the time of enrollment next year, the academic length of the formal class will be extended to three years, giving students more ample time to study.
The vast majority of students in the formal classes are poor scholars in the pre-Ming Dynasty. The requirements for students' cultural level are relatively high, and it is not possible to pass the exam just by being proficient in writing.
At the same time, young people are also required. The Officer Academy has never thought of recruiting a group of forty-five-year-old guys as officer students.
Therefore, the students in the formal classes are young and young, generally only around 20 years old, and there are even a lot of students in their teens. After all, the minimum age for admission to the formal classes is fifteen...
The students trained by the three classes in the above-mentioned officer academy have become the main group of officers in the Chu army. Even the officers who were former soldiers or even bandits, most of them have participated in advanced training courses.
This has also led to a situation, that is, the officers in the Chu army are generally very young. Twenty-year-olds are the mainstream group, and there are actually a lot of officers in their teens.
It is normal for low-level officers to be young people. This is true for most armies in the world, especially for officers with a complete promotion system, even for modern armies in later generations.
After all, officers who have just graduated from military academies are generally only in their twenties.
But like the Chu army, it is rare for middle- and senior-level generals to also have a lot of young people. This situation often only occurs in the army during its initial establishment period.
Because at this time, the army is often in the process of large-scale expansion, and a large number of officers are rapidly promoted during the expansion.
Unfortunately, most of these officers are also young people.
The Chu army is in this situation!
Since moving south from Funiu Mountain, the size of the Chu army has been in the process of rapid expansion. It only took a few months to go from tens of millions to tens of thousands, and it only took a few months to go from tens of thousands to 200,000. Just over a year.
It only took more than two years to go from 200,000 to the current army of over 600,000.
From a few hundred people in the early days to hundreds of thousands now, it only took the Chu army just five years!
The expansion of the Chu army to such a huge size in such a short period of time also meant that the number of officers needed also increased significantly.
At full strength, a first-class division of the Chu Army requires more than 400 officers, and there are twenty-seven first-class army divisions in the Chu Army, requiring a total of nearly 10,000 officers.
In addition to the second-class divisions, independent artillery brigades, cavalry brigades, garrison brigades and other units, then the provincial garrison headquarters, campaign or border defense headquarters, and various agencies under the four departments and two directors of the Gyeonggi Military Academy.
The number of officers in the Da Chu Empire Army reached tens of thousands.
Among them, there are more than 100 generals at the major general level alone, including division commanders, chiefs of staff of each army/command, deputy commanders, directors of agencies directly under the Military Academy, etc.
There are even more people at the brigadier level, so there must be hundreds of people.
Where did so many senior generals come from?
They have all been promoted in the past few years, which means that most of these people are still young people.
Even senior generals at the lieutenant general and admiral levels are actually mostly young people.
For example, Xuanda Border Guard Commander, Army General Li Dongshao, is only twenty-seven years old this year.
The commander of the Northeast Campaign, Army General Li Chengtong, was only twenty-nine years old.
The commander of the Yunnan-Guizhou Campaign, Army General Huang Xiangbin, is younger, only twenty-three years old.
On the other hand, Army General Huang Dingquan, commander of the Shaanxi-Gansu border defense, is slightly older, but he is only thirty-two years old.
These generals are only in their twenties and thirties, so naturally the lieutenant generals and major generals are not that much older.
As for the rank of school officer, there are a lot of them who are eighteen or nineteen years old.
Major Gan Xinrong, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 18th Infantry Regiment, is 19 years old. To the outside world, that would be very unusual, but in the Chu army, it is quite normal.
Gan Xinrong was not considered an early general from Conglong. He only applied for the Army Officer Academy after Luo Zhixue became emperor in Han Dynasty.
He is a scholar himself, and he is also a scholar with a good family background. The Gan family is a traditional scholarly family in Anlu Mansion.
In fact, before Gan Xinrong was admitted to the Army Officer Academy, he never thought that one day he would lead troops to fight and become a lowly warrior among scholars...
In the previous ten years of his life, he basically rushed to become an official in the imperial examination.
It's just that his Gan family also defected to the Great Chu Empire early, and his father and eldest brother both entered the Great Chu Empire as officials early on.
Gan's father, who was obsessed with climbing up the ranks, directly sent the second son of the Gan family, Gan Xinrong, to the academy in response to the then Emperor Luo Zhixue's call for young people to apply for military academies and join the army to fight for the unification of China. Army Academy.
Well, at that time, the recruitment task of military schools was very heavy, but the society still did not have a high opinion of military generals, thinking that joining the army was a lowly profession.
The children of the gentry go to school to prepare for the imperial examinations and become officials, but few of them go to join the army. However, the formal classes of the Army Officer Academy have high requirements for the students' cultural level...
At that time, the Chu army was undergoing large-scale expansion, and the official class enrollment was hundreds or thousands of people... In order to obtain enough students, Luo Zhixue began to call on aspiring young people to apply for the military academy, and asked court officials to recommend aspiring young people. People...
As a result, many gentry families who defected to the Chu Empire, especially those who came to serve as officials in the Chu Empire, had to send their children to apply for the military academy whether they wanted to or not...
The emperor has called for you to make recommendations. As ministers, why don't you help His Majesty solve his problems?
Be quick and send your sons, nephews, etc. to military schools.
What, do you think you don’t know?
You don’t even have any political consciousness, but you still want to get promoted? It's a beautiful idea, you can just die at the grassroots level in this life. There are too many people who can't turn back to become officials, so I will drive you, a person who doesn't care about the overall situation, back to your hometown...
As a result, at that time, many gentry families who had defected to the Chu Empire sent their disciples to apply for military academies to join the army. However, they basically sent their second sons, and rarely sent their eldest sons to join the army. Some even sent their nephews. Cousins and the like make up the numbers.
Anyway, just recommend one or two people, and it doesn’t matter who you recommend.
Otherwise, given the social environment in recent years, it would be really difficult for the Da Chu Empire to recruit thousands of regular students from Da Da University.
It was against this background that Gan Xinrong entered the Army Officer Academy and easily passed the cultural level assessment given his educational level. Although his results in the physical fitness assessment were not great, he barely passed.
As a result, he became a sixth-term student of the Army Officer Academy, studying infantry.
The sixth formal class at that time was also the first batch of formal classes in the Chu Army to adopt a two-year academic system. It was also the largest batch of enrollment, with more than a thousand students.
After a year and a half of theoretical study, Gan Xingrong entered the army for internship with the rank of warrant officer unique to military academy students. At that time, the Chu Empire had successfully advanced eastward and occupied the south of the Yangtze River.
He was assigned to an internship in the 10th Division of the newly formed army for half a year. He also participated in the suppression operations, gained some combat experience, received a moderate internship evaluation, and then successfully graduated and was awarded the rank of second lieutenant.
His graduation rank was not high. He only ranked in the top 600th place among the more than 800 people in the infant department.
Because the internship evaluation was average and the graduation results were not that good, I lost the opportunity to stay in the new main force of the 10th Division. At that time, everyone knew that the 10th Division could stand out, and there were a lot of people squeezing in. .
Although his graduation rank was not high, he was among the first batch of formal students to receive two years of complete military training. He had solid military theory, and his superiors had high hopes for this group of students.
Therefore, although he was not retained and assigned to the 10th Division, he was assigned to the 5th Division, one of the main forces.
He went to the Fifth Division and served as a team officer for several months. After accumulating a certain amount of experience, he was transferred to the regiment headquarters as a staff officer. His military rank was also promoted to lieutenant. Not long after, he was transferred to the division headquarters. He served as combat staff officer and was promoted to captain.
The combined experience of these two staff officers was less than half a year, but it turned him from a second lieutenant to a captain.
Then he was naturally transferred to the third battalion to serve as the sentry officer of the first musketry post, still with the rank of captain.
During his tenure as a sentry officer, he led troops in battle step by step. His performance was not outstanding, but not too bad either, and he almost never made mistakes.
The impression given to the superiors is that of stability!
Although he is young, he is very prudent when leading troops. He seems to be in a law-abiding manner when fighting, but he never makes mistakes!
And this is very important to the superiors!
