Early the next morning, the 37th Cavalry Regiment was ordered to set off first and act as the vanguard of the entire army.
The departure of the army is naturally not something that can be done just by walking, but requires detailed arrangements. Guo Chengyong, as the deputy battalion commander of the 3rd Cavalry Battalion and the sentry officer of the 2nd Cavalry in the Cavalry Regiment, started making arrangements before dawn. various matters.
After breakfast and other matters were prepared, he followed the battalion commander Major Xu Wenshan to assemble troops in the open space of the camp, and then left the camp and headed west.
After the army officially set off, Guo Chengyong could not be idle. He not only needed to command the actions of the directly subordinate 2nd Cavalry Post, but also needed to serve as the deputy battalion commander, representing the 3rd Battalion to contact the regiment headquarters to determine the specific march of the 3rd Cavalry Battalion. Route, coordination with other cavalry battalions, etc.
After a day's march, he had to be busy arranging camp affairs, and arranging sentinels to conduct peripheral exploration, security and many other camp affairs.
As for the battalion commander, Major Xu Wenshan, he naturally would not handle these trivial matters personally.
However, although he is tired and needs to deal with many trivial matters, Guo Chengyong will not feel bored. On the contrary, he is quite happy - because this is an important step for front-line grassroots cavalry officers to move up. Other cavalry officers want this There's no chance yet.
Generally speaking, in the Da Chu Empire, if you want to be promoted to chief officer, you must first serve as an adjutant for a period of time. The military rarely says that it will directly promote the chief officer of the next level to the previous one. The commander-in-chief of the army.
There are not only differences in military ranks, but also huge differences caused by different commanding forces. Therefore, there is a transition of positions, among which serving as adjutant of the superior unit is the most common.
The formation of the cavalry unit is slightly special. There are only two cavalry sentries in the cavalry battalion. The number of troops is small and the organization is simple. In addition to the battalion commander, it is naturally impossible to arrange a deputy battalion commander. Therefore, the cavalry unit arranges a senior captain to serve as deputy battalion commander. The battalion commander also serves as a sentry officer.
These senior sentry officers are often the next batch of candidates for promotion.
Cavalry sentry officer, cavalry sentry officer and deputy battalion commander, and then battalion commander. This is a very common promotion route for frontline officers in the cavalry troops of the Great Chu Empire.
Major Xu Wenshan came here this way, and Guo Chengyong is also following this route. If everything goes well, and he achieves some military exploits, Hu Guo Chengyong will be able to serve as a cavalry battalion in a few years. Battalion Commander, and was promoted to Army Major.
Guo Chengyong is quite looking forward to this. An army major in his early thirties is considered young and promising no matter where he is.
After nightfall, after all camp affairs were arranged, Guo Chengyong, battalion commander Xu Wenshan and another sentry officer, Captain He Tianyu, the sentry officer of the first cavalry sentry, each sat on a simple folding stool, surrounded by a It was only about 40 to 50 centimeters long and wide, and was a small wooden table set up temporarily for eating.
The food on the small temporary wooden table is very simple. In a few iron lunch boxes, there are a few canned meats and canned fruits, as well as some pickles and sauerkraut. The staple food is noodles.
Naturally, it is impossible to eat as well as in the camp while marching.
Even as an officer, he mostly ate various canned and compressed dry foods when marching in the field.
This is limited by realistic conditions... Marching in the prairie or Gobi Desert, or even in the desert, you still want to eat rice or even home-cooked vegetables... Why not go to heaven.
The reason why we were able to make noodles to eat was because we had just set out not long ago, we had not yet entered enemy territory, and the flour we carried had not gone bad or moldy.
If you enter an area where enemies are active, you will really have to deal with all kinds of canned food, fried noodles, and beef and mutton every day.
As for rice... there is not much rice to be found in the entire Yining region. Currently, there are no rice-producing areas in Turpan Province. Several large oases and even the most important Yining Valley area mainly grow wheat.
Although some people from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry are thinking about trying to grow rice in places such as the Yining River Valley, that is a matter for the future.
The only staple foods currently supplied locally are wheat and corn.
It’s not impossible to eat rice, but you can only buy rice that has been transported thousands of miles from behind, and that’s a sky-high price!
Limited by the types of local food output, the various units of the First Army garrisoned in the Yining area naturally have whatever they can eat. They are fine when they are in the camp. Their daily food and drink are actually no different from ordinary people, including steamed buns, steamed buns, noodles and other pasta. Lord.
When leaving the camp to march and fight, they can only eat mainly fried noodles, plus various canned food and fresh beef and mutton.
Fried noodles, this is a traditional military food in China, and it was still eaten even during the Korean War.
By the way, this thing is not noodles... but a kind of powdery dry food made by frying flour directly. The advantage is that it is easy to store and convenient to eat. The disadvantage is that like almost all dry food, it does not taste good. In fact, it tastes pretty good. The key is that this thing must be eaten with water, otherwise it will be impossible to swallow.
Why is there an allusion about fried noodles with snow? It’s because you need water to eat this food, otherwise you won’t be able to swallow it... And when the war is fierce, there may not even be time to boil snow into water, so many soldiers simply stuff it Put a handful of snow into your mouth and wait for the snow to melt into water before taking a bite of fried noodles.
In addition to fried noodles, there are also various canned meats, canned water and compressed dry food. These are more popular among soldiers than fried noodles, but the relative cost is also higher, so the military provides fried noodles as well as various canned foods. Compressed dry food.
Speaking of this compressed dry food, we have to talk about the Buller thorns of the nomadic people. The Chu army's compressed meat cans were improved based on this thing.
This thing was born out of the Buller thorn of the early nomadic people, but the process technology has been improved, but the basic principle is still the same. They are all types of dehydrated and compressed dry food.
The basic steps are to slaughter the cattle in the military grain factory at the rear, select the beef with less fat, dehydrate it, crush it and compress it with mechanical equipment... and finally use horseshoe cans for final packaging and high-temperature sterilization.
This damn thing is hard and unpalatable, but it has to be said that it is light in weight and provides sufficient calories, allowing soldiers to survive longer than ordinary canned meat that has not been compressed.
And the most important thing is that it can be stored for a long time... After the military purchases it, it can stock up in large quantities without worrying that the shelf life will expire after one or two years of purchase.
The Army's side is fine, but many of the Navy's warships are rationing compressed beef cans, some of which are even more than ten years old.
Because the frontline soldiers had great objections to various compressed dry rations, the Army also adopted a large-scale supply of fresh cattle and sheep for military rations on the Western Front!
To put it bluntly, it is to let the frontline troops directly bring a large number of cattle and sheep to the battlefield, graze them while fighting, and kill and cook them immediately when the meal is served!
In order to solve the problem of food supply for the troops on the front line, especially on the front line of the Western Regions, the Da Chu Empire Army worked hard and used various methods.
Various flavors of fried noodles, various flavors, different types of cans, and now compressed cans, etc. In addition, we have also developed industrially produced biscuits based on a snack in Europe, that is, biscuits. Use of military rations.
So far, the development of military rations in the Da Chu Empire has evolved from early fried noodles and primitive cans to various compressed dry foods.
Now is a transitional period, so the military has a variety of military rations at the same time.
Although many of the military rations were not very good, especially fried noodles, some compressed dry rations, and some relatively primitive dehydrated and air-dried foods, such as bacon and the like, which were not popular with the soldiers, various fresh canned foods were an exception.
Non-compressed cans made of various fresh meats, as well as various canned fruits, are very popular among soldiers... Of course, only cans made of fresh ingredients without additives are limited.
Not the bad cans from Donglin Trading Company that are exclusively for export.
Let’s not talk about whether that damn thing will cause poisoning and death. If we just talk about the taste, it’s actually not that good. When I first ate it, I thought it was like that. It has a bit of meaty taste...but if you eat too much, it will It makes people feel disgusting.
In the past year, there has been news that Donglin Trading Company is preparing to build a so-called new cannery to produce cans that meet domestic food safety standards, and then supply the domestic market and even want to enter the military procurement system.
For this reason, it encountered opposition from many grassroots soldiers and even officers.
However, although there is considerable opposition from the grassroots, the senior military officials are very interested in the so-called 'national standard version of canned meat with special flavor' proposed by Donglin Trading Company.
The reason is simple, this thing is cheap, only about one third of the price of fresh pure canned meat.
Moreover, the safety standards of all aspects of the national standard version of the canned special fragrant meat are within the legal range. People from Donglin Trading Company patted their chests and said, this thing will definitely not kill anyone!
However, despite this or that problem, the Chu Empire's military rations can still be proudly said to be the best in the world, and are absolutely incomparable to other indigenous countries.
Every day in the camp, there is enough noodles, bread or white rice, often meat, and a variety of fruits and vegetables. The daily diet is much better than that of ordinary people in China.
Even during marching operations, the logistics department will try its best to maintain the supply of fresh food. If fresh food cannot be supplied, a sufficient supply of various military canned or dry food will be provided. Whether it tastes good or not is another matter, but the portion is absolutely sufficient. of.
This Western Expedition to the Kazakh Khanate was no exception. The logistics department prepared a large amount of supplies. The logistics warehouse in Yining area was filled with five warehouses filled with cans of pure fresh beef!
There are even more supplies of other types of military rations, including various canned fruits and vegetables, as well as various compressed dry rations.
In addition, the frontline soldiers were provided with fresh meat, and the logistics department also prepared a large number of live cattle and sheep to march with them so that they could eat fresh meat while on the front line.
In addition to the food for the soldiers, a large amount of rations for the large number of military horses was also prepared.
Sufficient supplies are enough to maintain 50,000 troops and tens of thousands of horses for at least half a year of operations.
In terms of material supply, the logistics supplies for this Western Expedition to the Kazakh Khanate were more than those for the previous Western Expeditions against Zhunger.
When Zhungeer was attacked, material supplies were actually very scarce. However, because Zhungeer had a lot of troops, the Chu army also used a lot of troops. At most, it even used more than ten or two hundred thousand troops.
In terms of the logistics supply capacity of the Chu army in the Western Regions at that time, it was actually not enough to supply such a large army. Therefore, many troops were often full and hungry when marching and fighting, and under special circumstances, they would kill soldiers and horses. Just eat.
However, this time in the Western Expedition to the Kazakh Khanate, the number of troops deployed was only about one-third of that of the previous Western Expedition to Jungar. However, the soldiers' rations and horse rations provided were more than those of the previous Western Expedition to Jungar.
This was due to the Chu Empire's control of the large oases in Turpan. The most important thing was its control and development of the Yining Valley area.
This place is very rare in the Western Regions and is suitable for large-scale reclamation and development. The Ili River and the plains in the river valley make this place the largest and most important granary of the Chu Empire in the Western Regions.
Some people call it Jiangnan beyond the Great Wall!
It is precisely with the food support from the Yining River Valley that the Chu Empire can station a large number of troops in the areas outside the Great Wall for a long time, and at the same time be able to supply an increasing number of new immigrants.
As of the twenty-eighth year of Chengshun, the Yining River Valley alone had a population of more than 50,000, and these more than 50,000 people were citizens.
This does not include soldiers. In fact, in the Yining Valley, more people are stationed here. The various units of the First Group Army, which also conducts military reclamation, have more than 60,000 troops stationed here for a long time, including one first-class division and two Second Division, plus a Fourth Cavalry Corps.
In addition to combat training, these troops will also conduct large-scale military reclamation to solve the military food problem on the spot.
If the military and civilians are added together, the total population in the Yining Valley area will reach 110,000, which is a serious population city in the Western Region.
Relying on the sufficient local food supply and human resources, the Ministry of Industry established a series of government-run enterprises here, mainly defense-related factories.
Including Yining Arsenal, Yining Cannery, and Yining Textile Factory, the three major defense expenditure industries involving weapons and equipment, military rations, and military uniforms.
In addition, there are some fragmentary small factories that are closely related to national defense and people's livelihood.
In just a few years, the Chu Empire built a city with a population of more than 100,000 and a basic defense industrial system in the deserted Yining River Valley.
This kind of thing could only happen in the industrialized Chu Empire, and would never happen in any country that was still in a backward agricultural era.
Relying on the Yining River Valley, the Chu Empire was able to look westward at the Kazakh prairie and prepare to swallow this prairie directly.
Not just a simple conquest and annexation, the Great Chu Empire was even preparing to build cities and settle settlers based on the Chu River and the Syr Darya River, two important inland rivers on the grasslands of central and southern Kazakhstan, and eventually turn this two-river area into a The Chu Empire's bridgehead and even logistics supply base in Central Asia provided assistance for the Chu Empire to conquer the entire Central Asia and even continue to advance westward.
Therefore, when the soldiers of the Second Cavalry Corps of the Army continued to advance westward, and the Fourth Cavalry Corps and some infantry and artillery units in the rear also moved westward across Sanshu City, an alternative mobilization swearing-in ceremony was held in Yining City. In progress.
Immediately afterwards, a civilian team of more than 100 people, led by Yang Mingda, a political participant in Turpan Province, will follow the military with more than 5,000 immigrants. They will follow the military to choose suitable places for city construction and settlement. .
The generals captured the city and territory from the front, defeated and annihilated the indigenous troops, destroyed the indigenous political power, and crushed the organized resistance of the indigenous people.
Civilian officials built cities and settled in the rear, organized militias to protect themselves, and even took the initiative to expel and wipe out the remaining indigenous people, and fully and effectively controlled the local area.
Combining one civilized force and one military force was a common practice of the Great Chu Empire when it expanded abroad. It was done this way in Nanyang, this was done in Siberia, and it is still done this way in Central Asia.
And Yang Mingda is the civil official responsible for the Chu River and Syr Darya areas this time. If nothing unexpected happens, he will also become the person in charge of the new administrative jurisdiction of the Chu Empire in West Asia.
The imperial center even chose the reputation of this area: Mesopotamia Province, named after the Chu River and the Syr Darya River, and the area between the two rivers is often called the Mesopotamia region.
The Great Chu Empire will establish Lianghe Province in this area in the future, and the other eastern areas of the Kazakh Khanate will be merged into Turpan Province as expected. The rest of the northern area will be merged with the existing Ob River Basin under military control. The controlled areas were merged, eventually creating a new Ob province.
The once vast Kazakh Khanate will be completely dismembered into three major parts.
Of course, it is too early to directly establish separate provinces. In the short term and for a long time to come, the administrative affairs of the Kazakh grassland will be handled by the "Lianghe Affairs Office", which is under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Turpan. The supervision is provided by Yang Mingda, a third-level political official from Turpan.
The establishment of the Lianghe Affairs Office means that the Chu Empire is preparing to completely take over the Kazakh grasslands. However, the Kazakhs know nothing about this and have no idea of the huge ambitions of the Chu Empire.
Even when the native Kazakhs discovered the vanguard cavalry of the Chu army, they did not know why the Chu people appeared here.
What followed was a huge panic... As the knights ran on the grassland, this panic quickly spread throughout the Kazakh grassland like a wave!
As a result, the Kazakh tribes who were still in the melee were stunned, and then they began to recruit troops one by one to prepare for war. The tribes that were fighting each other also stopped attacking each other, and turned their heads eastward, preparing to face the Chu Kingdom. people.
There were a few smart tribal leaders who even ignored the past grievances and tried to unite with other tribes to resist the invasion of the Chu people, especially the tribes in the east... Seeing that the Chu people were about to kill them, they Naturally, I want to fight for all the help I can get.
But... some tribal leaders thought it had nothing to do with the Chu people coming.
Anyway, their tribe’s pastures are not in the east, but in the south or even the west. It’s none of my business for the Chu people to attack the tribes in the east...
Some people even think that they can join forces with the Chu people to conquer other tribes in the central and eastern regions and seize more pastures.
As the Second Cavalry Army of the Great Chu Empire entered the grassland, they faced not tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of Kazakh coalition forces, but more than a dozen tribes or alliances, large and small, fighting each other.
Some of these tribes or alliances are even still attacking and fighting each other. Some tribes even send people to contact the Chu people, hoping to attack a certain enemy tribe with the Chu army.
Then several tribes in the east saw that the situation was not good, and did not give other tribes a chance at all. They ran directly to the Chu army and surrendered!
This scene made some of the top generals of the Chu army feel uncomfortable...
Some people even began to worry...According to the surrender method, this massive battle to destroy the country might turn into an armed march...
After this battle, they will only get some hard work if they are exhausted.
Credit? Stop dreaming. We haven’t even fought yet. Do you still want military glory?
How can I be promoted without merit?
So, half a month after marching westward, the Chu army seemed to have captured a large area along the way and accepted a large number of captured Hunan troops. However, the faces of the Chu army's generals became increasingly ugly.
In particular, it took a lot of personal connections to get a mid-level and high-level general who had the opportunity to lead troops on the front line.
They had gone through so much trouble to mobilize the troops, and they were about to do a big job, take all the credit, and then move up the mountain. It turned out that these Kazakh natives were lucky, and they surrendered faster than rabbits!
Mother Xipi, if you don’t resist, how can I make meritorious service?
What a scam!
