Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 234 Students and New Organization
ps: Thanks to Pangdian and book friend 20180518155635512 for their support!

Walking down from the second floor of Yuxing Teahouse, Zhang Lingyun and Wang Shizhen helped the drunk Lu Rongting into three three-wheeled rickshaws and returned to the military camp twenty minutes later.

In the afternoon, after Lu Rongting fell asleep, he washed his face with a bucket of cold water and felt much more alert.

"Brother Shizhen, we will graduate from the preparatory course in three days. Have you chosen your major?"

Lu Rongting put the towel on the washstand and asked casually.

"Instructor Zhou suggested that I apply for the artillery, and my grandmother and mother also agreed to my application."

Wang Shizhen replied.

"Artillery, that thing is not easy to operate!"

When Lu Rongting heard the other party mention his family members, he had a relaxed expression on his face, but a feeling of sadness arose in his heart.

Wang Shizhen's father died early, and he was adopted by his uncle. Two years later, his uncle died of illness. He was raised by two widowed mothers since childhood. When the great famine broke out in 1874, he immigrated to Han State with his two widowed mothers. Because he came from a declining scholar family and had several years of study experience, after immigrating to Han State, he was admitted to the preparatory department of the Army Officers School and studied in the same class as Lu Rongting.

Although Wang Shizhen's family was poor during his childhood, he had two widowed mothers who took good care of him, so he could live a decent life when there was no great famine. When Lu Rongting was one year old, his father was falsely accused of colluding with the Taiping Army by villagers and was beaten to death. His mother, Ou, was forced to remarry and move to the county town. She sent some silver money to her son who lived in the countryside every month. After a few years, his mother, Ou, could not bear to see her son suffer in the countryside, so she took him to live with his stepfather in the county town. Then when he was ten years old, his mother died of illness, and Lu Rongting became an orphan with no one to take care of him. He survived the most difficult six months by begging in the county town. Finally, he met an intelligence officer of the National Defense Force who specialized in receiving homeless orphans, and was transported all the way to South America.

After 1840, natural disasters and man-made tragedies were prevalent in the Central Plains, resulting in millions of orphans without care every year. Except for a few who were lucky enough to survive, the vast majority of these orphans died on the streets due to disease, hunger and other reasons.

Children are the future and hope of a country and the most precious wealth of a nation. Although these children are not the young labor force urgently needed by the Han State, out of a sense of responsibility to the nation, Li Mingyuan still ordered the transfer of some intelligence personnel to be responsible for the resettlement of homeless orphans on the mainland.

Like those lucky orphans, Lu Rongting was sent to a Boy Scout training camp outside the new capital, where he received five years of closed military and cultural education, and then was admitted to the preparatory department of the Army Officers School with the first ranking.

The Taiping Army had a tradition of forming Boy Scouts. The brothers Wang Dashan and Wang Xiaoshan, who were promoted to commanders of the Nanyang Corps and commanders of the Fourth Division in the National Defense Army, were both from the Boy Scout Camp. In the early days of the National Defense Army, the main force of Han immigrants were young and middle-aged people. Therefore, there were no conditions for forming Boy Scouts in Han. As batches of orphans around ten years old came to South America, how to properly place them became a not-so-small problem.

Young orphans were young, and Li Mingyuan believed that making them serve as soldiers and fight in wars like the Taiping Army was a crime against the country and the nation. On the other hand, arranging them to go to school with children who had families would easily cause some inevitable problems due to their status as orphans. Finally, after rejecting the above two options, Li Mingyuan decided to set up a training school specifically for young orphans, with teachers dispatched by the government and the army to train them.

The Boy Scout training camp adopts a military management method. Here, all orphans are divided into different classes according to their age, and then further divided into ordinary classes and elite classes according to each orphan's different ability to acquire knowledge. Children entering the elite classes will receive more rigorous education on the one hand, and can obtain the qualifications to become members of the Han Renaissance Youth Corps (abbreviated as the Youth Corps) on the other hand, and can get a personal meeting with Li Mingyuan and a place in the army and navy academies.

At the graduation ceremony of the Boy Scout Training Camp, Lu Rongting received a military knife from Li Mingyuan, and after being admitted to the preparatory department, he was also favored by the instructor. However, when he was studying hard, Lu Rongting sometimes felt tired. At this time, his mother's expectation of success became the motivation for his hard work. In his heart, he always had an idea, that is, to become a general, lead his soldiers to catch the murderers who killed his father to avenge his father, and then transport the bones of his father and mother to the Han Kingdom to hold a grand burial for his parents.

"Brother Lu, are you planning to apply for the cavalry exam?"

Wang Shizhen splashed the water he had used to wash his face outside. He did not notice Lu Rongting's change of mood and said with a smile, "Brother Lu has served in the First Division Cavalry Battalion for a year. Even Commander Zhang praised Brother Lu for his excellent riding skills. If Brother Lu applies for the Cavalry Department, with Commander Zhang's appreciation, he may be able to become the deputy company commander of the cavalry company directly after graduation."

"It's not as simple as Brother Wang Shizhen said." Lu Rongting shook his head, disagreeing with him.

"After the change in the organization of the National Defense Force, in addition to the cavalry division, there are only four divisional cavalry battalions and three brigade cavalry companies that recruit cavalry officers. There are only a few promotion positions for cavalry officers. I don't know how many years it will take to be promoted to a colonel-level officer."

The Han State is located in the Pampas. With the adapted natural environment and the policy of introducing excellent horses that it has adhered to for many years, the National Defense Army no longer lacks qualified war horses. In addition to being used as war horses, a large portion of the horses produced in the horse farm are allocated to the Zibo Heavy Army to transport weapons and supplies.

The abundant supply of horses met the demand for war horses, but it could not change the trend of the gradual decline in the importance of cavalry units in the Wehrmacht.

The imitation rifles, 75mm field guns and machine guns had an increasingly greater suppressive effect on the cavalry units. Because of the need to fight against Argentina, the National Defense Army expanded the cavalry brigade into a cavalry division. However, in the four newly organized field divisions and three independent mixed brigades, only one cavalry battalion and one cavalry company were retained. Compared with the Japanese division-level units and a town unit of the New Manchukuo Army, the number of cavalry was much smaller.

The second expansion of the National Defense Force increased the equipment rate of weapons such as artillery, machine guns, mortars, as well as new types of troops such as engineers, communications squads, and surveying and mapping troops.

The new military organization is based on the organization of the main belligerents in World War I. After adaptive modifications, the specific data are as follows:

A standard infantry company of the Wehrmacht:

It included three infantry platoons, a machine gun platoon, a heavy weapon squad, a company headquarters, 10 horse-drawn carriages, and 13 horses.

① Machine gun platoon: two heavy machine guns, four light machine guns, three horse carriages, a second lieutenant platoon leader, a sergeant major deputy platoon leader, a light machine gun group leader sergeant, a heavy machine gun group sergeant, and a sergeant infantry squad leader.
One officer, four NCOs, and twenty-three soldiers. A total of 28 people.

② Rifle Platoon: three infantry squads, each with ten people.

There was a second lieutenant platoon leader, a sergeant major deputy platoon leader, three non-commissioned officer squad leaders, and 27 soldiers, a total of 32 people.

③Zizhong Ban: one NCO squad leader, nine soldiers, and seven horse-drawn carriages.

④ Company Headquarters: One Captain, one Lieutenant, five professional NCOs (mapping, communications, etc.), one NCO squad leader, nine soldiers, a total of 9 people. A standard infantry company includes a Captain, a Lieutenant, and a total of 15 people.

2nd Infantry Battalion:
It includes three infantry companies, a mortar platoon, a heavy machine gun platoon, a light machine gun platoon, a heavy platoon, a communications squad, and a battalion headquarters.

① A mortar platoon: one sergeant major, three non-commissioned officers, nine 3mm mortars, and 55 soldiers, a total of 20 people.

②Heavy machine gun platoon: 4 heavy machine guns, 18 people in total.

③Light machine gun platoon: 6 guns: 24 people.

④Zibo rearrangement: 32 people.

⑤Communication class: 10 people.

⑥ Battalion Headquarters: a guard platoon of 32 people, a major battalion commander, a captain deputy battalion commander, three battalion headquarters officers, and five non-commissioned officers, a total of 42 people.

An infantry battalion consists of a major battalion commander and a captain deputy battalion commander, totaling 561 people.

3rd Infantry Regiment
: 3 infantry battalions, an artillery company, a heavy artillery company, and a regimental headquarters.

① Artillery Company: three artillery platoons, one light machine gun platoon, and one infantry guard platoon.

9 75mm field guns and 3 light machine guns.

There is one captain as the company commander, one lieutenant as the deputy company commander, five sergeants, 5 non-commissioned officers, and 18 soldiers, a total of 130 people.

②Zibo Zhonglian: 151 people.

③ Regimental headquarters: a guard company of 151 people, 15 professional officers of the headquarters, 20 non-commissioned officers, and 32 soldiers, a total of 218 people.

The regiment commander is a colonel and the deputy regiment commander is a lieutenant colonel, with a total of 2207 people.

4th Infantry Division
: three infantry regiments, one artillery regiment, one reconnaissance battalion, one cavalry battalion, one engineering battalion, one heavy battalion, and a division headquarters.
① Cavalry Battalion: 32 people per squad, 151 squads per platoon, 560 people, 600 people per company, 400 people per battalion, war horses, pack horses.

Battalion commander major or lieutenant colonel.

② Artillery Regiment: 105 36mm howitzers,
There were 480 horse-drawn carriages, 100 trailers, and 2000 draft horses.

2200 officers and soldiers.

③ The number of people in the reconnaissance battalion and the heavy battalion is equivalent to that of the infantry battalion, 560 people respectively

The division commander is a major general or lieutenant general, the deputy division commander is a colonel or major general, and the total number of people is 1.2.

In the new organization, the rank of sergeant major was added, bringing the rank of non-commissioned officers in the National Defense Force to four levels, divided into corporal, sergeant, staff sergeant, and major.

Soldiers who have not attended military school can apply for the preparatory course of the Army Officers School when they are promoted to sergeant major, as long as they are under 30 years old. After passing the graduation examination of the preparatory department, they have the opportunity to be promoted to battalion-level officers.

Apart from the Pampas, the areas surrounding the Han Kingdom such as Chile, Paraguay, and the Brazilian plateau are not suitable for cavalry combat. Therefore, Lu Rongting gave up the opportunity to apply for the cavalry department and chose the infantry department with brighter prospects as his major military major.

"Brother Lu is a great rider. Among the new batch of German instructors, there is a noble cavalry officer named August von Mackensen. I heard that he once made great contributions in the Franco-Prussian War. It's a pity that Brother Lu gave up studying cavalry and missed the opportunity to meet August von Mackensen."

Wang Shizhen was not yet the warlord leader who later became the Beiyang boss. At this time, he was simply thinking about Lu Rongting.

"Captain Augusta is an excellent soldier. It is indeed a pity that I cannot learn cavalry techniques from him. However, the German officer delegation led by Count Gottlieb von Heseler also includes excellent officers such as Captain Remus von Walch, Hermann von Eichhorn, and Captain Colmar von der Goltz. If I choose the infantry department, I can also learn excellent tactics from them."

"Well, Brother Lu is excellent in all military skills. Even if he didn't choose the cavalry department, I believe that Brother Lu would be able to do well."

Wang Shizhen smiled and said. …

(End of this chapter)