The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 209 Teng Yuzao's Close Friends

Teng Yuzao nodded. "Now that you are ready, you should report to the deputy chief of staff. He will command the specific actions. He will notify the troops of the second and third regiments who are staying near the east and west gates to evacuate in time."

Teng Yuzao added in a low voice, "I heard the sound of heavy machine guns firing from both towers. We must ensure the safety of the soldiers who are still holding on inside and bring them all back safely. Not only the wounded, but also the bodies of the fallen soldiers must be brought back. No one should be left behind."

As the city wall had been bombarded by the coalition forces for many days, the arrow slots and even large sections of the parapet were all blown down, leaving only sections of the parapet that looked like jagged walls in the east and west. Standing a little further away in the city, one could have a suitable angle to shoot at people walking on the parapet.

This severely restricted the independent detachment's movements during the day. The members of the independent detachment would not easily risk walking on the city walls during the day, and now the soldiers defending the arrow tower would only be rotated down at night.

"Yes, I will send all the heavy machine guns of the independent detachment to the top of the city wall and prepare to suppress the people below."

Pan Jinshan finished speaking.
After finishing, he did not leave immediately, but looked at Liu Changfa. Liu Changfa said with a helpless smile.

"Sir, leave the matters in the city to us. However, my brother Ruiguang and I hope you can return to the city as soon as possible. It is not safe here."

"As long as the arrow tower collapses, the heavy machine guns and Gruson rapid-fire cannons deployed by the foreign devils on the southwest corner of the city wall will be able to hit here unhindered. This place is too dangerous."

Teng Yuzao is not a cat with nine lives, nor does he have bones of steel. In such a cramped space on the city wall, facing more than one Maxim heavy machine gun and 50mm Gruson rapid-fire cannon, Teng Yuzao will not play the hero.

What's more, the cannons on the Allied positions outside the city could also fire here, which made it very dangerous to be on the city wall.

Thinking of this, Teng Yuzao smiled and said to the two of them, "It is indeed very dangerous on the city wall, but you still have to stay here. What's more, Ruiguang has been in the city wall for several days. As the president, I will not run away early when I encounter danger!"

Going down the city was a certainty, and the two men considered his safety first. Teng Yuzhao was still very satisfied, but he was the head of the vanguard army, and his every move affected the officers and soldiers of the vanguard army. Even if it was dangerous, he had to show some form of preparedness.

"But."

Seeing that the two were still trying to persuade him, Teng Yuzao nodded and said, "I will not affect your command, nor will I distract you from taking care of me. After I see you blow up the arrow tower, I will leave."

Can the Arrow Tower be blown up as planned? What is the effect of the explosion? Are there any follow-up measures? If something goes wrong, the coalition forces will rush along the city wall and the North City may be lost. In that case, the troops in the city of the vanguard army will be divided and surrounded by the coalition forces, and the vanguard army will immediately face a fatal defeat.

All of these are of great importance, even to the life and death of the vanguard army. Teng Yuzhao will not go down unless he sees with his own eyes that his expected results are achieved.

Seeing that Teng Yuzao did not leave immediately, but was not stubborn either, the two felt relieved.

Although the two men didn't want to ask Xu Ting and Wu Peifu to take good care of Teng Yuzao, they still glanced at them.

Although Xu Ting was only a guard leader, he was Teng Yuzao's guard leader. There were Liu Bingyi and Hu Daqiu, as well as the director of the Security Department who was appointed as the director of a certain job a few days after taking office, and many people still don't understand what it is to do. There was even the precedent of Li Dazhui who was sent to study in the camp school.

Among these people, Hu Daqiu and Liu Bingyi, who now hold the highest official positions, are already captains. In Teng Yuzhao's mind, their closeness to him is probably only slightly less than that of Liu Yuzhi and Li Xianze.

Everyone has seen clearly that the leaders of Teng Yuzao's guards will all have a good position in the end. Of course, these people are first of all extremely loyal to Teng Yuzao. Ordinary generals will not order such people around. Even when expressing their concern for Teng Yuzao, they have to be very cautious.

As for Wu Peifu, he was even more incredible.

Although everyone was still unclear about why Teng Yuzao was so fond of this young scholar who had suddenly appeared and had been stripped of his official title, anyone with a discerning eye could see that Teng Yuzao had high hopes for Wu Peifu and was even willing to teach and guide him personally.

Therefore, these people would be even more cautious about saying anything more to Wu Peifu, for fear that Wu Peifu would misunderstand their good intentions and make him feel resentful.

Pan Jinshan looked at Wu Peifu with particularly eager eyes, and smiled and nodded to Wu Peifu before leaving.

Wu Peifu was a student that Teng Yuzhao took the initiative to accept. His quality was much better than that of his forced student. Pan Jinshan was very willing to have a good relationship with Wu Peifu.

After the two men left, Teng Yuzao asked Wu Peifu to arrange for the installation of the artillery scope.

This time, Wu Peifu also realized the danger, so he not only set up the artillery mirror on the north city wall 200 meters away from the independent detachment's position on the city wall, but also set up the artillery mirror behind the arrow stack and even on several nearby battlements. He also asked Pan Jinshan to get some sandbags to block it tightly.

Xu Ting also arranged for someone to find a dozen empty ammunition boxes to serve as seats for Teng Yuzhao and to place a telephone.

Teng Yuzhao's guard platoon has been expanded again. To be exact, it now has more than a hundred people and is called the Vanguard Army Guards Squadron.

Xu Ting has been promoted to squadron leader, equivalent to sentry leader, and his military rank has been promoted to captain.

The Guard Squadron included a communications squadron, which was mainly to facilitate Teng Yuzao to keep in touch with the headquarters at all times. This was an opportunity to incorporate the Third Battalion Training Army into the Vanguard Army. It was probably discussed in advance by Li Xianze and Liu Yuzhi, and then Wei Jinghai and Liu Shijiu were brought in. They all agreed that Teng Yuzao often had to command at the front line, and there could be unexpected situations at the front line at any time, so it was absolutely impossible to have no reliable and powerful troops to protect him.

Teng Yuzhao knew that it would be inappropriate to reject his subordinates' kindness bluntly, so he had no choice but to accept it.

However, he accepted it, and Teng Yuzhao also set an ambush. Since he had to form a sufficiently strong guard force for him, he might as well build it according to the image of the special forces he had always dreamed of.

Of course, his small force now cannot definitely reach the standard of special forces in later generations. In Teng Yuzhao's opinion, this Royal Guard Squadron can only be said to have a little shadow of special forces in later generations. It is not even a prototype yet, and it still needs Teng Yuzhao's continuous polishing and training.

This unit is still far from the standard of a special forces unit, so Teng Yuzao naturally would not call it a special operations team.

Moreover, the Western powers had no concept of special operations at present, and Teng Yuzao did not want to set an example for the powers and then have them "copy his homework", so Teng Yuzao temporarily named this special squadron, which he had high hopes for, the Guards Squadron.

If understood literally, it can be understood as a close guard force.

Of course, if the great powers heard this, this would mean elite troops.

It is not surprising that the great powers would understand this.

Because, until now, almost all Western countries still have a Guards, and the name of Guards is synonymous with a country's most elite troops in the West.

Since the intention is to form this guard squadron similar to the special forces, the personnel must naturally be carefully selected.

Compared with the special forces personnel of later generations, the standards set by Teng Yuzhao are nothing to mention. His requirements are very simple. All selected personnel must be under 25 years old, over 1.75 meters tall, be proficient in martial arts, preferably mastering swordsmanship, boxing and kicking, regardless of school of thought, and having decent marksmanship is enough, and it would be best if they could ride a horse.

If one item stands out, other aspects can be appropriately relaxed.

Although Teng Yuzhao's standards were not high, it was wartime and he could not make a wide selection from the vanguard army. For the time being, he could only select candidates from various units.

Even with such standards, Teng Yuzao could only barely make up the size of a squadron. Including the communications squad, Teng Yuzao's guard platoon, and his personal guard squad, the number of people was only 165.

However, these people have not followed us yet. Many of them are weak in one or two skills, and most of them are not so good at shooting and horse riding. Now they are training hard outside the North Gate.

The large-caliber eight-fold artillery scope produced by the German Zeiss company mounted on the city wall has excellent performance. It can see targets several kilometers away relatively clearly, not to mention that it is only looking from the north city to the south city.

You should know that the width of Tianjin City from north to south is only 324 zhang, which is less than 1,000 meters when converted into meters.

As the arrow battlements and parapets on the city wall had been blown down by artillery shells, the line of sight was basically unobstructed. Teng Yuzao could clearly observe the sandbag fortifications set up by the Russian army in the southwest corner of the city wall through the artillery telescope. There were actually two Maxim heavy machine guns and two Gruson rapid-fire cannons, which were still very rare in the Russian army.

Teng Yuzao originally thought that the Russian artillery would be from France's Schneider or Britain's Armstrong, but he didn't expect that their small-caliber artillery would also be the Gruson mountain cannon. Although the distance was a bit far, it felt that the caliber of the Russian Gruson rapid-fire cannon seemed to be smaller than the 57mm of his artillery regiment.

Teng Yuzhao remembered that the Gruson 1mm rapid-fire mountain cannon weighed only 4.03 kilograms, the barrel weighed 4.46 kilograms, the gun body weighed 350 kilograms, the barrel was 4900 mm long, the diameter was times, the caliber was mm, the vertical firing range was plus or minus ten degrees, the grenade weighed kilograms, the shrapnel weighed kilograms, the muzzle velocity was meters/second, and the maximum range was meters. It was the most advanced small-caliber mountain cannon at that time.

It not only has one caliber of 57mm, but also four calibers of 37mm, 47mm, and 83mm.

It is especially convenient to disassemble and transport, and is very suitable for use by troops in mountain warfare.

The only drawback is that the caliber of the Gruson rapid-fire gun in his hand is too small, and its power is almost the same as that of a 60mm mortar.

Moreover, as far as Teng Yuzhao knew, the Hanyang Arsenal was the only one in the country that had an 83mm caliber gun, which was bought by Zhang Zhidong for the arsenal to copy.

This type of rapid-fire mountain cannon is also known in China as "mountain fast cannon". Historically, Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army was equipped with seven or eight hundred of these small-caliber mountain cannons.

According to his memories from his previous life, Teng Yuzhao knew that the Hanyang Arsenal was now producing this 57mm small-caliber mountain cannon and many caliber artillery shells, but Teng Yuzhao couldn't get a single shell now, let alone artillery.

Due to the lack of reliable supplies, his vanguard troops now have to use artillery shells and Maxim heavy machine gun bullets sparingly.

Especially artillery shells, even under normal circumstances, he would not use them.

Suddenly, Teng Yuzhao discovered that the Russian troops on the southwest corner of the city wall seemed to have responded. A Russian officer had stood up behind the sandbag fortifications and was observing something from the west gate arrow tower with a telescope.

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(End of this chapter)