I want to be emperor

Chapter 267 Chu Nan Preparations (Two in One)

The establishment of the Southern Route Army Command also means that the Great Chu Empire's planned South Chu offensive in the spring and summer has entered the final stage of preparation.

The troops that are expected to participate in the battle have already been arranged, and they have started to conduct strategic maneuvers to arrive at the predetermined position in advance. At the same time, they must conceal information during this process to avoid being detected by the spies of the Ming army to find out the movements of the Chu army.

Although it is impossible for the Chu army to really conceal their movements when the fight really starts, even the Ming army can guess the direction of the Chu army's attack: Linxiang.

But the news that should be concealed still needs to be concealed, so if the response time of the Ming army is slightly delayed for a few days, it can be exchanged for a certain tactical advantage.

The troops participating in the war began to move into the predetermined positions, and at the same time, the logistics department further hoarded a large amount of supplies on the front line.

In the Chu army camp in Linxiang, a large number of carriages continuously transported countless grains, ammunition and other materials.

At the same time, Jiangling and Jianli on the north bank of the Yangtze River in Jingzhou Prefecture also hoarded heavy troops and a large amount of supplies.

The Great Chu Empire is trying its best to prepare as many supplies as possible for the troops going to the front to participate in the war.

Not just weapons and ammunition, but also all kinds of messy military supplies such as food, meat, tents, medicinal materials, medical alcohol, gauze and even candles.

A large army needs more than weapons, ammunition and food to fight.

In addition to these three, there are many other things, and they are also very important.

For example, medicinal materials, gauze, and medical alcohol are life-saving supplies for the injured soldiers on the front line. Sometimes it is better to have less food, but it is also necessary to prioritize the supply of these medical supplies.

After all, food is something that can be eaten by the enemy if it is really short of food. If it is really impossible, you can survive without starving for a few days. However, it is really difficult to collect medical supplies for a while, and once there is a shortage, there will be a lot of them. Many wounded soldiers could not receive effective medical treatment and were killed, wounded or disabled.

In the previous series of battles of the Chu army, although there were not many direct casualties in the battle, there were a lot of soldiers who died after the battle due to serious injuries and no effective treatment, even exceeding the number of direct casualties in the battle. data.

There are many people who are infected after injury and are forced to amputate in the end.

Many of these wounded who were killed or amputated due to lack of timely treatment were actually lightly wounded.

Many people were just cut a small hole by a sword. In future generations, even if there is no professional doctor to treat this kind of minor injury, if you get a simple treatment such as medical alcohol, gauze, and iodophor, then it will not happen. What's the problem, at most it will leave an ugly scar!
But on the current battlefield, such small wounds are often prone to infection, and eventually become more and more serious, resulting in the need for amputation or even death.

This situation made Luo Zhixue very sad!

These are all soldiers who have been on the battlefield and shed blood. As long as they are cured, they are veterans. The value of such veterans is much higher than that of recruits.

In order to save more veterans, and to further ensure and even enhance the combat effectiveness of the troops, Luo Zhixue began to vigorously promote the military medical system.

In the early days, Luo Zhixue only set up a medical clinic under the general's mansion. Although several medical clinics were established one after another, these medical clinics are considered to be relatively high-level medical clinics, and there are relatively few doctors and nurses. .

In response to this situation, Luo Zhixue had already started to train medical soldiers with simple trauma treatment skills in September last year.

For this kind of medical soldiers, you don't need to diagnose the pulse and prescribe a prescription. What you need is to bandage the wounded soldiers in time to stop the bleeding.

Today, every post in the Rural Protection Army has such a full-time medical soldier, and at the same time, a number of soldiers will be selected for emergency treatment training to serve as part-time medical soldiers.

In the battalion, the Rural Protection Army set up a medical team, led by a full-time military doctor and three apprentices, who treated the soldiers for some simple ailments and pains on weekdays, and provided professional treatment for the wounded soldiers in wartime, and further cleaned up and sutured. Wounds, hemostasis, amputation of limbs and so on.

As for the technical level, don’t expect too much, because these people say they are military doctors, but in fact they are all people with half a barrel of water. They are not very good at diagnosis and prescribing medicine. Then directly seal the wound with a sterilized sewing needle, then wrap it with gauze and you're done.

As for more serious injuries or diseases, they are usually sent to the medical battalion of the division headquarters, where there are professional doctors.

It is worth mentioning that, in order to prepare for the establishment of the military medical system, Luo Zhixue also rectified, or directly cleaned up, the civilian medical system.

When preparing to build several medical clinics, the soldiers of the Township Protection Army basically came to invite doctors from various families with swords and guns, especially those who were more famous.

The soldiers of the Township Protection Army also knew that the doctors they invited could save their lives, so they worked very hard.

Later, after three medical clinics were established successively, the Township Protection Army stopped this rude and barbaric invitation mode, and changed to a more relaxed method.

When you go to invite people, the doctor in charge of your family will not come, but you must send one of your senior brothers or apprentices.

With the expansion of the control area, the number of doctors controlled by the rural protection army is also increasing. In the end, Luo Zhixue ordered the three medical centers to be renamed Hantianfu Medical Center, Xiangyang Medical Center, and Nanyang Medical Center. .

Provide medical services for the soldiers and officials stationed nearby, and at the same time start to transfer some personnel from these three medical centers to the main divisions, and set up medical camps in the garrison divisions.

The scale of these medical battalions is not considered large. Often a few doctors who are proficient in trauma lead a dozen schools to sit in the camps, and there are dozens of ordinary medical soldiers to assist.

By the first month of the second year of Chengshun, all the divisions in the Baoxiang Army basically had medical battalions, and each battalion also had its own medical team.

Against such a background, the Changsha Medical Center, directly under the direct leadership of the Ministry of Military and Political Affairs, was formally established and temporarily stationed in the eastern suburbs of Linxiang.

The number of doctors in this medical center is much larger. Dr. Ma Chongshui, a famous Xinglin expert in Xiangyang, who is proficient in trauma, led a team to sit in the town, with 32 doctors recruited from the private sector or drawn from three other medical centers, and about [-] apprentices.

It is worth noting that these doctors all have military ranks, and they are all officer ranks, even apprentices have the same rank as warrant officer.

According to the relevant regulations of the Great Chu Empire, military doctors conferred the rank of civilian officers, and "tong" was added before the rank, which had almost the same meaning as Tong Jinshi.

In the newly established Changsha Medical Center, Ma Chongshui, the curator, holds the rank of "same colonel". of.

The military doctors in the Yuezhou Medical Hall were conferred titles because the Yuezhou Medical Hall was also a purely military institution, and was essentially a part of the Great Chu Empire Army just like the combat troops.

Because the award is very necessary.

However, the conferment is not a regular military rank, but the same military rank unique to civilian personnel such as military doctors.

In addition to doctors with civilian military ranks, Yuezhou Medical Center also has a group of ordinary medical soldiers who belong to active soldiers. These medical soldiers are selected and trained from soldiers, and the number is more than 300.

There are about 400 medical staff in just one Changsha Medical Center.

The reason why there are so many medical staff in this medical center is that they are from Hantian Medical Center, Xiangyang Medical Center, the First Medical Battalion, the Guards Medical Battalion, the Sixth Medical Battalion, the Fourth Medical Battalion and other parts of the Garrison Medical Battalion. Temporary reinforcements were mobilized here.

After all, the other troops don't have any combat missions right now, and these medical staff are also idle, so let them go directly to Linxiang to prepare for the follow-up Chunan offensive.

After all, if Chu Nan's offensive starts, there will be hundreds or even thousands of wounded in a short period of time.

It is actually very difficult to treat so many wounded only by relying on the medical battalions of each unit. Therefore, it is necessary to deploy medical personnel from other directions to reinforce the front line of Chunan.

The establishment of the Changsha Medical Center in Linxiang is only temporary. After the army captures Yuezhou and Changsha, the medical center will follow up as a field hospital.

After the frontline army stabilizes the situation and takes control of Changsha Mansion and the surrounding areas, some of the staff of the Changsha Medical Center will return to the various troops, and the rest will be stationed in Changsha, becoming the fourth official military medical center in the Great Chu Empire.

This is why it is called Changsha Medical Center instead of Linxiang Medical Center or a certain medical camp.

The establishment of the Changsha Medical Center also means that the preparations for the Great Chu Empire's offensive against Chu Nan have reached the final stage.

At the same time, it also indirectly announced the first main attack direction of the Great Chu Empire in the Chu Nan offensive:
There is no doubt that it is Linxiang!

This city blocked between Wuchang Mansion and Yuezhou Mansion has become the front line of the confrontation between the Chu army and the Ming army.

The Ming army in the southern Chu area stationed at least 2 troops in Linxiang.

A mere [-] troops is nothing. More importantly, the Ming army obviously absorbed Zhong Xiang. The mistake in the fall of Wuchang City turned out to be the habit of relying purely on the city wall for defensive operations in the past. Instead, it set up many defenses around the city wall Fortifications and even firepower points.

These Ming troops faced a large number of sandbags on the head of the city, and separated the top of the city wall, forming anti-bombardment fortifications similar to ring fortifications.

In some areas, there are wooden planks and sandstones on the top of these fortifications to prevent the volley explosion of the flower bomb...

The artillery deployed by the Ming army in Linxiang City also adopted a better defense system. They piled sandbags around the artillery and in front of the artillery.

During this process, these Ming troops even directly dismantled the battlements in front of the gun emplacements...

It has been proved in many actual battles that the battlements cannot stop the bombardment of solid shells at all, and after being bombarded by solid shells, the rubble formed by these battlements will fly randomly, causing more serious additional casualties.

It's better to just dismantle the battlements and replace them with sandbags that are more effective against solid bullets.

The officials of the Ming army who were in charge of defending the city of Linxiang obviously also specialized in the study of the Rural Protectorate Army, especially the Battle of Zhongxiang and the Battle of Wuchang.

Only in this way can these preventive measures be taken in a targeted manner.

Today's Linxiang has become the strongest city the Great Chu Empire's army has encountered, and many of its fortifications can greatly reduce the siege efficiency of the rural protection army.

However, even so, the Township Protection Army still chose Linxiang as the main breakthrough point.

Because the geographical location of this place is too critical, it is the only way to connect Wuchang Prefecture and Yuezhou Prefecture.

Except for the Linxiang line, the other routes are not very reliable, especially for the main force of the rural protection army with a large number of artillery and supplies, the other routes are very difficult.

Coupled with the fact that after a winter renovation, the firepower has been further strengthened, and the Fifth Division is about to be fully staffed, the South Route Army finally decided to storm Linxiang.

As long as Linxiang can be taken, then there will be a smooth road ahead, allowing them to go directly to Yuezhou Prefecture to govern Baling City, and then go south to Changsha, without any strong city pass to stop them.

Conversely, if you bypass Linxiang and choose another direction to break through, let alone how the enemy is, the large mountainous area alone is not easy to do.

Waiting for you to drag the artillery slowly across the ten or twenty kilometers wide mountain, the Ming army has already built a fortification on the other side of the mountain and is waiting for you.

At that time, we still have to attack by force, and we still have to attack by ourselves across a mountain road that is difficult to carry a load of more than ten or twenty kilometers, and the supply is not smooth.

Just thinking about it makes my scalp tingle!

If you want to pass quickly, you can only pass lightly, but in this way, the frontline troops will also lose the vital support of intensive artillery.

It is actually unknown whether the rural protection army without the support of field artillery can fight, even the top leaders of the Great Chu Empire Army have no idea.

Because...the main force of the rural protection army has never left the artillery unit to play by itself.

On the other hand, the garrison has a lot of examples, but the response of these examples is not good.

Based on these precedents, it is impossible for Major General Han Ziping, the commander of the South Route Army, to voluntarily give up artillery support. It would be nonsense to detour to other places and cross the mountainous area to attack. never mind.

Although the fortifications of Linxiang City are better, but he can also get a lot of heavy artillery support.

Even nine-pound field guns and 48-pound mortars can be easily brought to the front line.

Not only the artillery under the command of the South Route Army itself will participate in the battle, but several artillery units that are not under the jurisdiction of the South Route Army will also be temporarily transferred to participate in the battle, and will return to the Eastern Front after the battle is over.

In this way, the artillery is enough, not to mention the shells. The logistics line to the east of Linxiang is very smooth, the terrain is flat, and there are official roads to go, and it can be transported to the nearby Yangtze River by boat first, and then pass through Carriage transport.

Not to mention the supplementary logistics and transportation after the battle broke out, just the shells stored in the camp in the eastern suburbs of Linxiang in advance can blow up Linxiang.

Han Ziping really didn't believe it. He got hundreds of various artillery pieces and fired them. This small Linxiang City can still hold it!
Impossible.

If the Ming army could really withstand the bombardment of the rural protection army, it would not have been occupied by the rural protection army to occupy the entire northern part of Chu, and even lost Wuchang Mansion.

　Posted the two chapters together today.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)