Rise From Eight Hundred

When the sun rose the next day, everything was normal in the military camp. After a brief speech by Xie Jinyuan, the military flag was raised.

As a senior intelligence officer of the Japanese Intelligence Department in China, Watanabe Yuta has been working in the concession for more than 2 months. He is also used to taking out a telescope from the window of his rented house at 7:10 to observe the situation in the Chinese military camp 350 meters away.

This situation has happened 60 times in the past 60 days. Although he does not quite understand the futile actions of the ragged soldiers, as a soldier, he still admires these soldiers.

It is said that they have persisted in such actions for more than 270 days. Not everyone can maintain the unique chance of a soldier in a "prison", but the Chinese soldiers in front of them, who are extremely despised by the Japanese navy and army, have done it.

The raising of the military flag this morning is still the same old routine. No matter how casually Watanabe Yuta is, the process repeated 60 times has left a deep impression in his mind.

The flag-raising ceremony today did not change, but the senior Japanese intelligence officer always felt something was strange. He looked through the telescope for a long time but could not see any clues.

After all, although the 4x high-power telescope made his sight long enough, it was not enough for him to see the facial expressions of humans at a distance of 350 meters.

Perhaps, he dreamed of the rice balls made by his mother in his hometown yesterday! He woke up in the middle of the night, interrupted his sleep for a long time, and got up very early, which made him a little dazed. Watanabe Yuta found an acceptable reason for himself. After quietly observing the military camp without any obvious abnormalities, he went to wash up.

After all, as a senior intelligence officer, his job in the concession is not just to observe this isolated army that has been imprisoned in the Western concession. Westerners should be very clear about the gap between the Great Japanese Empire and the China that is about to be defeated.

This is the most typical idea of ​​the Japanese, thinking that they have worked hard to learn and catch up with Western countries, and the developed Western countries should be enough to recognize Japan.

But unfortunately, that was just what they thought. Those white people really didn't think so. Not to mention yellow skin, even in the future, Russians with white skin would want to kneel down, and they would not be recognized by mainstream Western countries.

Therefore, the Japanese senior intelligence officers who felt a little weird didn't know that just last night, it was with the cooperation of two big figures in the Western Concession that 260 recruits entered the barracks and exchanged identities with the officers and soldiers of the 542nd Regiment.

The group of people who raised the military flag and sang military songs this morning were no longer the group of "old men" that Watanabe Yuta had seen 60 times. The military posture of the refugee recruits who had only been trained for a week could really be compared with those elite soldiers who had fought hundreds of battles.

In other words, the concession party understood that the Japanese spies could only observe from a few hundred meters away at most. If they were allowed to get close to a distance of 100 meters, they might find loopholes.

Neither the Japanese nor the Chinese expected that the Chinese government's efforts in negotiations were not as effective as the tens of thousands of US dollars sent by Tang Dao and the two favors owed. The Western Concession used Tang Dao to sneak people out in a way that was hidden from the sky and the sea.

According to Xie Jinyuan's own request, he took Yang Ruifu, the former major battalion commander who was now promoted to lieutenant colonel deputy regiment commander, and several school-level civilian officers, and under the protection of the special operations team led by Yang Zongdao's trusted subordinates, boarded a US cargo ship, followed the Huangpu River into the Yangtze River, and headed straight to Jiujiang.

Here, although the Huangpu River and the Yangtze River estuary were firmly controlled by the Japanese army, the right of passage of Western countries was not lost, and they could even continue to trade with inland China, as long as they did not transport arms, and as long as they hung the flags of various countries, the Japanese warships and patrol boats patrolling on the river would at most do routine inspections. If they wanted to board the ship for inspection, a very high-level headquarters would issue a military order, otherwise it would cause passivity at the diplomatic level.

At this time, Japan has not expanded to the extent of daring to challenge the Western powers that have long entered the Industrial Revolution. The reason why it dares to attack Southeast Asia and even stab the American cowboys in the ass in the future is that it is a helpless move driven crazy by the shortage of energy. In addition, the German Empire is advancing triumphantly on the European battlefield, which also gives them an unrealistic illusion that I can do it.

The root of all this is that "China has no oil". It has occupied millions of rich lands and has everything except oil exploration. The Japanese who don't have that thing on the island are very miserable.

In addition, after consulting the opinions of more than 270 officers and soldiers of the 542nd Regiment headed by Shangguan Yun, almost all of them are willing to follow Tang Dao to the north to fight against the Japanese.

This is not to say that Tang Dao has enough personality charm, but that the officers and soldiers who were detained in these 9 months were full of anger.

At that time, there was a military order on the battlefield, asking them to go to the last position of Songhu for defensive operations. As Chinese soldiers, they guarded the country and protected the people. Even if it was a deadly place, it was natural.

But in the end, they received a military order to evacuate. As a soldier, it was their duty to obey military orders. Although they were unwilling, they could only obey orders.

But they were people, not puppets. They obeyed the military order and went to the concession, but were detained for no reason. If it were not for Tang Dao to rescue them, they might not know how many years it would take.

What about the person who gave them the military order? He was never seen again.

It can be said that a few months ago, this group of iron-blooded soldiers had already been extremely disappointed with the principal and their former commander, and many of them even had the idea of ​​retiring.

But when Tang Dao, an old comrade in arms, appeared in front of them and said that he would take them away, the blood that had almost stagnated surged again.

They are the glorious 542nd Regiment, the defenders of the last position in the Battle of Songhu. The blood and lives of their brothers were spilled on this land. The living people must not sacrifice for those brothers who died. Do something?

It just so happened that without their military uniforms and ranks, people like them who had lost their identities no longer had to worry about it. They followed Tang Dao to North China and killed the enemy with a new identity.

It's really not easy to digest the replacement of three company-level officers at the major level and five platoon-level officers at the lieutenant level with other infantry regiments, but in the Four Lines Regiment, which has more than 8,000 soldiers, it is not too simple.

Tang Dao even had the idea of ​​forming a fourth infantry battalion, so he reorganized an infantry battalion with more than 270 people from the 542nd Regiment as the backbone. His old boss Shangguan Yun was the best candidate for battalion commander.

Even the rest of the new recruits were not all selected from the public. At least 500 of them were from the prisoners of war exchanged with the Japanese this time.

Tang Dao had specifically greeted Brigadier Geng. This time, the 17th Division requested 4,000 prisoners of war, of which 1,000 were secretly given to the Four Lines Regiment.

After all, the 17th Division currently has only over 7,000 personnel at full capacity. Replenishing 3,000 prisoners of war is already the limit. If more prisoners of war are taken, the proportion of prisoners of war will be too large. Management in the short term will definitely give all the officers a splitting headache. Son.

Both Commander Zhao and Brigadier Geng were well aware of this truth, so they initially considered recruiting 3,000 people. After hearing what Tang Dao said, they naturally followed the trend and returned Tang Dao's favor.

In that negotiation with the Japanese, Tang Dao made a lot of money for their 17th Division. The 4,000 prisoners of war were basically from the 39th Brigade of the original 29th Division, not to mention four full infantry regiments and equipment, and the 17th Division was hard-pressed. An entire infantry regiment and an additional 2,000 rifles were requested.

This is almost equivalent to the addition of a full infantry regiment and a light infantry regiment to the 17th teachers and students. As long as the ideological work of those prisoners of war is done well and integrated into the entire infantry division, the combat effectiveness will be almost the same as the heyday of Niangziguan in early October last year. The times are worth fighting for.

In other words, the 17th Division, which had been completely crippled, was resurrected with full health in just 10 months. You said that the division commanders of the 17th Division should not be grateful to Tang Dao!

No matter how nice the words are, it is useless, it depends on the actual actions. Tang Dao is the kind of person who talks beautifully, but the actual actions are even more awesome.

Moreover, everyone in the 17th Division thought that Tang Tuanzuo was only good at robbing people and weapons from the Japanese? That's wrong.

In less than a month, the equipment and ammunition of a German armored infantry regiment will also be given to them by Tang Dao.

That is the most coveted equipment of the Chinese army's German weapons reorganization division. Light machine guns are for infantry squads, mortars are for battalions, and heavy machine guns are as high as 6 for a battalion and 18 for a regiment.

Just ask, when did the 17th Division, who came from the Northwest Army, become so wealthy?

What's even more awesome is that despite the high ammunition consumption of the German Arms Division, Tang Tuanzuo, who was divided into three German Arms Division infantry regiments and equipped them, promised that only the 17th Division and the 80th Group Army would pay the cost, and he would be responsible for all the ammunition. supply.

cost? Isn’t that the so-called lowest price? So much ammunition has been taken out, why can't we snatch something back from the Japanese?

Besides, Tang Dao, a rich man, if we can't get supplies and money for the time being, why don't we allow him to write an IOU or something to owe him first? Commander Zhao Shoushan of the 17th Division and the senior officers of the 80th Army were all veteran foxes who had been on the battlefield for a long time. They had different personalities, but their minds were all clumsy.

Anyway, if one day you really owe too much and you can't pay it back, then take the initiative to go to Tang Tuanzuo to eat and drink, and then say straight up that you need money! There is one head among these several kilograms, why don't you play with it?

Typical lying down, showing up badly, no longer pretending!

In the future, Tang Tuanzuo will often encounter this kind of situation. Although Tang Tuanzuo is supported by the huge profits from selling penicillin in the United States and does not care about the small money at all, in the face of these big bosses who are "living down and lying down", I've never been used to it.

You owe a lot and you can’t pay it back, right? Okay, it doesn't matter. Those who know poetry can write poems in handwriting to pay off the debt. A pair of poems will cost two thousand yuan, and they also need to be signed and stamped. If you don't have a stamp, it doesn't matter. Tang Tuanzuo has already done it for you.

No, it doesn't matter to a rough guy like Wang Xiaoqiang who was born as a tough guy. Come and have a meal, drink and take a photo with the officers and soldiers of the Sixth Regiment who have served in combat, and write "gift" on the photo. Heroic comrade so-and-so' signed his name again.

For Tang Tuanzuo's "bad taste", the elders who are destined to leave their names in the sky of Chinese history first expressed their disdain with righteous words, saying that they would repay the debt by selling iron, but they would never You can learn to do such vulgar things as exchanging talents for money.

But the gap is often broken from within. Mr. Zhao, who is very good at writing poems, spent one night writing 20 poems through wholesale, and even began to shamelessly steal the poems of his colleagues who had always known each other. In the end, he was exempted from up to 100,000 yuan. After Dayang's debt, the bosses of the Eightyth Army began to write poems wholesale, fearing that someone would pirate them before it was too late.

The rough guys led by Wang Xiaoqiang felt OK with the idea of ​​having food and drink and just taking a photo to pay off the debt. The only pain was that their handwriting was really not good enough, and it always felt a bit awkward to write on the back of the photo.

But Tang Dao didn't mind at all, and required that it must be written by hand, refusing to be written by someone else. This also led to a period of high-ranking officers of the 80th Army practicing calligraphy, just to make the words on the photos sent out less embarrassing.

The news finally reached a certain scholar who was good at poetry and asked Tang Dao with interest how much his calligraphy could pay off the debt. Tang Dao directly offered a sky-high price of 20,000 oceans to forgive the debt, which made the person laugh. He spent a few days to make 10 pairs of characters for Tang Dao in one go, and personally signed each pair of characters with the words "Gift to friendly forces, wish you new achievements on the anti-Japanese front!"

Tang Dao was so happy that he looked like he had gotten a great bargain, which made the people of the Four Lines Group and the 80th Army who knew the inside story smile.

In their view, this was just Tang Dao's act of helping the friendly forces and giving them enough face. They were all very grateful for this, but Tang Tuanzuo should not be so into the drama! It's like he really needs these things that can't be eaten or drunk.

In wartime, is there anything more important than supplies and money?

They were wrong. Tang Dao's joy was from the heart.

200,000 oceans bought the approval of the elders in black and white. Isn't that a huge bargain?

Tang Dao's "good deed" lasted for several years, and accumulated countless calligraphy and photos of the elders, which were sent to the officers of the Four Lines Regiment, big and small, and ordered them to keep them carefully.

One day in the future, these are the best evidence of the officers and soldiers of the Four Lines Regiment working side by side with the 80th Group Army and fighting the Japanese invaders hard. Even the king of heaven can't discredit it.

To put it bluntly, this is a talisman. Tang Dao not only has to protect himself, but also protect his comrades who have been through life and death with him.

I'm afraid that no one else would be able to prepare for a rainy day decades in advance except Tang Dao.

Of course, these are all later stories. Because of Yang Zongdao's involvement, Tang Dao couldn't send Xie Jinyuan away from Songhu, but he personally sent Shangguan Yun and others to the German cargo ship sailing from Songhu Port.

They will go to Tianjin by sea, and then go to HD's Fengfeng Coal Mine from Tianjin in the name of Krupp's laborers, and finally go to Taihang Mountain arranged by Gong Shaoxun who is already in charge there.

"Dear Tang, there are still many defeated soldiers from your country in the concession. Do you need them?" Mr. Rockefeller, the chairman of the board of directors of the Western Concession who personally accompanied Tang Dao to send people off, suddenly had an idea.

What is a businessman's mind? This is it.

Of course he knew what Tang Dao wanted. Tang Dao obviously wanted soldiers and sent them to the northern front to fight the Japanese.

And these, the concession has!

The Battle of Songhu, which broke out in August last year, saw the Chinese and Japanese forces deploy over a million troops, destroying the metropolis of Songhu to pieces. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed in the battle, and the Western Concessions on the edge of the war zone were under tremendous pressure.

The pressure did not come from the terrible naval guns with a caliber of more than 200, nor from the bombs dropped by the Chinese and Japanese fighter planes that kept flying up to meet the enemy in the sky, but from the large number of Chinese refugees who fled to the concessions to avoid the war and the Chinese defeated soldiers who were separated from the troops and had to choose to surrender their weapons and enter the concessions.

In just a few months, the population of the concessions increased by hundreds of thousands, and daily management was much more difficult than before.

Especially the defeated soldiers. For the so-called humanitarianism, they could not send those people to the Japanese to be slaughtered in front of them, so that the media would have news to write, but they could not let them go either. They could only let them stay in the concessions, and public security incidents increased sharply.

"Yes, as long as they have served in the army, 10 US dollars per person, as many as you have, I want." Tang Dao agreed without hesitation.

"Okay, let's use the Chinese saying: A gentleman's word is his bond!" The current top official in the Western Concession smiled.

Those defeated soldiers would only cause trouble if they were kept in the concession. Now they can be sent out as laborers and sold for money. It's a two-birds-with-one-stone deal. Anyone on the board who hears about this business will think he is a genius.

"It's hard to catch up with a four-horse race!" Tang Dao shook his hand and was also in a good mood.

These defeated soldiers are all valuable assets. Although they are all scattered, they have been tested by the Battle of Songhu. Their battlefield survival experience is much stronger than that of the newly trained recruits. After a period of training, their combat effectiveness should not be underestimated.

The price of 10 US dollars is really not too cheap.

What is win-win cooperation? This is it.

Perhaps the only one who was betrayed is Japan, but is that important to the Chinese and Westerners?

And for Tang Dao, there are more things that make him happy.

Yang Zongdao, who reported to his superiors that he had finally successfully rescued Xie Jinyuan and others, was personally commended by Director Dai and promoted to major general, which meant that his status in the system had been further improved.

The surprise promised by the new intelligence system major general was finally delivered. When this person personally brought Tang Dao to a warehouse in the concession and opened the door, Tang Dao was almost blinded by the object in front of him.

It was not a weapon or equipment, but its value was no less than that of an infantry regiment's equipment.

Because it was a high-tech equipment originally belonging to the Jiangnan Arsenal, a Martin furnace originally produced by Siemens in the German Empire, and the only steelmaking furnace in China that can refine gun barrel steel.

Before the Songhu retreat, this equipment purchased at a high price had no time to be transported away, so it could only be transported to the concession, and finally fell into the hands of the Military Intelligence System in Songhu.

In peacetime, I don’t know how many state-owned materials would be resold, let alone in the war-torn era. As the highest person in charge of the Military Intelligence in Songhu, as long as he made a light stroke on the information, this equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars would become a consumable item, and no one would care about its whereabouts.

But this equipment that can disappear easily is too important for Tang Dao, which is planning military industry.

With this thing, it means that the Dakouzidong Arsenal has the ability to assemble mountain cannons, and can also use high-quality steel to start the "107 rocket launcher" test. The single-soldier rocket launcher is not just on the drawing.

Moreover, there is no need to place all hopes for manufacturing MG42 machine guns and imitating Soviet 12.7mm heavy machine guns on the ‘Laboratory No. 1’ located in HD.

No matter how high the salary and so-called ideals are to attract Dr. Grunov, he is a German after all. The interests of the motherland are above everything else, and this is not only true for Chinese with ideals, but also for many Westerners.

This high-precision equipment will help the Dakouzidong Arsenal break many shackles from the material aspect.

Yang Zongdao’s gift really surprised and delighted Tang Dao.

Another successful win-win situation!

All the damage will be borne by the Japanese!