Chapter 57: The Winter of Jiwei (8)

  The training of the troops in later generations can be summarized as mainly focusing on several aspects: discipline training, physical and tactical training, honor cultivation, and mission indoctrination. These trainings intersect with each other during practical operations, with the ultimate goal of cultivating a qualified soldier. Li Chengzhong was just an ordinary soldier before crossing over, always being the object of training, so he didn't have many theoretical frameworks in his mind. However, as the saying goes, "the buttocks decide the brain," since he became a small military leader in this era, he involuntarily had to summarize and generalize the training methods. Although the summarized and generalized things were quite disorganized, at least they were initially formed, covering all aspects.

  Li Chengzhong thought for a moment, he currently has 350 soldiers under his command, roughly equivalent to the rank of a regiment commander in his previous life. He couldn't help but feel some pride and satisfaction about this achievement. Unfortunately, it was over a thousand years ago during the Tang Dynasty, so he couldn't return home in glory and show off his accomplishments to his parents and fellow villagers. All he could do was deeply regret this.

  Since he became the battalion commander, it was impossible for him to personally go down to the field and train soldiers one by one. Li Chengzhong remembered that his battalion commander back in the day had a lot of prestige, and it was rare for everyone to see him. If they did see him, they would have to address him as "Commander". Has anyone seen the Commander personally lead troops in training? Moreover, it's unrealistic for one person to train over 300 soldiers. After some thought, Li Chengzhong decided to start by training officers first. He planned to take it one subject at a time, teaching the officers first and then having them train the soldiers. Once the officers and soldiers were familiar with that subject, they would move on to the next one.

  Li Chengzhong had thirty-five squad leaders and eight battalion officers under his command, totaling forty-three people. He found the largest cave in the military camp, barely able to hold so many people, hung torches on all four walls, illuminating the cave brightly, then summoned the forty-three squad leaders and above officers to gather inside, everyone sat cross-legged, listening to Li Chengzhong's lecture.

  "A soldier's duty is to obey orders! This is the first thing I want to tell you today. Only a soldier who listens to orders is a good soldier, and only an army that listens to commands is a qualified army. In any situation, we must unconditionally listen to our superiors' orders and fight according to their requirements. Does anyone have any questions about this?" Li Chengzhong scanned the room, waiting for someone to ask a question.

  Starting from the military service evaluation meeting after the defense of Yu Guan, Li Chengzhong's department had gradually developed a habit of discussion and negotiation. When Li Chengzhong raised questions, everyone could speak freely, of course, after making decisions, it was required to obey unconditionally.

  The officers all had different expressions, Jiang Miao and Zhang Xingzhong nodded in understanding, Zhou Kan Dao and Wang Da Lang furrowed their brows in thought, while several newly promoted squad leaders blinked at each other, unsure if they understood. After a moment, Wang Da Lang spoke up loudly: "Commander..."

  Li Chengzhong interrupted him: "In the future, when attending classes and wanting to speak, raise your hand and shout 'report'." Many military discipline trainings are in the details, Li Chengzhong decided to correct his subordinates one by one.

  Wang Dalaru was taken aback, hesitated to raise one hand, then put it down, switched to the other hand, feeling a bit awkward, and finally slowly raised both hands, looking like surrendering, and shouted: "Report..."

  Li Chengzhong smiled and said, "Just raise your right hand."

  Wang Dalang hastily put down his left hand and raised his right hand again, shouting: "Reporting!"

  Li Chengzhong nodded for him to speak, and Wang Dalang let out a breath, saying: "If the superior's order is wrong, should we still listen?"

  "As a subordinate, you usually don't have as much information and grasp of the situation as your superiors do. So, most of the time, what you think is an incorrect order, when considered in the context of the entire battlefield, is actually correct. Finally, if the order really is wrong, you can suggest alternatives, but after your suggestion is rejected, you must still carry out the order without hesitation! Because in the vast majority of cases, the losses caused by resolutely carrying out orders are much smaller than those caused by taking matters into one's own hands. I want to ask everyone to remember that on the battlefield, the soldiers you lead are only a part of the entire war effort, and we must establish an overall awareness and a sense of the bigger picture..."

  Li Chengzhong did not expect everyone to understand, but judging from the expressions of the officers listening below, at least half of them were deep in thought, so he didn't continue to dwell on this issue. Cultivating absolute obedience among soldiers is not something that can be achieved by saying it once, it must be repeatedly emphasized and stressed, and clearly stated in military law, and implemented in practice.

  "Soldiers take obeying orders as their bounden duty. How to make soldiers recognize and firmly imprint this in their minds, I think, first of all, it needs to be achieved through disciplinary training. The crux of the training lies in formation drills. Formation drills are not only the foundation for combat formations but also an extremely effective way to cultivate good discipline among soldiers...” Li Chengzhong began to explain the requirements of formation drills according to his own understanding and deliberation. He said all that at the beginning to make military officers not only know what to do but also understand why they are doing it, so that they can carry out and implement it better.

  Li Chengzhong brought out a large wooden board made by Zhang Laojiang after his death. This wooden board is similar to the lectern in later generations' classrooms. A large yellow paper was pasted on the wooden board, and some densely arranged dots and lines were drawn on the paper.

  "This is the most basic formation I drew, from left to right are three black dots, representing A, B and C respectively. Each row is arranged with ten in both vertical and horizontal directions, that is, each team forms a line, with a distance of one fist between left and right, and an interval of one arm between front and back, forming a square formation. It is required to arrange from tall to short from left to right. Of course, this formation cannot be arranged immediately, I give you seven days, go down and intensify training."

  To complete this formation, we will break down the target into three steps. The first step is to arrange the soldiers in a horizontal line for each group, requiring them to march in unison, turn around, advance and stop uniformly, which should be achieved within three days; the second step is to form a square array with each team as a unit, requiring the square array to march in lockstep and turn around, advance and stop uniformly, this step also gives everyone a deadline of three days; the third step is for each of you to combine the two teams under your jurisdiction into one square array, arranged in the shape of the diagram on the drill ground inside the military camp, this step gives everyone one day, with the three team leaders responsible.

  Li Chengzhong spent half a time, made a detailed explanation of his team's training requirements, answered some questions from the officers, and then took the officers to the drill ground for actual drills.

  Just now when lecturing, everyone seemed to understand, but when practicing, they all seemed confused. Li Chengzhong had the officers above the team observe from the side, these officers were basically all participants in the southern expedition, and were relatively familiar with the formation of troops, observing Li Chengzhong's training method from the side would have a better effect.

  Li Chengzhong mainly trained more than 30 partners. He took each person to the designated position, barely standing in three rows, and stood at the front row with his body as an example, standing in a standard military posture for later generations. The three rows of partners all learned from him, standing upright with their chests out, and he went forward one by one to correct them, looking at them roughly the same, then explained: "There are several commands that everyone needs to remember, which are 'Attention——', 'At ease', 'Right face——turn', 'About face——turn'." As he spoke, Li Chengzhong demonstrated each of these actions according to the command, repeating it for many times. Then he gave orders with his mouth, requiring everyone to follow him and do these actions.

  During the training process, Li Chengzhong found that at least one-third of the partners did not distinguish between left and right, so he had to stop and start correcting them.

  "Now find the location of your heartbeat... hmm... feel carefully around your chest, where is the location of your heartbeat? Right... good, the hand closest to the location of your heartbeat is your left hand, that direction is left... and relatively speaking, the other side is right..."

  Li Chengzhong patiently and painstakingly corrected the movements and postures of his subordinates one by one. Jiang Miao, Zhang Xingchong and others who were watching on the side also spontaneously lined up in a row and followed suit.

  "It's all said, the tallest ones are on the far left, some of you are taller than others, Old Zhang, move to the right." Zhou Dabao pulled Zhang Xingzhong to the right, looking pleased with himself as he watched Zhang Xingzhong being pulled over.

  Zhang Xingzhong smiled slightly and didn't argue with him, continuing to listen intently to Li Chengzhong's explanation. He and Zhou Fangdao were both old soldiers of the Lu Long Army, so they knew more about the role of battle formations on the battlefield and understood their importance even better. Therefore, they also paid closer attention to the array formation methods mentioned by Li Chengzhong.

  Far behind the original plan, it wasn't until noon that Li Chengzhong finally managed to teach them commands such as "Attention!", "At ease!", "Right turn!", "Left turn!", "About face!" and "Eyes right!". He was so exhausted that his mouth was dry and his heart was weary. Even then, the officers could only roughly complete the actions, let alone in unison, and they still kept making mistakes.

  Li Chengzhong's soldier training plan was delayed again and again, until three days later, he finally managed to teach this batch of officers. He let out a sigh of relief and announced the start of military training. Suddenly, the White Wolf Mountain barracks became lively, with shouts of orders, scolding, shouting, and footsteps echoing throughout the entire campus.

  Li Chengzhong then walked around, saw the wrong place in training, immediately called the partner to his side, explained in detail, corrected the mistake, and continued to the next partner to check.

  The large-scale military training activities at the White Wolf Mountain Garrison attracted a crowd of onlookers among the civilians, mainly women and children. Li Chengzhong did not deliberately drive them away, as the garrison was too big to chase them out. He could only tolerate this phenomenon, but required the civilians not to enter the training ground, only to stay at the edge, and not to make loud noises or laugh, so as not to affect the training.

  The onlookers of the common people, especially the women's onlookers, had an unexpected effect, making the trained soldiers more energetic during training, as if they had been injected with chicken blood. Whether it was their eyes or movements, they all seemed more spirited. This made Li Chengzhong couldn't help but laugh, indeed men and women working together is not tiring.