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In October, autumn arrived in Hunan. At this time, the southwestern part of Hunan had fallen into the hands of the Liberation Army. Chenzhou, Guiyang, and Daozhou, the places where the Taiping army had fought before, were now under the control of the Liberation Army. The Taiping army had tried to attack Yongzhou, a big city in Hunan, but had never found a chance. It had also been captured by the Liberation Army. Guangxi, in the southwestern part of Hunan, had been controlled by the Liberation Army. Guangdong and Guangxi had merged with southern Hunan, backed by the sea and located in the southeast of China. Based on the "golden horn, silver edge, and grass belly" layout of Go, the recovery of the Commander-in-Chief's Office, which had successfully occupied a corner of China, was in a good situation.
However, these were things that only the upper echelons would consider. For the officers and soldiers of the Liberation Army, especially those who came from other provinces outside Guangdong and Guangxi, the completion of the army's goal of occupying Guangdong and Guangxi meant that the army could continue to move north. Every road north meant that everyone was getting closer to their hometown.
This kind of distance was different for everyone. For example, Battalion Commander Zhou Jinguo was from Hunan, and he was from Yongxing, which was north of Chenzhou. When the Taiping army occupied Chenzhou, Heavenly King Hong Xiuquan was stationed in Chenzhou, and Vézé led his troops to be stationed in Yongxing, which was north of Chenzhou. It was at that time that Zhou Jinguo joined Vézé's team. He didn't expect that he would be gone for so long. Seven years had passed by the time he stood near his hometown again. Of course, Zhou Jinguo didn't expect that after only seven years away from his hometown, he would set off from Hunan and travel to ten provinces. He had seen the world that he didn't dare to think about before.
Zhou Jinguo was very dissatisfied with the Liberation Army's current situation of being satisfied with seizing Chenzhou and other places. The army stopped less than a hundred miles away from his home. When they were fighting in Hebei, the troops marched on the boundless plains, covering a hundred li in two days. Even in Hunan, which was densely packed with mountains, it would take the army less than four days to travel a hundred miles.
In this situation, Zhou Jinguo had been trying to convince the regiment commander and even the brigade commander that they just needed to take one more step forward. As long as they could take Yongxing. However, the regiment commander and the brigade commander clearly told Zhou Jinguo that it was not the division commander or even the corps commander Lei Hu who gave the order. It was Governor Vézé who gave the order to stop the army in Chenzhou.
Hearing that it was Governor Wei Ze's order, Zhou Jinguo could only settle down for the time being. He could find the regiment commander and of the brigade commander, but he couldn't see the Military Governor Vaize. . He had been a soldier. of Zhou Jinguo of of of of of Zhou. Zhou... Zhou Zhou... Zhou Zhou. Zhou..... of Zhou Zhou.... of, of of Army of Zhou of Of Zhou.
Zhou of Zhou of Zhou of Zhou was.. He of of of of of of Zhou of of Army. of the Army. Zhou of Zhou Zhou Zhou University., and Zhou of of of of Army. Army, Zhou Army, of Army, and of Army, Army, Zhou of Zhou. Zhou Zhou. of., of. of of. of. of., Even if the poor were illiterate, they could still learn how to farm. Studying required talent. Even if one wasn't the descendant of the Star of Literati, one should at least be tainted with the aura of the Star of Literati. The people on the mountain had never been literate for generations, but they still lived like this.
Mastering three to four hundred words, he could read the military orders of the Liberation Army and the order of the Recovery Commander-In-Chief. He could also write some simple military orders, but the accumulation of this knowledge didn't allow Zhou Jinguo to learn how to write good articles with sincere feelings. Or rather, he was full of passion to go home, but the accumulation of writing only let him write a letter with the style of a military order.
Half a month later, in November, Zhou Jinguo didn't get the reply he expected. The army fought with the Xiang Army for the peripheral power every day. The Liberation Army didn't take any big military action. But they were using slow and effective actions to drive the Xiang army away from the surroundings of the recovery army.
Zhou Jinguo's battalion was in charge of this action. The second division in charge of defending Chenzhou asked each unit to send out their own high-level shooters to attack the Qing Army's stronghold. For example, the rivers in Chenzhou could flow downstream to Hengyang. In order to block the water, the Xiang Army sent a lot of troops to be stationed on both sides of the river.
The main force of the Liberation Army didn't sweep these camps. Instead, they sent small troops to surround these camps of the Qing Army. The one-on-one rifle had enough lethality at a distance of two hundred meters. After replacing the bullets with copper, the accuracy was even better. Lying on the ground two hundred meters away from the Xiang Army's camp, Zhou Jinguo wore a straw hat on his head. He held his breath and focused on aiming at the enemy in the distance.
The one-on-one rifle in Zhou Jinguo's hands was named "Model 1859 Rifle." It had a steel barrel, a wooden stock, a muzzle caliber of 11 mm, and a length of 1.5 meters with a bayonet. It used fixed metal cartridge bullets. The new bullets with copper bullets were also distributed to the frontline troops. At this time, the technology of reassembling cartridges was very mature. However, the production speed of the copper bullets was relatively slow. The army required the soldiers to save bullets. Therefore, each soldier was only given ten copper bullets in a battle.
The soldiers were very dissatisfied with this behavior, but a battalion commander like Zhou Jinguo didn't feel too much. Ten bullets was indeed not a lot, but the specialty of the new equipment was accuracy. In the hands of a skilled shooter like Zhou Jinguo, every bullet could be used. Before the ten bullets were used up, the battle had already entered the stage of hand-to-hand combat.
Even if it wasn't that urgent, such as long-range sniping, ten bullets was more than enough. For example, carefully adjusting the ruler designed for the copper bullets. The parameters of the ruler were very important to the rifle, but different bullets naturally required different rulers. Fortunately, the ruler of the rifle could be disassembled. If it was fixed on the rifle, it would be terrible.
The enemy was locked in the crosshairs. Zhou Jinguo didn't shoot immediately. After so many years of fighting, Zhou Jinguo found that if he wanted to prepare to shoot, not only did he have to draw the crosshairs, but he also had to adjust his breathing. As the breathing stabilized and slowed down, the heartbeat would gradually slow down. The whole person had to imagine the action of the target. When this imagination was highly consistent with the action of the target, the finger could easily pull the trigger. This was the most peaceful time. Not only was the sniper very calm, but he could also forget the killing intent and even himself. What drove their actions was only the physical memory from training. Because of this, their bodies didn't shake at all. The bullets were steadily shot out of the muzzle without any movement, and they hit the enemy along the precise trajectory.
This was not only Zhou Jinguo's own experience, but also the more authoritative views of the high-level shooters who were transferred from the whole army. They communicated, debated, and experimented with the officers and soldiers of the Xiang Army as live targets.
At this time, Zhou Jinguo had entered a very stable state. In the crosshairs, the Xiang Army in the crosshairs also stopped after a series of movements. Then, Zhou Jinguo pulled the trigger. Through the white smoke that came out of the muzzle, Zhou Jinguo saw the Xiang Army take two steps back as if he had been hit in the chest by a sledgehammer. Then, he fell straight back.
After so many years on the battlefield, Zhou Jinguo was sure that he had indeed hit the chest of the target 200 meters away. If the enemy was really injured by acting, it could only be said that his acting skills were beyond the sky. It was more like the real thing than the real thing. Zhou Jinguo felt that it was a pity that the bullet hit the guy's right chest instead of the left. If the bullet hit the left chest, it was very likely to hit the heart, or at least create a large wound near the heart. The enemy in front of him would die very soon. If he was hit in the right chest, if he was lucky, he could live for a long time.
However, this thought was fleeting. At this time, Zhou Jinguo did not want to proudly think about the results of the battle. Instead, he immediately withdrew from the position along the communication line. This time, he did not choose the backbone of this group of troops to be snipers for nothing. In addition to the mastery of the weapons, the tactics that went with the new weapons also needed to be practiced. This was not a problem that could be solved by simply practicing in the military school for a while.
He opened the barrel of the gun and stuffed the hot shell into his pocket. Then, he loaded another bullet and closed the barrel. Zhou Jinguo carried the rifle and crawled forward, then ran with small steps. Soon, he retreated.
The place where Zhou Jinguo sniped was 200 meters away from the Xiang Army's camp. A distance of 200 meters was almost no distance to the Liberation Army. If the fully armed infantry charged, they could cross this distance in one minute and kill the enemy's position. The effective killing range of the rifle volley was more than 400 meters. As for the artillerymen, shooting from this distance was like shooting at the enemy's chest with a bayonet.
But for the Xiang Army, it was completely different. Their solid shells were useless against the scattered infantry line, not to mention that these infantry were hiding in the shooting point. If it were not for the smoke that came out of the muzzle after shooting, the Xiang Army would not have been able to know where the person who fired the shot was.
At first, the Xiang Army also sent people out to chase. As a result, the people who came out to chase were shot at by other ambushes, and the loss was greater than the loss of the sniper rifle. After the two sides were in a stalemate for seven or eight days, all the camps of the Xiang Army moved almost at the same time. They escaped from the camp in the dark and fled to the safer rear.
If it was an open battle, it would not matter if they were killed. But they were living with the threat of death all the time. In addition, the grain transport team was ambushed and completely wiped out. If they continued to hide in the camp, they would only starve to death. The Xiang Army did not have such strong nerves at all, so they chose to escape.
When Zhou Jinguo led the troops to take over the Xiang Army's camp, he found that the Xiang Army not only escaped quickly, but also completely. Not only were the dead people thrown in the camp, but they also did not take the wounded people with them. These wounded people were lying in several tents. When they left them, the Xiang Army had already decided to let them fend for themselves.
Recently, the Liberation Army finally announced a new captive policy. In the past, in order to prevent the Qing Army from having the courage to approach Guangdong, the Liberation Army adopted a lot of cruel policies to deter the Qing Army. Now that the Liberation Army had changed from defense to offense, the cruel policy was abolished. They could not deprive the captives of their personal belongings, nor could they kill them on the spot.
This policy brought a lot of trouble. If it was in the past, when the troops saw a living enemy, they would shoot them from afar. Then they would rush over boldly with confidence. Now the troops could only approach slowly, shouting, "Surrender and you will not be killed." Fortunately, the Xiang Army did not leave weapons for the wounded people to defend themselves. After the troops shouted, the wounded people shouted, "Officers, we have no weapons. We surrender."
Zhou Jinguo went in to see the wounded people, and then his eyes fell on a man who had been shot in the right chest. The guy was about 25 or 26 years old, with an unshaven beard. The blood stains on the clothes outside the right chest that had been shot had already dried. Zhou Jinguo carefully identified him for a while and was sure that he was an acquaintance. When he was in his hometown, Zhou Jinguo had a girl he liked very much. She was the daughter of the landlord's family.
Before Ceng Guofan formed the Xiang Army, this kind of thing was not a big deal. At most, the Earth Lord would be very annoyed with this arrogant brat and find his own son to scare Zhou Jinguo and the others, or teach him a small lesson.
Zhou Jinguo's experience was the latter. The man in front of him was about the same age as Zhou Jinguo. His name was Lü Shangyang, and he was the fourth son of the landlord of the Lu family. At that time, the four brothers went to find Zhou Jinguo and were ready to teach him a lesson. But Zhou Jinguo had seven brothers. Four against seven, it was obvious that they had more people. The Zhou family defeated the four brothers of the Lu family.
Not long after this incident, the Taiping army took over Yongxing. The Lu family immediately ran away, and Zhou Jinguo joined Vézé's troops. He did not expect that when they reunited, it would be so dramatic. This time, Lü Shangyang suffered a loss in the hands of Zhou Jinguo. Maybe this was fate.
As for Lü Shangyang, Zhou Jinguo did not feel sorry for him. It was just that Lü Shangyang's sister, Lü Yufeng, was Zhou Jinguo's sweetheart. When he joined the Taiping army, Zhou Jinguo was 18 years old, and Lü Yufeng was one year older than Zhou Jinguo. Seven years had passed, and Zhou Jinguo was 25 years old. He did not dare to imagine that the 26-year-old Lü Yufeng was still unmarried.
But when he thought of Lü Yufeng, Zhou Jinguo did not want to kill her. He called for the military doctor. "Save these people as soon as possible."
The military doctor looked at the group of injured people and gritted his teeth. The snipers were not ruthless enough. The military doctor felt that there was no need to waste time and energy on the injured people.
Zhou Jinguo could understand what the military doctor was thinking. He advised, "I still remember when I was in Yongxing seven years ago, we fought with Zhang Guoliang's troops. At that time, our military doctor team had just been established. After we killed many people, the troops selected the representative corpses from the Qing Army and started dissecting them. I was in charge of security at that time, but I was terrified. It felt like a slaughterhouse. Things are different now, of course, but I think we should at least know what effect these new bullets will have. Comrade military doctor, what do you think? If we can save them, try to save them. "
These words had some effect. If the main purpose was to save people and research was secondary, the military doctor would naturally be less interested. But on the other hand, research was the main purpose and saving people was secondary. The military doctor had no reason to object. He was a military doctor after all. When he could save people, he would not easily refuse. But the other party was the enemy, so the military doctor could not put too much pressure on himself. To be kind to others and be kind to oneself, one had to know the limits.
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