January 16, 915, Kubinka, the location of the forming mobile army.
This was also the station for the “Royal Imperial Guard” in the mouths of many from Ye Fort.
Kubinka was originally the royal family’s usual training ground, equivalent to our Zhurihe, and Wang Zhong made full use of this condition, training troops here every day while organizing them.
When the new tanks arrived, the troops were practicing combined arms with infantry, so all the soldiers saw the Shermans and Crusaders roll in.
Yegorov was organizing the training, and upon seeing the scene, he immediately ordered, “Rest for 30 minutes, I’ll go take a look at what’s going on.”
“Can we go too?” An old soldier who was familiar with Yegorov asked.
Yegorov: “Stay put! The general won’t mind your fuss, but I will.”
“You’re a general now too,” said Aleksandrovich, who had replaced Pavlov as the chief of staff of the Guards First Mechanized Infantry.
Yegorov looked down at his collar insignia: “Indeed. I never dreamed I’d be a general in this lifetime. You and the Military Bishop keep an eye on them, I’m going to see what’s happening.”
Ivan Petrovich, who had replaced Popov as the Guards First Mechanized Infantry Military Bishop, said, “Go ahead, if it’s good equipment, try to get it for our division.”
Yegorov grinned, “Of course. Back when the General—I mean, when Rokossovsky was division commander, he led us to request equipment everywhere, now it’s his turn to be pestered by me!”
Many veterans laughed.
Yegorov swaggered toward the new equipment.
The chief of staff Aleksandrovich asked Ivan Petrovich, “Vanya (Ivan’s nickname), looking at his swagger, can you imagine he was the same old guy who got drunk last night because he missed his deceased wife?”
Before the Military Bishop could answer, a nearby soldier joked, “Spill the beans about drinking in misery.”
But the one who asked was a new soldier, who got flicked on the forehead by an old one: “Don’t jest about such matters! The division commander’s wife and child both died in enemy fire!”
Military Bishop Ivan glanced at the new soldier being schooled and said, “The division commander himself might not mind you teasing about that, but isn’t it right to be polite? Night school taught you not just culture but also etiquette!”
Night school was an initiative started by General Rokossovsky, and because the Ante Army had no practice of utilizing time at night before, the soldiers objected a lot at first.
Later, General Rokossovsky took two measures to increase everyone’s enthusiasm. The first was the establishment of a system where passing the night school’s final assessment could get one into the prestigious armor units, charging into battle alongside the General.
The second was that at the end of each week’s night school, soldiers who received excellent evaluations could get a bottle of vodka and were permitted to drink on weekends, without participating in the weekend’s extra training.
The effectiveness of the first measure was currently unknown since no soldiers had yet passed the night school final assessment.
The second measure was extraordinarily effective; every weekend, soldiers who performed well in night school gathered to drink, making everyone else envious—they still had to do extra training.
Petrovich took this opportunity to give the soldiers a lecture, then with his hands clasped behind his back, looked in the direction of the new equipment and said, “I hope the division commander gets some good stuff.”
Chief of staff Aleksandrovich said, “I’m hoping for the kind of tank with a thick gun barrel; the other tank’s barrel, looking about the same as our 45mm, seems feeble.”
An old soldier immediately chimed in, “Doesn’t seem sturdy enough either; at the very least, the front of the thicker-barreled tank is sloped.”
Many infantry soldiers hadn’t even finished the 10th grade, so they only knew that T34’s protection was good because its armor was sloped, but they didn’t understand much beyond that.
————
Wang Zhong was busy arranging the range personnel to place dummies when he heard someone call his name, “General!”
Those who would call out to a general so directly were definitely old hands who were familiar with him. He turned his head and saw Yegorov.
“Yegorov, you rascal!” Wang Zhong laughed, “You’ve come to request equipment, right?”
Yegorov pointed at the Sherman: “I want this one!”
Wang Zhong: “This has already been decided to go to the Davarish of the Melanian People’s Army. They have people who have come from the Free Melanian forces on the United Kingdom side and are familiar with this.”
Yegorov pursed his lips: “You got promoted, and now you don’t care about your old troops!”
Wang Zhong: “What are you saying! The first to be fully equipped with T34Ws in this training ground was the First Mechanized Infantry.”
Yegorov: “I have only one battalion, not enough, give me another battalion!”
Wang Zhong: “You are a mechanized infantry division, not a tank division. Though I think your division would be stronger in combat than a Tukhachev-style tank division.”
Whether intentionally guided by someone or not, now in the troops, those types of tank divisions built in Tukhachev’s era that lacked everything except tanks are called Tukhachev-style tank divisions, whereas those big formations Wang Zhong engineered—combining a tank battalion with a large number of various other arms—are called “new-style divisions” or “Rokossovsky-style tank divisions.”
Knowing that no new tanks were coming his way, Yegorov stopped looking at the Sherman and turned his attention to the Crusader Anti-aircraft Gun: “And what is this ugly thing?”
Wang Zhong: “Crusader self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.”
While speaking, he had a sudden thought that if a 25mm anti-aircraft machine gun was considered light air defense, and an 85mm anti-aircraft gun heavy air defense, then could the Crusader’s 40mm Bofors be classified as medium air defense?
As a seasoned Hearts of Iron IV player, his favorite thing was to boost an entire division’s armor rating by stuffing a self-propelled medium air defense unit into an infantry division; because in the game, enemy armor-piercing capability was calculated only by looking at the armor of the thickest unit in the division, and if the enemy’s armor-piercing capability was insufficient to penetrate the armor, the whole division would become tougher.
This action, colloquially known as “gold-plating,” was why Hearts of Iron players had a unique fondness for medium air defense that could provide “gold plating,” offer air defense against soft targets, and also come cheap.
Wang Zhong’s First Guards Mechanized Infantry already had a battalion of tanks, and later may add another battalion equipped with whirlwind tank destroyers, so its armor power was not weak. In game terms, this kind of “Gundam division” didn’t really need to use anti-aircraft guns to “gold-plate.”
But in reality, for an elite division’s armored units, a reliable self-propelled anti-aircraft gun was needed to provide accompanying air defense.
Wang Zhong: “This anti-aircraft gun will reinforce the First Guards Mechanized Infantry, providing accompanying air defense for the armor units.”
Yegorov immediately frowned, “This doesn’t look very powerful!”
Wang Zhong: “Not powerful?”
He turned to ask the staff at the firing range, “Is the target set up?”
“The targets are ready, General, including the aerial targets hung from balloons and the dummies on the ground,” replied the staff member.
Wang Zhong looked towards the Crusader Anti-aircraft Gun—now they were operated by military instructors from the United Kingdom who had flown in.
“Tell the instructors to fire at the aerial targets first, and be careful not to hit the balloons,” he said.
After he finished speaking, Vasily immediately translated.
The instructors gave a thumbs-up, then the Crusaders turned their barrels towards the aerial targets and fired.
Wang Zhong heard Yegorov exclaim beside him, “That noise!”
After all, the Bofors only had a 5-millimeter smaller caliber than the Ante Army’s main 45-millimeter anti-tank guns, and even had a larger caliber than the 37-millimeter guns mounted on the early Prosenian Panzer III tanks; the noise of these things firing was frighteningly loud.
The targets were hit by a series of airbursts and fell to the ground with a clatter.
Wang Zhong: “Have them fire at the houses.”
There were brick houses on the firing range used for practicing close-quarters indoor combat as well as testing the lethality of various shells on targets inside the houses. Now, these houses were also fitted with dummies.
After Vasily relayed the order, the Crusaders leveled their machine guns and aimed at the houses, beginning to fire.
When the Bofors fired, each shot kicked up a cloud of dust from the ground; the thing was a dust-raiser, surrounding the Crusader with a cloud of smoke and dust.
On the target side, high-explosive shells continuously hit the brick walls, tearing chunks out of the sturdy bricks that flew everywhere.
The dummies placed outside the houses were directly shattered, and those inside were not spared either, those standing by the windows were smashed, and those hiding inside were probably riddled with holes.
The brick house had one side completely blown open by the Bofors.
Wang Zhong: “Cease fire!”
Vasily: “Sisfael!”
The firing stopped.
The range staff rushed towards the house to check the situation, and soon the radio in the range officer’s hand crackled with the report: “All ten dummies are damaged to varying degrees, all judged to be casualties.”
Wang Zhong had just turned towards Yegorov when the latter said, “I’ll take this! Just not sure how good it is against armor.”
Wang Zhong said to Vasily, “Have them switch to Armor-Piercing Shells, and bring in one each of the captured Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks as well as a half-track, with dummies inside.”
It took slightly longer to prepare this time, so Wang Zhong chatted with Yegorov, “How does it feel to be a division commander?”
“Great, I can’t wait to go beat up those Prosen bastards,” Yegorov said.
Wang Zhong: “I hear you drink alone quite often?”
Yegorov: “That’s just boredom when we’re not fighting the Prosen devils. Once the fight starts, there’ll be no problem.”
Wang Zhong patted Yegorov on the shoulder, “It’s still early; I reckon the Prosenians won’t start their new offensive until April.”
Yegorov: “To attack the capital again?”
Quite a few officers around overheard and immediately looked over.
Wang Zhong: “No, the enemy’s plans for a quick surrender are bankrupt, and Ye Fort is not as important now, at least not as much as our southern oil-producing regions. General Golikov and I both judge that the enemy’s main direction of attack this year will be the south.”
Yegorov: “So there won’t be any attacks on the central and northern fronts?”
“How could that be possible? The enemy needs to tie up our forces, so they will attack from the north, central, and south, but all other directions will be diversionary.”
By now, the range officer reported: “The targets are ready.”
Wang Zhong: “Aim at the half-track first, fire.”
Without waiting for Vasily to translate, the Crusaders immediately fired, and after only a few shots, the half-track burst into flames—the vehicle had just been brought to the range and naturally contained fuel and oil that would burn.
Yegorov: “Oh, not bad.”
Wang Zhong: “Aim at the Panzer III.”
The Crusaders quickly fired, and the armor-piercing shells first scattered bits of the Panzer III, like its headlights, and then broke its tracks.
Yegorov: “Not bad, it can break tracks!”
On the battlefield, a vehicle that has lost its tracks has to be abandoned temporarily, to be later towed away by a recovery vehicle.
Yegorov was clearly pleased with being able to break tracks, but the Crusader continued firing, and after hitting something, the Panzer III suddenly caught fire.
Yegorov: “Oh, oh, oh, good, good, good, get me a battalion of these!”