The Flames of Resistance Against Japan in Jiangnan

In this way, Xue Geming's troops exceeded 1200 men. Among them were over 500 new recruits, making this reorganization a crucial step. Xue Geming disregarded everyone, regardless of whether they were new recruits, veterans, former city garrison soldiers, police officers, newly enlisted young farmers, or returning wounded soldiers. He reorganized them into nine 9-man teams, and sent all his existing veterans—who were essentially new recruits, many having served less than a year, but still considered veterans compared to these new recruits—except for the special operations squadron, to serve as instructors. All battalion and company officers went to the front lines to intensify training. The key points of the training were threefold: first, emphasis on discipline; second, iron-like military posture; and third, daily 10-kilometer cross-country runs with a 30-kilogram load, with plans to gradually increase this.

According to Xue Geming's understanding, it means training women like men and training men like animals!

The goal is singular: to train these people into men of unwavering willpower! He has no deserters here! If anyone is unwilling to train or afraid of hardship, the organization will only intervene once; if that fails, they will be discharged immediately! —As for those who suffer through the training cursing behind his back, let them curse. Xue Geming is not afraid at all, but the training must continue!

Of course, these new and veteran soldiers trained during the day and sat together at night to receive ideological education from their instructors, political commissars, and political instructors, who lectured on both grand and trivial principles. As for the instructors—currently mainly the so-called veterans—Xue Geming personally taught them both military and ideological matters. Military posture was not a problem because of several months of intensive training; but ideological matters required his personal intervention.

He Changgong and his group are quite good, but they are mostly only familiar with the grassroots and ordinary aspects, and cannot analyze things from a higher level. Xue Geming is different. He has been following Xu Wenqing for a long time. Xu Wenqing was a top student in his previous life and was good at studying history. His knowledge is on a completely different level.

Xue Geming had served as Xu Wenqing's bodyguard, and through this exposure, he had learned quite a bit.

Of course, he knew that most of these people were not very knowledgeable, so he used stories and historical anecdotes to attract their attention, and then used these as a basis to reason with them, thus educating the soldiers. For example, regarding some soldiers who had deserted and wanted to go home, he specifically talked about the Yellow Turban Rebellion, saying that after the Yellow Turban Rebellion achieved only a few small victories, some rebel soldiers thought about going home and developing their homeland all day long, resulting in the annihilation of most of them. He also pointed out that if the Yellow Turban Rebellion had pressed on with their momentum, their future happiness would have been more long-lasting. For another example, for some people who became arrogant after winning a few battles, Xue Geming cited several historical examples of how arrogant armies inevitably fail, and then pointed out the reasons behind them, thus achieving the purpose of persuasion and education.

It must be said that Xue Geming's "storytelling method" was very effective. At least, everyone—including new recruits and veterans, soldiers and leaders—liked his approach. Of course, they primarily enjoyed listening to the stories; understanding the profound principles behind them was secondary. This method wasn't a lecture-style approach, but rather easy to understand and learn from. Within just one month, many could already tell stories. Naturally, they had long since grasped the underlying principles. Watching his troops become increasingly orderly and the soldiers' quality improve day by day, Xue Geming nodded in satisfaction. However, he was unaware that his training method, after this initial experience, was widely adopted. Not only did his main force consistently adhere to this method, but many other units derived from it also inherited this humanistic educational approach. This method was later listed as one of the most important methods for ideological education in the military.

Several months passed quickly. Xue Geming continued to focus on military affairs. As for local administrative work, it was all handled by He Changgong. Fortunately, He Changming had always been very good at this, and now he also had a group of deputies to assist him, so all the work was carried out in an orderly manner.

The troops underwent rigorous training in the mountains for over two months. As Xue Geming had predicted, the reactionary authorities, due to the approaching year-end, did not send troops to encircle and suppress them. This gave Xue Geming ample time; in just those two months, his troops were completely different from their initial state, possessing the basic strength for combat. However, Xue Geming knew that these men needed a real battle, a baptism of blood, to truly become iron-willed warriors! He knew it was inevitable; but he couldn't worry about that now, focusing solely on intensive training. Whether it was crawling, obstacle courses, bayonet fighting, familiarizing themselves with firearms, or practicing marksmanship, everything was carried out meticulously. However, due to limited ammunition, each soldier was currently only given three live rounds for practice, causing Xue Geming to sigh inwardly and secretly vow that one day, with ammunition available, he would let everyone fire to their hearts' content. But what Xue Geming didn't expect was that the scarcity of ammunition made the soldiers train even more diligently, fearing any mistakes. Before each shot, one must constantly rehearse and ponder; after firing one, one must summarize the experience and rehearse again before firing the second. Therefore, the second shot is usually better than the first. This made Xue Geming sigh inwardly: these bullets, there are advantages to having more and advantages to having fewer!

During training, Xue Geming suddenly remembered that some new troops would scatter at the sound of gunfire, and he resolved to solve this problem. He specially obtained a batch of homemade explosives from local hunters for the soldiers to use during charges. As the soldiers charged, explosives detonated one after another, while many soldiers frantically threw lit firecrackers at the charging soldiers. At first, the soldiers were not used to it and even had to hide. But after a while, they finally overcame this psychological barrier. No matter how the explosives or firecrackers went off, they were not afraid and charged straight ahead.

Xue Geming recalled a method Xu Wenqing had mentioned: during a drill, when soldiers were charging, to make the battlefield more realistic, a large group of people could throw stones at the soldiers, forcing them to dodge the stones while charging. It really looked like they were charging and dodging bullets at the same time.

Therefore, Xue Geming also used this method: the soldiers charged forward amidst the explosions of homemade explosives and the booming of firecrackers, while also dodging stones thrown from who-knows-where. Over time, in this highly realistic combat training ground, the soldiers really developed excellent skills.