Chapter 195 Reserve Improvement Plan (Chapter 3 Asking for a Monthly Pass)
After the birth of the crown prince's child, the Romanian people loved the newborn prince very much. In the Cathedral of the Last Emirate, the baptismal ceremony presided over by Patriarch Baldocvin I was also crowded with people, and everyone could not wait to see the new prince.
It was also rare that Edel did not deal with government affairs during this period and stayed with his family. He was mainly concerned about Sophie Marie and Prince Victor, who had just given birth. In addition, he also often accompanied his aging father, Carol I.
However, such leisurely time did not last long. In less than a week, he had to pick up government affairs again and start handling them. Edel now picked up the documents to look at, which were the Minister of War, General Courtois and the General Staff
General Chang Pulieshan jointly submitted a plan to improve the reserve force. This plan, which is related to major military operations, was still brought to the crown prince by General Pulieshan this time.
Looking at Edel who was carefully reading through the pages, Plesan felt much more frustrated. He was afraid that the crown prince would not understand the importance of this plan. This was the result that he and the Minister of Army learned from the advantages of reserve plans from various countries and combined them with the actual situation in Romania.
It was carefully prepared. But it seems that his worries are unnecessary at present. The crown prince watched it with great interest.
When it comes to the strength of the Romanian army, it is definitely ahead of other countries in the Balkans. Just having artillery with a larger caliber than other small countries can show Romania's wealth, not to mention the number of Romanian artillery that they cannot match. But now Edel's target
It is the Austro-Hungarian army and the Soviet army that was born out of the Russian army, so its small and elite Romanian army alone cannot achieve the above goals, so Romania's domestic reserves must be mobilized.
Relying on Romania's abundant manpower in the Balkan countries, it maintains a reserve force of 400,000 people all year round. They usually work in the fields and factories, and will take up arms to fight the enemy when the country needs them. In Romania,
There are reserves in every walk of life, and there is even a bankers reserve company in Romania.
And when using these reserves, the Romanian military can only hope to recruit them into the army and disperse them as supplementary troops.
However, in the past, Romania's finances could only support the transformation and reorganization of its army, so it was unable to reform the reserve system. Now that Romania's finances have improved with the outbreak of World War I, the two army leaders have already prepared this.
The plan was put in front of Edel.
In this reserve reform plan, the two military leaders first unified the various models of rifles in the reserve and replaced them all with the Mauser 98 rifles used by the army. This move consumed 310,000 Mauser 98 rifles in the army's inventory.
210,000 Mauser rifles. However, because the Romanian arsenal is currently working overtime for production, it does not take two years to replenish the inventory.
In addition, in this plan, they also need to train personnel to use machine guns and artillery. This will consume 746 machine guns and 168 artillery pieces in the army's inventory. These still need to be supplemented by the arsenal.
After strengthening these reserve weapons, of course their training time also needs to be strengthened, from the previous five days of training per month (training time will be reduced during busy farming periods and made up for during slack periods) to seven days per month, when there is no farm work
There will also be one month of separate training in the winter. This will increase the reserve's training time from 60 days, or two months, to 107 days, or three and a half months.
Moreover, in the plan, those who train these reserve soldiers will be replaced by serving army officers, and the reserve officers who were previously responsible for training them will also be centralized to train them in military skills.
Through the intensive training of these reserve officers and soldiers, Romania's reserve forces will be greatly strengthened.
In addition, in order to allow these reserve officers and soldiers to train with peace of mind, the allowances were also increased for them in this plan. Previously, the reserve forces had no allowance and relied entirely on the patriotism of the people to maintain their combat effectiveness. Therefore, the Romanian reserve forces were previously trained.
The level is not high and it is not easy to manage.
Now the two generals believe that the reserve force is also a part of the Romanian army, so each soldier is given 50 lei per year, the average allowance for lieutenant level is about 70 lei per person per year, and the average allowance for school level is 100 lei per person per year.
However, the army does not intend to spend all of this money on its own. In this plan, the two generals believe that because the reserve is half civilians and half soldiers, the government must also pay half. Relying on the current tense situation of the European war, the Prime Minister finally
Brutianu pinched his nose and acquiesced to the rogueness of the two generals. Therefore, the government and the army each provide half of the funds to support the 400,000 reserve forces every year.
In fact, what costs more than subsidies is weapons and ammunition, which costs more. You must know that if the training intensity of the army is followed, these reserve soldiers will consume a lot of ammunition. Fortunately, Romanian ammunition production has been expanded several times, so this can
Support the progress of the two generals' plans.
And in the end, the two generals also conceived how to use these intensively trained reserves. First, before the outbreak of the war, these reserve and training officers were organized into independent battalions and regiments, and then they were drawn from each division.
and recruit a regiment, and form a new division-level unit with them. As for the technical arms of this division, it is also composed of the transferred division's sergeants as the backbone, and the replenishment of previously trained reserve technical officers and soldiers.
Overall, it looks very much like the Japanese army in World War II, except that each division is not divided into areas for recruiting troops, and there is no perverted military hierarchy like the Japanese army.
After reading the entire plan, Edel still agreed with it, but he still had to ask the chief of general staff a few questions before he could make a decision.
"Admiral Pulieshan, according to your plan, how will the second wave of members be dealt with?"
After hearing the crown prince's inquiry, Preshan knew that this was exactly the part that they had not written into the plan. It turned out that he and General Courtois had differences regarding the second mobilization. In his opinion, the second mobilization
After mobilization to expand the scope of recruitment, the conscripts are sent to military camps for two months of training and then go to the battlefield as supplementary troops. This is now a common pattern in Europe.
Admiral Courtois believes that doing so is too dangerous for a small country like Romania. Once the second mobilization is launched, it may face opponents such as Austria-Hungary and Russia, whose manpower cannot be compared with that of big countries. So he
It is believed that a sub-level mobilization organization needs to be established. During training, these people can be trained for a shorter period of time, to two months or one and a half months each year, which is much better than training them for two months after recruitment and then sending them to the battlefield.
The General on Mount Pulie mainly considered that this would require more weapons and ammunition to support such a secondary mobilization mechanism, which would be too heavy a burden for the current army, so he did not agree.
Now faced with the Crown Prince's inquiry, General Pulie had no choice but to tell this question.
After listening to Preshan's story, Edel knew that Romania's participation in World War I was necessary. The current Romanian army plus reserves is only 700,000. Even if it continues to expand to 1 million in the future, considering the current general recruitment ratio in various countries,
He said there was still a lot of gap. So he was quite sympathetic to the proposal of the Secretary of the Army.
So after thinking about it, Edel said to General Pleasan: "At present, General Courtois's plan seems to be pretty good. You should think more about his second-level mobilization plan and come up with a supplementary plan."
After Edel finished speaking, he signed his name on the reserve reform plan.
So in early October 1914, Romania began to implement a new reserve plan.
