Since Lin Ziran said he would have dinner in Fengyan Town, he would have dinner in Fengyan Town.
Even in the follow-up attack, the defenders resisted very tenaciously. Even after the second mixed regiment entered the battle, the defenders retreated steadily. Even after the city wall defense line fell, they still retreated to the city and relied on the buildings in the city to resist.
However, Lin Ziran faced this situation and directly sent the artillery troops to the front and launched a large-scale artillery bombardment directly on the urban area.
Subsequently, five-pound artillery was directly dispatched into the city to carry out close-range shelling, killing the stubborn defenders.
To put it bluntly, Fengyan Town is just a small town. There is no such thing as a town. The residents in the town are not even as large as the number of armies fighting on both sides.
In such a small place, the defenders would not be able to hold on for long even if they retreated to the city. What's more, the Sixth Division also had absolute superiority in artillery fire and troop strength.
After several hours of fierce fighting between the two sides, the remnants of the defenders who had been divided and surrounded finally could no longer hold on, and several remnants surrendered one after another.
This made Lin Ziran very envious of Feng Haozhong. The soldiers this man brought out were not simple.
After entering the city, after questioning the prisoners of war, we learned that only a small regiment of the Third Division was guarding the place during this battle, with a total strength of less than 1,100 men and only four artillery pieces.
Post-war statistics show that during the two days of fierce fighting, nearly 100 people of the unit were directly killed, more than 300 were injured, and more than 100 people were killed directly, with a casualty rate of nearly 40%.
In the end, after the city was divided and surrounded, the remaining troops could not hold on and had no hope of breaking through, so they had to surrender.
As for the Sixth Division, which was on the offensive side, it suffered a total of more than 600 losses in two days of fierce fighting, and nearly a hundred of them were deserters who were killed by themselves!
This battle was undoubtedly the most brutal and the one with the heaviest casualties since Lin Ziran raised his troops.
But what made Lin Ziran happy was that even though the battle had a bad start and the 8th Infantry Battalion simply lost his face, the situation was successfully reversed through various means.
Otherwise, he might have capsized in this small town of Fengyan!
After successfully capturing Fengyan Town, Lin Ziran had dinner directly in the city. After dinner, he read the complete battle report of the battle compiled by Wu Guanlin, and the more he looked at it, the more helpless he felt.
I won the battle, but the overall performance of the unit was actually quite poor.
The battle report compiled by the staff office pointed out that during a series of battles, our side had at least a dozen fatal loopholes.
If the enemy's strength was not too small, or if the enemy's artillery had so many artillery pieces, this attack might have failed.
At the same time, the command of the officers of each unit was also unsatisfactory.
Xu Zhongshu, the frontline commander, naturally has no problem with his command. He is a professional officer, so he has no problem at all in commanding this kind of battle. Problems arise with many battalion commanders and company commanders.
The command level of these mid-level and low-level officers is seriously insufficient. They often misunderstand orders and make actions that confuse their superiors. Many of them feel that they are the sons of destiny and often act without authorization.
Generally speaking, among the many mid-level and senior officers above the company commander level who participated in the attack, except for a few such as Xu Zhongshu and Zhang Hanqiu, the performance of others was not very good.
Compared with the low quality of officers, the performance of soldiers is actually more normal.
Although the performance of the soldiers was not great, considering that many of them were new recruits with insufficient training time and had not fought in any battles before, poor performance is understandable.
In the third attack this afternoon, the soldiers had generally adapted to the war and performed well.
After reading the detailed battle report, Lin Ziran envied Feng Haozhong!
Look at the army under someone else's command, and then compare it with the army under your own command. It's really a waste of comparison!
The defenders, who were in their early 1,000s, resisted our own army of 5,000, and our own side also had an absolute artillery advantage. The other side did not have any perfect city defenses, so they were able to create so much trouble for themselves.
Moreover, after more than half of the casualties were lost, and even after their regiment commander was killed in action, they could still continue to fight stubbornly under the leadership of the battalion commander and even the company commander.
If their own troops had not divided and surrounded them later, completely cutting off their thoughts of continuing to resist or break out of the encirclement, they probably would not have surrendered.
No wonder Feng Haozhong's military strength is actually not greater than that of Li Dingjun and Zhao Song. The actual military strength of the three is almost the same, but it makes Jian Minggang regard it as a serious problem.
For this reason, he did not hesitate to join forces with Li Kun to kill Feng Haozhong's men.
then
This third division has great combat effectiveness!
In order to show respect for these soldiers of the Third Division who had excellent combat effectiveness, Lin Ziran ordered that the more than 400 prisoners of war from the Third Division who surrendered must be closely monitored.
At the same time, he also ordered Luo Mazi to start persuading people to surrender from these prisoners of war, especially those sergeants and low-level officers.
Ever since he recruited a large number of people from Guang'an prisoners of war, Lin Ziran felt that recruiting people from prisoners of war was a way to quickly increase the combat effectiveness of the army.
Many of these prisoners of war are professional officers and veterans, and these people are of great value, especially to Lin Ziran's army, which seriously lacks professional officers and veterans.
Another very important point is that in actual wars between vassals, it is normal for the winning side to directly recruit the loser's troops.
Those defeated prisoners of war usually do not resist too much.
How did Jianming Gang come to have more than 40,000 troops under his command?
Most of them are actually people who were originally under Cheng Lingfeng, who were recruited and dispersed by him and then reorganized.
Of course, this is only limited to ordinary soldiers and low-level officers. For mid- to high-level officers, it depends on the situation.
Lin Ziran asked Luo Mazi to recruit people from prisoners of war, with the main targets being sergeants and low-level officers.
Sergeants are veterans who have been in the army for many years. For artillery, they are usually gunners. For infantry, they are usually corps commanders, platoon leaders and the like.
Not to mention low-level officers, who usually hold positions such as company commander and adjutant.
The above two are the backbone of an army.
With these two types of people, you can directly add a group of new soldiers and you can build an army in a short time.
In addition to these two main goals, ordinary soldiers are also the focus of the fight.
There are actually some new recruits or soldiers with lower quality among these soldiers, but they are not bad. They are much better than directly recruited recruits. We can recruit as many as we can.
As for the remaining mid-level and senior officers, it depends on the situation. Those who are willing to surrender are best, and they will be given temporary posts directly. They will be observed for a period of time and then appointed based on the situation.
If they are unwilling to surrender, it is impossible to kill them, and they will not even be locked up forever. Instead, they will be imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp first, and when the time is right, they will naturally be able to regain their freedom.