Chapter 69 Recruitment
After all, there are very few time-travelers like Ren Liang who are extremely idle and have the mood to slowly train their subordinates. Not everyone has a group of hard laborers at their disposal. Gu Wei, who had just been transferred from the labor camp, was now in a very anxious state.
Gu Wei received an order from the Military and Police Department to join the newly established recruitment office. He will also serve as the chief instructor of this batch of recruits after recruiting all the soldiers. This is natural for Gu Wei, who has been engaged in militia training for a long time. It's an easy job, but it's much better than getting angry at those mud monkeys every day in the labor camp. Of course, this organization currently only carries the title of "Recruitment Office". Due to the shortage of housing, the Executive Committee has not arranged an office for this organization at all. If necessary, it can only go to the office of the Military and Police Department to squeeze in. .
The main targets of this conscription are local people who have joined the two newly established communes. These people have basically gone through identity verification and registration, are highly reliable, and already have a certain degree of trust in the people. The Military and Police Department The leaders believe that these two places are definitely excellent sources of troops. The task assigned to Gu Wei was to recruit troops at the farm commune.
Gu Wei was very excited when he first got this job. His personal goal was to become a powerful figure in the military academy in the future, and training local militiamen was obviously the first step to achieve this goal. Before he went to the farm to see his future subordinates, Gu Wei had already fantasized about himself being surrounded by a large group of naturalized civilian officers more than once.
However, when Gu Wei actually came to the farm and saw the scene here, he had to face reality and readjust his thoughts. As for the idea of an Army Academy, he probably had to postpone it for a while.
The management committee of the farm commune has received a notice from the executive committee to gather all the men in the commune together in advance for selection by the recruitment office. Most of the local people standing in front of Gu Wei were dark and thin, and their bodies were even thinner than those of the hard laborers in the labor camps.
Most of the first batch of local people to join the communes were living in extreme poverty. In order to have a stable meal, they could ignore other things. Joining the communes was like grasping a life-saving straw within their reach. The physical fitness of such people is naturally not much better, and Gu Wei can't help but worry about whether they can withstand the heavy training of new recruits.
"Gao Huan, are these all the people in your commune?" Gu Wei still couldn't believe it. He could only hope that the farm management committee had some kind of ambush to hide some of the young workers.
Gao Huan also had a helpless expression on his face: "Don't be dissatisfied, I can't bear to hand over this person to you! I only have these dozens of people here who can do manual labor, and you are ready to take half of them away for me with just one word." , I don’t know what to do with the production tasks here. The roster is here, you can check it out.”
"They are all as skinny as monkeys... Didn't you say that the food on your farm is the best?" Gu Wei asked Gao Huan while looking at these numb-looking workers.
"These talents have only been brought in for a few days. How can they recuperate their bodies so quickly? Even if they take tonics all the time, it won't be enough." Gao Huan explained: "Besides, many crops have just been planted in the ground now, what can they eat? ? At most, it only allows them to eat three meals without starving. ”
"There aren't many available here!" Gu Weixin said that Yan Chujie still expected to pick out a hundred young men from the two communes. He should really bring him here to see with his own eyes - the young man There are some, but none of them are strong.
After looking around, Gu Wei didn't find a few suitable ones, so he could only ask Gao Huan: "Have we told these people about our conscription policy?"
"I told you!" Gao Huan said with his fingers crossed: "We are recruiting soldiers on behalf of Yazhou, but they will serve locally and do not need to go to Yazhou. They will receive military pay every month, eat meat every day, receive pensions for those killed in battle, and retire from the army. Arrange jobs, arrange schooling for children... Oh, by the way, veterans can also apply for contracted land. As you can see, everyone in the commune has signed up.”
"Have all these people signed up?" Gu Wei had never expected that these people who had joined the army would be so enthusiastic.
"If I were like them, I would probably sign up to join the army. After all, the treatment is so good." Gao Huan sighed: "But don't be too happy too early. Maybe in their eyes, being a soldier and eating food are the same as the Ming Dynasty's garrison. Same.”
"So these people thought they were just changing places and continuing to be farmers?" Gu Wei suddenly realized that the field soldiers of this era were almost equated with farmers, and for these people, whether they were members of the commune or If you join the army and become a soldier, you are still farming anyway, but the treatment is very different. So why not choose a way out that is more beneficial to you?
As a result, Gu Wei felt that the previous optimism of the Military and Police Department about the source of soldiers became more and more unreliable. In addition to physical fitness, the ideological quality was also quite worrying. If a large number of people with this mentality are recruited to serve as soldiers, the initial ideological work may be much more difficult than expected.
Although people in the farm commune were very enthusiastic about signing up, Gu Wei did not recruit people on a large scale out of concern, and in the end he only carefully selected less than twenty people. Even so, Gu Wei was not very satisfied with the people he selected. Looking at these thin young people, the only thing he could do was sigh again and again. In the afternoon of the same day, the unwilling Gu Wei went to the salt farm commune again, but the conditions here were not much better than those in the farm commune. The physical fitness and mental state of most people were still far from what Gu Wei wanted. The only thing that makes Gu Wei feel more gratified is that the members here are mainly villagers from Yulin Fishing Village, so they have a higher degree of recognition of the time-traveling people, and some people dare to have the courage to exchange a few words with Gu Wei.
For example, Yu Dashan, the special assistant of the commune management committee, came over and timidly asked a very fatal question: "Sir, are you recruiting troops openly like this, are you... planning to... rebel?"
Gu Wei gasped and said: "Yu Dashan, you are very enlightened if you can think of this problem!"
When we went to the farm commune in the morning, none of those people asked Gu Wei such a question. Maybe some people didn't dare to ask even if they thought about it. Of course, the Military and Police Department did not expect the excuse of "recruiting troops on behalf of Yazhou" to fool everyone. There are always some smart people who can see through the tricks in this. But what Gu Wei never expected was that it was the always honest and honest Yu Dashan who raised this question first.
Yu Dashan's face suddenly turned pale, and he waved his hands repeatedly: "No, no! Don't you dare!"
"Don't be afraid!" Gu Wei also knew that his tone probably frightened Yu Dashan, so he lowered his voice and asked him: "How many people have the same idea as you?"
Yu Dashan stammered in response: "No... no, I didn't tell anyone else."
"Actually, what we are recruiting this time is not soldiers, but police." Gu Wei knew that if he didn't make this clear, people like Yu Dashan would only become more and more frightened. It is never a good thing to control the minds of naturalized people, so he immediately used another statement prepared by the Military and Police Department: "We recruit these people mainly to maintain local security, quell disputes, arrest bandits, and resist the sea. Thief, it’s actually the same thing as the Inspection Department. But we recruit and support ourselves, and we don’t need to listen to Yazhou’s transfer. Do you understand what I said?”
"I understand, I understand." Yu Dashan raised his hand and wiped the sweat from his forehead: "I will tell the junior students exactly what the officer meant, so that they will not have random thoughts."
"Sensible! No wonder the executive committee values you so much..." Gu Wei felt that Yu Dashan was very informed and knowledgeable. He didn't explain what he was saying, so Yu Dashan already knew what to do next.
Although the process went smoothly, the result was still not ideal. In the end, Gu Wei only picked out more than 20 people in the salt field commune. Of course, if Anxi hadn't been following him with a black face the whole time, Gu Wei might have shamelessly asked for a few more people.
As a result, the number of people recruited from the two troop concentration areas originally expected by the Military and Police Department has not even reached half of the expected number. This situation is obviously not satisfactory to the Military and Police Department. So the backup plan had to be put forward again-recruiting local minority youths to enlist in the army. The reason why ethnic minorities are mentioned here instead of Li people is because Miao workers have begun to appear on a small scale in the territory of Chuanzhong. They come from the mountains farther away than the Li Dongzhai, and their living conditions are poorer than those of the Li and local Han people.
These Miao people are basically the descendants of the Miao soldiers who were conscripted to Hainan to quell the chaos from Jiajing to Wanli years. It is recorded in "Yazhou Chronicles" that "in the Gaiqian Ming Dynasty, Luohuo and Baoyu Erdong were pacified, and Leding Camp was built. , mobilized Guangxi Miao soldiers to defend, and their names were medicine crossbowmen. The back camp was destroyed by the flood, and their descendants were scattered in the valley, still named Miao." Because of their status as guest troops, the local Han Li people did not like them. People can only settle in the mountains.
The Military and Police Department did not give much thought to using the Li and Miao ethnic groups as a source of troops at the beginning, believing that these people were not yet fully civilized and that the mixture of different ethnic groups might cause some trouble in subsequent military training. But now it is impossible to recruit the expected number of soldiers, forcing the Military and Police Department to reconsider the recruitment plan.
Many people in the military and police department were in favor of recruiting troops from ethnic minorities. When we went to Fushandong to do business last time, someone had already proposed the formation of a Li mountain unit, but it was rejected because the conditions in all aspects were immature. . Now that old things have been brought up again, and a Miao ethnic group who is also good at mountain warfare has been added as an option, the call for the formation of a multi-ethnic mixed force has become louder again.
(End of chapter)