The Mediterranean sun shone lazily on the dock, and a passenger ship sailing from Seville, Spain to Trieste slowly entered the port. After Italy surrendered, the Austro-Hungarian Navy had completely controlled the sea control of the Mediterranean. It turned out that the British ships and merchant ships flying the San Giorgio flag were gone, and most of the seas were neutral merchant ships.

Ding Xudong, an officer from the Embassy of the Republic of China in Vienna, and Wang Huanzhang, stood on the dock to welcome a group of newly graduated officers who had come from China, seven graduates from the Army University and forty-three junior officers who graduated from the Baoding Officers' Academy, and more than twenty international students from Yantai Naval School and Beiyang Aviation School. The two really don’t understand what the newly reincarnated army chief in Beijing is doing.

Ye Quan walked down the gangway with a suitcase and a large number of classmates. Thankfully, after nearly three months of traveling on the sea, they finally arrived at their destination. Their military academy students who volunteered to apply to guard the border and defend the country when they graduated and embarked on a journey to study in Europe. Due to the deadline, the group could only go to South America first, then to Spain, and circled most of the earth, and finally arrived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

"What exactly did the Army Department send us to Europe for?" This is a question that lingers in the minds of every officer. If you go to Europe for inspection or to watch the battle, the Army Department should not hide the matter, and you are not allowed to wear military uniforms or expose your military identity along the way. Those guys who graduated from the Army University must know, but they refuse to reveal their background, but they just vaguely feel that they came to Europe to lead troops.

Leading troops? What a joke, those foreigners are willing to follow our command?

Anyway, no matter what, they are now regular officers, which is better than those students who return to the province after graduation. Some people may not find suitable positions in the province. Baoding Army Officer School can be said to be the only regular officer school in China today. The graduates in the army halls of each province can only be non-commissioned, and their identities cannot be compared with those of the graduates of Baoding Military Academy.

The graduates of Baoding Military Academy all have good military qualities. They are the best selected from graduates of military primary schools in various provinces. They are valued by the northern government and the military authorities of various provinces in military education and staff business. Since its establishment, the purpose of the Baoding Military Academy is to cultivate professional soldiers for the country, proclaiming that "soldiers are responsible for defending their families and the country, and obeying orders is the duty" and "soldiers do not care about politics as noble", forming the characteristics of professional soldiers for students of Baoding Military Academy.

The graduates of Baoding Military Academy can be said to be the most military-quality students in Chinese history. They absolutely obey orders and do not participate in political affairs. Most Baoding Military Academy students can abide by this military discipline.

Of course, young people are always full of passion and ideals. When they graduated, passionate young people such as Ye Quan, Xia Wei, Bai Chongxi actively applied to go to Mongolia or Xinjiang to defend the country and guard the border. Unexpectedly, the Army Department took the initiative to give special preferential treatment to nearly 400 students who went to the border during the second and third phases of the military academy, and selected nearly 100 people to send them to Europe to study and study.

There are nearly 1,800 graduates from the two periods of Baoding Military Academy, but they are the only ones who have become the lucky ones, which makes those students who have a good family background and have arranged positions for them in the army regret it.

Along the way, the passenger ship was intercepted and investigated by British ships twice. The British sailors were very rude and rude to the Chinese, but were very polite to even the Germans who were fighting. This made these officers more clearly realize the current situation of weakening the country and bullying it, and also aroused everyone's patriotism.

As the saying goes: If you don’t have a foreign country, you don’t know how to be patriotic.

There is indeed some truth that such a strong national sentiment cannot be felt in China. The confrontation and conflict between nations, races and civilizations cannot be understood without personally experiencing it.

In the Adriatic Sea, these officers and students saw a battle fleet passing by the passenger ship, allowing them to personally feel the huge gap between the poor and weak motherland and the Western powers. Compared with these giant warships, the largest "Haitian" in the Beiyang Navy is like a small fish on the sea.

A strong army and country have become everyone's most sincere wish.

The team led by Wu Guangxin from the Army Department, who were relatives of General Duan. He turned out to be the deputy commander of the model officer regiment. He spoke politely with Ding Xudong and Wang Huanzhang on the dock, and took them to the Navy Hotel not far from the dock. Graduates of the University of Land and University were riding cars, while junior officers like Ye Quan and others who graduated from Baoding Military Academy took two buses respectively.

Now, they finally know their mission to Europe: train and command about 8,000 Chinese workers in Austro-Hungary.

This is the plan that Li Haidun and Xu Shuzheng discussed at the beginning.

However, due to the control of the ocean, it is relatively easy for Britain and France to recruit workers in China, while it is not easy for Xu Shuzheng to send the workers recruited by the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Germany and Austro-Hungarian Empire. The British's maritime investigation was quite strict, and they could only turn to South America and then detour from neutral Spain to reach Europe.

With the financial support of Lee Haydn, Xu Shuzheng spent nearly half a year to send less than 8,000 workers to Austro-Hungary from China.

Now, these Chinese workers are placed in six logistics camps, implemented military management, and are usually porters and occasionally undergo some military training.

According to European standards, commanding these people is equivalent to a reinforced infantry division, requiring about 400 officers, but it is obvious that the country cannot meet this requirement at all. Xu Shuzheng pieced together and sent more than 80 officers from China. It was because of the name of gilding in Europe that he could attract so many people to sign up.

With only such a few officers, each Chinese engineering camp can only be assigned to more than ten officers, plus the military advisers sent by the Austro-Hungarian side: a few officers and a dozen non-commissioned officers can only do it first.

Ye Quan, Bai Chongxi, Yao Cheng and others were assigned to the Yamolin Camp in Ukraine, which is close to the front line. The camp of the Chinese Workers' Camp is mixed with the Austro-Hungarian Army's barracks. Occasionally, the sound of cannons coming from afar can be heard. As usual, hundreds of Chinese workers are training on the training ground of the camp, while most of the others are transporting supplies to the front line. There are a total of more than 1,700 Chinese workers in the Yamolin Camp, taking turns to train in the camp.

Now, these officers who have just graduated from the military academy have become the supreme commander here. However, when the foreman introduced their identities to the Chinese workers under these men, Ye Quan could clearly feel that these Chinese workers had a hint of hostility and distrust towards them.

A very difficult thing, how can we train these farmers into qualified soldiers?

This made Ye Quan and the others feel a headache.
Chapter completed!