Pax's Alternate History Snippet repository.

6 July 1917
The morning after was when the fatigue hit... or maybe that wasn't quite right he had slept like a rock, and the feeling was ... his limbs felt like lead. Cole was the opposite he was jittery and looked like he hadn't slept, moving hither and dither around the ranks a clamor to the next. There was much to be done, as the telegram on his desk from both the American Legation and the British one remarked... but it was good that the telegram lines to the international concession in Tiestin were intact... and that word could come through.

There was a grunt from the other end of the phone line as Sam readjusted himself in his chair, "I will leave that to you lot." The other engineer remarked referring to the breaching of the building, and there was some scratch on the other end of the line. "It sounds like you could use that thing Lewis has been kicking around."

Isaac had access to some of the material the Germans ... 'staff officer day dreams' as someone had called them through the British War Office, and the Germans had talked about the final two hundred meters, needing a weapon for it... and maybe someone was just trying to put something in front of Kaiser Bill to just catch his attention... but the idea was small, compact, automatic firepower to break through resistance. "Has he actually made any headway?"

"Not that I've heard." There was some ruffling, he must have been digging through papers, "Apparently, Lewis writes that BSA didn't forward Savage the papers to the changes to the bolt... and well he's a little invective so I won't read the exact quote."

Allen covered the receiver and glance to Cole who was fooling with the field mug, "Two fingers."

"What was that?"

"Nothing I was talking to Cullen. You were saying."

"Anyway they shrunk the action down, and well Lewis is sure that its an issue with needing more gas in the system, but also that the drum is two awkward." There was a pause, "He references that he's encountered a similar problem with the Assault Phase Rifle he's been working on."

"Has he gotten ahold of one of Federov's guns yet?" Allen interrupted.

"He doesn't say, but I doubt it." Sam huffed. "Some limey has probably considered the thing a distraction, I suppose it was too much to expect Lloyd George would have cleared out the luddites. One of them is probably not passing the 'distraction' along so as to keep things running smoothly."

"The rifle would be thirteen pounds?"

"That's what he says, I haven't had the time to make a prototype from the drawing... I'll do that once this tomfoolery is done."

"There will be time for it then, so the pistol gun?"

"Think its the dwell time, they had to speed up for the 303," And of course 3006 was too much gas in the piston and had needed to be slowed down, even with the smaller bolt it probably dind't have the energy to move right quick, "But if he could get it working well that'd solve your hallway and door kicking problem."

A problem which he had not been considering. "Where is Lewis now?"

"I have no idea, he could be in Birmingham or New York." Cole set the glass down on the table as Sam paused, "Already talks about Crozier going to Europe if you didn't hear, he's not happy, and from the sound of it neither are any of his friends in ordinance. That could be trouble down the road, if those sticks in the mud decide to try anything."

"I wish I could say I was surprised Sam, but shucks its not." It was politics.... the infighting was something that had been there for generations... it was how ordinance was, and how they probably always would be, "Its how ordinance is. We're about done done here, we're gonna swing North and look at the frontage."

"Don't rightly see the point... I mean yeah it was the plan, but if what you've been told is true Duan has the numbers now, and most of the Wu Wei corp is bottled up... did you hear Duan flew aeroplanes over Peking yesterday... they didn't do anything but I reckon it was a shocker."

"It came in over the wire at dinner from Tietsin." He replied reaching for the glass, and suppressed a yawn. "Things are stable?"

"Dawes new guns did well. Battery detered anything further. They pop up, the carriage rotates, a couple rounds go out and if they have any good sense they back up, and quick. Have a good twenty miles of visilibility, and theyve no hint of trying to steal a march at night."

Well, best hope that stayed that way. "You think they might try it."

"No, not if Duan has fifty thousand men."

They finished up the phone call, and sat there as the morning sunlight streamed in through the windows as the staff officers filed in. That was the defining factor, it wasn't just the Gendarmes, but the average age of the combined staffs was something like twenty eight. Shang was one of the oldest men in the room, though he was a full colonel in the service, and the youngest men were Lieutenants like Guan who hadn't even started to grow whiskers. "Gentlemen the particular impositions of operations within town centers creates for us a problem." He gestured to the map of the city. "We have been engaged in Zhengzhou officially for six days that has tied down a signficiant body of the divisional manpower. To the north of us, the engagement and establishment of static defenses south Baoding by the second against their opposition has kept the front largely in fixed, and limitted exchanges. Exchanges which we are in a much better position to sustain."

That opened the floor to discussion, but answer was already somewhat dangled out to the officers present. "Can the divisional corp of engineers be brought in?" The ideas was that even though obvious rifle infantry could dig breast works with their field entrenching tools it would be faster if a couple of tractors were brought in from the divisions assets ... even if that would consume fuel. The division attached unit was about a thousand men, and the only with heavy field moving equipment compared to the regimental and battalion pioneers in company, and platoon strength units.

The idea of course was to allow the staff officers to brain storm deployment formations to answer the question of how best to defend Zhengzhou in the event of any further movements. Obviously they needed a deployment that would neither force them into a sustained high tempo of operations, and would maintain unit mobility if it became necessary.

The answer was geographically determined. A southern defense line needed to be established. That presented really only a single political issue. The rail line that went directly south wasn't theirs. The line that ran down to Hankow ran to Kaifeng which raised also the questions about the status of the arsenal there... but that was a military question.

"We could divide our forces. Cross deploy units. Artillery units could remain, and Gendarmes units could remain in reserve against any push again defensive works." The Zhengzhou 'group captain', and Cullen's battalion Intelligence officer, remarked in suggestion to tying down only a portion of forces to move the others north.

Everyone on the staff understood the goal was to hold the city. There needed to be a strong enough garrison to do that Mobility required meant holding the railway.

--
"Well that still leaves the weapons that are meant for the Australians here."

"Tiestin is blocked Percy. If I leave the 1sts artillery here I'm not comfortable pushing up to Weihaiwei," Hell he wans't comfortable really pushing into the province to begin with... not without a better idea of what the devil was going on. "Besides the legation is telling everyone to remain put. The minister is afraid if we move the guns it'll cause a panic."

Exactly who it would panic was unclear... he might have been under the impression it would look like England was going to turn the weapons over to one side or the other... or that Duan or Zhang might just assume that or that the other side was going to try and steal them... but whatever the case Tietsin's cable, which Percy was looking aghast at, made it clear they didn't want the weapons moved.

That might have put Percy in a problematic spot... but well that was Percy's problem.

"The weapons will be safe here." Or at least as safe as could be promised with the current fracas across the north china plain. "I doubt Zhu even knew about them being in the warehouse, he might have known we had a warehouse here, and probably could have guessed we had guns, but I don't think they were here for the warehouses."

"Then what was all this about?"

"The city." Allen replied before Cole could continue. "Zhu wanted to secure the route to Hankow so that they could mark on to Wuhan and suppress any anti monarchial sentiment. We think one of the local officers jumped the gun and started shooting at Cole's boys, and when he took return fire he went to call for reinforcements ... probably from the troops that were supposed to get on a train and go further south."

"So this whole thing was one drunken pub brawl after another. That we've been fighting for a week for what, a mistake."

"Compounded errors. They shot at us, we shot back. That was it." It was grim but that was how it was, and not much more needed to be said. "Whatever their intentions were on the first it doesn't change that once the bullets started to fly it was too late." Not that those details would ever be framed like that. Officially the story would be the Zhu's commander locally was written off as just a committed royalist who hadn't wanted to back down... that he had also been killed in action by 2^nd Battalion's artillery and wasn't around to dispute his position in the official histories was ... well history was written by the victors.

Zhu's actions were written up to be exuberance, perhaps not actively malicious, but also avoiding any indication that the whole fight had been a comedy of, a cavalcade of mistakes regarding intentions... and of course that official recollection of events was to be the norm for how North China viewed the farcical attempt to restore the Qing dynasty. North, and even central chinese, papers would lament the unfortunate, and misguided actions that Zhang and his supporters took, but the fighting against the restoration was necessity for one reason or another... depending on the specific politics being espoused by the hundreds of different newspapers.
--
Notes: as I said in the previous segment part of what makes the July Action important is how it impacts the future part of the timeline. As to the Assault Phase Rifle, Lewis's first version was tested the previous year, he had made a second lighter version, these were interestingly 3006 guns not 303 which may have been why they were unpopular with the British establishment... but Lewis really given his grievances with Crozier and his clique within ordinance really should have considered appealing to the British first.

The Lee Enfield had been designed with a magazine capable of working rimmed 303 . it might have been better for Lewis to make a 303 gun first show it to the British and get it working before going to 3006. His development of a pistol caliber lewis gun began life as gas piston system... which wasn't ideal.

Now that isn't to say you can't make an SMG as a piston gun, but he eventually would go to a direct blowback gun but neither of these (either the LMG/Assault Phase rifle, or the SMG) were successful in part due to both political issues in the US Ordinance and of course post war (its 1919 by this point) financial draw downs and as semi automatic pistols they weren't going to be able to compete with the 1911 so trying to make one of those was also a mistake.

We reference the Federov in this segment, those will show up. It has a good magazine design, its curved it will reliably feed 6.5SR which is good... the downside is that the magazines were apparently not always interchangeable (I've read conflicting sources.... but they were also small batch of guns built intermittently so different batches probably had slight manufacturing ... basically in tolerance but that is a guess.) but Zhengzhou as a battle for a military that is only a single division is impactful. This is before Xian writes its constitution, Yan Xishan comes on to the scene in the next (or one following) segments which sets the stage for both Shensi and Shansi as provinces during the period.

Derailed somewhat by IRL events for me, I had planned to post in the misc thread the 'Necromancer's Zombie Apocalypse' project, but its not really ready but tentatively Tuesday I will be trying to update my Isekai litrpg story thread, and move into standard updates for November more broadly with Battletech resuming main timeline updates the following Sunday.

 

7 July 1917
They were regrouping their forces. Casualties were mild. Injuries, yes, but deaths few. Most of the enemy dead had been killed, somewhat expectedly by fires from artillery, or machine guns outside of the often lopsided routs of shock actions. Of course the latter had been a product of specific tactical conditions. There were talks about motorized ambulances of course, but that talk had been going around... just now they'd seen where that made a difference... but they were having to look beyond that regroup meant more than moving injured men to field hospitals, or further back by train, and using trains to bring them on.

The discussion about cars wasn't anything new. Motorized ambulances, and armored cars as well had seen action at the Woosung Forts, and other skirmishes even before 1913 their greater importance now and the results was in some ways to be expected.

Bill, who had drawn the short end of the stick, tossed a look over his shoulder. In this case the roles for leadership had left the large texan in command of the reserve forces. That left him at the network junction of the rails, the telephones, and telegrams looking at the broader strategic picture rather than the closer to the front tactical one. A decade ago that division of labor would have been unthinkable, but then so to would being in this situation.

The world had changed. The difference in organization reflected that. "So what do we do?"

"Its July now... Duan seems to be winning the support of the other Beiyang leadership... and from the sound of it has unified foreign recognition." Phillips, and Powell shared a look between each other. "What are you two girls fretting about?"

"You ain't wrong. He has Japan, John Jordan, and support from Washington..." There was a pause and once again the two men looked at each other, "but I think its just them." Powell finished a little quieter.

"What do you mean just them?"

"Duan, is getting loans from Japan... but I don't know if he bothered to talk to France or Russia. I can't say for sure, but both of their legations have been mum." The artillery officer remarked, "But we know he's cabled Washington, and London about reorganization loans for when this gets settled."

Allen shook his head... Duan might have been getting ahead of himself... or maybe he was hoping that he could buy Zhang off to avoid a fight if he had promises of loans to the Peking government... or he needed those loans to shore up Anhwei. "Alright, we will see how it plays, Its july I figure fighting wise once we go into September we can open new courses."

The simplest solution would be to just enlarge the previous garrison arrangement . Battalion garrison moving to Regimental Headquarters, Company headquarters becoming Battalion garrisons. "You gonna tell Nakamichi he was right?"

That they should have considered three divisions sooner... probably once the actual shooting was done. They had effectively nine Infantry Battalions. "Besides manpower," he declared ignoring the question, "Is there anything we need to do, that we could correct for in terms of readiness, anything that has stood out?"

"We were slow getting off the line. Getting the automobiles loaded, some units didn't have enough trucks, I think Waite is having shortages of tractors to haul ammo. Materiel shortage, Ammunition shortage. I mean we've engaged on paper twelve battalions?"

"That's what Percy thinks." Even if they were small battalions that that was plenty to deal with. "I don't think we'll know until there is an agreement. "So ammunition?"

"Artillery, not so much shells, but moving the shells to the guns, from the trains from the arsenals. Mortars same situation The three incher is short 'n reach, but we knew that. We could rifle them, or could make them bigger, either should work. It was an expedient design there were going to be trade offs, everyone has heard the bellyaching before."

"Its manpower but we have a shortage of medical, veterinary too, too few mechanics, too few telephone operators." They could have probably addressed that by pulling them from the reserve force, but that wasn't an ideal situation either. "I mean,"

"We could always have more machine guns." Bill remarked throwing into the conversation. "Vickers or Lewis guns, or more Madsens. The latter two are mobile enough to fire and maneuver with. Face facts boys, it don't look like the Europeans are going to stop whacking each other," The Texan drawled resting a hand on the map table, "war could go on a couple more years for as much as the lines in France have moved. So chances are we are either gonna fight another Bai Lang next year protesting whoever is in charge in Peking, or we're going to be doing this."

There were nods from around the train car, "Well the states are involved now." Powell started to protest.

"You miss the part where the French army is well and truly at risk of telling Paris to shove it up their ass?" Bill shook his head, "The french army has been repeatedly been shit out through a sausage maker... only way they're not going to break is if they get pulled off the line, and can be reconstituted. The AEF will have to fill gaps... So I don't think we'd see any big offensives yet, not"

"Especially since they'd be greenhorns." Phillips agreed, begrudgingly, "Feed them in fresh wouldn't do anything. The germans might not expect it, but the Army would get shredded the same the europeans did."

... except that Blackjack was in charge, and Pershing might well have been selected to try for a quick end to the war... whether or not the army was ready for it. "The situation in Europe will have to be let to play how it will." He said tabling the discussions out of the way, that was a conversation that had little place right here and now. "We expand."

"And we focus on our neighbors." The Texan drawled.

"I was thinking about that," He replied with a nod, "You talk to the Mas? I can see about Yan in Shansi." Bill nodded, "No telling when Cao Kun will be back though. Shensi domestically what can we do?"

"That, whole constitutional thing. It needs to be done." Powell started to protest that it was much too early for that kind of talk. Phillips shook his head, and shook his head, "No, we can't keep doing that Philip, Sam is right it was one thing when the Qing were still around, or Yuan, but we're not just in Zhili anymore, and we need to be the ones to do it."

Bill cleared his throat, "That seems a more long term solution... maybe not announcing a constitution right after there is a constitutional crisis ain't the best idea." Phillips, and Powell blinked, "Seeing as how Zhang started shooting because he'd been told one thing about the constitution," Admittedly national one, "and then they tried to do another." It wasn't quite the same ... but maybe not something to risk just yet. "What do you think we should do once the shooting slacks off, Al?"

Allen leaned forward resting a finger on the rim of the cut crystal glencairn, "We talk about farming." A couple of looks passed around the table, "We talk about farming publicly. We talk about water infrastructure." China was a rural agrarian country, and the cotton trade in the north was starting to really get underway as Japanese money rolled in to expand for textiles that were being shipped to English orders, or being sold to fill english orders for France or Russia. "Tube well irrigation," Which was nothing new to be sure, "dykes, dams, we launch a whole spiel about water management, and science. We go big, and hard, we press on it and in doing so we convey that we're not concerned about having had to roll the division along to handle this."

"Anyone who knows will know we've been talking about an electric dam," Bill remarked, "Yeah we'll look pretty even handed that way," and especially given that it would look good, responsible with the way people wanted respectable things like infrastructure put up. The Chinese put a lot of stock in farming, and in people making sure the river didn't flood and get a bunch of people killed.

Just focusing forward, "That should settle anyone overly worried." and if they started losing steel contracts next year to expanding quotas on American firms ... if this War Board thing undercut prices like the French wanted it too... then they could funnel their own production lateral anyway while they readjusted.

He picked up the glass, "And we see if Percy will put the Trans Turkestan, into Kirghiz, line into money that's worth while." He drained the scotch, and rested his hand over the glass. "I think the states are underwriting the loan, I can't see any other reason they'd go for it, not with the way he keeps bringing back to it."

"Something needs to be backed up from the Russians, and from Washington." Even though Phillips was saying that he looked close to salivating at them committing to such a project in the western frontier despite his support that they start looking at a big project in middle America... and no doubt given the expression... the gears in his head were calculating how they might be able to convince the state department to support them in Nicaragua or Guatemala. "I think we could do it, far faster than the old man managing things on the siberian."

Allen merely nodded. He'd let Phillips focus on that rather than the bloody mess of Europe... and he needed to consider how exactly he was going to approach Shansi's Dujun since he'd been quiet through the last week

--
Notes: And of course that railway, minor spoiler, won't be linked in by the time the Romanovs need rescuing since that will go along the trans siberian but it does set up for one of major foreign policy changes in the inter war years where a rump nominal white russian state exists in the south supported by the British in part because of how the early twenties play out abroad as one of the consequences of greater Japanese-British involvement with Chinese assistance in the form of manpower contributions from Zhang Tso-lin and also Xian making industrial work to Tashkent is the splitting off from Russia into a Japanese Far east, and the rump state in central asia.

I 'mnot putting that in spoilers because this has been talked about before. Certainly while that will have effects on politics it doen't really change matters within continental Europe and only becomes particularly important in and after 45 on the global stage.

This segment was going to introduce Yan Xishan, but I ended up flip flopping on that decision again, but definitely next time, which forms the basis of proto-xian's contiguous geographic clique [The Mas (the western commanderies), Yan in Shansi (Taiyuan), and then Shaanxi province (xian) itself]. Mostly this segment and the next are long term organizational ramifications that directly emerge from the attempted restoration, and their butterfly effects

 

July 1917
Diplomacy
To be governor of Taiyuan wasn't .... precisely the most august of positions in the Qing. There was something to be said for hometown loyalty of course, and that Yan Xishan sank so much of his time trying to improve his home state, but Shansi had been a part of China... since time immemorial. Long before Shanghai, or Hong Kong had even been dreamed up, long before even rice probably it had been here the ancient northern kings had fought the Xiongnu horse lords. This wouldn't be the first time he'd come... and despite its closeness to the northern capital for centuries Taiyuan remained a sleepy provincial town.

Yan Xishan had been trying to fix that since he'd come to power in 1912. The problem like so many others had been money... and perhaps shown by the local brigade having their Maxims mounted on the carriages that more resembled those of civil war artillery pieces. John Allen suspected though that if you opened the breech the guns would at least be clean of fouling. Yan was serious, and studious about military affairs, and he had taken every lesson on modern soldiering seriously... which had included Imperial Japanese Army doctrine on the bayonet.

As the wind blew, John Allen recalled the 1893 Chicago world faire, and the sights and sounds off Washington park, the 'midway' as Herbert Spencer had called it talking about the human development. There had been a Chinese opera at the world faire.

... a year later he'd borrowed his grandfather's paper as people talked about the Japanese Navy's daring do charging forward against the larger ships of the Qing fleet. Despite the proclaimed odds, despite the talk, despite all, Japan had hit fast and hard and taken a victory that most had been skeptical they could manage. Ten years after that war Yan Xishan had been at the IJA academy, and John Allen had been in Joseon.

Allen had had received his fresh oak leaves that year to go along with observing the new war. The Russo Japanese one. That was where the problem lay, because as was somewhat normal, as Japanese sources of Yan's schooling attested, Yan had chosen to join the Tung men wei a loose, nominally secret, brotherhood with anti-manchu tendencies. Exactly how sympathetic Yan was to Sun was still up in the air... but the truth was Allen doubted they were strong ties... there just wasn't evidence for that.

The truth was that the southern doctor had failed too many times. Whether it was superstition, cynicism or some other factor, or combination of factors Sun Yat-sen simply did not have any broad popular support in the north. Yan could have made a move to support Sun several times, and hadn't so whatever had been in those years had surely atrophied in the following decade. North China by and large had simply been confronted by a movement that was all talk, and no success.

Allen had never questioned Yuan's commitment to a modern China. He wanted a modern military because that was what made the European great powers great, it was what clearly gave the Japanese the power to stand as one of the old boys in the club of world empires. If the Japanese could learn why couldn't beiyang officers learn what the IJA had learned. It was the motive that Yan had probably gone overseas to pursue.

... But Yuan Shikai was dead now and the fractures in the Beiyang were now self evidentially so ... so much more pronounced than they had seemed even just six months ago. Allen didn't know where things had fallen through, where they had started to go wrong but it had to have started sooner than all of this... this was just where things had finally catastrophically burst. The damage a flood did, was not just the rushing water, it was the damage it left behind, and what it cost to repair things as well.

That was going to cost money. Money that whoever ended up in charge of Peking wasn't going to have, and wasn't going to have the options to finance on. The south was well in arrears in terms of taxes owed, and the truth was foreign sources of loans were going to be limited given how much was tapped extended to the Europeans and their war. He suspected that Qirui didn't care, either willfully disregarding it or so damn concerned about being in charge hinged on keeping a hold on places he couldn't really afford he was going to pour good money into the fire.

After Yuan's failure to cement himself as emperor, and now this, trying to do that ... well if Duan tried it then his eyes were bigger than his stomach, and the result would be that it wouldn't matter who nominally held Peking. Whoever could hold the city wouldn't have the resources to reach much further beyond it and whatever provinces that they were in charge of... and that had been true for Yuan Shikai... but northern influence would retreat even further from the center provinces, and any chance of reestablishing Peking's influence over Mongolia would fade as well.

They needed to readjust priorities and that was why he was here. Yan was almost the model of what a Japanese Infantry Commander was thought to look like, the picturesque ideal. Stern, reserved in demeanor and with a suitably grand mustache he wouldn't have looked out of place in 1905 around a table in some field tent in Manchuria to the north.

Yan's personal chef had cooked up, and had ready, the same sort of buckwheat noodles with chili sauce and bean sprouts that took long enough to make that Yan had probably been stirring on the meeting. They'd only put the phone call in two days earlier, not a lot of time to decide on a menu or to make sure the cook could make the neighboring province's food. That was a good sign.

That Yan was willing to play into Deng's stereotype of how Shansi was a poor backwater province that probably couldn't be much use suggested that Shansi's military governor was prepared to navigate around any potential large requests. The province's main resources were coal and iron, which were the vital building blocks to modernizing in industrial terms. So Yan wasn't ignorant of his potential export market.

But he was also Chinese.so while he recognized the population he had to work with... John Allen wasn't entirely sure he understood the scope of what he had. "You have a population ten million people."

"And?" was the reply as if were stating that the sky was blue. "What does this mean?'

"New York state is about the same," Admittedly Shansi didn't have a population center quite like the big apple, its major population centers were divided across large river basins Taiyuan was one of four such sites. It was four times the population of his native Georgia, and Shansi was safe enough that its population was growing. There were less than a hundred million people living in the states and Szechwan was two thirds that or equivalent to the flagging dual monarchy of Austro Hungary.

A population that could work in factories, but no one had been willing to invest in a small interior province so Yan had been cobbling together nickels and dimes from the provincial budget to build his own. Since the state budget wasn't running much a surpluses to begin with, and in some cases was collecting taxes in the form of goods or even feudal labor Yan's process was slow and inefficient... but it was what the man had to work with.

If all of Yuan Shikai's officers had had the commendable piety and hard work of a confucian like Yan Xishan North China would have been a safer place. Not that Cao Kun wasn't jolly good, but he represented more Daoism in terms of native religious thought. Duan Qirui was a dedicated buddhist.

They weren't proposing Yan stop being governor of the province. They didn't have that kind of authority... and the truth was Peking couldn't really do more than acknowledge someone was in charge. Zhu Zhibao and Zhang Xun might be out of their soon, but Duan was ruling on consent from the other Beiyang.

"Don't you already have a hundred men?"

"Some of the older men are retiring. Some of the others are going to Middle America to start something similar to what we have there, the cadre will be optioning new membership. It'll still be a hundred men in 1920. Everyone will have one vote on projects, programs and directives."

Railways, uniforms, weapons, training, factories and tooling the manufacturing... the little machine shop used to repair and manufacture the old eighty eights could be among the first things expanded and perhaps most importantly was that with fall approaching they could provide a greater common defense against bandits both as September came, and also in the following years.

This was going to be long term. They were going to need to finish connecting Taiyuan's rail system to the towns in the north of the province, and roads supplementing them wouldn't hurt either... and the question turned to how they'd have specialists, another question of people, to do all this... and that was easier. Yan might not like it but there were experts who had migrated to dodge the draft in the states to fight in the European war, but that war wasn't going to last forever either, and when it did there were would be people who had skill sets who needed jobs who could teach.

At the end of dinner Yan reflected that he still needed time to meditate on the proposal. It was clear he didn't want to seem to eager to agree, to come to terms... and Allen wondered if old Man Ma had agreed immediately to Bill's extension of a similar offer or if he also was going to wait.
--
Notes: On the kettering CEP is about ten miles when you can get it up, which isn't a given in 1918, and really the main early interest is a combination Billy Mitchell's endorsement in 1923 (he believed that the USAAF really should have poured more money into it, especially after the British demonstrated you could control the 'aerial torpedo' with radio, which I will admit is very cool for the 1920s. Now Mitchell did have a lot of foresight in these sorts of programs but this could still take quite a while to turn into a functional ballistic or cruise missile system but its potentially one of the earliest that will yield that.

But mostly its Mitchell's enthusiasm during period writings that I think would push that kind of thing, and also if you look at GM's handling of the project this is an airframe that costs basically what a mass production car costs because functionally it is. The engines were sub contracted out to use Ford engines which makes it interesting. But it is not, and I'm not pretending it is, to be a magical solution but I think that it has long term potential to mature as a design especially post war when better engines, and bigger explosives come into play [ALso Mitchell may have let his excitement run away from, and Towers (USN) was not nearly as enthusiastic even in spite of the Navy's work in radio control systems, and I believe his solution was in fact dive bombers.]

 

10 July 1917
Instead of facing each other in a pitched battle there had been a handful of brief skirmishes that had entailed Beiyang, both sides, firing a handful of volleys from fixed ranks and then breaking off contact. The result was that over the last few days the Royalists had slowly ceded ground falling back to Peking as Qirui demonstrated the much larger allegedly pro republic Beiyang force that he had gathered in coalition. Casualties were sparse. There were more men falling out on the march from heat exhaustion or poor food on the way to Peking than there were wounds from battle.

In western Zhili province the situation had turned into much the same. The royalists had decided that attempting to push an offensive was undesirable. Zhu Xibao had presumably advised not to waste resources attacking fixed strongpoints and since they weren't attacking up the rail line there was little for the governor to do with his troops other than to sit in the fort to the north protecting their position.

If they had wanted to their fifteen centimeter guns could have pounded that position to ash and ruin with high explosive and incendiary but they'd held that option in reserve. Zhu wasn't attacking their position any more so the old fort could stay there and look pretty. If it gave them a false sense of security then so be it.

Allen was confident that with a static front there goals were achieved. They needed to hold the front, until Duan either secured Peking by negotiation or by force, and thus restored the status quo. That was what the British and American Legations and respective foreign services views was the best resolution to the crisis. Once things were back to normal they could ship the Australians their specialized small arms per the contract and collect the rest of the money. Business could resume normal affairs.

That didn't mean they were idle. He'd had the small collection of chaplains in early, one of the first meetings of the day. There had been a lot of talk of early rising, and moral rectitude and so forth. It was all about correct living. Men needed to be physically fit, literate, prudent, benevolent those good things that made men civilized. It had been a long meeting for one scheduled as only an hour.

It was a necessary procedure since Class B recruits had had just received their first taste of modern war looked like... and that they were going to be going further still.

He put the invoice out of the way. Requests for replacement running gears from the line up in the maritime provinces... something about having been run with an oil leak, or insufficient oil for the entire line. The invoice had come with a very insistent letter... and another one that had carried on at length in performative measure that their American supplier could fulfill because of the war in Europe having taking up the backlog. He'd seen these kinds of letters before where they'd get publicized as an excuse to halt or slow work on something.

No one ran entire line's boxes out without oil without realizing they were doing it. Allen was skeptical the north eastern line was even that damaged. That sort of self sabotage was absurd... more likely they'd pulled the oil from the oldest most warn down trains maybe even vandalized some others exteriorly and blamed someone for the misfortune and then exaggerated the damage.

That was wholly speculation on his part, but it meant that the Manchurian trains that could run south to the capital weren't. As long as that stayed this way, then maybe tomorrow, or the next day? Then this should all be over, if talks were going as well behind the scenes as they were rumored to be going.

If not... well what were a few more days? Nothing, so far as he could tell, there was talk in the south, but no action Southern China had no mobilization to speak of. Yunnan, and Szechwan were both looking more across their respective border than the capital. Canton was... well Canton. The Navy clique was making noise but their funds might last two months and then what? He was relatively certain the Fukien boys would have to put into port and ask for money for fuel

... unless they started selling off their assets or threatened to play pirate... he supposed, which was an unpleasant thought to be sure. Percy though seemed certain that all this would blow over very soon, even if he was pacing up a storm in the hotel they'd put him up in for the moment. Still that was mostly over a document published four months earlier and almost four thousand miles away as the crow flew.

... but he supposed that was because the 'argonauts of peace' might put the worm back in the Virginian's apple. There was also the young officers, the Kadets, who'd left the coalition governing in Russia as well that had come up, but it seemed all so very far away, and irrelevant with a fight on the doorstep to deal with.

Nakamichi joined him at the landing of the office, and it was a short walk to one of the large pressing machines knocking out fittings for the bodies of locomotives. "It shouldn't be an issue, if they need spares," He remarked looking at the massive hydraulic driven press coming down on a piece of partially shaped steel. It clanged, and the team working adjusted the piece into the next position for the carriage as started to look a little more like its final shape, "There is some work that needs to be done on the Trans Siberian."

"Is that right?"

"They've got an old hand coming over, but its an old line, I don't know if they've got the rolling stock, and engines for what they're talking about."

"Relieving the Russians offensive."

He wondered what Yamagata had thought about the failure, did he see the Russo-Japanese failures in it. Was that why the offensive had failed? Was it something else? Were there faults elsewhere? There were too many questions for what little they knew.

Nakamchi took the folded invoice without looking at it and put it inside his jacket. The smaller man looked at the forms taking shape inside the engine works, "will these make the gun carriers as well?"

"The machinery," the apparatus which raised and then released the hammer with its many ton of force, " is the same, the molds are different but they can be changed in the span of an afternoon to set up for making another sort of piece.

The tractors really were just tractors. Tractors really were just locomotives with bigger wheels in terms of practical operation. They needed those to operate without rails and get through muddy fields.

"So you could make, any sort of locomotive?"

"Not any, but most." He hedged, "Making the jig is hard part, that hammer will beat steel and extrude it and we can weld and rivet the body, the boiler and such if we have the measurements."

"You have shown this to Iseburo-sama?"

"Oh of course, these are old hat for locomotive manufacture in the states," Not as big as this but, there was one in Dearborn that built tractors for International, "They're part of the reason Australia and India have American locomotives rolling on Scottish railroads."

"Ah, of course. I just happened to consider it."

"These are built for our large rail gauge," Principally because their rails were cut through the hills with more dymanite, and reinforced grading that would support the wider weight, and the greater pressure from a train going faster. Faster train meant that in the straight shot east to west had in turn meant a several hour trip could be made.

It did consume more coal, but there were always trade offs. He elected not to mention the presses could knock out the frames for smaller things en masse if you had a jig... but of course that meant being sure the jig was either very exact, or you were prepared to do a lot of exact filing and lathe work... somethings worked better for one, and other.

"We can replace the gear boxes and any missing oil."

"You said so," Nakamichi paused, "Stevens, he's the old hand coming? I had heard that he was in Manchuria now."

If he was that was news to Allen. The truth was he'd lost track of the venerable old engineer in the mess of things that had come about. "Yes. I think he underestimates the condition of what he's taking on..."

Nakamichi's face belied his agreement before he could smooth it, "Yes, you're correct I think, something to speak with Akashi-sama I believe, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. This may be too daunting a task for the unprepared." Allen would later, realized he'd never been quite certain the extent of what Nakamichi had believed was going on in the summer of 1917 only that the recent offensive had certainly panicked the british, and the growing bolshevik position made the powerful genryo in Japan at least equally as nervous.

Terauchi's priority was still reapproachment with China after the previous cabinet's downfall, and would gradually shift to a policy of Bolshevik containment that would base itself in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance with a broad intent of including the United States that would unfortunately see only limited success.. but perhaps more than it might otherwise have.

In the west though the modd quickly turned to wanting a post war order and especially a 'return to normalcy'', an ability to have a collective security apparatus to maintain the peace where the bill was being footed elsewhere... and that couldn't, and didn't work... for China the narrative around the Manchu restoration of July 1917 was to blame the Germans and use it as an excuse to justify the Beiyang consensus to pressure parliament to declare war.
--
Notes: In the original configuration of this it was going to be slightly different, and part of that is this or began as a vaguely 'gaslight fantasy' moderately magical scenario, but most of that has been segregated off into its own portions, along with the broader GURPS and Destroyermen stories while this thread focuses mostly on the slow progress of state building.

Which brings us to the issue of Green Ukraine, really Ukraine to but Poland, and Finland the Baltics when they declared independence had the advantage of it being basically de facto. Green Ukraine was not this emerged as a product of how the Russian Empire had dealt with 'maligners' 'complainers' 'sedition of all sorts' during the period... and the same with Ukraine's popular national movements also had to compete with the anarchists so the British foreign (since they're principally the ones I have the most access to for this period) were very leery to provide support or recognition to the Blacks, also the British were persistently worried about German collaboration. Britain and France basically came to an accord in 1916 (Siems Picot) and when it became apparent to them that Russians had problems they came to the decision to start dividing up the Russian sphere of influence.

However once everything was said and done, after Versailles the British ran the numbers decided that without a strong US guarantee (really looking for a physical prescience, and since they had basically been the money man) to the collective security apparatus it was better to avoid a significant conflict on the continent. Chamberlain gets a lot of flak but appeasement as a strategy to prevent war was very much British policy in part because of the depression of 1920 and Irish Home rule turning into the Irish free state, there are other factors but the British conservative governments that follow simply were not going to move on continental issues.

France obviously was a little more invested, but it didn't have the resources, much as with Napoleon the first France was facing a major demographic crash and the economic problems of the war, and the war had been financed and in 1920 simply didn't have the resources and they didn't have the political unity, even the cornerstone of espoused French policy was the notion of an alliance to check Germany and that this meant an alliance with Poland.

I do hew closer mostly to the notion that Ukraine failed because of lack of foreign support. Even isolated from the Ukranian heartland by being in the far east the FSO was very leery that they were still politically suspect and of course the Anglo-Japanese alliance comes to mind. [And that goes into the weaknesses of Marshal Potato head's cabinet, the Terauchi government was not particularly stable] The reason that we're focusing on Green Ukraine, the Ukranian community in the far east at the time is because of course its closer and with the differences of how the civil is going to progress as a timeline in international relations. But with Green Ukraine, I'm referring to the settled communities of what is today the Russian Far East

 

10 July 1917​

The room was already a madhouse. It was hard to hear with seventy plus men crowded into the chamber with boxes everywhere. There were no secretaries, it was a cadre only and they were pressed into the space with tables which had been laid out with maps in addition rolling carts, and large book keeping blackboards with times and dates on and data transcribed from printouts.

"The legation is in a bloody twist." Someone grumbled. Reinsch was all knotted up about the situation, the bankers were complaining, and the state department regulars were a third wheel. And that was just the American side of things. There were at least three sides in the British Legation even in spite of Ed Gray finally getting sacked by Lloyd George. Then of course there was the last of the friendly nations Japan's foreign service position within the Legation had even more internal cliques the army the navy, divisions within each, provincial loyalties of satsuma and choshu, the career civil service, the farm lobby, the heavy industrialists... it went on.

The Russian and French situation... who could say. The danes were taking advantage of Beglium being occupied. It went on. It was nothing new, they knew that. The comment did nothing to draw aay from questions of lead time for manufacturing things. Once upon a time the stock drying process for rifles had been significantly longer. They had gotten around that by first kiln drying, and then a combination of kiln drying, and going to multipiece stocks. Changes in machine, cutting, grinding and the milling operations had changed the rifle receiver.

There was a significant difference between a rifled gun, and a rifle. The receiver and the barrel were some of the longest lead time items to contend with with, with the exception of complex engines that measured horse power in four digits, and holding at seventy miles on the open line... but even that compared to the way things had used to be took less, much less than it had been in Stevens hayday. The problem lay in that two months to put together a whole piece of rolling stock wasn't the problem for today... oh they needed more locomotives, but they had a build schedule that was currently marked out almost two years in advance. They knew what trains they would be building...

"And that's precisely why we need to be getting back to how things were."

"A return to scientific organization of labor, and production." Another member remarked barely audible from fifteen feet away.

That twisted the conversation back up into the situation with the states entering the war in Europe, the Swiss office, and the Middle America discussion that another fifteen minutes to get parsed down and everyone back in their seats. "Gentlemen there will be a contraction of the apparatus of global trade when the war resolves itself. Governments will hastily respond tit for tat as they usually do to perceived unfairness and inflame such behaviors with further tariffs. The French have been pressuring both England, and the States for artificial government price controls on export goods. This is intended to save the French government money. Nothing more nothing less, they're overleveraged." ... and the truth was China was not in good financial situation as countries went...

The Communications Bank, of the Communications clique, which took its name from its 'ministerial portfolio', was tied up with the Japanese Legation with the original idea having been that banking consortium was 'finally' get China's finances sorted out... but of course that had failed. Every intervention and round of reorganizations always seemed to fail...

"Russia then?"

"The French and English divided the Ottomans up last year, they've staked claims out now of Russian territory, and"

Stevens. The whole business with the Trans Siberian while at the same time the English were looking for another route if that wouldn't work if there was a trans Caspian connection anything that could funnel material from pacific ports and shore up the Russian front. England's Foreign Office was looking for figureheads, so they wouldn't have to rely on French puppets, and the old world empires were fine parceling out spoils to get America to play ball with concessions in the Russian far east.

'And we need it in writing.' Was the declared consensus. It seemed clear that France and England had reached their own decisions on how things were going to be and that the States needed to be talked around to agreeing to that...

Whatever regulations were to be born out by Wilson's decision to bring the United States into the European War they had to be out in front of it. As the guns had opened in the summer of 1914 the Cadre had changed, with the entry of the United States it seemed that there would be the much expected change in their ranks as well.

That was the notion to which they adjourned their meeting on giving him time to step outside of the confines of the cadre's 'war room'. "You said it was important?"

"A cable from Terauchi's government went out from Tokyou. Hayashi is being recalled. Mister Nishihara is coming as is, Soho," They had known that Tokutomi was planning a visit in August, but the idea that Terauchi was pulling Hayashi out... that was news. Nishihara, and Tokutomi Soho visiting was one thing, but to pull the minister of the legation out was... Terauchi wouldn't have done that sort of thing without explicit support of the senior statesmen. There was a pause, "Do you think Tokutomi is a second prong?"

Allen paused, "Because he's the advisor on Korea," It took a minute to remember that detail he'd, Soho, been on that post for so long, "No, but I do want you to call Tokyo double check Soho's itinerary." The newsman had only been allowed limitted access, like most of the Japanese press, during the Russo-Japanese war and there was little doubt that if Soho could get in sooner he'd be in Tietsin to see if he could report on the fighting here. His original itinerary had been putting him getting into Tietsin in a few weeks from now, if he was coming early... well they'd have see.

Just because the physical lines to Peking were blocked by troops shooting at each, didn't mean the front interrupted the passage of wires. Telephone and telegraph carried word , and radio would soon make physical lines run alongside the railways that moved goods inland merely a more reliable way. Telegraph, and telephone though had been able to send word hundreds, thousands of miles away and have it delivered in minutes or seconds even to the intended recipient. A change that many had been unprepared for as the technology matured.

He glanced to the trio of teletype copies, "Alright, thank you." He responded,

"What do I need to do?"

Allen threw a look over his shoulder, back down the long hall, and then pulled his sleeve back on his watch, "Its three o'clock now. Sunset is about eight, summon the 1^st officers and staff put them in a room, I want to know what is broken, and what we need to fix to put them on the line." Soho visiting early had the potentially to be a double edged sword... better that if he came in their bit was done, "as for these, call find out Soho's itinerary and get back, I'll bring this to the cadre, we'll work on it."
--

There was more space to work despite similar office accoutrements filling the space. He had laid out that there were two objectives to the Regimental staff, and attendant battalion officers. The first was the immediate need, and objectives, and the second was to be looking at where their problems in this deployment had been and what they would need to do to correct that.

The electric lights of the long windowed façade created a glare against the night lurking outside the third story. It was pushing eleven, though the bell hadn't yet tolled. The cadre had divided into separate committees with divisions between the regiments, and the small handful of independent sections, but also the lateral wings of corporate interest.

Waite's motion to start pushing for ground clearing was still stalled up, but that was because of the disagreement about the war and the distraction. How long until they could ink the final arrangement with ford, and start taking receipt... the answer was however long the Germans could hold out, because consensus sat that if the US previous wars were any indication as soon as hostilities ended the congress would start wanting to downsize immediately and... the question was could they wait.

The incoming Battalion S3, who'd been in the job just shy of a month now, for third was a stock fellow, basically no neck and forearms of size that wouldn't sit comfortable against his size. In other words the reflected build of a career enlisted. 3^rd Battalion's operations officer was having to deal with the shortage of of vehicles, and more correctly spare parts. The infantry mustang knew what he was doing, but that didn't change the fact that they were short on parts, and that it had taken them longer to get moving as a result.

The red leg's staff officer was shorter, and skinnier and just younger all around in the spot because Griswold trusted him to run the hammers that actually made the barrels. "Battalion garrison has," a pressing, "need for a dedicated allotment for machine shops."

It was one thing when they'd been encamping in railroad depots. The machine shops there were plenty much sufficient to needs in 1914. Unfortunately putting addition plate armor, and heavier engines put additional on the stress on the forward leaf springs, which meant off road capacity diminished... which... meant you bogged down in the mud. The bigger engine had been required for moving the additional weight of the armor and the slightly higher top speed on roads.

"The British have done some interesting things this past year with their tractors." That had resulted in the development of a dedicated armored tow for recovery of distressed vehicles... which sort of sounded like they needed. "Of course it bears," to be realistic, "reiterating the facts of current limitations." It was all well and good to recognize that one vehicle couldn't do everything. "Our immediate priority is provision of the tractors for the Five Nines. Their mobility is paramount."

The smaller red leg staff officer nodded looking painfully smug at confirmation, but at the same time relieved that he didn't need to argue the point. The rifle officers were less enthused. The problem was that was where the break down was. He doubted the Artillery branch was truly unified behind the heavy guns, some probably would have preferred a tractor with better characteristics to maneuver the light howitzers ... but they were certainly a minority in face of that a tractor that could tow a hundred fifty millimeter howitzer could pull the smaller gun on the same chassis.

"In shortage terms the tractors are in better shape."

"Explain."

He didn't really need it explained. He had an idea where this was going.

"All of the guns use the same chassis, even if a frame becomes damaged, or a wheel needs to be replaced they can be easily be switched out." Obviously, that had been the whole point of the system, "While there is wear to tractors they're not going as far from staging grounds, nor as quickly as cars. Simply put that any tractor from the heavy brigade can be used to move ammunition or batteries from any lighter field piece."

That and there, also of consideration, was they had no entrenched cavalry to fight. There were horse soldiers around, but Cole was too pressed on with the gendarmes and more focused as mounted rifles for anyone under him to contemplate four legs versus wheels. That went back what they had in front of them. "There are already plans in discussion to expand production," And whatever provincial rivalries existed Shansi and Shensi could benefit symbiotically from the other, "There is at this moment a shortage of factories," both domestically, and there was no external slack to make up for demand, "So the priority are the larger guns. Any talk of self motorized gun carriages will have to be for later. Equally the same full mechanization, or expansion of scout cars, armored cars and carriers will need to be put aside."

The thinking six months ago had been that they had been in possession of a reserve of material and with no pressing need that they could afford to experiment. While they hadn't reached the point where there was a consensus to start disbanding the experimental technical sections they had been proven wrong about the volume of spare parts, and machines needed to be kept in reserve for rainy days.
They had ended up putting all three regiments in the field, which hitherto had been an unthinkable situation compared to the idea of simply posting units of reservists as preeminently guard or picket duty. It was July of 1917, a year ago the states hadn't even been in the war, and Okuma had still been prime minister, and the little welsh man hadn't become the English PM until December.

A year.

It felt as if they had fallen behind.

Just a month ago they'd been expecting Duan to make a move on Hunan while the latter was looking at the chaos over the border with Szechwan.

The immediate concern was fixing the cars that were broken, and how quickly they could do that. If it took a few weeks that was one thing, but days would be better, hours better... but doing that would probably meaning pulling from elsewhere.
--
Notes: this is an amalgamation of three separate sections, obviously as history will tell you mechanization largely favored going to a truck based solution for towed goes, there were instances of continued tractors but it really does drop off as automobiles increasingly mature as a technology and tractors become more specialized. Also of course thats because highways become more common and road fuel efficiency drives that adoption since in peace time moving artillery piece A to location B usually involves driving it around rather than going overland. Specialized tracked artillery movers show up in this period but predominantly in this period its horses (or donkeys / mules depending), and then tractors, trucks, and also you need to move ammunition. [And also of course standardization during this period was very much a not a thing, the vehicle list for England and France, 'we had some of these sitting around']

 

11 July 1917

In hindsight, with the benefit of things they hadn't known this would be a complete and pointless waste of shells. It was just shells. Three casualties on Xian's side would be recorded and none of them serious, no one counted the potential risk of long term hearing damage back then. Still early on the morning of the 11^th of July 1917 First Regiment before the sun rose began the process of disembarking from the station at Shijiazhuang's northern terminal a hundred fifty miles south of Peking. The Regiment had advanced north by train after a brief respite, and was arriving reinforced by assets from the Division.

By the time the sun was in the sky they were thirty miles north move over the defensive positions erected more than a week earlier. Then forty pieces and three battalions' batteries of artillery pulled by heavy tractors began the process of deploying. At a quarter to ten as the last ammunition carrier moved the final readied carriage of munitions into place the combined guns of first and second regiments opened.

It was now ten o'clock in the morning, and they were in physical sight of Baoding from the hillside. "I thought you said he didn't have artillery."

Waite snorted at the surly comment, "If you want to call those thing artillery, sure." He shook his head, "In all seriousness we didn't push to within range of those old krupps," They were mountain guns not even seventy millimeter, these were the smaller six centimeter guns and it was a wonder that they even worked they were so old. "We will have them suppressed before they get dialed in." He turned to start ordering the field telephone operator into the trade positions.

"I will admit John Allen this is a little surprising." Percy had found solid footing after getting used to the fifteen centimeter guns had begun maneuvering, "I of course understand the need to work north, to focus on restoring direct access to the capital, I just assumed that your position on not committing to moving on Weihaiwei was a disposition against any exploratory action of the enemy's position."

"Well," He began.

"Well we don't want these fellas on the front lawn." Waite grunted throwing Allen a look.

The truth was that this hadn't been the original plan. They had planned to hold, to give the first time to write and digest their after actions to drill at home. They could play this off as close to the vest, rely on the mobility the railway afforded them to maneuver positions close to the front offload from vehicles borrowed from other units have company level artillery units moved in a concerted force ... and then push forward relying on the range afforded by the large caliber field guns. It was hard to deny though that there was an opportunism, they had a chance to hit.

Nakamichi adjusted his field glasses, "There," He extended a hand tracing several miles, "I see there are horses, Cavalry, are they committing, no, I think they are withdrawing, they could be a blocking force," To discourage infantry from routing, "or scouts."

It was hard to tell from here looking at the farmland. There were occasional flashes of glass from reported the other lines which suggested whoever was over there was trying to figure out what was going on. "I do not reckon they can tell the difference."

Percy could have been talking about any number of things. The two regiments were probably impossible to distinguish without the colors posted, especially with fighting positions dug in. They would have looked like any other mass of gray uniforms at five hundred yards plus. The regimental guns were probably impossible to tell because of the obfuscation of the shared chassis. The muzzle flash, and smoke might have been different the sound but with so much artillery going out, and a relatively mild morning shower it wasn't particularly dusty today. A shell capable of flying ten or twelve miles was going to be hard to watch for, to watch its source effectively when it was behind an infantry company.

"They may be pulling back to the city." Nakamichi observed.

"I think he's right."

Allen adjusted the sixty power of german glass, and agreed with the concurrence. That was what it appeared. The enemy had likely realized that their territorial battalions were were now facing a significantly larger force than the one which had checked their march south the past week.

Hindsight of course would tell them that this had been pointless. Zhu, the civilian governor, had been rather leery of giving battle because of course Zhang Xun hadn't expected it be a necessary thing. The entire royalist restoration had been prefaced on the expectation, the misinterpretation that the beiyang clique was still a still a solid foundation supporting the north's weight. The notion of disagreement had apparently so completely failed to register that Zhang Xun had thought the entire grand alliance of provincial military governors, down to beiyang brigade commanders supported the restoration and that they were sick and tired, as sick and tired as he was of the southern dominated parliament.

'The parliament of fools'.

But Zhang Xun had not checked, or if he had asked he received only the answer he wanted to hear rather than the truth, and now that push had come to shove more were willing to nominally throw their support to Duan Qirui than they were to restoring an infant to the throne.

Nakamichi and Percy were here as observers... but the truth was he was going to let Nakamichi handle Soho. Having him along for this would mean he'd be front and center to drawing Tokutomi in when he got in in August... assuming the interary held, and he wasn't on an earlier boat from Tokyo.

It was a newspaper thing. Soho's record of the testimony given would be heartfelt and passionate account of the continental strife even if Nakamichi gave a deadfish delivery of nothing but cold facts. It was unfair to him, but well it needed to be done. "Red Legs have most of the work today." He remarked to the about four hundred men currently on the field from first and the same likewise from second. Each battery filled the role in the state's fourth rifle, and each battery was about a hundred men, and then there were the fellows directly on the headquarter staff, and the observers from division, as well as those forward attached.

"Yeah." Waite grunted leaning into the optic in front of him. "Shit, if I'd known they were going to run back I'd done this."

"We have superior numbers, they can clearly see that." Percy replied. "Fighting a superior force as they are-"

Nakamichi shook his head, as fifteen centimeter high explosive shell brought in and burst near to on top of one of the Krupp 1873. "No you can see their guns are too far forward of their line, their battalions were expecting to be defended by their guns." The blackpowder charges of the hit gun catastrophically cooked off.

"Well that was clearly unstable." Waite snarled. "and yeah after they thought this was just going to be a duel of gunfire they must have settled in for tea and just to sit around and wait."

They must have had no clue what to make of this push. He suspected that was probably true of their own privates. The senior enlisted had been given the objectives of the day pushing instructions down to the platoon level to distribute as they had taken the train a little farther north, and then settled on. They thing that they did not have, were the motorized cars. He doubted the enemy knew to to look. To recognize their absence, because he doubted that the battalion commanders here had been told what had happened in Zhengzhou while they had been checked here.

These men didn't know that the scout cars, and armored cars, and their machine guns and the trucks with men in them were by and large absent. This was leg infantry being supported by direct and indirect artillery fire in the advance. This was not the Philippines. This was the north china plain. This was not an island... and nor were there mountains.

Not jungle forests but farmland and country road path along the railroad tracks. The enemy did not realize that the regiments here were understrength compared to paper, because they weren't willing to bring potentially unreliable cars that needed checks on their axles and spokes, and leaf springs even if they were probably okay.

Okay wasn't good enough.

The goal wasn't to take Baoding. It was to shove and see how far back Zhu was willing to backpedal, if he fell back into the city and didn't want to run on to Peking... then they'd go back to the original plan.

They'd wait. They'd wait a week or two and see what happened.... but there would be no bombardment of the city, and no siege... but he doubted that whoever in charge north realized that... he probably didn't know what to think. This entire last march had been decided for certain before midnight.

Did he necessarily believe Percy when he said that someone had just happened to bring in a manchu officer claiming to have been paid in Mexican silver dollars. No... and even if that was true that a Royalist officer happened to have silver dollars, it didn't prove some nebulous German conspiracy... but it didn't disprove it either. If for whatever reason Zhang Xun was doing this on behalf of Kaiser Bill... then the pony tail general was a god damned idiot.

Similarly speaking even if these were German made Krupp guns it didn't prove anything. More likely the battery of territorial defense were using guns by Kiangnan or another arsenal's license built copies. If Percy meant for it to get in the papers though a reader might well imagine Kaiser Bill borrowing Santa Claus's sleigh to deliver modern Krupp guns like their own 15cm to queue wearing Wuwei corp.

"Pardon me though, if I might ask another question." Percy started, he was a couple steps away from the observation area, nearer to the bank of field telephones and sheltered from the view by the heavy felled timbers notched on the end, forming a simple protected redoubt, "Where is Mr Dawes I would have expected these being his men."

"With the rest of the 1^st Artillery brigade."

"Ah, yes quite right, what a daft question to ask." Percy clammed up.

It wasn't Percy's fault. He was probably in spite of everything still thinking of early days. In 1913 there had been forty odd pieces of artillery in the company till. This was not 1913 anymore. The guns that Dawes was sitting on were mostly those that didn't have tractors right now to pull them. Guns that were in stationary garrison and protecting the critical cities and strong points like Bashan in the south. "You've been gone a while Percy we do have two brigades of artillery now."

"Even if someone has been off shopping for most of that." Waite grunted, "They've found the range for that other one." he added as another round of shells started to burst into bright red smoke around an enemy battery. Red smoke mingled with white powder smoke.

From the sudden scrambling around of the little smudges in the distance through the glass the Royalists knew what that meant and were rushing to try and get clear as the other two guns in the battery started dialing in corrections. A few men who didn't bother trying to move their gun and just took to their heels probably made it before high explosive started to launch from Waite's crews on the neighboring hill.

There was a shuffle of movement from the bank of receivers, and the scratching of pens on waxed paper. He didn't think anything of it. It was a notice over the wires something was going on north and east in the province. Then other notices, and from other sources. The legations, and Cao Kun, and then others. It was not immediately clear what the development was, just that something had happened.

Those first reports were unclear, and there was an enemy in front of them.
--
Notes: What will likely go up in the notes TOE wise is probably either the current Staff and Force formatting, or possibly since we're approaching that point the distinction between (in organization) Xian's 'Rifle Divisions' versus Xian's 'Infantry Division' [A Rifle Division is a type of Infantry Division, but an Infantry Division is not necessarily always going to be a Rifle Division] as we are approaching the official creation of 2nd and 3rd Divisions.

But yes the irony here is that Xian commits to this push basically too late for it to matter, Zhu is already being told by this point by Zhang 'stand down we're going to have Puyi abdicate' [again] 'everyone can go home' because he's been in talks with Duan Qirui for like the last week.