The artillery battle ended before the sun sets. The British fired the cannons placed on the top of the city, and after the British fires were shut down, the people on the east coast would naturally not be too stupid to tease them again. The two were very convenient and tacitly ceased the fire at the same time.

The battlefield fell into strange silence for a moment.

After nightfall, Sun Sheng's army gathered all the Eight Banners soldiers back and built a simple position with the artillery bunkers scattered around them as the core. Then, the barbed wire was carefully pulled around the position, and important parts were blocked with large trucks. After everything was finished, the lights were extinguished in the entire camp, and sentries led wolfdogs to patrol the barbed wire, and all arrangements were like regular troops.

The night of May 18 was calm in a sense, because the British had never left the city to attack their positions; but in a sense, it was uneasy, because the shadows of people swayed in the wheat fields in the distance for the middle of the night, and there was not a faint noise, and the wolf dogs in the barbed wire also yelled for the middle of the night. However, considering that the Eight Banners soldiers did not have high combat quality, Sun Shengjun decided not to stick to the camp, and to respond to changes in the future.

After dawn, Sun Shengjun looked at the wheat fields in front of the camp and was stunned. He saw that next to the wheat fields that had been harvested by the slaves yesterday, a large area of ​​unharvestable wheat fields were suddenly harvested overnight.

Last night, the British were struggling for the middle of the night to secretly leave the city to harvest wheat! Sun Shengjun couldn't help laughing a little, and at the same time felt a little incredible. How could these British men's morale be so low? They didn't dare to face their own troops head-on. This is not the case, at least more than 300 militia equipped with firearms in the city can fight. Although the possibility of victory in their own troops is not very high, they are not going to just keep huddling in the city as turtles. Especially when the enemy is still harvesting the food they have worked hard to grow for a year.

However, the enemy was depressed and wasn't it what he wanted to see when he was hunched. If they were to leave the city and fight to the death with artillery fire, who would he ask for if the Eight Banners soldiers collapsed in the battle? Others didn't know the combat quality of these people, but Sun Shengjun was too clear. To put it bluntly, those black flags may still have a little combat power, while the combat power of those short red flags is very suspicious. Once they enter a melee state with the enemy, the chance of collapse is very high.

However, it is a matter of "comfortable" that they are extremely brave and powerful when fighting the local natives. It is as if they are standing under the banner of the Eight Banners, each of them possessed by magical skills. They fight against their own people, and they just need to watch them win from a distance.

Today, the scene outside the Good Hope Castle was about how to quickly harvest wheat with the rumbling cannons accompaniment. As a result, the artillery soldiers on both sides accompaniment were a little lazy. Just after noon, the sound of cannons stopped for a whole morning.

The sound of cannons stopped, but the slaves' wheat harvesting action could not stop. It was not until the evening that Sun Shengjun made people sound the horn to return to the camp. The slaves who were working in the wheat fields suddenly received a general amnesty and rushed back to the camp like a tide. After two days of uninterrupted rapid harvesting, most of the 800 acres of wheat fields sown outside the Good Hope Castle have been harvested. Since the wheat has not yet matured, the harvest may not be too much when counting, but Sun Shengjun roughly estimated it. He felt that the wheat harvested in the past two days would have a harvest of about 150 tons.

This amount is quite a small amount of grain reserves in Hezhong Fort. The large amount of grain harvested during the day yesterday had been shipped back overnight by large trucks, but most of it is still piled up in the camp. Xiao Baitu, who was in charge of the army in the rear, sent people to report the news overnight, asking Hezhong Fort to send a large number of large trucks and husbands to bring wheat.

The night of May 19 was just like the eve of the previous day. The British commander did not know what method he used, and once again persuaded the depressed English militia to go out of the city to harvest wheat. They also kept in the dark and tumbling until four or five o'clock in the morning before retreating. As for the actions of the British, the guns were facing the East Coast artillery tacitly fired and allowed the British to harvest wheat back and forth.

After the sun rose on May 20, hundreds of slaves launched a final harvest of harvesting against the last small piece of wheat in the wheat field. Two hours later, as the last bundle of wheat was handed over to the camp, the plan to harvest the British wheat fields was basically completed successfully.

After receiving the order to end the mission, the slaves who had been desperately harvesting wheat for more than two days were immediately sitting in the camp. Sun Shengjun did not go back on his word and ordered people to count the amount of food each person harvested, and ranked the top 100. Then he immediately announced the pardon of the slave identity of these hundred people and their families, and "carried the flag" into the upper six flags, and became free people from then on.

After everything was handled here, Sun Shengjun sent someone to ask Xiao Baitu and others who were supervising the formation in the rear. After getting approval, he began to organize the Eight Banners soldiers and slaves to retreat slowly. Retreatment before the enemy was originally an extremely complicated and meticulous job, especially when you still have a lot of supplies and food to carry, it is even more difficult job. If the organizer's ability is slightly inferior, it may lead to a terrible chaos.

But now that these British people have become so depressed that they are unwilling to go out of the city to fight, things are much easier. In addition to the artillery and some Eight Banners spearmen who did not move and still monitor the British, hundreds of slaves, under the care of some Eight Banners spearmen, began to transport wheat back in truckloads.

The entire transportation operation lasted longer than the wheat harvest at the beginning. The slaves and husbands who were back and forth transported it for four days. It was not until the afternoon of May 24 that with the departure of the last cart, the wheat and supplies in the entire camp were finally emptied.

On May 25, under the cover of the Eight Banners Spearmen and the cavalry troops in the distance, the East Coast artillery pulled up ten cannons one by one and embarked on the way back to the Hezhong Fort. At this point, the entire wheat harvesting operation finally declared the victory over.

In this battle, except for the Eight Banners Spearmen who lost more than a dozen people, the East Coast people almost lost nothing (slave reductions were not counted), but the harvest was very huge. First, they harvested more than 100 tons of wheat grown by the British, and second, they tested the low morale of the British in the Cape Town area. Especially the second, it gave the River Fort a new understanding of the current situation of the British neighbors in the south, and it also made more targeted when formulating countermeasures.

After harvesting the British wheat, the southern hemisphere began to gradually enter winter. At this time, not only did the temperature gradually fall, but the weather became worse, and the area in the southwest corner of South Africa began to become cloudy and rainy.

Thanks to the relatively complete infrastructure in the Hezhongbao area, these winter rains and snowstorms did not cause any disaster to the local area, but on the contrary, they also injected valuable rainwater resources into the land. During the slack season in winter, if the weather is clear, all residents and some slaves of Hezhongbao will be dispatched to clean up the silt of the river ponds and docks, repair farmland water conservancy facilities, and build house and fort facilities. In short, they are very busy.

Of course, the most important task for residents is winter militia training exercises. During this rare concentrated training period, East Coast militias trained military skills such as discipline, queues, sabre chops, gun raids, bombs and other military skills almost every day; in addition, intelligence reconnaissance, field training, setting traps, drawing maps, interrogation skills and other subjects are what non-commissioned officers need to master. It can be said that the annual winter training exercises are an important stage for the East Coast militias to make a leap in improving their military skills and military literacy.

A while ago, the Executive Committee and the Military Affairs Department had just issued a new local militia reserve organization and training outline. In this outline, in addition to specifying the training details of local militia, it also mentioned the establishment of four companies of reserve troops. As the name suggests, the reserve troops are usually all farmers and workers, and they are regularly concentrated in training and carry out ideological and political education. Compared with militias, they train more frequently, more standardized and meticulously. Of course, they usually receive one-third of the military pay for the regular army.

At present, as far as the country is concerned, there are four regular military companies, namely the 1st Company stationed in the capital military camp, the 2nd Company stationed in Zhenhaigang Fortress, the 3rd Company stationed in Meihe Township and the 4th Company stationed in Hezhongbao. This time, with the approval of the Executive Committee, the military headquarters was approved to establish the 101st Company of the Reserve in Dongfang County, the 102nd Company of the Reserve in Zhenhaigang, the 103rd Company of the Reserve in Meihe Township, and the 104th Company of the Reserve in Hezhongbao.

The officers and soldiers of these four reserve companies only exist on the roster on weekdays and are only concentrated during regular training, which is considered an important supplementary force for the regular army. Once the situation changes, they can be quickly mobilized as regular army and put into combat.
Chapter completed!