The fleet sailed on the sea for six or seven days... Although this time the New Division had made sufficient preparations and everyone had prepared seasickness medicine, but for so many days on the ship and encountered a storm that was neither big nor small on the way also made the soldiers who had never taken the boat look like they had peeled off their skin.

But let alone, the soldiers' adaptability is quite strong. Some of the soldiers adapted quickly, and later they even laughed and joking with the US sailors on the ship... This made Zhang Chi a little impressed. You should know that those soldiers don't understand English at all, and they mostly communicate with each other with their hands, and they can even chat happily.

On the seventh day, the fleet finally arrived at the remote Koro Island in the Fiji Islands.

Zhang Chi and others, including Wang Mazi, didn't know why they came here. Later, Zhang Chi heard from Captain Edson that they were going to come here for exercise.

The exercise is of course necessary. After all, it is a joint war between China and the United States, with language barriers, communication, identification, and coordination issues. It is best to conduct an exercise before the war begins, but as the main force of this war... the New First Division actually needs to learn the purpose of coming here from a third party, which can also show how little the US Navy does not take this Chinese army seriously.

Zhang Chi guessed right.

Although the US military believes that the Chinese army has the ability to defeat the Japanese army, objectively speaking, the Chinese army is more experienced than the US army, so it is possible to exert combat effectiveness in the jungle of the islands that is stronger than the US army.

But the U.S. Navy doesn't think so.

The US Navy generally believes that... what is important in island combat is sea and air combat. As long as the US Navy wins sea and air combat, it is no problem to seize the island. Moreover, even if it wants to take down the island, it is still a matter of the US Marine Corps. The Chinese may be familiar with jungle combat and may have experience in fighting with the Japanese, but they are not familiar with amphibious combat.

Therefore, the US Navy simply treated the Chinese army as an emergency force... Because the US Marine Division had no time to assemble, in order to attack the Japanese army as soon as possible to prevent its airport from being built, it had no choice but to pull the Chinese army up and use it. When the US Marine Division came up, it would soon replace the Chinese army.

As for this exercise, the US Navy believes that the focus is on landing on the beach. The role of the Chinese army is just to wait for the United States to land before "transporting" to occupy some important places. Therefore, the exercise does not have anything to do with the Chinese army. At most, it is just to bring it up and show its face.

However, the exercise was not going smoothly because the coast of the exercise site was high and coral reefs were densely packed. The two landing craft hit the reefs and sank during the exercise. Fortunately, the US military rescued in time and did not suffer casualties. Due to the safety of combatants and the concerns about the losses caused to the extremely precious landing craft, the exercise had to be cancelled midway. Therefore, the Chinese army did not even show its face.

Because the exercise was not going well, the US Navy was worried about the landing battle, but the urgency of the battle was that the Japanese army could work at the airport on Guadalcanal at any time, and they had to attack Guadal Island.

Zhang Chi was notified to meet on the third day after arriving at Koro Island.

The warship where Zhang Chi is located is the "Quncy". Although the two warships are not far away and are just around at first glance, it takes a lot of trouble to go over... Zhang Chi must climb from the warship along the net rope to a small boat, drive to the "Vincent" and then climb up along the net rope.

Because of the huge waves, Zhang Chi was already soaked when he arrived at his destination.

Wang Mazi threw a dry towel to Zhang Chi and asked, "The situation in the army is fine!"

"It's okay!" Zhang Chi took the towel and replied: "Most of them have adapted to life on the boat. I trained on the deck in batches. All aspects of physical fitness and other aspects are recovering."

"Well, that's good!" Wang Mazi nodded.

One after another, several regiment leaders and staff members arrived. Everyone greeted each other and saw that Wang Mazi had not started the meeting yet, so he couldn't help but feel a little surprised.

Wang Mazi smiled bitterly and explained: "I didn't want to open this one!"

“That’s…”

Before he finished speaking, an American officer with a trouser uniform and beard walked in with a few followers. He stood on the podium and said in English: "Everyone, let me introduce myself first. I am Brigadier General William, deputy commander of the 1st Land War Division. I am responsible for commanding this landing operation. For your own safety and victory in this battle, you'd better obey my orders unconditionally. Do you understand?"

When the translator repeated this in Chinese, the Chinese officers, including Wang Mazi, showed some displeasure on their faces... Damn, an American commander said he was commanding and obeyed his orders unconditionally. This did not take the Chinese army seriously at all!

But they also knew that soldiers were obeying orders. Moreover, William was a brigadier general, so he was still qualified to command this battle, so although he was a little unhappy, he did not show it.

Zhang Chi was not happy, and he immediately retorted: "General, just like we were in Yangon, did we obey orders and left most of the tanks and artillery?"

Brigadier General William was stunned when he heard this. He did not expect that a Chinese officer would dare to openly contradict him.

"Your name, Colonel!" William asked Zhang Chi.

"My name is Zhang Chi, General!"

"Maybe you have defeated the Japanese in Myanmar." William glared at Zhang Chi fiercely and said, "But you better be clear that the Japanese army you encountered in Myanmar is just the army. Does the army understand? This is the Pacific Ocean. Most of the battles you are fighting here, I mean that what you are going to face will be all-round battles from sea, land, and air. So believe me, for your own lives, you'd better throw your cleverness aside!"

It should be said that what William said is correct to some extent. Island battles are indeed different from land warfare. Even if you stand on land when you fight on the island, its tactics and strategies are quite different from land warfare.

but……

"I don't think we have any cleverness, general!" Zhang Chi replied: "What we have is the experience we gain from fighting the Japanese on the battlefield. If the cleverness you meant these, then sorry, we won't throw them away, because we still need to rely on these to defeat the Japanese to save our lives!"
Chapter completed!