The Rise Of A Billionaire 1943

From here on, everything became very simple.

Now that the ships had arrived, the next step was naturally to load the supplies. When everyone reached the storage area, they were stunned by the mountains of weapons and equipment before them.

"Th-this was left by the Germans..."

Wang Huiqi's mouth hung open in shock. The sheer number of guns, artillery, vehicles, and all sorts of equipment was beyond anything they had imagined. As for Zhao Xiyong, a major general from the Ordnance Department who had previously gone overseas to procure arms, he was completely dumbfounded.

He had never imagined there would be so many weapons.

"Director Zhao, this... this could equip four or five hundred thousand troops, right...?"

"Forty divisions!" Zhao Xiyong replied directly.

"One division needs 3,200 rifles. With hundreds of thousands of rifles here, we could equip at least forty divisions..."

As he finished speaking, Pierre added,

"Those are over a hundred thousand K98s, plus about two hundred thousand Italian Carcano rifles. But the Italian ones are of average quality, and their caliber isn't compatible with what we use back home, so I didn't really consider them..."

The Carcano rifle, though of average quality, would become famous in the future—for opening up Kennedy's mind.

"What? Two hundred thousand Italian rifles? If you have them, we'll take them too..."

Before Zhao Xiyong could finish, Pierre shook his head.

"It would be a waste of shipping capacity. The Allies have already landed in France, and soon the whole country will be liberated. The company's top priority is to enter mainland Europe. Also..."

Pierre looked at the young men in expeditionary army uniforms without insignia and said,

"How many of them can speak English? How many can speak German? We need to get a count. After all, we're about to go treasure hunting in Europe."

Seeing that Zhao Xiyong didn't quite understand, Pierre patted him on the shoulder and said,

"General Zhao, from now on, you're all company employees. We have to consider cost-effectiveness. Shipping these mediocre Italian rifles would take up a huge amount of capacity. A round trip would take over a month, and by then, France might already be liberated..."

"There are over a million German troops there, and…"

He paused for a moment, then Pierre smiled and continued.

"There are also four or five thousand cannons, all just waiting for us to take over…"

Four or five thousand cannons…

In an instant, everyone was stunned. They couldn't even imagine what it would look like to have four or five thousand cannons lined up together. Seeing the shock on everyone's faces, Pierre actually appeared rather calm. Four or five thousand cannons might sound like a lot, but under the fierce assault of the Allied forces, how many could really have survived?

But this was no longer Pierre's concern. The most important thing was… his staff had arrived.

Five thousand staff members!

From the day these people arrived in North Africa, they were no longer soldiers, but employees of the North Borneo Company.

After all, Zhenhua Company had signed the contract with the Pentagon as an "enemy weapons collection contractor," taking on the centralized management, repair, and transportation of captured military supplies. Therefore, the task force had to be made up of Zhenhua Company employees.

That's also why the personnel sent from China had to be "civilians." In reality, they weren't true civilians at all; they were soldiers who had undergone several months of training. The only difference was that they weren't organized into formal military units—there were very few senior officers, with the highest rank being a lieutenant colonel and deputy regimental commander.

"Everyone must sign an employment contract."

Speaking in awkward Mandarin, Xu Chengjie, an old employee of the company, was now handling onboarding procedures for these new hires just like everyone else.

"Once you've signed the contract, you're company employees."

"According to our agreement with the Americans, only company employees are allowed to enter the war zone…"

The transition from soldier to company employee was simply a matter of filling out a form. They were already prepared for this, since by the time they left China, they were no longer considered soldiers.

"Huiqi, I remember you speak German, right?"

Looking at the section on the form for foreign language proficiency, Zhang Tingpeng turned and called out.

"I only know a little, not really fluent, not as good as my English."

Wang Huiqi thought for a moment, and after writing down English, he also filled in German.

As for their university majors, he carefully wrote down "Law and Political Science, Tsinghua University." Zhang Tingpeng filled in "Department of Chemistry, Jiaotong University." Zhang Lianzai was a graduate of the Department of Physics, Central University.

What is true treasure?

These young talents are the real treasure.

1,463 university graduates, 1,625 college graduates…

Flipping through the documents in his hand, Pierre couldn't help but feel his heart race a little. There was no helping it—so many talented people arriving at once was almost overwhelming.

"In fact, if it's just about collecting weapons, we don't need so many people. We could actually arrange for some of them to go to American schools or companies for further training—yes, employee training is perfectly normal for a company…"

In actual history, next year the country would, according to the Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement, send a large number of technical trainees to the United States. Westinghouse alone trained nearly a hundred Chinese technical personnel, who became the first generation of design, manufacturing, and management experts in China's electrical engineering industry. The first domestically produced thermal power equipment, hydropower equipment, transmission and transformation equipment, and the design and construction of power equipment factories—all these core leaders mainly came from this group of technical trainees.

Now, there was every opportunity to negotiate with those companies for technical cooperation.

Having these talents collect weapons on the battlefield was really a waste! Sigh, everyone at home is talented when it comes to scheming for personal gain, but they just don't know how to make proper use of real talent.

But that's nothing new. Well, all the better—if they don't use them, we'll just pick up the slack!

Complaining about the domestic neglect of talent, Pierre picked up the phone and communicated his thoughts with the HR department, instructing them to group these talents by field and education level, and then set corresponding salary standards according to their positions.

If you want to retain talent, the first step isn't to draw a pie in the sky, but to actually let them eat the pie. Only real, tangible benefits can truly keep people.

Having once been "cut like leeks," Pierre knew very well what ordinary people needed, and thus what he should give them.