Text/Kingdom Building
He was a famous general in the Dian Army and served as a lieutenant general in the 3rd Army of the National Revolutionary Army. In the Battle of NakajōZan in May 1941, surrounded by Japanese regiments and several times the breakthrough was lost, the commander blamed himself for not defending the territory, and was not willing to be captured and humiliated, so he raised his gun and committed suicide. The Nationalist government posthumously awarded him the title of General of the Army. In 1986, Yunnan Province posthumously recognized him as a revolutionary martyr and ranked among the first batch of 300. This anti-Japanese hero of the Dian Army was General Tang Huaiyuan.
Tang Huaiyuan, born in 1886, is a native of Maliyuan Village, Cuifeng Township, Jiangchuan County, Yunnan Province.
Tang Huaiyuan began to study literature and wanted to pass the imperial examination to enter his career, so he immersed himself in hard study, and in 1909, he tried to raise people in Yunnan Township, a high school. However, when it was depressing, soon after the Guangxu Emperor ordered the cancellation of the imperial examination, cutting off Tang Huaiyuan's career. In desperation, Tang Huaiyuan took a different path and went to Kunming to study at the Yunnan Daowu Hall, where he and Marshal Zhu De became classmates.
In January 1911, Tang Huaiyuan graduated early from the Yunnan DaowuTang and served as a platoon leader in the Dian Army. Later, he participated in the patriotic movement led by Cai Yi and Tang Jiyao, and was promoted to deputy company commander and battalion commander for his merits. By the end of the Yasukuni War in 1918, he had been promoted to brigadier general of the 15th Mixed Brigade of the Yunnan Army.
In 1920, Gu Pinzhen, a famous general of the Dian Army, launched a coup d'état to oust the veteran warlord Tang Jiyao, and reorganized the main force of the Dian Army into 7 mixed brigades, with Tang Huaiyuan as the brigade commander of the 2nd Brigade. Unfortunately, with the support of some reactionary officers, Tang Jiyao successfully restored in 1922 and hunted down progressive soldiers who supported the revolutionary party. To this end, Zhu De, who ranked first among the four great Kongs of the Dian Army, was forced to study abroad, while Tang Huaiyuan and others defected to Sun Yat-sen and joined the Guangdong revolutionary government.
After the Start of the Northern Expedition in 1927, Tang Huaiyuan did not get the opportunity to lead the troops to fight, but was appointed as the chief of education of the Nanchang branch of the Kuomintang Army School, training military talents for the Nationalist government in the rear. Tang Huaiyuan himself could not go to the battlefield, and recommended his old classmate Zhu De to the 3rd Army (commander Zhu Peide) as the regimental commander. Zhu De performed well in the 3rd Army and was appointed as the director of the Nanchang City Public Security Bureau, making great contributions to the Nanchang Uprising on August 1 of the same year. Afterwards, Tang Huaiyuan was not only not implicated, but was also appointed deputy commander of the 12th Division of the 3rd Army and brigade commander of the 35th Brigade, and led his troops to surround and suppress the Red Army everywhere. There is no exact record of whether Tang Huaiyuan sincerely "encircled and suppressed" the Red Army, but by the time of the Xi'an Incident in 1936, he had been promoted to deputy commander of the 3rd Army.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, Tang Huaiyuan was appointed as the commander of the 3rd Army and led his troops to the Shanxi front to resist Japan. The 3rd Army was the first central army unit to enter the Shanxi front. Tang Huaiyuan led the 3rd Army to participate in the Battle of Niangziguan and the Zhongtiao Mountain Area (here refers to the Zhongtiao Mountain Garrison Battle commanded by the famous anti-Japanese general Wei Lihuang from 1938 to 1940), and was quite successful.
On May 7, 1941, the Japanese army concentrated more than 100,000 troops from 7 main divisions and launched a fierce attack on the Chinese defenders on the Zhongtiao Mountain Defense Line. At the same time, the Chinese army was distracted by infighting, which eventually led to the fiasco of the entire campaign.
First, at the end of 1940, Chiang Kai-shek secretly arrested and put General Wei Lihuang, the commander of the First Theater, under house arrest at Mount Emei, and it was He Yingqin who actually took wei Lihuang's place in command of the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain. The second was to transfer the 4th Army, the main force of the Zhongtiao Mountain Defense Line, to "suppress the Communists", so that the Chinese defenders who originally defended the Zhongtiao Mountain line dropped from 260,000 to 180,000 people (mainly the Zeng Wanzhong Department of the 5th Army and the Liu Mao'en Department of the 14th Group Army). Finally, there was no ideological preparation for the strategic determination of the Japanese army, no determination to fight a big war and a bitter war, and insufficient logistical preparations. After the battle began, because the logistical supply line was cut off, there were defenders who did not enter for three days and three nights, completely losing combat effectiveness. The Chinese and Japanese armies exchanged fire from May 7 and by May 11 had suffered a massive rout due to the loss of positions.
On May 12, 1941, the 3rd Army, which was defending the Nakajō-san line, was defeated by the Japanese army for the deployment of reserves to support fraternal units. Commander Tang Huaiyuan, who personally led the reserve, lost contact with his own large army and was surrounded by Japanese regiments. Tang Huaiyuan led his troops to break through three times, but failed to break out of the encirclement. Seeing that the Japanese army was gradually approaching, they were in danger of being captured. Tang Huaiyuan was indignant at the lack of defense of the territory, and ashamed of being humiliated by the Japanese army after being captured, he pulled out his gun and cut himself on the top of the hanging mountain. On the same day, the commander of the 12th Division of the 3rd Army, who had broken through to Hujiayu, was shot in the chest and seriously wounded while engaging the Japanese. Until the morning of May 13, the right leg of the commander of the inch division was blown off by the Japanese army and incapacitated. Unwilling to drag his subordinates along, he shot himself to death. Tang Huaiyuan and Zhizhiqi were the anti-Japanese heroes who were martyred at the same time as the commanders of the first army and the commanders of the first army, after Hao Mengling, commander of the 9th Army in the Xinkou Campaign, and Liu Jiaqi, commander of the 54th Division of the 9th Army. In the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain, the senior Chinese generals who were martyred included Wang Wang, commander of the newly organized 27th Division of the 80th Army (who was shot and killed in a fierce battle with the Japanese army), and Liang Ruxian, deputy commander of the division (who was surrounded by the Japanese army and martyred in the river).
On May 27, 1941, He Yingqin ordered the Chinese defenders to withdraw from the battle, and the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain was concluded.
In this battle, the Chinese defenders lost 44,000 dead and 37,000 captured, plus missing and wounded, and lost more than 120,000 people. The Japanese suffered only 673 casualties and 2,292 wounded, for a total loss of less than 3,000. After receiving the war report, Chiang Kai-shek scolded He Yingqin for being incompetent, calling the battle the greatest shame in the history of the War of Resistance.
After the martyrdom of General Tang Huaiyuan, the Nationalist government recovered his body and buried him on the hillside of Qing Daocun in Xia County, Shanxi, and posthumously awarded him the title of general of the army.
In 1986, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of General Tang Huaiyuan, Yunnan Province posthumously recognized Tang Huaiyuan as a revolutionary martyr. His remains were moved back to his hometown Jiangchuan Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery for burial.