The defeated army entered Burma and accidentally became a lone army: the story of the remnants of the Kuomintang in the Golden Triangle began here

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The story of the remnants of the Kuomintang in the Golden Triangle begins here. In January 1950, after the People's Liberation Army entered Kunming, it launched an offensive that swept through the clouds and swept away the Kuomintang troops in Yunnan. After the liberation of Kunming, the main stronghold of the Kuomintang army in Yunnan, Mengzi, was soon surrounded by the People's Liberation Army, and Tang Yao, who was then deputy commander-in-chief and chief of staff of the Kuomintang Army General Headquarters, saw that the situation was not good, and as the commander of the 8th Corps (including the 8th Army and the 26th Army), he ordered the abandonment of Mengzi, and according to his orders, the retreat route was for the 8th Army to withdraw to western Yunnan, and the 26th Army to "turn" to southern Yunnan. Soon after, the 26th Army was attacked by the People's Liberation Army at Yuanjiang, suffering heavy casualties, and after forcibly breaking through the river, it had to divide the troops into two, the right road was "transferred" by the direct troops led by Ye Zhinan, commander of the 93rd Division, and the left road was led by Peng Zuoxi, deputy commander of the 8th Corps and commander of the 26th Army, and 3879 officers and men led by the army headquarters to retreat to the south, and finally failed to contact the right road, but was disarmed and put under house arrest by the French army after entering Vietnam.

In order to avoid the 93rd Division from following in the footsteps of the Left Route Army, Peng Zuoxi called Ye Zhinan not to enter Vietnam, so the 93rd Division had to retreat along the Sino-Vietnamese border to Xishuangbanna, and then to the Sino-Burmese border, originally wanting to wait for the Taiwan side to pick up and evacuate, but on the way, it was chased by the People's Liberation Army, and after a period of encirclement and suppression, the remnants panicked and fled into Burma. At the same time, on January 25, the 8th Army, on its way to western Yunnan, engaged in a fierce battle with the People's Liberation Army at The Beijiang River, suffering heavy losses and almost destroying the entire army, and the commander Cao Tiange was also captured in the battle, along with Tang Yao. Sun Jinxian's 170th Division, which had previously crossed the river, also surrendered to the People's Liberation Army shortly thereafter. At this point, most of the Kuomintang troops in Yunnan were wiped out on the north bank of the Yuan River, and the history of the People's Liberation Army also called this battle "the last battle to liberate the mainland."

But there are also fish that have slipped through the net, that is, the remnants of the 709th Regiment of the 237th Division of the Kuomintang 8th Army, the leader of the regiment is called Li Guohui, originally just an unknown grassroots officer, but later this name is famous in the Golden Triangle region, even a household name, all because in the spring of 1950, he led the army into Burma. After entering Burma, about 1,000 men of the 709th Regiment followed the retreat route of the Anti-Japanese Expeditionary Force that year, entered the primeval forest of Savage Mountain, and after several days of marching, finally arrived at the triangle at the junction of Thailand, Vietnam, and Burma, and stationed themselves, and soon after met with the remnants of the 93rd Division of the Kuomintang 26th Army, which also withdrew into Burma, at this time, Ye Zhinan, commander of the 93rd Division, and others had already withdrawn to Hainan by plane, leaving only about 400 troops, and the commander was lower than Li Guohui, and was Tan Zhong, deputy commander of the 278 regiment. The combined number of the two remnants of the army was about 1400 people, and in order to unify the dispatch, Tan Zhong ceded the command of the troops to Li Guohui, which formed the initial Kuomintang troops active in the Golden Triangle region.

At the end of 1953, before the remnants of the Kuomintang Golden Triangle withdrew for the first time, Chiang Ching-kuo personally inspected the scene to show encouragement

This remnant of this force operating on the Border of Yunnan and Burma soon attracted the attention of Li Mi, the veteran commander of the Nationalist 8th Army. A native of Taiping Township, Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province, Li Mi graduated from Huangpu Phase IV and served as deputy commander of the 8th Army in the late period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and in August 1944, he co-commanded the Battle of Songshan with commander He Shaozhou. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he was promoted to the commander of the 8th Army and participated in the civil war. In March 1947, Li Mi was promoted to commander of the 13th Corps of the Kuomintang Army, and after the outbreak of the Battle of Huaihai, he led his troops to participate, and almost the entire army was destroyed, only to be spared. In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek decided to rebuild the 13th Corps, still commanded by Li Mi and concurrently served as commander of the 8th Army. In September, Li Mi and his troops moved through Luzhou to Zhanyi and Qujing in Yunnan. It can be said that Li Mi not only had a deep-rooted influence in the 8th Army, but was also very familiar with the situation in Yunnan.

After Li Mi arrived in Taiwan in 1950, he wrote to Chiang Kai-shek on the one hand, asking Miao to go to the Yunnan Burma Border Region to take care of the old department, and on the other hand, he went everywhere to raise people and horses for the troops operating in Burma. The Taiwan authorities also believed that the presence of this unit in Burma would be helpful for the future "counter-offensive to the mainland," so they received chiang kai-shek's instructions on April 15 of that year after The release of Li Mi's "Plan for Entering Yunnan." On the same day, Li Mi petitioned Zhou Zhirou, the chief of the "Ministry of National Defense," for approval of his troop establishment, hoping to restore the numbers of the 8th and 91st armies. However, in view of the fact that the troops are currently in the territory of other countries and it is not appropriate to use the name of the regular army, this request was rejected in disguise.