The Order of the Blue Sky and White Sun was a military medal during the Period of the Nationalist Government, awarded to meritorious military personnel who defended the country and resisted foreign insults, and was established on May 15, 1929. The first Qingtian White Sun Medal was awarded to Zhang Xueliang in 1930, and more than 200 people were awarded the Qingtian White Sun Medal in the following decades. Among them, 48 people in the Great Wall War of Resistance alone won the Order of the Blue Sky and White Sun.
On January 1, 1933, the Japanese Kwantung Army launched an attack on Shanhaiguan, and the Northeast Army He ZhuGuobu bravely resisted, and the Great Wall Resistance War began, and the truce was held on May 25, which lasted for nearly half a year. The total strength of the Chinese army was 250,000 people, and the strength of the Japanese army was the 6th and 8th Divisions of the Kwantung Army, the 14th Mixed Brigade, the 33rd Brigade, the 4th Cavalry Brigade, the Aviation, and the Navy. However, the outcome of the campaign ended in the defeat of the Nationalist army, and the Nationalist government was forced to sign the Tanggu Agreement with Japan, tacitly acquiescing to the legitimacy of Japan's occupation of the three northeastern provinces and Rehe provinces.
So why did the Nationalist army, which had absolute superiority in troops, eventually lose? The main reasons are as follows: First of all, although the National Army has superior troops, it has a complex faction and has failed to work together. Among the 250,000 were Zhang Xueliang's Northeast Army, Song Zheyuan's Northwest Army, and Fu Zuoyi's Jin Sui Army, and the Central Army only had one division, the 25th Division of Lin Zheng, which participated in the battle. Due to the complexity of factions, it is often impossible to work together in battle, which weakens the combat effectiveness of the national army to a certain extent.
The second reason was that the puppet army and the traitors had helped the Japanese Kou a lot. During the Great Wall War of Resistance, 30,000 puppet troops successively cooperated with the Japanese army, and these puppet troops nodded their heads in front of the devils, but they fought with the Nationalist army with great strength, and the participation of the puppet army made up for the lack of Japanese troops. In addition, there were han traitors who led the way to the Japanese Kou and revealed the intelligence of the defenders, such as the South Tianmen Eight Louzi position, which was led by the traitors to sneak attack, and the nationalist army did not retake this commanding height, sacrificing more than 1500 people and failing to succeed.
The third reason is that the weapons and equipment are inferior to the opponents, the most obvious example is that a battalion of the Nationalist army surrounded more than 70 Japanese troops at Xinglong Mountain, but due to backward equipment, it could not destroy the enemy, and finally the enemy broke through. Although the Great Wall Resistance eventually failed, the performance of the defenders was commendable, many positions were repeatedly fought for and tried their best, and the 29th Army gave the Japanese Kou a great and lethal deterrent in the form of a night attack by a large knife team. In order to commend the soldiers who made meritorious contributions in this War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Nationalist Government successively awarded the Order of Qingtian and White Sun to 48 senior generals, including Song Zheyuan, Guan Linzheng, Huang Jie, Feng Zhi'an, Zhang Zizhong, and Liu Ruming. This figure greatly exceeded the famous battles such as the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Changsha and the Battle of Changheng in the future, setting a record for the largest number of Blue Sky and White Sun Medals awarded in one battle.