There is a very important factor in Chiang Kai-shek's employment criteria, that is, to see whether the other party is a Huangpu family, if not, even if it is capable, it is difficult to be reused, so Huang Baitao appears to be more unusual.
In his early years, Huang Baitao successively defected to Li Chun, a direct descendant of the Beiyang warlords, and Zhang Zongchang, and only followed Chiang Kai-shek after the Northern Expedition. However, not long after he became the commander of the corps, he fought a major battle with the People's Liberation Army, and was finally surrounded by Mill villages.
Putting aside the camp, Huang Baitao was a man, and his regiment was quite stubborn, causing Hua Ye to pay about 60,000 casualties. He himself preserved his loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek until the last moment, and the five commanders below committed suicide, two were captured, and two escaped.
The most interesting is the commander of the 25th Army, Chen Shizhang, who successfully escaped from the Huaihai battlefield, but was captured by his own people to receive merit, and the later experience was quite interesting.
Chen Shizhang was a fifth-term student of Huangpu, who had always served in the Central Army, and was commended by his superiors for his great merits in the Battle of Wuhan. During the Anhui Incident, he led his troops to participate in the encirclement of the New Fourth Army, causing great casualties to the New Fourth Army.
His intersection with Huang Baitao began in January 1944, when he was the commander of the 40th Division, and Huang Baitao parachuted in to become the commander of his superiors, the 25th Army.
At that time, the Huangpu clan looked down on the "miscellaneous cards", and Huang Baitao was not less angry with his subordinates. But Chen Shizhang was different from those people, he had a good attitude towards Huang Baitao, and he was also capable, so Huang Baitao also valued him.
After Huang Baitao was promoted to commander of the Seventh Corps, he strongly recommended Chen Shizhang to take over as the commander of the 25th Army, and the two were still close superiors and subordinates.
On November 21, 1948, the Battle of Nianzhuang had entered its final stages, and the Nationalist army surrendered in pieces, and only some sporadic resistance was still persisting.
Chen Shizhang was more special, he considered that he had killed too many Communists in the Anhui Southern Incident, so he did not dare to surrender, but if he resisted, he would die, so he chose to disguise himself as a peasant and flee.
Chen Shizhang had already made preparations when the war situation was not good, with coarse cloth clothes with large patches, half-old hoes, dung baskets with a few horse dung eggs, and so on.
Coupled with his dark skin and lean body, he also looked like a farmer, and he deliberately rolled up a trouser leg and tied a dirty towel on his head, which no one could see as a military commander.
With this image, he successfully slipped out of the refugee tide. Moreover, Chen Shizhang was very clever, he was alone on the road, he did not have any high-level items on him, no guards or adjutants, and he did not engage in such a thing as using a toilet on paper, so even if the People's Liberation Army saw him along the way, he did not suspect him.
However, after he escaped from the battlefield, he was instead interrogated by the search troops, and he saw that the clothes of the other side were from the Kuomintang troops, so he made a clever inquiry, confirmed that the other party was the real Kuomintang Eighth Army, and then identified himself: I am the commander.
After hearing this, these Nationalist troops were very excited, and they thought that they had made a great contribution to capturing the commander of the People's Liberation Army, so they quickly tied up Chen Shizhang and brought him back to the military headquarters.
Zhou Kaicheng, commander of the 8th Army, was surprised to see the people brought by his subordinates, because Chen Zhang, the commander of the 63rd Army of Huang Baitao's corps, had committed suicide, and Chen Shizhang and Chen Zhang were one word apart, and the news spread around, and many people thought that it was Chen Shizhang who committed suicide.
However, Zhou Kaicheng quickly reacted after seeing the people, and immediately asked his subordinates to loosen Chen Shizhang's ties, and then called out "Commander Chen" And the two hugged together. Only then did the search unit know that Chen Shizhang was not the commander of the People's Liberation Army, but the commander of the Nationalist Army.
After Chen Shizhang asked Zhou Kaicheng to convey the news to Chiang Kai-shek that he was not dead, he first returned home, but he did not expect to see the spiritual hall placed for him by his family as soon as he entered the door, and it was obvious that his family was also misled. Chen Shizhang, who was crying and laughing, settled down at home and went to Nanjing to report for duty.
Chiang Kai-shek did not put the pot of defeat on Chen Shizhang's head, but on the contrary praised him for his perseverance and perseverance in running back, and retained the number of the 25th Army, ordering him to go to Fujian to form a new 25th Army.
Although Chen Shizhang was stubborn, he could see the situation clearly and knew that the Kuomintang's rule on the mainland was unstable, so he ran to Fuzhou to recruit soldiers while sending his wife and children to Taiwan.
Not long after his new 25th Army was formed, the People's Liberation Army came again. In August 1949, the Sanye Ten Corps liberated Fuzhou in a state of decay, and Chen Shizhang once again became the commander of the Guangzhan Army, but he once again successfully escaped.
Being able to escape successfully in both major wars with all tails is also a skill.
Chen Shizhang fled to Xiamen and wanted to cross the sea, but the People's Liberation Army was too fast, and Xiamen was soon liberated, so Chen Shizhang had no chance, and later he was arrested in the clearance operation and became a prisoner of the People's Liberation Army.
Because Chen Shizhang failed to report to Taiwan on time, Chiang Kai-shek included him in the list of his dead and gave him a plaque at the Martyrs' Shrine in Taipei's Yuanshan, so he became a "living martyr" for the second time.
However, this Chen Shizhang is indeed very stubborn, has always refused to reform, no matter how the People's Liberation Army enlightens him, he will not cooperate, so he has become the last batch of amnesty.
On March 19, 1975, after the amnesty, Chen Shizhang wanted to go to Taiwan to reunite with his wife and children, and the mainland agreed, but Taiwan refused, so Chen Shizhang could only stay in Hong Kong.
Chen Shizhang died in Los Angeles in 1992, and after Chiang Kai-shek identified him as 'dead', he lived for 43 years.
In fact, if nothing else, Chen Shizhang's backbone is still quite admirable, which is rare in the national army, but it is a pity that he has not been able to stand on the side of the people.
Moreover, the irony is that after he was captured, he never did anything to apologize to the Jiang family, but the Jiang family decided that he was dead early, and even in the end they did not even want to see him. Is his lifelong loyalty worth it?
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