The Battle of Dingtao was the first major victory of my Jinji-Hebei Luyu Field Army (also known as "Liu Deng's Army") before advancing into Dabie Mountain. What happened next? It was mentioned in the article that this was a battle with a gap of six to one between the enemy and ourselves, and in this battle in which the strength of the enemy and us was very disparity, Liu Deng's army played a very strange and ingenious tactic, not only destroying the enemy's integrated 3rd Division, but also capturing the enemy lieutenant general Zhao Xitian alive.
Today, Uncle Long will tell you about this Zhao Xitian who was captured alive by our army, and what was the subsequent outcome?
Zhao Xitian is a native of Lianshui, Jiangsu Province, born in 1907. Speaking of this Zhao Xitian, he is not an ordinary person, he is the nephew of Gu Zhutong, the former commander-in-chief of the Nationalist Army and chief of staff, and he is also the uncle Gu Zhutong's uncle and brother-in-law. After graduation, he successively served as a platoon and company commander of the Third Division of the First Army of the National Revolutionary Army, a staff officer of the Major Of the Thirty-second Army, a company commander of engineers, a battalion commander, a staff chief of the Third Division, a regimental commander, and a brigade commander.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhao Xitian, then commander of the Sixty-third Division, participated in the Anhui Incident launched by the Third Theater, and it was he who led his troops to besiege the headquarters of our New Fourth Army, and Commander Ye Ting was captured by him, so for our army he was an enemy of our army.
However, judging from the performance in the struggle against Japan, Zhao Xitian led his troops to participate in the Battle of Nanchang, the First and Second Battles of Changsha, the Battle of Zhejiang, the Battle of Changde, and the Battle of Changheng. Especially in the Changde Offensive and hengyang defense battles, the 3rd Division and the 10th Army led by him became one of the most famous anti-Japanese troops in China, and later he led his troops to participate in the expedition to Burma and fight against Japan, all of which had outstanding military achievements. Therefore, judging him from the perspective of national righteousness, there is no doubt that he can be called a famous anti-Japanese general.
Such a famous general of the War of Resistance was captured alive by our army in the Battle of Dingtao on September 7, 1946, and became a prisoner of our army. Of course, this was not General Zhao Xitian's personal mistake, but the inevitable result of his implementation of old Chiang's wrong decision.
One day, the head of Liu Deng's army went to see General Zhao Xitian in the captive shelter, only to see that Zhao Xitian was wearing a torn cotton pony, his pants had been torn with several large holes, and there was a lot of dirt on his face. When Liu Bo admitted that he was like this, he comforted him and said that Mr. Zhao had been running from place to place over the years, very tired, and injured, and that he could rest in peace when he went to the Liberated Areas, without any worries, and that we would do our best in life. What else to run?
In addition to expressing his deep gratitude to Liu Bocheng and other leaders of our army for their concern, Zhao Xitian had nothing to say: It is not that our army is too incompetent, but that the communist army is too cunning.
After that, Zhao Xitian received a period of education in our army and was released home in February 1947 with more than 3,000 captured officers and men of the 3rd Division. From then on, he no longer held military positions. However, although Zhao Xitian did not hold a military post, in order to thank our party for its grace of not killing, he still did some work for our party, such as winning some old subordinates to revolt and rescuing our party personnel in prison, and he was once arrested and imprisoned for this reason.
In 1949, after the Defeat of the Kuomintang on the mainland, Zhao Xitian's uncle Gu Zhutong invited him to Go to Taiwan, but he insisted on going to Brazil in South America. In 1991, Zhao Xitian, who was already 84 years old, returned to China to visit his relatives. In this way, he can also be regarded as having a good ending.
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