The miscellaneous army can't command the old Jiang Yan clan? Does Bai Chongxi command Du Yuming's bloody battle against Kunlun Guan?
Bai Chongxi
Since Zhang Xueliang changed the banner and changed his banner to the central authorities, Chiang Kai-shek has completed the reunification of China. But he was really not very peaceful as a boss, and not only did the big warlords such as Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan, and Li Zongren jump out from time to time to fight with old Jiang, but even local powerful factions like Han Fuyu, Jiang Qukai, and Yang Hucheng dared to openly and secretly intimidate their leaders, and often made old Jiang a mess. There is no way, the Central Army is his own son, and the Miscellaneous Brand Army is raised by the late mother, and it is impossible to level a bowl of water. As a result, China, which on the surface seems to have been "greatly unified," is actually surging with undercurrents: the miscellaneous armies do not listen to the greetings, desperately try to preserve their strength, and do not want the Central Army to eat them in one bite; the Central Army is aggressive and eager to put these local military leaders to death.
Under such circumstances, it is impossible for the Central Army and the Miscellaneous Army to live in harmony. As for a certain miscellaneous army general who wants to command the central army, it is really too much to think; in the early days of the Red Army's Long March, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the Hunan warlord He Jian to command Xue Yue, and as a result, what should Xue Yue do, He Jian did not dare to really take Xue Yue as a younger brother. And Xue Yue was born in the Cantonese army, not even a hardcore concubine of Chiang Kai-shek, but only a collateral of the concubine. Therefore, as a general of the Miscellaneous Army, it is an impossible task to command Chiang Kai-shek's concubines, and to command them with ease, mission impossible!
Xue Yue
But there is one exception, he not only commanded the Kuomintang's concubines, but also commanded the old Chiang Kai-shek's ace army, and what is important is that the general of this ace army was pleased with this, and although the losses were heavy and the casualties were nearly half, he did not dare to say half a word! This big god was none other than Bai Chongxi, known as "Little Zhuge Ge", one of the three giants of the Gui clan, known as the Kuomintang god of war--a strange man whom Chiang Kai-shek had to use but was deeply jealous of.
In the early years of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Japanese army first opened a gap in Shanghai, and then marched all the way west into the hinterland of China, but this did not mean that China's southern gate was safe. On October 21, 1938, Guangzhou fell. At that time, the Nationalist government's troop deployment on the southern front was very weak, the whole province of Guangdong fell, and the gate of Guangxi was immediately opened. Guangxi is the hometown of Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, so naturally they will not sit idly by while Guangxi falls into the hands of the Japanese, and the combat strength of the Guangxi army is probably unmatched by the armies of any province in modern history.
Li bai
A few years ago, the Red Army had suffered a great loss at the hands of the Gui Army, and Peng Dehuai had a lingering feeling in his heart for a long time, and it is said that he said such things: The Qian Army and the Dian Army have two sheep, the Xiang Army is like a wolf, and the Guangxi monkey is the Gui Army, fierce as a tiger and as vicious as a wolf. There is even a saying that if the weapons of the Gui Army are as sophisticated as the Japanese, the combat effectiveness is not below that of the Japanese Army! As for Li Zongren, this is what he thinks.
However, when the Japanese army was preparing to move west into Guangxi, Li Zongren Bai Chongxi did not have the courage to defend Guangxi, because almost all the main forces of the Gui army were sent to other anti-Japanese battlefields, and the few people who stayed in Guangxi were simply not worthy of the Japanese. On November 15, the Japanese army raided Fangcheng Port and Beihai, and the Gui army was weak, and the two cities quickly fell; on November 23, Nanning, a major town in Guangxi, was captured by the Japanese army. As early as when he learned that the Japanese army was about to attack Guangxi, Li Bai made an extremely painful decision: to rescue Chiang Kai-shek and ask him to send elites into Guangxi to fight against the Japanese army.
Kunlun Pass
Before that, Li Bai would never allow the Central Army to enter Gui Province, because once Chiang Kai-shek's army entered, it meant that Guangxi would no longer be Li Bai's domain. But now that the enemy is at present, the Gui army is powerless to defend alone, and can only call for help from Chiang Kai-shek, even if Guangxi is lost to old Chiang Kai-shek, it is better than losing it to the Japanese. In the face of the great national righteousness, Li Bai was still able to carry it clearly. From the time the Japanese army landed in Guangxi from the sea to the fall of Nanning, it was only a few days, Chiang Kai-shek called Bai Chongxi to account for it, but the little Zhuge Qiao woman was difficult to cook without rice, what could be done! Therefore, Bai Chongxi asked Chiang Kai-shek to transfer troops to Guizhou. On November 20, three armies of the Central Army marched into Guangxi, including the Most Elite Fifth Army of the Kuomintang, and its commander was the famous Du Yuming.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Du Yuming was a famous general, he was born in the Huangpu Phase I, and was the commander of the Fifth Army, the only mechanized unit of the Kuomintang Army at that time, and his name was no less than that of the star-studded Huangpu I, which can be called the concubine of the concubine. This time, with Du Yuming's entry into gui's Fifth Army, there were several fierce men of great god rank: one was Zheng Dongguo, who was one of Du Yuming's most powerful assistants, who later cooperated with Du Yuming for a long time and was later captured by the People's Liberation Army in the Liaoshen Campaign; the second was Dai Anlan, who also had a very deep relationship with Du Yuming, participated in the later expeditionary army, was shot and martyred in the battle with the Japanese army in northern Burma, and the place where he fell was only a few tens of kilometers away from Chinese territory, because there was no wooden coffin at that time, and the way he returned to China was to wrap the body of Ma Ge and return it Another person who has to be mentioned is Qiu Qingquan, who is called "Qiu Crazy" because he is extremely brave in battle and does not accept the heavens -- from the strength of these three fierce men, we know how terrible the combat strength of the Fifth Army is.
Du Yuming
It was Bai Chongxi, director of the Guilin camp, who sat in charge of the overall situation in Guangxi, and Du Yuming was obedient to this new boss, and the old White "Little Zhuge Ge" name was not a vain name, and even Chiang Kai-shek hated and loved Bai Chongxi. Therefore, for Bai Chongxi's orders, Du Yuming absolutely carried them out to the letter, on the one hand, this is the quality of a professional soldier, and more importantly, Bai Chongxi has enough ability to charm and command thousands of troops, even if they are in the national army.
Bai Chongxi's strategic intention was to occupy the strategic kunlun pass and then recover Nanning. On December 18, the Nationalist army began to attack the garrison Japanese army, kicking off the Battle of Kunlun Pass. Kunlun Pass is located 59 kilometers northeast of Nanning City, with steep valley slopes, dense water and extremely dangerous terrain, which is a natural barrier in the northeast of Nanning and has always been a place where soldiers and families must fight. The Kunlun Pass was founded by Ma Yuan, the founding father of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the general Fu Bo, and Ma Chao, one of the famous Shu Han "Five Tiger Generals" in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, is, according to himself, a descendant of Ma Yuan.
Statue of Ma Yuan
From December 18, when the Great War broke out, until December 25, the Chinese and Japanese armies launched an extremely fierce battle at Kunlun Pass, the Japanese army relied on the kunlun pass to be condescending and desperately resisted, and Du Yuming also killed the red eye, and sent all three divisions of Dai Anlan, Qiu Qingquan, and Zheng Dongguo to it. However, the glue of the war made Chiang Kai-shek very anxious, and he repeatedly inquired about the situation of the war and strictly ordered the capture of Kunlun Pass. Tens of thousands of troops fought fiercely at Kunlun Pass, the land of projectiles, filled with gun smoke, shells flew everywhere, and the corpses of soldiers on both sides were strewn across the field, and no one was willing to take a step back first, but no one could take a step forward.
At this critical moment, something happened that changed the tide of the war: Major General Masao Nakamura, the supreme commander of the Kunlun Pass garrison of the Japanese army and the commander of the 21st Brigade Regiment, died. The general, who was unanimously valued by both China and Japan, died in a very unique way, first by the sniper of the Nationalist army through the cheek, in the spirit of minor injuries not in the line of fire, the major general insisted on commanding; then the machine gunner pointed a hole through the abdomen and had to undergo surgery; just as he was undergoing surgery, an unexpected surprise fell from the sky, a large bomb landed, and the respectable Major General Nakamura went to heaven - after his death he was posthumously awarded the rank of lieutenant general.
Site of the Battle of Kunlun Pass
Nakamura Masao's death made the Japanese army chaotic for a time, although they were still dying in the spirit of Bushido, but after all, the trend was gone, on January 3, Kunlun Pass was conquered by the Nationalist army, and this was already about a week after Nakamura's death, and the tenacity of the Japanese army was really amazing. But after all, the results of the Battle of Kunlun Pass were brilliant, major general Masao Nakamura, the commander of the 21st Brigade, was killed, the acting brigade commander Motoichi Sakata committed suicide, and the 21st Brigade was no less than 4,000 people killed, and the casualty rate exceeded 85% of the total number of the brigade! This is a victory worthy of a big book on the frontal battlefield of the anti-Japanese battlefield.
Of course, the casualties of the Chinese army were also very heavy, because the follow-up reinforcements of the Japanese army continued to open, Kunlun Pass was eventually lost, and Bai Chongxi's plan to counterattack Nanning eventually came to naught. Whether it was Chiang Kai-shek or Li Bai, they were deeply afraid that their own troops would fall into the quagmire of the "meat grinder" and could not extricate themselves, so they could only order a retreat. In the end, the Battle of Kunlun Pass, like the Battle of Taierzhuang, was a partial victory, but from the overall point of view, it was a failure, the Battle of Xuzhou, to which the Battle of Taierzhuang belonged, and the Battle of Guinan, to which the Battle of Kunlun Pass belonged, also ended in failure.
However, in this battle, what Chiang Kai-shek could not let go of was that Bai Chongxi was able to command his ace troops so skillfully, and under his command, Du Yuming's troops charged towards the sky one by one like they did not want to die. A Battle of Kunlun Pass caused the losses of the Fifth Army to exceed 28,000 people, and in the entire Battle of Guinan, the losses of the Kuomintang troops were more than 50,000 people, and Old Jiang cried bitterly, scolding Bai Chongxi in his heart for not being a thing...
Schematic diagram of the outcome of the Battle of Guinan