When the All-out War of Resistance Broke Out in 1937, there were many different factions of Chinese troops, the Kuomintang Army including the Central Army, the Local Army, the Northwest Army, the Northeast Army, the Dian Army, the Gui Army, the Cantonese Army, the Sichuan Army, and so on. People often say: "The Qianjun Dianjun has two sheep, and the Xiangjun is a wolf; the Guangxi monkey is the Guijun, fierce as a tiger and as vicious as a wolf!" "Is the Dian army really so ineffective?"
The origin of the Dian army can be traced back to the establishment of the Yunnan New Army at the end of the Qing Dynasty. After that, the military and political power was controlled by the warlord Long Yun for ten years, and before the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Dian Army had six two-regiment infantry brigades, in addition to four directly subordinate battalions, six directly subordinate regiments and twenty-one county security battalions, with a total of 36,000 regular troops and 10,000 local troops.
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Long Yun responded to Chiang's call and drew twelve regiments of elite forces from the Dian Army to form the 60th Army, with weapons and equipment mainly French weapons and Belgian weapons, each infantry battalion had 3 infantry companies and 1 machine gun company, each infantry company had 148 combatants, equipped with 63 rifles, 20 pistols, 6 light machine guns, and 3 grenadiers. This army was headed by Lu Han, and the entire army had a total of more than 40,000 officers and men.
The 60th Army was scheduled to go to Nanjing for a defensive mission, but had not yet arrived at Nanjing, which had fallen, so it could only return to Wuhan on New Year's Day in 1938.
Du Yuming sighed when he saw the Dian Army: Compared with this Yunnan Army, the Central Army seems to be inferior in appearance. German military advisers also praised this army as undoubtedly the best unit of the Kuomintang today.
Old Chiang Kai-shek naturally welcomed this unit very much, and changed the 60th Army into a special army, equipped with more than 20 cars. In order to win this team together, he divided and disintegrated by having officers above the battalion level trained in military training regiments. However, most of the officers of the Dian Army were hand-picked by Long Yun, so they were not completely divided.
After the bloody battle of Taierzhuang, Jiang hoped that Long Yun could send another army to the front. Long Yun agreed and made Sun Du the commander of the army and led the newly formed 58th Army to the front. However, after the 58th Army went out, Sun Du had the idea of breaking away from the Dian Army. In order to control Lu Han and Sun Du, Long Yun drew a division from the 58th Army and the 60th Army and formed it into the New 3rd Army.
After that, the troops of the Dian Army participated in the Battle of Wuhan, the Battle of Nanchang, the First Battle of Changsha, and so on, until the situation in Yunnan was urgent, and Chiang only allowed the 60th Army to return to Yunnan to form the Southern Yunnan Combat Army.
In the eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the total number of officers and men of the Dian Army in foreign conquests reached 200,000, and another 250,000 people enlisted in other units of the Nationalist Army, which can be said to have shed all the blood for the War of Resistance. However, after the victory of the War of Resistance, Jiang still had the idea of Yunnan, so he ordered Lu Han to lead the 60th Army and the newly formed 93rd Army of the Dian Army to Vietnam to accept the surrender of the Japanese troops stationed in Vietnam, and Long Yun did not know the plan and agreed. Later, Du Yuming, the central army in Kunming, seized the opportunity to launch a coup d'état and force Long Yun to step down.
After that, the 58th Army and the New 3rd Army of the Dian Army were successively annexed by Chen Cheng and Xue Yue's military groups, and the remaining 60th Army and 93rd Army were shipped to the northeast region thousands of miles away, intending to completely eliminate these local miscellaneous troops by the hand of the People's Liberation Army.
During the Battle of Shen, the 93rd Army was completely annihilated, and the 60th Army was reorganized into the 50th Army of the People's Liberation Army during the Changchun Uprising. At this point, the Dian Army completely withdrew from the stage of history. In the subsequent War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the 50th Army completely annihilated the British Royal Tank Battalion and attacked Seoul. Later, on the north bank of the Han River, the U.S. army and Syngman Rhee's troops fought a frenzied counterattack for more than 50 days and nights, and they were commended by the general order of the volunteer army headquarters, and they were also a heroic unit.