Sun Liren's father, Sun Xize, was a native of the late Qing Dynasty and was sent to be the prefect of Dengzhou Prefecture in Shandong Province, and his family went to live in Qingdao. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, due to the forcible lease of the land by the great powers, Qingdao was the sphere of influence of Germany at that time.
When Sun Liren was nine years old, one day playing on the beach, he found a very beautiful stone, so he happily took this stone in his hand and played. At this time, a few German children came, they saw the stone in Sun Liren's hand, so they joined forces to bully Sun Liren, snatched the stone, and slapped Sun Liren twice, and insulted Chinese. This incident had a great impact on Sun Liren's life, and he believed that "his country must be strong and prosperous in order to make the people live with dignity."
In 1914, Sun Liren was admitted to the Preparatory Department of Tsinghua School (now Tsinghua University) Gengzi Compensation for Staying in the United States with the first place in Anhui Province, received eight years of preparatory training for studying in the United States, and then went to the United States to study, because he had studied many basic engineering at Tsinghua School, so he went straight to purdue university in the third year of civil engineering, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1925. During this period, he was employed as a design draftsman for the American Bridge Company. In 1926, Sun Liren entered the Virginia Military Academy, because he already had a bachelor's degree, so he went straight to the third year of liberal arts, graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1927, and then traveled to Europe, visiting the british, French, German and other countries' military forces.
After returning to China, he was appreciated by Song Ziwen, minister of finance, and served as the colonel commander of the second detachment and the commander of the fourth regiment in the Tax police corps of the Ministry of Finance, which he founded. The Tax Police Corps was owned by Song Ziwen, minister of finance, and its weapons were purchased from Germany, and most of the officers above the platoon level were students studying in the United States. Under the training of Sun Liren, the education level of the officers and men of the units to which he belonged, as well as the standards of disciplines, disciplines, and anti-smuggling methods, were far higher than those of ordinary troops.
During the Battle of Songhu, after suffering thirteen wounds from a mortar shell attack in a bloody battle with the Japanese army, Song Ziwen hurriedly sent his younger brother Song Zi'an to send Sun Liren to Hong Kong for treatment.
In December 1941, at the request of the Nationalist government to urgently need to expand its troops, the Ministry of Finance was forced to surrender half of the troops of the anti-smuggling corps to form the newly organized 38th Division of the National Revolutionary Army, and in exchange for Sun Liren of the Ministry of Finance, he was promoted to major general division commander and subordinate to the 66th Army.
During his lifetime, Sun Liren was known as the "God of War" in two major battles: the Great Victory of Ren'an Qiang and the Battle of Siping.
Let's first look at the Great Victory of Ren'an Qiang:
In February 1942, during the Chinese Expeditionary Force's Operation in Burma, Sun Liren led the new 38th Division to mandalay, Burma, and concurrently served as the commander of the garrison and participated in the Battle of Mandalay. On April 14, the 1st Infantry Division and the 7th Armored Brigade of the Burmese Army of the British Empire on the Western Front were surrounded by the Japanese army at Nyan Qiang, and they were starved of food and ammunition, and the water source was cut off. General Sun was ordered by Luo Zhuoying to send the 113th Regiment to the aid of the Stars, and The commander of Liu Fangwu Regiment rushed to QiaokeBodang at 4:00 p.m. on the 16th. General Slim, commander of the British Burmese Army, personally met on the 17th and ordered the regiment to take a car to the Pingqiang River area to join Brigadier General Antis' chariots to attack and eliminate the enemy on both sides of the two-mile highway on the north bank of the Pingqiang River. In the early morning of the 18th, the 113th Regiment, together with Brigadier General Antis' chariots, launched a fierce attack on the Japanese army, conquered the Japanese positions at noon, annihilated a large group of the enemy, rescued the commander of the British Southern Military District, Admiral Harold Alexander and Lieutenant General William Slim, and 7,000 British troops, and rescued more than 500 American missionaries, journalists and women captured by the Japanese army.
The Great Victory of Ren'an Qiang was the first victory of the Chinese Expeditionary Force after entering Burma, Sun Liren repelled several times the enemy with a regiment of less than a thousand troops, and rescued nearly ten times as many friendly troops, and Chiang Kai-shek awarded the Fourth Class Cloud Medal in recognition of Sun Liren's achievements. President Roosevelt of the United States also awarded him the Medal of Merit, and King George VI awarded him the Order of Commander of the British Empire.
Let's look at the Battle of Siping:
After the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the relations between the Kuomintang and the Communists deteriorated rapidly, and in April 1946, the two sides began the first decisive battle in Siping, a strategic town in the northeast. Originally, Chiang Kai-shek had ordered the northeast battalion to capture Siping by April 2, but the northeast security commander Du Yuming commanded the Nationalist army to advance north slowly, delaying for nearly two months, and there were still setbacks in the middle, Chiang Kai-shek was very anxious about this, and urgently sent Sun Liren back to command the New First Army (after the New Thirty-eighth Division withdrew from Burma, it was reorganized into the New First Army). On 18 April, under the cover of aircraft and artillery fire, the New 30th Division of the New First Army attacked from the south and the New 38th Division from the west and northwest to Siping, which lasted for 3 days. The 1st Brigade and the 7th Column of the Security Brigade of the Democratic Coalition Army defending the city relied on fortifications to stubbornly resist and organized many counterattacks, inflicting heavy casualties on the Nationalist army and making little progress. Although the Democratic Coalition Army thwarted the Kuomintang army's attempt to detour to Siping, it also did not have the mobile strength to carry out a strong counterattack. In the defensive operation that lasted for more than 1 month, the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army suffered more than 8,000 casualties, in order to get rid of passivity, avoid being cut off from the retreat route, and maintain combat effectiveness, after asking the central government to agree to decide to retreat from the Siping area one by one.
However, Chiang Kai-shek was not interested in Sun Liren's great victory in Ren'an Qiang and the Battle of Siping, and once commented on Sun Liren in person, saying: "Training troops is very good, but fighting is not good!" ”
In fact, about 800 officers and men of the 113th Regiment of the New Thirty-eighth Division participated in the battle, more than 4,000 British troops and several missionaries were trapped in Ren'anqiang, and the enemy was only about 2,800 people of the 214th Regiment of the 33rd Division of the Japanese Army (missing the first brigade). These thousands of British troops did not sit and wait for rescue as usually described, but fought alongside the 113 regiment. After the war, Sun Liren called this battle "defeated an enemy ten times that of me and rescued ten times that of our friendly forces", and called himself the "Great Victory of Ren'an and Qiang". In fact, the Japanese did not feel that they had lost the battle. The Nationalist government also did not affirm the so-called "Ren'an Qiang Victory".
At the Battle of Siping, the supreme leader of the Kuomintang in the northeast at that time was Du Yuming, the commander of the Northeast Security. It was under the command of Du Yuming that after Benxi won the battle, he quickly turned to planning an attack on Siping with all his might. Coordinated by aircraft and artillery fire, the Kuomintang troops stormed, forcing the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army to carry out a strategic retreat. Only half a year after Du Yuming arrived in the northeast, he successively invaded all of western Liaoning and key cities such as Tieling, Fushun, Benxi, Liaoyang, Anshan, Haicheng, and Yingkou on the outskirts of Shenyang, and confronted the Northeast Democratic United Army along the Songhua River in the north. And Sun Liren just happened to be at the end of this campaign, just in time to take office, and conveniently picked a peach in siping.
It can be seen from this that Chiang Kai-shek's appraisal of Sun Liren's "inability to fight a war" has its factual basis. The reason why Chiang Kai-shek used Sun Liren, who was "unable to fight a war," as the commander-in-chief of the army at the beginning of his visit to Taiwan was mainly due to political considerations -- the US military and political circles had a bad impression of Chiang Kai-shek that day, and they had a good feeling for Sun.