What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In 1942, at the request of the British and Indian governments and coordinated by President Roosevelt, China sent the Chinese Expeditionary Force to Burma to assist the British and Indian forces in defending Burma and covering the Burma Road. At this time, the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway had been cut off by the Japanese army, the Burma Highway was China's only foreign contact channel, and foreign aid materials could only enter the country through the Burma Highway, so China must ensure smooth access, otherwise the War of Resistance could not continue.
At this time, a total of three armies were dispatched, about 100,000 people, namely Du Yuming's Fifth Army, Zhang Yi's Sixty-sixth Army, and Gan Lichu's Sixth Army. Nominally, the expeditionary force was under the unified command of Stilwell, chief of staff of the commander-in-chief of the Chinese theater, including the British army and the Chinese expeditionary force in this theater, the commander-in-chief of the First Route Army of the Chinese Expeditionary Force was Luo Zhuoying, and the deputy commander-in-chief was Du Yuming, commander of the Fifth Army.
According to the original plan, the British army stopped retreating on the western front, established positions, and prevented the Advance of the Japanese Army, the Eastern Front was covered by the Sixth Army and the Sixty-sixth Army on the communication line on the Burma border, and the 200th Division of the Fifth Army was responsible for blocking the Japanese army in Tonggu, and after the new Twenty-second Division and the Ninety-sixth Division of the Follow-up Unit of the Fifth Army entered Burma, they would fight a decisive battle with the Japanese army to eliminate the tired Japanese army after the long battle. Obviously, in this battle plan, the Fifth Army was the main force.
After the 200th Division arrived in Tonggu, division commander Dai Anlan immediately arranged for the establishment of defensive positions to prepare for a protracted resistance against the Japanese army. After the arrival of the Japanese army, the 200th Division rose up to resist, and after half a month of fighting, although the Japanese army went around to the north of the city, the nationalist position was shaken, but the traffic between the east and the rear was still smooth, so Dai Anlan did not have the intention of retreating, but was ready to continue fighting. Moreover, at this time, the Central Military Commission also transmitted a telegram from the Master of Micro-Exercises, which began with Brother Dai An Lan, asking them to continue to stick to Tonggu.
However, the British had no intention of resisting the Japanese on the Western Front, but only wanted to flee back to India quickly, so they did not resist the Japanese at all, which was equivalent to exposing the flank of the expeditionary force in front of the Japanese army. In this way, although the 200th Division was still resisting Tonggu bravely, and the newly formed Twenty-second Division was also on its way to Tonggu in the middle of the night, the situation on the battlefield deteriorated sharply because the British army released pigeons. The staff committee stationed in Yunnan suggested to the Military Commission that the Battle of Tonggu had already achieved the purpose of depleting the Japanese army and had also shown its face internationally, at this time the British army had retreated, the Sixty-sixth Army and the Sixth Army on the Eastern Front were weak in combat, and once it was broken by the Japanese army, the Fifth Army would be surrounded, so it was recommended to retreat.
The Master of Micro-Exercises rejected this suggestion, still insisting that the 200Th Division continue to wait for help in Tonggu. After some deliberation, Du Yuming decided that there was no point in continuing to hold on to Tonggu, so he ordered the newly formed Twenty-second Division to cover the retreat of the 200th Division, retreat to Pingmanna, and then establish a defensive position by the Ninety-sixth Division that was rushing to Pingmanna, delay the Japanese army, and wait for the 200th Division and the newly formed Twenty-second Division to reorganize and replenish, and then counterattack the Japanese army. This was also the plan for the Battle of Binh Manna.
Unexpectedly, at this time, the Japanese army had also urgently increased its troops, drew troops from Malaya, quickly moved north, and attacked the Sixth Army and the Sixty-sixth Army in the border area of Yunnan and Burma, these two armies were relatively poorly equipped and had low combat effectiveness, and the only unit with relatively strong combat effectiveness, that is, the new Thirty-eighth Division of the Sixty-sixth Army Sun Liren, had at this time rushed to the western front at the request of the British army to break the siege for the British army, and the other units were vulnerable to a battle, and were easily defeated by the Japanese army, pursued along the road, and reached the Huitong Bridge.
On the side of the Huitong Bridge, under the command of Song Xilian, the Thirty-sixth Division closest to the Burma border was urgently transported to the front line to block the Japanese army, and at the same time, the engineer commander ma Chongliu of the Staff Committee in Yunnan blew up the Huitong Bridge, the only passage of the Nu River, which was considered to have stopped the Advance of the Japanese Army, and part of the Japanese troops who crossed the Nu River were also mostly wiped out by the forward troops of the Thirty-sixth Division. If the Thirty-sixth Division did not arrive in time, the Japanese army would cross the Gaoligong Mountain, climb over the mountain from the western Yunnan region, and enter the territory of Sichuan, and the southwest would be dangerous.
After the situation on the Burmese battlefield took a sharp turn for the worse, Du Yuming, in accordance with domestic orders, led the 200th Division and the newly formed Twenty-second Division to cross the deserted primeval forest and gradually retreated to northern Burma, preparing to return to China. The newly formed Thirty-eighth Division, after helping the Japanese army break the siege at the Battle of Ren'anqiang, followed the British army and directly retreated to India, in fact, after cutting off the British army. The new Twenty-second Division and Du Yuming were lost in the Savage Mountains, and the Central Military Commission ordered the new Thirty-eighth Division to send people to search for them, and only then did du Yuming and the remaining 2,000 people of the new Twenty-second Division be brought to India, and the 200Th Division went through many hardships before returning to China.
After the new Thirty-eighth Division and the new Twenty-second Division withdrew to India, they first arrived in Imphal, and later because the British felt that the Indian population here was too large, and they were afraid that the Nationalist army would incite the Indian locals to oppose the British, they converted the prison of Ramga into a military barracks, and sent the remaining Nationalist troops to Ramga for training, on the one hand, to continue to replenish troops from the country, on the other hand, to receive weapons aided by the United States, these two divisions were also organized into the new first army, and the commander was Zheng Dongguo. After that, three divisions of the Civil Engineering Department were successively airlifted from China and expanded into two corps, the New First Army and the New Sixth Army, which were the Troops stationed in India.
On the domestic side, on the basis of Song Xilian's Eleventh Group Army, the Second Army, the Eighth Army, the Fifty-third Army, the Fifty-fourth Army and other units were added, and they were reorganized into the Eleventh Group Army and the Twenty-fourth Army, with Chen Cheng concurrently serving as the commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Force. However, after Yichang was captured by the Japanese, Chen Cheng was urgently transferred back to Chongqing as the commander of the newly formed Sixth Theater, and the commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Force was replaced by Wei Lihuang, who commanded the subsequent counterattack in western Yunnan. The indian garrison began in the second half of 1943 and counterattacked one after another, and by early 1945, the Indian army and the expeditionary force eliminated the Japanese forces in northern Burma and western Yunnan, and reopened the Burmese traffic.
After the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, most of the troops of the Expeditionary Force system, except for a few units such as the Second Army and the Eighth Army, were transferred to the northeast to participate in the civil war. It was also for this reason that the Northeast Nationalist Army was initially commanded by Du Yuming, when Du Yuming was ill, it was commanded by Zheng Dongguo, and after Du Yuming was Chen Cheng, Chen Cheng was also changed to Wei Lihuang after he even lost the battle, and in fact, they were all people related to the expeditionary force and commanded the expeditionary force. This is also a routine operation in the national army, otherwise others will not be able to command.
The situation of the Fifth Army was an exception, after the 200th Division returned to China, it was restored and rebuilt, transferred to Kunming to garrison, after the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, transferred to East China and the Central Plains to participate in the civil war, and did not accompany Du Yuming to the Northeast Battlefield. In the Huaihai Campaign, the Nationalist army had the Fifth Army as the core main force, so it had to be commanded by Du Yuming, which was also the same reason, and others could not command it.