During the Republic of China period, among the many generals in the Kuomintang army, there was one member who was incompatible with other generals, and he was Huang Baitao. Although Huang Baitao was a Cantonese, in the early days he did not include the Whampoa Military Academy, but entered the Beiyang warlord Li Chun as a soldier, and later after Li Chun was defeated by Zhang Zongchang of the Feng clan, Huang Baitao's troops were absorbed by Zhang Zongchang.
In 1928, Huang Baitao's superior, Xu Yuanquan, commander of the Sixth Army, defected to Chiang Kai-shek, and Huang Baitao was appointed division commander by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek has a habit of employing people, either graduated from Huangpu, or graduated from the Japanese Army University, the Japanese Non-Commissioned Officer School, or he must be from Zhejiang, and Huang Baitao was neither born in the Huangpu department nor from Zhejiang, it can be said that he is a complete miscellaneous army general, and Chiang Kai-shek naturally does not trust him.
In accordance with Chiang Kai-shek's practice of relieving the generals of the Miscellaneous Armies of their military powers, he sent Huang Baitao to the third phase of the Army University to study, and after Huang Baitao had finished studying, he transferred Huang Baitao to the Central Military Commission as a lieutenant general and senior staff member, without any real power. But gold always shines, and a military paper published by Huang Baitao was noticed by He Yingqin. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Huang Baitao was recommended by He Yingqin to be the chief of staff of the Third Theater, and Gu Zhutong, commander of the Third Theater, later slowly recognized his ability.
In 1944, Gu Zhutong put Huang Baitao as the commander of the 25th Army, which was a miscellaneous unit, and the three divisions were from the Northeast Army, the Sichuan Army, and the Central Army. However, after Huang Baitao arrived in the 25th Army, he was quickly recognized by the officers and men of the 25th Army, and he and the officers and men at the bottom of the 25th Army ate and lived together, severely punishing the generals who ate empty salaries.
After the end of the War of Resistance, the 25th Army was reorganized into the 25th Division, and Huang Baitao was appointed as the commander of the reorganized 25th Division, which had been equipped with Japanese weapons until the Liaoshen Campaign in 1948. Huang Baitao was very grateful to Chiang Kai-shek for his weight, and he knew that it was not easy to climb from a general of the Miscellaneous Army to this point, so he would charge forward at every battle, and would not save his strength at all. At the end of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the generals at all levels of the Kuomintang army were desperately busy collecting money and doing business, but Huang Baitao did not even participate in the dance party and concentrated on training troops.
At the time of the Battle of Menglianggu, the three units of the reorganized 25th Division, the reorganized 74th Division, and the reorganized 83rd Division were very close together and were incorporated into a column; of these three units, the other two were all central army units, and they were all American armaments, only Huang Baitao's reorganized 25th Division was Japanese armament, but only the reorganized 25th Division was desperately reinforced, and Li Tianxia, commander of the reorganized 83rd Division, only symbolically sent a regiment to support.
In the Battle of Nanma in 1947, Su Yu led four columns of Huaye to besiege hu lian's reorganized 11th division, one of the five main forces, and it was also Huang Baitao who desperately reinforced, resulting in heavy losses in Huaye and did not annihilate the reorganized 11th division. In the 1948 Battle of Eastern Henan, Huang Baitao disregarded his own danger and desperately reinforced the District Shounian Regiment, and after his own troops were surrounded, Huang Baitao personally drove a tank to charge and stabilize the position. In the end, the whole army shrank in more than a dozen villages within ten miles of Diqiudian, there was no water source, tens of thousands of people could only drink muddy water, and there was a serious shortage of food and medicine, Huang Baitao had to resist Hua Ye's attack and waited for the arrival of reinforcements.
Before the Battle of Huaihai, Huang Baitao was appointed commander of the Seventh Corps, under the command of the 25th Army, the 63rd Army, the 64th Army, the 100th Army, and later the 44th Army was also included in the Seventh Corps. Chiang Kai-shek's weight made Huang Baitao even more grateful to him.
On November 4, 1948, Su Yu commanded 16 columns of the East China Field Army, 400,000 men and horses, to carry out a central breakthrough on the Xuhai section of the Longhai Railway, and rushed forward separately to attack Xin'an Town, where Huang Baitao's corps was located. At that time, Huang Baitao also tried to go directly to Huaye and prepared to lead the troops to evacuate, but because the commander-in-chief of Xuzhou, Liu Zhi, ordered the 44th Army stationed in Haizhou to help transport salt for himself, the plan for Huang Baitao's corps to retreat was delayed.
On November 8, Zhang Kexia (an underground party member), deputy commander of the Third Appeasement District of the Kuomintang Army, and He Jifeng (an underground party member) led a regiment of 23,000 officers and men of the 38th Division, the 180th Division, the 132nd Division, and the 37th Division under the jurisdiction of the 59th Army, the 77th Army, and a regiment of the 37th Division to revolt on the front line of the canal, so that the Shandong Corps of the East China Field Army penetrated through the defensive line directly into the Suyangshan and Bayiji lines of the East Longhai Line, and surrounded the Seventh Corps of Nianzhuang.
Chen Zhang, commander of the 63rd Army, who was covering the flank of the corps, was arrogant and was stopped by Huaye Yizhong, who at that time was recuperating in the rear, and Zhang Yixiang, deputy commander of the first column and chief of staff of the first column in charge of the command team, assured Su Yu that one column of the 1st column would be responsible for solving the 63rd Army alone, and as a result, the first column took only one day to eat the 63rd Army one-on-one, and Chen Zhang, the commander of the 63rd Army, was killed.
The leak of the house coincided with continuous rain overnight, and at this time, Li Mi's 13th Corps, which was serving as a cover for the rear of Huang Baitao's corps, hurriedly withdrew to Xuzhou, and Huang Baitao begged Li Mi not to withdraw, but Li Mi did not agree. In the end, Li Mi withdrew, Huang Baitao's flank was completely exposed, and the People's Liberation Army swung southward, cutting off the Longhai line.
On November 11, Hua Ye completely completed the encirclement of Huang Baitao's corps, Su Yu was preparing to completely annihilate Huang Baitao's corps in five days, and after the troops completed the encirclement, he quickly ordered the second column, the fourth column, the sixth column, the eighth column, the ninth column, and the thirteenth column to encircle and annihilate The Huang Baitao corps with the cooperation of the artillery units of the special column. But Hua Ye fought all night and made no progress.
In the first three days, Hua Ye even used the tank troops he had captured earlier, but only a few villages were captured, and the progress of the troops was very slow. On the 14th, Huaye had to redeploy, and finally decided to establish an attack group, with Tan Zhenlin, deputy political commissar of Huaye and political commissar of the Shandong Corps, and Wang Jian'an, deputy commander of the Shandong Corps, under the unified command of the battle to encircle and annihilate Huang Baitao's corps.
When the Ninth Column of Huaye was attacking the south side of The Mill Village, there was a water trench, and the Kuomintang army concentrated dozens of machine guns at a distance of less than 100 meters, blocking the small bridge on the trench with intensive firepower. In the end, it was Nie Fengzhi, commander of the Ninth Column, who went to the front line to investigate and concentrated a large number of heavy weapons before breaking through the resistance of the Kuomintang army.
The Battle of Nianzhuang was fought until the 22nd, and Huang Baitao led the remnants to break through, which took 11 days, which was twice as long as the pre-planned time. Huang Baitao was wounded in the process of the breakthrough, did not want to be captured, shot himself, and the body was buried by Yang Tingyan, deputy commander of the 25th Army, and a Huaye officer and soldier, who then fled the battlefield.
In the Battle of Nianzhuang, the Seventh Corps of the Kuomintang Army suffered 60,000 casualties, and HuaYe also paid a tragic price of 60,000 casualties, with a casualty ratio of nearly one to one, which was very rare during the Liberation War. In the Battle of Shuangduiji, facing the 12th Corps of Huang Wei, the number one elite regiment of the Kuomintang army, Nakano Huaye also paid the price of 30,000 casualties. Later, in the Battle of Chen Guanzhuang, Hua Ye surrounded and annihilated three regiments of the Kuomintang army, but only suffered 60,000 or 70,000 casualties.