From May 13 to 16, 1947, in the Menglianggu MountainOus District southeast of Mengyin County, Linyi City, Shandong Province, Chen Yi and Su Yu commanded the East China Field Army to conduct a siege and annihilation battle against the 74th Division, the number one main force of the Nationalist Army. In order to annihilate this unit, Hua Ye used five columns, of which Ye Fei was the first column, Tao Yong was the fourth column, Wang Bicheng was the sixth column, Xu Shiyou's ninth column was the strongest unit in Huaye's offensive ability, and the heavy artillery of the Huaye Special Forces Column also participated in the battle.
After three days of bloody fighting, Huaye officers and soldiers finally annihilated all the integrated 74th Division, but Huaye also paid huge casualties, with casualties as high as 12,000. The Battle of Lunan, the Battle of Subei, and the Battle of Laiwu were all much greater than the results of this battle, but Hua Ye did not pay such huge casualties. However, the significance of this battle was extremely great, the 74th Division of the Nationalist Army was the number one main force of the Nationalist Army, and its combat effectiveness was extraordinary, and this battle greatly shocked other Kuomintang troops, so that other Nationalist troops no longer dared to go deep into the hinterland of the PLA base area alone.
Shortly after the Battle of Menglianggu, in early June 1947, the Prisoner Management Office of the Political Department of the East China Field Army received an order from the Field Command: "None of the prisoners of the reorganized 74th Division can be released, and strict control will not allow them to escape." This order startled the prisoners of the reorganized 74th Division at that time, and thought that they were going to kill them.
During the Liberation War, the PLA's favorite soldiers were peasants from poor backgrounds, because the peasant class composition was good, they could bear hardships, and they were brave in fighting, while the liberation fighters were after all influenced by the ideas of the Kuomintang and needed a certain amount of time for reform. Therefore, at that time, the policy of the People's Liberation Army on prisoners was that those who were willing to stay and join the People's Liberation Army joined the army on the spot, and those who did not want to stay sent them home for the road fees would not be forced, but why did they have to leave the prisoners of the reorganized 74th Division behind?
In the Battle of Menglianggu, HuaYe took 19,000 prisoners of the reorganized 74th Division. The prisoners of the reorganized 74th Division can be different from the prisoners of other units of the Kuomintang Army; there are many veterans of the division, their combat experience and combat attainment are generally better, many officers and men have fought all the way from the period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the individual soldiers are of good quality.
The combat effectiveness of the reorganized 74th Division can be said to have been fought during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the predecessor of this unit, the 74th Army of the National Revolutionary Army, was formed during the Battle of Songhu. In the melee of the Battle of Songhu and the Battle of Nanjing, this unit performed well and remained calm even in the process of retreating. In the Battle of De'an in 1938, the 58th Division of the 74th Army fought with 500 men left, and Zhang Lingfu, the commander of the 153rd Brigade of the 51st Division, led 400 commandos to zhanggushan, and Zhang Lingfu was wounded in many places and still did not retreat.
The 74th Army was able to gain its later prestige thanks to its second commander, Wang Yaowu. Although Wang Yaowu was born in the Huangpu Phase III, due to his outstanding military talent, he was promoted faster than many Huangpu Phase I generals. In 1941, during the Battle of Shanggao, the 74th Army fought from beginning to end, the Japanese 33rd Division was severely damaged, the 34th Division and the independent 20th Mixed Brigade suffered more than 70% casualties, and the commander of the Japanese 34th Division, Major General Iwanaga, was killed. In the Battle of Changde in 1943, the 57th Division of the 74th Army, under the leadership of Yu Chengwan, held Changde for 15 days and won two flying tiger flags in a row.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to deter the Japanese army, the 74th Army was airlifted to Nanjing by the US military. In 1946, the Nationalist government reorganized the national troops, and the 74th Army was reorganized into the 74th Division, with a total of 32,000 people and fully equipped with American weapons. At that time, the National Government also ranked all the troops according to the performance of the units in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and selected five units that performed best during the War of Resistance, namely the Reorganized 74th Division, the Reorganized 11th Division, the Fifth Army, the New First Army, and the New Sixth Army, of which the Reorganized 74th Division was at the head of each unit.
Although the reorganized 74th Division made outstanding military achievements during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, it acted as a thug of the Chiang family dynasty, engaged in white terror in Shandong, Jiangsu, and other places, and carried out wanton killings in the base areas where Hua Ye was located, destroying the people, and causing the people in East China to complain bitterly. This unit did cause great trouble to HuaYe, many of Huaye's generals wanted to eliminate this unit, and when it came to the Battle of Menglianggu, Huaye couldn't bear it anymore and finally concentrated his strength to eliminate it.
Most of the officers and men at the grass-roots level of the reorganized 74th Division also came from poor peasant families, so the transformation of the captured officers and men of the reorganized 74th Division was relatively smooth, and many officers and men of the reorganized 74th Division later joined the PLA, especially the more professional posts such as machine gunners and artillerymen, which provided our army with very valuable combat experience. Chen Shuyun, commander of the 57th Brigade of the reorganized 74th Division, later served as a member of the Nanjing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.