When it comes to the 74th Army, everyone will always think of Zhang Lingfu, after all, the integrated 74th Division that was annihilated in the Battle of Menglianggu is too representative. In fact, the predecessor of the reorganized 74th Division was the 74th Army, which is also known as the Ace Army and is one of the five main forces of the Nationalist Army. Before Zhang Lingfu took office as the commander of the 74th Army, some people had long coveted this position, and he was Li Tianxia, who had served as the deputy commander of the 74th Army.
It is said that this Li Tianxia is also a small and famous figure, he has been in the 74 Army since the beginning of the founding of the 74 Army, and has had a deep affection for the 74 Army for many years, but later although he was promoted to the commander of the 100 Army, he always had the 74 Army in mind.
Li Tianxia had been looking forward to becoming the commander of the 74th Army, but who knew that halfway out of the way, a cheng had come out to bite the gold, and Zhang Lingfu had successfully become the commander of the 74th Army. This was a bit unexpected by Li Tianxia, after all, when Li Tianxia was the deputy commander of the 74th Army, Zhang Lingfu was only the commander of the 58th Division of the 74th Army, which belonged to Li Tianxia's subordinates, and now Zhang Lingfu became the commander of the 74th Army across Li Tianxia, which made Li Tianxia feel very unhappy.
After Zhang Lingfu took the throne, Li Tianxia did not deal with him at every turn, and the total destruction of the 74th Division in Meng Lianggu's reorganization in World War I was also closely related to Li Tianxia's lack of cooperation. Li Tianxia always felt that this was a personal grudge between himself and Zhang Lingfu, but he forgot the truth that Pi Zhi would not have hair, which made the reorganized 74th Division go to ruin.
Later, at the end of the Liberation War, Li Tianxia and his troops did not perform well in the Pingtan War, and although he escaped to Heaven, he was relieved of his military power not long after arriving in Taiwan. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek intended to use him as a negative teaching material and decided to put him to death to make an example.
After hearing about this, the Li family spent a lot of money in the middle, and finally Li Tianxia was able to retrieve a small life and commute the sentence to life imprisonment. Later, because of the petitions of He Yingqin and Jiang Dingwen, Li Tianxia was given two commutations, and was soon arranged by Chiang Kai-shek to be released from prison and make meritorious contributions. After Li Tianxia was arranged to continue her service in Kinmen, the soldiers in the army scorned his personality, and Li Tianxia, who was originally a senior officer, had no place to look at herself, and it did not take long to apply for retirement.
After retiring from the army, he tried to break new ground in the business world, but unfortunately it backfired, he did not have a business mind at all, and it was not long before he lost everything, so he began to cheat and deceive, so that in 1960 he was imprisoned again for fraud.
This imprisonment made Li Tianxia completely lose hope of a comeback, and his wife, who had not abandoned him for many years, also left him during this period. If it were not for the fact that the Taiwan side had a certain compensation for generals with military ranks, Li Tianxia would have almost starved to death after being released from prison.
I thought that the most despondent situation in my life would be like this, but he was diagnosed with uremia at this time, which was really worse. In 1967, this general, who had experienced countless swords and light sword shadows, finally died of illness at the age of 60 and was buried in Taiwan after his death.
Probably no one expected that a generation of famous anti-Japanese generals who had been in the battlefield would end up with such a desolate end. As the saying goes, if he had been able to wake up in time in the Liberation War and turn to the side of the people's hearts, maybe he would not have died elsewhere. However, there is no regret medicine in the world, and Li Tianxia understood this truth before she followed Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan.
Resources:
"From the "Ace of the War of Resistance" to the Ashes: Inspiration from the Rise and Fall of the Reorganized 74th Division of the Kuomintang to Us" By Sun Haidong