In the recent hit TV series "Armageddon", a "special" unit is mentioned - "Zhao Zilong Division".
In the Battle of Tashan, the "Zhao Zilong Division" launched wave after wave of group charges against the Tashan positions where our army was stationed with a rare spirit of risking death, and the scene was extremely spectacular and tragic.
Seeing this, we can't help but ask: What kind of unit is this "Zhao Zilong Division"? What is its history and combat experience? Is it an "ace" unit in the national army?
The author consulted a lot of information for this reason, and finally clarified the past and present lives of this "Zhao Zilong Master", and if there is something inappropriate, I hope that readers will criticize and correct it.
Zhao Zilong Division, which began with Ma Hongkui's "Anning Army"
The "Zhao Zilong Division" we call the "Independent Ninety-fifth Division" of the Kuomintang Army, was established directly related to the Ningxia warlord Ma Hongkui.
During the Republic of China period, Ma Hongkui had a private army called the "Anning Army" in his hands. However, this army was not created by him, but from his grandfather 'Ma Qianling'.
During the anti-Qing uprising during the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, Ma Qianling advised Ma Zhan'ao and was one of the leaders of the Hui uprising in Hezhou.
However, Ma Qianling did not go farther and farther on the road of anti-Qing, but led his troops to surrender to the Qing court on the way of the uprising, becoming the vanguard of the suppression of the rebel army. And he himself also became an official of the imperial court, and his private army became the regular army of the country.
Since its inception, Ma Qianling's private army has experienced more than a hundred battles, large and small battles, coupled with the influence of Ma Qianling's family power and religious beliefs, so that its combat effectiveness has been greatly improved.
In 1900, Ma Qianling's son Ma Fuxiang led this army in Beijing to participate in the fight against the Eight-Power Alliance.
Because of his bravery in battle, and also served as an important task to escort Empress Dowager Cixi, the Guangxu Emperor and others to the west, he was commended by the imperial family, and the following year he was awarded the post of deputy general of the Gansu Jingyuan Association.
During the Republic of China period, Ma Hongkui officially took over this army from his father.
It was also thanks to this army that Ma Hongkui was able to straddle the various political forces of the Republic of China, thus firmly controlling the "hereditary land" of his family.
However, in 1926, the domestic situation suddenly changed dramatically!
Figure | Ma Hongkui
From the "Tranquility Army" to the Ninety-fifth Division
In July 9, 1926, the revolutionary government in Guangzhou formed the National Revolutionary Army, with a total of more than 100,000 people in 8 armies, officially kicking off the prelude to the "Northern Expedition War".
After the Northern Expedition began, the National Revolutionary Army was unstoppable and unstoppable, and the Beiyang warlords were defeated.
On September 17 of the same year, Feng Yuxiang swore an oath at Suiyuan Wuyuan and announced that the troops would be reorganized into the National Coalition Army, and Feng Yuxiang would make himself commander-in-chief.
Subsequently, Feng Yuxiang led his troops through Ningxia into Gansu and Shaanxi, and then left Tongguan in the east to join the Northern Expeditionary Army in the south.
Under strong military pressure, Ma Hongkui had no choice but to submit to Feng Yuxiang and was appointed commander of the Fourth Route Army and commander of the Seventh Division of the Nationalist Coalition Army, and soon after concurrently served as the commander of the Xi'an Garrison.
Subsequently, Ma Hongkui led his troops to leave Ningxia and marched east all the way out of Tongguan to attack Shandong.
After the defeat of the Zhilu coalition army, Ma Hongkui's troops captured a large amount of weapons and equipment, and their troops were once again expanded and armed.
In June 1927, Feng Yuxiang's Nationalist Army was reorganized into the Kuomintang Second Army, with Ma Hongkui as the commander-in-chief of the Fourth Route Army and the commander of the Fourth Army. The following year, the Fourth Army was downsized to the Seventeenth Division.
Figure | Feng Yuxiang
"There are no eternal enemies, no eternal friends, only eternal interests", this sentence was vividly reflected in the warlord forces in the Republic of China period, and Ma Hongkui was naturally one of them.
In May 1929, Ma Hongkui, co-opted by Han Fuqu and Shi Yousan, jointly telegraphed "anti-Feng Yongjiang" in Luoyang.
When Chiang Kai-shek heard this, he was very happy, and immediately replied to the commendation, and expanded Ma Hongkui's Seventeenth Division into the Eleventh Army of the Rebel Army, with Ma Hongkui as the commander of the army and concurrently as the commander of the Sixty-fourth Division and the commander of the Zhengzhou garrison.
In addition, Chiang Kai-shek also specially ordered that Ma Hongkui be paid more than 300,000 silver dollars and thousands of guns.
After the Battle of the Central Plains began, Ma Hongkui was promoted to commander-in-chief of the 15th Route Army of the Rebel Army, assisting Chiang Kai-shek in fighting against his former boss Feng Yuxiang.
Figure | Feng Yuxiang, Chiang Kai-shek, Yan Xishan
During the battle, Ma Hongkui's troops fought bravely, dared to fight, and showed extremely tenacious combat effectiveness, which was deeply appreciated by Chiang Kai-shek.
After the war, Ma Hongkui continued to serve as the commander-in-chief of the 15th Route Army, but his troops were reduced to the 35th Division of the National Revolutionary Army, with 3 brigades, 9 regiments, and a standard "A division" with nearly 20,000 soldiers, and was ordered to garrison Xinyang, Henan.
Later, Chiang Kai-shek, because he "cared about the generals in the northwest", specially appointed Ma Hongkui as the chairman of Ningxia Province, but only allowed him to return to Ningxia with five regiments, leaving Ma Tengjiao, commander of the Thirty-fifth Division, to lead the remaining four regiments to continue to garrison Xinyang.
However, shortly after Ma Hongkui returned to Ningxia, Ma Tengjiao was also transferred back to Ningxia by Chiang Kai-shek, and the four regiments stationed in Xinyang were handed over to Liu Zhi, then chairman of the Henan provincial government and director of the Appeasement Office.
Chiang Kai-shek wanted to do this for two reasons: first, to weaken Ma Hongkui's forces; second, because he liked the combat effectiveness of this unit.
Figure | Ma Hongkui wielded a large knife
After Liu Zhi took over these four regiments, his name was not the original Thirty-fifth Division, but was changed to the first column of the "Suppression of Bandits" Army, and Tang Junde was appointed as the commander of the column.
In the autumn of 1934, Liu Zhi transferred four regiments of the First Column to Kaifeng, and combined the First Column with the newly formed 46th Brigade to form the Army's Ninety-fifth Division.
From this time on, the name of the "Ninety-fifth Division" officially appeared in the sequence of the Kuomintang army.
The commander of the Ninety-fifth Division was Tang Junde, the commander of the original First Column, and the whole division had 2 brigades and 4 regiments under its jurisdiction.
However, according to the establishment of the Kuomintang army at that time, the Ninety-fifth Division was only the establishment of the "B Division".
Although the department was reorganized, the force was still dominated by the four regiments of the former Ma Hongkui.
After reorganization, the division was transferred to the pinghan longhai railway intersection area, serving as a road escort between Shangqiu and Tongguan and Xinyang to Anyang.
Figure | Liu Zhi
The "Luo Chitose" clan troops
In 1935, Li Tiejun, a graduate of the first phase of Whampoa, was ordered to serve as the second commander of the 95th Division.
Later, after Li Tiejun was promoted to commander, the Ninety-fifth Division was succeeded by Roach as the third division commander of the division.
Roach served as the division commander for six years, which had a very great impact on the construction and style of the division.
People who have watched the TV series "Armageddon" should be familiar with this person! Roach was proud and complacent, and after taking over the Ninety-fifth Division, he was determined to forge a unit of his own.
But this forging is not for the sake of the country and the people, but for his own selfish interests, because he wants to use it as his political capital.
To this end, Roach devoted great efforts to the Ninety-fifth Division, and he personally did many things in the unit, such as the deployment of officers, the daily training of troops, and so on.
However, Roach's management of the army stayed in the warlord period, treating soldiers who made mistakes at every turn by kneeling and beating military sticks; while treating those who had meritorious service was immediately promoted to knighthood and rewarded with money.
Gradually, the officers and men of the whole division developed the habit of absolute obedience to the commander, and Roach also became the "Luo Chitose" in the Ninety-fifth Division.
Figure | Roach (stills)
The Ninety-fifth Division during the War of Resistance
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, the 95th Division was transferred to Zhengzhou to serve as a garrison on both sides of the Yellow River.
At that time, the former division commander Li Tiejun was leading the First Army to fight against the Japanese in the Songhu Battlefield in Shanghai, and Li Tiejun was well aware of the combat effectiveness of the Ninety-fifth Division, so he applied to Chiang Kai-shek to transfer three whole battalions from the division to the First Army to cooperate in the operation.
After the Songhu War, the 95th Division sent more than 1,000 officers and men from these two whole battalions, all of whom were martyred heroically.
At the beginning of the following year, the division was ordered to cross the Yellow River and enter northern Henan to carry out guerrilla warfare, and then participated in the operations on the outskirts of Xuzhou.
After the outbreak of the Battle of Wuhan, the 95th Division began to enter the anti-Japanese battlefield as a regular unit of the Kuomintang army.
Initially, the Ninety-fifth Division was subordinate to Li Xianzhou's Ninety-second Army, and later to Chen Pei's Thirty-seventh Army, and participated in three battles of Changsha and the Battle of Changheng.
In the fight against the Japanese army, the officers and men of the Ninety-fifth Division have been greatly trained, and their combat effectiveness has also been greatly improved compared with before.
Especially in the Second Battle of Changsha, the 95th Division fought a fierce battle with the Japanese army on the line from the mouth of Dongting Lake to the town of Hengtian, killing a large number of Japanese troops at the cost of nearly 1,000 casualties.
To this end, the Xiangyin County Government of Hunan Province of the Kuomintang once established a "Monument to the Sacrifice of the National Hero of the Anti-Japanese War for the Country" in Hengtian Town to commemorate the soldiers of the 95th Division who died for the country.
After the battle, the Ninety-fifth Division was transferred to the second line and was responsible for defending the Jinjing Defense Line in the new city of MiluoHe.
In the Third Battle of Changsha, Roach led his troops to carry out pursuit operations, beating the retreating Japanese troops to lose their armor and capture countless.
After the war, Roach was also promoted to commander of the Thirty-seventh Army of the Army because of his command, and the Ninety-fifth Division was succeeded by He Xuchu.
Due to years of combat attrition and repeated replenishment of troops, there were very few northwestern soldiers in the Ninety-fifth Division, and its soldiers were mainly young and middle-aged people recruited from Hunan and Hubei.
All the officers at all levels of the division were replaced by graduates from all walks of life of the Whampoa Military Academy, and most of the senior officers were Roach's cronies or fellow villagers.
It can be seen from this that at this time, the Ninety-fifth Division has been basically transformed into a centralized concubine unit.
However, despite this, the combat tradition of daring to fight and fighting in the troops has not changed.
In 1945, after Luo Qi, commander of the Thirty-seventh Army, was ordered to be transferred to the Nanning Officers' Training Corps, the 95th Division was assigned to Huang Tao's Sixty-second Army, with Duan Hu, a graduate of the Huangpu Ivy, as the division commander.
Figure | Duan Hu
A few months later, Huang Tao led the Sixty-second Army to the Sino-Vietnamese border town of Nanguan to confront the Japanese.
At the same time, the Chinese High Command is already making active preparations for the great strategic counteroffensive, and is preparing to transfer fifteen armies with strong combat effectiveness in the Kuomintang army to form four fronts to take on the task of strategic counteroffensive.
The Ninety-fifth Division was part of the Second Front Combat Series.
After Japan's defeat and surrender, the 95th Division was ordered to enter Vietnam and serve as a garrison in the Hanoi area, and then sailed to North China.
At the beginning of 1946, due to the reorganization of the army by the Kuomintang government according to the us military establishment, the Ninety-fifth Division was downsized to the reorganized Ninety-fifth Brigade, and the following year it was restored to four regiments.
The "Sorrow" of the Ninety-fifth Division
Looking at the sequence and evolution of the Ninety-fifth Division and its performance in the War of Resistance Against Japan, it is not difficult for us to see that although the unit participated in many battles and made many meritorious achievements, it was generally only a "second-rate" combat unit in the Kuomintang Central Committee's lineage, and it was not called an "ace" unit.
Not only that, until the end of the War of Resistance, the Ninety-fifth Division did not belong to one of the so-called "five main forces" with the strongest combat effectiveness in the Kuomintang army, let alone squeezed into the ranks of the first thirteen armies equipped with beautifications.
It is worth mentioning that Luo Qi, Du Yuming, Song Xilian and others are all graduates of the first phase of Huangpu, and they all established their own basic troops in the mid-to-late thirties, but the outcome of the 3 people is very different.
Du Yuming's 200th Division was soon expanded into the Fifth Army, which in turn was reorganized into the Fifth Army.
Song Xilian's Thirty-sixth Division was also rapidly expanded into the Seventy-first Army, which in turn was expanded into the Eleventh Army.
Even their apprentice Wang Yaowu, who commanded the Fifty-first Division, was expanded into the Seventy-fourth Army, later promoted to commander of the Twenty-fourth Army, and later commander-in-chief of the Fourth Front in the strategic counteroffensive.
In contrast, Roach and his Ninety-fifth Division were much inferior, and after eight years of war of resistance, the division was still a division, and nothing was changed except for the replacement of personnel.
Even when Roach became the commander of the Thirty-seventh Army, he never ate the three divisions under his command, but in 1944 he was relieved of the actual power of the commander and transferred to Nanning as a teaching captain.
Of course, there are still many reasons for this result, and in the final analysis, there are two main points: First, Roach himself does not have the quality of high-level military personnel; second, the performance of the Ninety-fifth Division in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression has not yet reached the combat level of the main "ace" force of the Kuomintang army.
But then again, the Ninety-fifth Division had Roach as its backstage, and the average person couldn't eat this unit in one bite.
It should be known that the division has always regarded itself as a stubborn and arduous traditional style, and during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, it has even moved to various places, and although its merits are not conspicuous, they are not bad, and this makes the officers and men of the whole division quite proud.
Especially after many battles with the North China People's Liberation Army, he even called himself the so-called "Zhao Zilong Division".
The origin of the name "Zhao ZilongShi"
After the Ninety-fifth Division was ordered to advance into North China, it fought many battles with the North China People's Liberation Army in Xushui County, Gucheng Town, and other places in Hebei Province.
However, because the situation in north China at that time was strong and we were weak, our army rarely launched a strong defensive and strong attack on the enemy, so the Ninety-fifth Division basically did not suffer any major losses in actual combat, but who knows, this has become their capital to show off.
They were unashamed to say that they had not "lost a machine gun" in North China, and they also called themselves "Zhao Zilong's Division", which had the intention of Zhao Zilong single-handedly entering and exiting the Cao Army camp seven times without being injured.
In fact, the title of "Zhao ZilongShi" was not issued by the National Government, so it is rarely recorded in many historical materials.
The appearance of this title should be during the Liberation War, because in the War of Resistance Against Japan, the performance of the Ninety-fifth Division was hardly worthy of this title.
In 1948, the Ninety-fifth Division officially broke away from the combat sequence of the Sixty-second Army and was directly commanded by the North China "Suppression General", and was renamed the "Independent Ninety-fifth Division" at the same time.
Liaoshen Campaign: The End of Zhao Zilong's Division
In September 1948, the Liaoshen Campaign, one of the famous "three major battles" in the history of the Liberation War, was officially launched!
In October of the same year, the main force of Dongye formed a siege against the Nationalist troops stationed in Jinzhou.
To this end, Chiang Kai-shek dispatched the "EastWard Advance Corps" commanded by Hou Jingru and the "WestWard Advance Corps" led by Liao Yaoxiang to try to rush to the aid of Jinzhou from the east and west to defend the enemy.
In order to ensure that the main force of Dongye captured Jinzhou, The Fourth Column of Dongye was ordered to enter Tashan to block Liao Yaoxiang's eastward advance.
At that time, the independent Ninety-fifth Division was also in the order of the Eastward Advance Corps.
At this time, Luo Qi had just been promoted to lieutenant general by the National Government in Nanjing, and was also awarded the title of "Presidential North China Field Inspector" by Chiang Kai-shek, who was mainly responsible for the war in North China, so he followed the East Advance Corps to supervise the war. This scene is well reflected in the TV series "Armageddon".
After arriving at the Tashan front, Roach thought that the troops had not captured Tashan for so long, which was simply the incompetence of the commander.
Therefore, in order to show his "genius" command ability, he immediately summoned all the officers of the independent Ninety-fifth Division as the head of the teacher, asked them to continue the fine style of hard work, and took out a large number of gold coupons to organize a death squad and prepare to take Tashan in one fell swoop.
So, did it turn out as he wished?
On October 13, on the Tashan front, all the officers and men of the Independent Ninety-fifth Division, after mobilizing for battle, shouted that "there is no position that the Ninety-fifth Division cannot capture", and immediately raised their submachine guns and launched a group charge of the whole regiment and battalion.
The officers and men of the Ninety-fifth Division were still very good in terms of their will to fight alone, but in fact, this kind of group charge was very stupid at that time, and they could get nothing but increase casualties.
It should be known that in the later stage of the Liberation War, the equipment of the main forces of the Nationalists and communists has undergone tremendous changes, even if the artillery is not used for attack, the dense fire blockade of the infantry alone can easily withstand the charge of the group composed of pure infantry.
What's more, the Ninety-fifth Division at that time did not have any superiority in strength, and the opponent was a four-column with one of the "five tigers" of Dongye.
So the outcome of the battle can be imagined!
The group charge of the Ninety-fifth Division not only failed to take half an inch of tashan position, but also suffered two-thirds of its troops, and finally only formed two whole battalions and withdrew to north China, where it was garrisoned in the area of Tanggu, Tianjin.
At the end of November of the same year, after the Start of the Pingjin Campaign, most of the independent Ninety-fifth Division fled to Shanghai, continuing to use the name of the "Ninety-fifth Division", and was later incorporated into the Seventy-fifth Army, mainly responsible for garrisoning shanghai airfields. Finally, the Ninety-fifth Division went to Taiwan!
In summary, it is a simple overview of "Zhao ZilongShi"!
Through the analysis of the historical evolution and combat experience of this unit, it is not difficult for us to see that it is only a "second-rate" unit in the Kuomintang Central Committee's consort, and as for the title of "Zhao Zilong Division," it is only a self-proclaimed gimmick.
Of course, in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, this unit also made many meritorious achievements. In addition, the officers and men of the division are also very tenacious in their will to fight, but in the face of our powerful People's Liberation Army, none of this seems worth mentioning.