In December 1941, in order to support the British army against Japan and defend the rear area of southwest China, China formed an expeditionary force to go to Burma. This is the first time since the Sino-Japanese War that chinese troops have gone abroad to fight. The Sino-Burmese-Indian War lasted for 3 years and 3 months, and China invested a total of 400,000 troops and suffered nearly 200,000 casualties, making great achievements, but the cost was also very tragic. The reinforced division, which originally had more than 10,000 people, eventually returned to China with only more than 2,600 people left, with more than 75% casualties. The picture shows the expeditionary force that went to Burma to fight.
A large number of knowledgeable young people at home and abroad also joined the army enthusiastically under the call of Chiang Kai-shek's "one inch of mountains and rivers and one inch of blood, one hundred thousand young people and one hundred thousand troops," joined the ranks of the expeditionary force, and spilled the blood of youth in Burma. The picture shows an expeditionary force on the march.
The Chinese Expeditionary Force entered Burma for the first time and ended in defeat when the British lost their chains. After that, the Chinese Army in India was established, which was the most elite combat unit in China at that time, and made great achievements in counter-attacking northern Burma and cooperating with the Chinese Expeditionary Force to open up the Chinese and Indian roads. The picture shows Chiang Kai-shek inspecting the Lambga training camp.
On September 15, 1944, at The Yi Airport in Yunnan, China, soldiers of the 200th Division of the Elite 5th Army of the Chinese Army boarded the C-47 transport aircraft, their feet were rubber shoes, not the grass shoes of ordinary Chinese troops, because they represented the elite strength of the Chinese army, and wearing rubber shoes would look better in front of other Allied forces.
The picture shows a beautiful female nurse rarely seen in the expeditionary force.
On July 10, 1944, the Chinese Expeditionary Force under General Wei Lihuang was assembling on the Nu River front in southwest China. There, the Chinese army launched a general counter-offensive in western Yunnan to break through the Japanese blockade of the Burma Road. In this image, soldiers take their pet monkeys and put them on the back of mules and horses that are transporting weapons to the front line.
Pictured on July 15, 1944, in a rehabilitation camp somewhere along the Ledo Highway, General Stilwell takes off his hat and speaks to a group of Chinese veterans.
In January 1945, The Allied Commander, General Lewis A. Pick, met with General Sun Liren, commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, in India. Sun Liren once relied on the strength of a regiment to fight against enemies several times his own, won more with less, rescued the 1st Division of the British Burmese Army, which had been besieged for several days and was on the verge of extinction, sensationalized the British Isles, and buried alive 1,200 Japanese prisoners of the Japanese division that participated in the Nanjing Massacre that year, which shocked the world, and also made the Japanese Kou feel frightened, and was praised by Western military scientists as "Eastern Rommel".
The picture shows Chinese soldiers stationed on the Nu River front in southern Yunnan Province serving food from food buckets, which were sent to the forward position by logistics personnel. This was the forefront of the Great Counteroffensive campaign launched by the Chinese army in Western Yunnan.
In March 1945, Henry C. Dozier Jr, an American officer in Kunming, was lecturing military maps to Chinese officer cadets at the fifth branch of the CSKA Officer School (Whampoa Military Academy), while the U.S. and American forces were fighting in Burma and inflicting heavy damage on the Japanese.