Battle of the Hundred Regiments
In the early period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Eighth Route Army, as the main force of the War of Resistance, fought thousands of battles with the Japanese army, large and small, but in these battles, the Battle of the Hundred Regiments was definitely the most inspiring. It not only dealt a blow to the arrogance of the Japanese army, but also greatly enhanced the enthusiasm of the mainland military and civilians for the war of resistance. Of course, the reason why this war is called the Battle of the Hundred Regiments is mainly because our army has invested up to 105 regiments.
To this day, many people still have the greatest admiration for this Hundred Regiments War more than eighty years ago, which can't help but make people wonder, according to the special organization at that time, how many people were in a regiment of the Eighth Route Army? Do you know how much the Eighth Route Army's troop establishment is?
Red Army reorganization
In fact, the emergence of the Eighth Route Army was mainly due to the fact that after the Japanese army launched a nationwide invasion of China, our army reorganized the earlier Red Army into the Eighth Route Army in order to facilitate the deployment on the battlefield. At that time, the strength of the troops was even more pitiful, and in the organization of the Eighth Route Army, there were only three divisions in total.
Two-two system
They were the 115th, 120th and 129th Divisions, in addition to a special headquarters special regiment. Moreover, in order to restrict the development of our army's armed forces, Chiang Kai-shek only gave our army 3 divisions and a C division, that is, adopted the "two-two system", with an average of 2 brigades under each division, and 2 regiments under each brigade.
In the case of initial reorganization, the number of each division ranged from 130,000 to 15,000 people, but because the divisional formation also had direct battalions such as cavalry battalions and artillery battalions, the number of a regiment was about two or three thousand. However, relatively speaking, these people are all the elite of our army in the early days.
The Eighth Route Army continued to grow
However, with the passage of time, our army has won the hearts and minds of the people, and it is precisely because of this that the Eighth Route Army has grown rapidly, and in just a few years, the strength of our army has increased by almost ten times. Against this background, the original establishment was obviously insufficient, so our army underwent an adaptation.
A and B brigades
Our army has divided the brigade level into two types: the A brigade and the B brigade, of which the A brigade adopts the three-regiment system, while the B brigade continues the two-regiment system. However, there is not much difference in the strength of the regimental level, basically maintaining about two or three thousand, while below the regimental level, the battalion, company, platoon, and squad structure are still adopted.
Special preparation
The only difference is that our army has specially adapted a special organization called "small regiment" for the sake of combat needs. Its subordinates abolished the battalion-level establishment and directly managed five companies by one regiment, but these companies were all additional companies, so the number of a small regiment was about 700 people.
The reason why such a small regiment appeared was actually that there was a certain difference between the establishment of our army and the Japanese army, and although the brigade of the Japanese army at that time was equivalent to the formation of our regiment, the number of the other side was much smaller than that of us. It is precisely in this way that in order to avoid the waste of resources, our army has formed a small regiment to compete with it.
During the Period of the Hundred Regiments War, the total strength of our army was almost 400,000 people, and the average number of people per regiment was about 2,000 people, which was not much different from the previous organization of our army. However, due to the existence of small groups in it, there is no accurate answer to the specific number of people in each group.