In May 1988, Sun Liren, a famous anti-Japanese general, finally lifted his 33-year-long house arrest and walked out of his taichung apartment. However, less than two years after his return to freedom, he died of illness at his apartment in the West District of Taichung City.
Sun Liren was a famous anti-Japanese general with outstanding merits, made countless meritorious contributions, and also won the Medal of Honor of China, Britain and the United States, so why was he ordered by Chiang Kai-shek to be imprisoned for 33 years in middle age?
The birth of a famous player
Sun Liren's father, Sun Xize, was a man of the late Qing Dynasty, and sun Liren was clever and clever since childhood. At the age of 9, Sun Xize was appointed as the prefect of Dengzhou Prefecture in Shandong Province, so his family moved to Qingdao City, Shandong Province. At that time, Qingdao was still a sphere of influence forcibly leased by Germany, and many Germans lived here.
Once, sun Liren was picking up stones to play on the coast of Qingdao, and several German naughty boys ran over and not only snatched Sun Liren's stones, but also slapped him twice and opened his mouth to insult. As a Chinese, Sun Liren felt humiliated in his own land and was determined to "join the army" in the future.
At the age of 12, Sun Liren followed his parents to Beiping to study;
At the age of 14, he passed the Preparatory Class for Compensation of Tsinghua Gengzi in the United States with the first place in Anhui Province;
At the age of 23, he successfully graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering of Tsinghua University;
Endless learning, based on his outstanding performance in Tsinghua Garden, Sun Liren after graduation was given the opportunity to study abroad at official expenses. In 1923, Sun Liren came to Purdue University in the United States to continue his studies in civil engineering.
Resolutely joined the army
Originally, Sun Liren could make a big splash in the construction industry, but in the process of studying abroad, he witnessed the gap between China and Western countries in terms of modern military, and Sun Liren believed that "no matter how good the construction is, it cannot withstand the bombardment of advanced Western weapons." So he gave up the glamorous position of design draftsman and began to receive Western military education.
After returning from school, he first served as a lieutenant military training team leader at the Kuomintang Central Party Affairs School, and then obeyed the deployment and became the head of the Special Corps of the Taxation Police of the Ministry of Finance. Sun Liren, who had drunk foreign ink, was very comfortable with imported weapons, and was favored by Song Ziwen, the "Song family", and was hired as a training instructor.
On July 7, 1937, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out, and Sun Liren also began his most glorious life.
He strategized thousands of miles and repeatedly defeated strong enemies. In the Battle of Songhu, Sun Liren led the Special Corps of Tax police to repel the Japanese army that forcibly crossed the Suzhou River seven times. In March 1942, he was ordered to lead the new 38th Division to attack the Japanese 18th Division, known as the "King of Jungle Warfare", and defeated the enemy invincibility, and was called "God of War" by the Japanese army;
He was tenacious in his will, and was attacked by mortar shells during the Battle of Songhu, suffering thirteen wounds, but still insisted on resisting the enemy. After the Chinese Expeditionary Force entered Burma in 1942, it repelled several times the enemy with a regiment of less than 1,000 troops, and was awarded the Medal of Honor of the Three Countries of China, the United States and the United Kingdom;
He was not foolish and loyal, did not blindly listen to the opinions of his superiors, refused to cross the tropical jungle Savage Mountain with his superiors Du Yuming, and made a miraculous achievement with his wit. And such a straight personality also laid hidden dangers for him to be imprisoned later.
Both Shengyu and He Shengliang
Sun Liren's discord with his superior, Du Yuming, dates back to the first Sino-Burmese-Indian war in 1942. At that time, the Chinese Expeditionary Force had already won the Battle of Ren'anqiang, but the British army as a battlefield Allied army was too far apart, and the Allies had to make the decision to retreat. There are two retreat routes:
The first: over the tropical jungle of Savage Mountain in northern Myanmar, and make a big detour to the country;
The second: retreat in the direction of British India;
Du Yuming, deputy commander of the First Route Army of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, kept in mind Chiang Kai-shek's order that "no one should enter India unless he was ordered" and insisted on retreating north through the tropical jungle of Savage Mountain to Yunnan. Sun Liren, then commander of the newly formed 38th Division, decided to follow the advice of General Stilwell, then chief of staff of the Chinese Theater of Operations, and withdraw to British India.
Savage Mountain is an undeveloped primeval forest, which belongs to the miasma area, which stretches for thousands of miles, and the forest is full of mosquitoes and flies dancing ants. Du Yuming, who was walking on this road, was exhausted, and finally could only rely on stretchers to barely move forward, and when he could finally contact Chiang Kai-shek, half of the troops had already been buried in the Savage Mountain, and when he learned that his subordinates would be so tortured, Chiang Kai-shek finally agreed to let his army go to India.
Du Yuming used the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers to prove his loyalty to Chiang Kai-shek, but in the end he went to India. This incident buried the foreshadowing of Sun Liren everywhere after he was buried.
Loss of trust
In March 1946, the New First Army entered the northeast to participate in the Kuomintang Civil War, and the knots planted by the two in Burma expanded and fermented. Du Yuming believed that Sun Liren was unruly, and Sun Liren believed that Du Yuming had selfish intentions, and the benefits were all given to Liao Yaoxiang, the commander of the New Sixth Army, who was also from the Huangpu clan.
Considering that the deteriorating relationship between the two was difficult to repair, Chiang Kai-shek first transferred Sun Liren out of the northeast, and then in November 1947, he was transferred to Taiwan Province, where he served as acting commander-in-chief of the army and concurrently as the commander-in-chief of army training in charge of the training of the nationalist army.
At this point, Sun Liren could never return to the battlefield where his blood was spilled.
Despite this, Sun Liren was not discouraged. Excellent people always change their situation and take advantage of their own advantages to the extreme. In terms of discipline and appearance, Sun Liren asked to train a team that was reborn from the fire; In terms of shooting techniques and physical training, General Sun fully inherited the efficiency of training a new army in Ramga, India.
From September 1948 to January 1949, the People's Liberation Army carried out three major battles, basically annihilating the main force of the Kuomintang army, the Kuomintang was in turmoil, Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling had no hope of turning to the United States for help, and they had no choice but to go to the field on January 21, 1949.
When he resumed his visit in Taiwan Province on March 1, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek, who was suspicious, began to exclude dissidents. At this time, Sun Liren, who was not a Huangpu concubine and held the national army of Taiwan Province, bore the brunt of it.
He was discredited
There are many subordinates who have drunk foreign ink, but Sun Liren's style of doing things is also Western, unlike Du Yuming, even if he knows that the "Savage Mountain" is full of difficulties, he must show loyalty. In addition, he was committed to advocating the "nationalization of the army", which was much in line with the political work system that Chiang Ching-kuo later promoted in the military.
Therefore, Chiang Kai-shek first rose to prominence and made him a military commander in the Presidential Office with no actual military power. After that, he seized the opportunity to use the "Guo Tingliang bandit spy case" to put Sun Liren on a false accusation.
When confronted with the investigation committee headed by Chen Cheng, Sun Liren excitedly unbuttoned his shirt and defended himself by revealing the scars left on the battlefield:
"My Sun Liren has led soldiers to fight all his life, and he knows a little about etiquette, can the princes here believe that I am stupid to this point?"
At this point, however, any explanation is pale. "Wood shows in the forest, the wind will destroy it", so Sun Liren began a 33-year long confinement.
Beautiful people share weal and woe on the side
Unlike Zhang Xueliang, who lived a carefree life after being placed under house arrest, Sun Liren was placed under house arrest in a remote military dormitory, and his life was very hard. But he also has two beautiful women on his side who are willing to share the happiness and hardships with him, one is his wife Zhang Jingying, and the other is the concubine Zhang Meiying.
Zhang Jingying is not the original match of Sun Liren. Before Sun Liren went to the United States to study, he also accepted an arranged marriage arranged by his father and married Gong Xitao.
Later, Gong Xitao was reluctant to go to the United States with Sun Liren, and when Sun Liren was serving as the colonel of the gendarmerie teaching team of the Army, Navy and Air Force General Headquarters, he met Zhang Jingying, an 18-year-old girl from Hunan, and the two were happily married.
Then, within a few years, Zhang Jingying found that she could not have children, and she thought traditionally, so she asked for a "concubine" for her husband. Choosing to go, Zhang Meiying, who is a nurse, attracted the attention of Zhang Jingying.
Zhang Meiying was honest and gentle, and later gave birth to four children for Sun Liren. During the period of house arrest, the two ladies accompanied Sun Liren. During the poorest period, General Sun cultivated land and sold lychees and guavas to the market to support his family.
It was not until March 1988, when the Taiwan Control Yuan announced that Sun Liren really had no intention of rebellion, that Sun Liren was able to regain his freedom. Although 33 years of precious time have been lost, General Sun's life has been much more exciting than others.
When proud, he did not take credit for himself, and when he was frustrated, he did not give up on himself, not only supported his family by raising chickens and vegetables, but also cultivated four children of school bully.
Among Sun Liren's two daughters and two sons, three graduated from National Tsinghua University, and one is a master's degree in computer engineering from Villanova University in the United States, and even the adopted son Jiejun is an emeritus professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo, Canada.