How many people were in an army during the war years?
There may be a few hundred people, or there may be a few thousand, but generally speaking, the strength of the army is still in the tens of thousands.
According to the general establishment at that time, there should be three infantry divisions under an army, and the strength of each division ranged from 5,000 to 6,000 or more than 10,000 men, and with the strength of the directly subordinate units, there were 20,000 or 30,000 men in an army.
Please note that as far as the modern army of the mainland is concerned, the strength of the general infantry army is basically like this.
As far as our army is concerned, the military-level structure during the Red Army period was very common, but the army at that time was often not in a state of actual formation. Some of them have only a few hundred troops, while the main force has several thousand, and some have tens of thousands.
Because the establishment at that time changed greatly, and the number of strength changed greatly with the different course of operations, until the main force of the Red Army was reorganized into the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, the strength of the various armies that existed at that time was not uniform.
During the Anti-Japanese War, there was the establishment of the Eighth Route Army, and then it was changed to the 18th Group Army, but we usually call it the Eighth Route Army; Under normal circumstances, whether it is a road army or a group army, it should first be the army under its jurisdiction, and then the infantry division.
However, due to well-known reasons, there were only 3 regular divisions under the Eighth Route Army/18th Army.
After that, we actually established a set of special systems for large military regions, second-level military regions, and military subdivisions, and the strength of large military regions often numbered 200,000 or 300,000 later.
The same is true of the New Fourth Army.
And the real number of strength of the standardized army can be talked about, in fact, it is the period of the Liberation War.
At that time, the main field forces under the jurisdiction of the major field armies of our army were all called infantry columns at the beginning, which was equivalent to the first-level establishment of the army.
Due to the different conditions in each strategic area at that time, the standards for the strength of the columns of each department were also different.
In the "Military Plan for the Third Year of the Liberation War" before the decisive battle in 1948, our army planned the strength of the columns in all directions.
The first type is the establishment of the northwest, with more than 8,000 people in each infantry division and more than 25,000 people in each column;
The second type is the establishment of the Northeast, with more than 12,000 people in each infantry division and nearly 43,000 people in each column;
The third category is the more moderate establishment in North China, Central Plains, and East China, with nearly 9,000 men in each infantry division and nearly 30,000 men in each column, but not artillery regiments, supplementary regiments, and transport stretcher teams.
In terms of concrete implementation, in fact, only the column strength of the Northeast Field Army can be enriched; The strength of the main column exceeded 40,000 people, which well guaranteed the victory of the Liaoshen Campaign.
After the victory of the Liaoshen Campaign, the Northeast Field Army further enriched the number of troops and weapons, and took the lead in using a new number.
Under the sequence of the new number, the original column was renamed XX Army, and the Northeast Field Army also allocated an additional infantry division for each army that entered the pass.
In this way, the original corps-level units actually had four infantry divisions.
Taking the 2nd Column of the former Northeast Field Army as an example, it was renamed the 39th Army, and the divisions under its original jurisdiction were changed to the 115th Division, the 116th Division, and the 117th Division, and later the 152nd Division, which was reorganized from the 7th Independent Division.
According to the statistics of the Northeast Field Army, the total strength of the whole army reached 59,378 when the 39th Army entered the customs.
Note that the strength of this army alone reached nearly 60,000 men, which was more than the corps-level troops on the North China side before the Pingjin Campaign.
So how were the forces of the 39th Army distributed at that time?
According to the original column (corps) level establishment of the Northeast Field Army, the total number of three infantry divisions plus organs and directly subordinate units should be 42,936.
Among them, the strength of the infantry division should be 12,302 people, and there are about 6,000 people in the column organs and directly subordinate units.
As for the actual strength of the 39th Army at that time:
The 115th Division had 12,526 troops; The 116th Division had 14,679 troops; The 117th Division actually had 12,817 troops.
From the above troop numbers, it can be seen that the strength of the three divisions under the jurisdiction of the 39th Army exceeded the standard number; In particular, the 116th Division, which has the strongest combat strength, has about 2,300 more than 2,300 people in excess of its strength.
In addition, the reinforced 152nd Division had the same establishment as the main division at that time, but because of the factors that had just been upgraded to the main force, its strength was still short, and the actual number of troops was 10,023.
In this case, the total strength of the four infantry divisions is 50,045 men.
The actual strength of the 39th Army was nearly 60,000 people, so excluding the strength of the four infantry divisions, there were more than 9,000 people in the organs and directly subordinate units.
Obviously, this is actually more than the 6,000 people on the staff.
Judging from the above-mentioned actual troop figures, we can obviously appreciate the strength of the Northeast Field Army at that time.
After such a unit entered the pass, it was no wonder that the Kuomintang troops in the pass had weak legs when they heard that Dongye was coming.