In 1959, the tenth anniversary of new China, taking this opportunity, a group of nationalist war criminals were pardoned, and on this special list, in addition to Du Yuming, there was a well-known nationalist general, and even in order to welcome this person out of Gongdelin, General Chen Geng personally went out to greet him. And this person's name is Song Xilian.
Speaking of which, it is actually a very normal thing for General Chen Geng to go to greet Song Xilian from Gongdelin, because the two people have been fellow villagers since childhood, and finally became students of the first phase of the Whampoa Military Academy, but later General Chen Geng joined our party, and Song Xilian threw himself into the nationalist army, but with the defeat of the nationalist army, Song Xilian also became a prisoner of the order. In the Gongdelin Forest, Song Xilian stayed for ten years.
Outside of GongDelin, in the face of the ashamed Song Xilian, Chen Geng only said one sentence: The two armies are in contention, each is its own master, our party's policy has always been to not investigate the past, as long as they repent and admit their mistakes, anyone can be lenient. In the face of such words, Song Xilian burst into tears with excitement, although he had made great contributions to the anti-Japanese resistance, he had also done a lot of wrong things under the leadership of Jiang Ren.
When Song Xilian was young, he was one of the few children of a rich family at that time, not only had money to study, his father was more literate and hyphenated, taught him a lot of ancient Chinese, it is reasonable to say that the children who grew up like this generally became a squire with some learning, but when they went to the provincial city to attend middle school, Song Xilian came into contact with revolutionary ideas, participated in many patriotic movements, and later was admitted to the Whampoa Military Academy and became a student of the first phase of the Whampoa Military Academy.
At that time, the Whampoa Military Academy and the later were not a grade, the Whampoa Military Academy opened a total of 23 stages, a total of 180,000 graduates, but if it is said to be elite, it can only be the first to the fifth period, Jiang Someone can be said to be these people as confidants to cultivate, especially the first period, Chen Geng, Xu Xiangqian, Zuo Quan, Du Yuming, Hu Zongnan, Song Xilian are all students of the first phase of Huangpu.
It can be said that in the first phase of Huangpu at that time, as long as you are still alive and there are no accidents, the worst is also a lieutenant general. And among these people, it is simply ironclad, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they are the new era and that Liangshan has one hundred and eight generals. According to Song Xilian's recollection, he was only 17 years old at that time, and he was still very young, but the senior sisters in the school also regarded him as their own.
Especially his fellow countryman Chen Geng, who was already on his own at that time, was simply the white moonlight in Song Xilian's eyes, with strong ability and good people, because the two were also fellow countrymen, so Chen Geng also took good care of Song Xilian. Song Xilian is indeed a talent, not only extremely accomplished militarily, but also very highly conscious politically.
To this end, General Chen Geng specially introduced his elementary school brother to Premier Zhou, and then joined the ranks of our party, but in the following year, the Zhongshan ship incident broke out, which was completely a domestic version of the Lugou Bridge Incident deliberately created by Jiang Someone in order to deal with our Party. Because of the suggestions of Soviet experts, we did not choose to adopt a tough attitude toward Chiang Kai-shek, which led to a large number of people in our Party evacuating Guangzhou, and looking at the colleagues who left, Song Xilian fell into a dilemma; in his opinion, although our Party's ideology was good, the strength at that time may have been too weak to compete with Chiang Kai-shek, and if he insisted on staying, it might be more difficult in the future, and Song Xilian, who had a relatively wealthy family since childhood, had some resistance to this.
After thinking about it again, Song Xilian chose to retire and join the ranks of Jiang Ren, who was growing fled at that time, and then the Northern Expedition began, Song Xilian also joined in, and from here on, Song Xilian had begun to drift away from his elder brother Chen Geng.
However, relying on his outstanding performance, Song Xilian in the ranks of the Nationalist Army was also a similar one, and at the end of 27 years, he was even named by Jiang Someone and photographed at the Army School in Chiba, Japan for three years of further study. Then, after returning to China in 30 years, Song Xilian completed the triple jump in less than a year, from the initial unit chief to the later regimental commander, and then to the brigade commander, and by March 31, Song Xilian had become a major general brigade commander, and this year, he was only 24 years old. At this time, Song Xilian was only a confidant of Jiang Ren who had a relatively rapid promotion in the eyes of others, and what really made him famous in the First World War was the Songhu War of Resistance a year later.
In 1932, the Songhu War of Resistance broke out, although the Japanese army encountered heroic resistance from our army during the attack, and suffered heavy losses, but they had no intention of giving up, and the commander of the Japanese Ninth Division, Ueda Kenkichi, after receiving considerable reinforcements, formulated a plan of "intermediate breakthrough". The focus of this plan was on the area where the Eighty-seventh and Eighty-eighth Divisions were stationed, and Song Xilian was the brigade commander of the 161st Brigade of the Eighty-seventh Division at that time.
On February 20, the Japanese middle breakthrough plan was launched, the Japanese first carried out a fierce bombardment of the positions of the Eighty-eighth Division, and then tried to send infantry to break in, but the soldiers of the Eighty-eighth Division desperately resisted, and the two sides fought a tug-of-war on the positions, and finally, the Japanese army saw that its plan could not succeed, and the number of casualties gradually increased, and began to withdraw.
However, only a few hours of calm, in the early morning of the 21st, the Japanese army again shelled the positions of the Eighty-eighth Division, this time they focused on destroying the positions south of the town of Miaoxing, which caused great convenience for them to continue to attack, and the soldiers of our army could only stay in the trenches for a while in the face of the dense artillery fire of the Japanese army, and once the Japanese army began to attack, they greeted them with machine guns and grenades, and the double-engine tug-of-war was very tragic.
In order to quickly open up the situation, the Japanese army sent a hundred-man squad to try to intersperse the area defended by Song Xilian and give the Eighty-eighth Division a flanking surprise attack, but under the command of Song Xilian, the enemy was killed by Bandu, dozens of Japanese troops were killed by machine guns, and on the way to the pursuit later, several Japanese troops were killed, although the Japanese conspiracy had been foiled at this time, but the situation of the Eighty-eighth Army was still difficult.
However, this was the crux of the breakthrough plan in the middle of the Japanese army, they were crazy to attack here, so on the 22nd, the Japanese army poured out of the nest and shelled the temple line for four or five hours, almost all the positions laid out by our army here were destroyed, and at nine o'clock in the morning, the Japanese army rushed to the position on the south side of the temple line town, and Chen Zhenxin, the commander of the three battalions who was responsible for guarding here, fought until the last moment, was brutally killed by the Japanese army, and at this point, the position was broken by the Japanese army.
In order to prevent the Japanese army from continuing to break through, Commander Zhang Zhizhong personally ordered Sun Yuanliang, the brigade commander of the 259th Brigade of the Eighty-seventh Army, to reinforce the area south of Miaoxing Town, while Commander Zhang led the teaching team to personally respond to the command post of the Eighty-eighth Army, and Zhang Yan, the deputy commander of the Sixty-first Division, also led troops to attack and respond to the Eighty-eighth Division.
But even so, the strength of the troops is still insufficient, at one o'clock in the afternoon, Song Xilian received a call from Commander Zhang, asking him to immediately send a regiment of troops to Miaoxing Town for reinforcements, here Song Xilian just hung up the phone, found his subordinates, the leader of the 511st Regiment Liu Anqi, the leader of the 522nd Regiment, Ci Fazao, asked the two regiments to leave a battalion of troops as a garrison force, the rest of the people all supported in Miaoxing Town, after his two regiments crossed the river one after another, Song Xilian also led his own guards to cross the river, Established its own command in the battlefield.
Under the command of Song Xilian, these two regiments quickly seized a number of strategic points, if it is to obey the order, the task of the superior can be said to have been completed, but Song Xilian did not think so, in his opinion, Song Xilian, he must do more, so the soldiers made a dangerous move, Song Xilian ordered the two regiments to continue to detour, around the enemy's rear to carry out a surprise attack, this is something that the Japanese army did not expect, in a hurry, the Japanese army sent two brigades to defend and block, just on the evening of the 22nd, the two sides launched a white-knife battle, The fighting continued until dark, when the Japanese retreated temporarily.
And Song Xilian also ordered people to start building fortifications and strengthening positions, because the Japanese army on the frontal battlefield was missing two brigades, so the pressure of the soldiers responsible for counterattack was greatly relieved, and they persisted until the reinforcements of the Sixty-first Division arrived, and the Japanese troops who were preparing for the middle breakthrough were now caught in the three bread sandwiches, and their plan was completely frustrated. And Song Xilian also made a great contribution to the surprise attack of his four battalions (two regiments each left a battalion of troops) and completely made his reputation. Later, he became the commander of the 36th Division of the Nationalist Army.
The 36th Division was one of Jiang's ace troops, and it was also one of its few German mechanic divisions, five years later, it was Songhu, and it was the Japanese army, Song Xilian fought the most satisfactory battle of his life, in the Battle of Songhu in 37 years, Yao Ziqing led his brothers in a battalion to defend Baoshan, Xie Jinyuan led 800 soldiers to defend the Sihang warehouse, what we saw seemed to be in passive defense, and Song Xilian led his men to fight the Huishan Wharf Battle that could be equally famous.
The Battle of Songhu began on August 13, three days later, Song Xilian led his men from Xi'an to Shanghai, on the 17th into battle, the 36th Division he led can be said to be the elite of the elite of the national army, but also one of Jiang Ren's three German mechanic divisions, in the battle with the Japanese army, Song Xilian gradually felt the difficulty, the front of the Japanese army continued to increase, the two sides soon began to fight again, but this is a very unfavorable factor for us, so Song Xilian decided to turn the target of attack, Instead, it attacked another important stronghold of the Japanese army, Huishan Wharf.
At twelve o'clock in the evening of the 20th, the battle began, but the Japanese army's defensive measures far exceeded our imagination, the Japanese army hid on the fourth or fifth floor of the high-rise building to shoot at us, the dense fire network almost made it difficult for the soldiers to move, this situation lasted for a whole hour, finally, the commander of the 216 regiment responsible for the attack ordered, do not be afraid of sacrifice, braving artillery fire to advance, he himself is the first to walk in the front, just this, we hit all the way to the Huishan pier, the remnants of the Japanese army finally could not resist and began to flee.
And our army also began to carry out a fierce street battle with the Japanese army, it can be said that every house we occupied was sprinkled with blood, and finally the Japanese army ran all the way to the Waibaidu Bridge and surrendered to the French there. Seeing such a situation, our army did not continue to pursue these remnants of the defeated generals, immediately turned around and continued to attack the Huishan pier, but the Iron Gate of the Japanese Army was stronger than we imagined, several shocks could not be opened, there were more and more fighters here, some fighters wanted to climb over the iron gate, but there were soon Japanese reinforcements around again, their fierce artillery fire made many fighters die here, after hearing this news, Song Xilian believed that his strategic purpose had been achieved. Ordering the troops to withdraw, the two armies once again returned to a confrontational situation. In this battle at Huishan Wharf, the 36th Division suffered more than 570 casualties, while the Japanese casualties also reached more than 400, completely shattering the lie that the Japanese army said that "the national army is vulnerable".
However, for various reasons, the Battle of Songhu still ended in the defeat of the Nationalist army, Jiang Someone's three German mechanic divisions were completely crippled, with the decline of the Nationalist army, Jiang Someone gradually became unable to control the domestic situation, he once tried to let Song Xilian hold an important position to block our party's troops, but unfortunately at that time Song Xilian had seen through everything and repeatedly proposed to resign, but Jiang Someone just did not agree, in this way, Song Xilian successively served as the commander of the Xinjiang Provincial Garrison, and the deputy commander-in-chief of the Central China Region. Jiangsu Xuzhou, deputy commander-in-chief of G, and other positions.
In August 1949, Song Xilian became the director of the Appeasement Office of the Sichuan-Xiang'e Border Region. In early November 1949, when the People's Liberation Army marched into the southwest region, Song Xilian's troops were surrounded by our regiment. At this time, his troops had been besieged in the southwest corner of our army, and after a long talk with Hu Zongnan all night, they thought that withdrawing into Burma at this time was the best solution, but when they tried to persuade Jiang to agree to this plan, Jiang refused him, and there was no room for him, and he still asked Song Xilian to stick to Sichuan.
Jiang Xilian's actions made Song Xilian completely chill, he began to slowly realize that he may be just a dispensable pawn, so the angry Song Xilian turned off the radio, moved to the southwest with his subordinates, tried to cross the Dadu River, to Kangding, and the place they passed was where the Nationalist army once surrounded us, once the Red Army soldiers crossed the river here, encountered the resistance of the Nationalist army, and now Song Xilian tried to cross the river to escape, and was also counterattacked by our army. The turn of feng shui is probably the best illustration of this scene.
In December 1949, when Song Xilian escaped, he was captured alive by the People's Liberation Army in the Dadu River section of southwest Sichuan, and was subsequently detained in the Second Detention Center of the Southwest Ministry of Public Security. After he was imprisoned, General Chen Geng heard the news and immediately went to visit him at the White Mansion where Song Xilian was being held. The two talked for a long time, and Song Xilian himself regretted it, choosing Jiang Ren's seemingly stable path at that time, but the world was ultimately the people's world, and when he reacted, it was too late. However, General Chen Geng reassured him that the merits and demerits could be left to future generations, and the first thing he had to do now was to make a good transformation and strive for the first amnesty.
In June 1954, Song Xilian transferred to the Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center in Beijing and met his old classmate Du Yuming and other "deceased people". During the period of transformation, Song Xilian never forgot the words of General Chen Geng, because his performance was very good, so in the first batch of amnesty lists in 1959, there was Song Xilian's name. When the former commander-in-chief of the Nationalist Army left the War Criminals Management Center, he saw his friend, General Chen Geng. This incident also made Song Xilian very moved, and later Song Xilian served as the cultural and historical commissioner of the Cultural and Historical Materials Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, making his own contribution to the reunification of the motherland.
In 1980, Song Xilian went to the United States under the arrangement of his children, but he also did not forget to contribute to the reunification of the motherland.