In February 1949, in accordance with the unified order of the Central Military Commission, the East China Field Army was officially reorganized into the Third Field Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, with Chen Yi as commander and political commissar, Su Yu as deputy commander and second political commissar, Tan Zhenlin as first deputy political commissar, Zhang Zhen as chief of staff, and Tang Liang as director of the political department, with four corps and a special forces column under its jurisdiction.
When Hua Ye was reorganizing, he also integrated some Kuomintang rebel troops and PLA troops together, which caused a series of problems, especially the establishment of the 35th Army, which made many PLA veterans very dissatisfied, and many soldiers clearly stated that they did not want to let the traitors become their commanders. So why is this a problem? Why is it that the 33rd Army and the 34th Army were also reorganized from the rebel units of the Kuomintang Army, but there was no such problem?
When Huaye was reorganized in 1949, there were three special units, namely the 33rd Army, the 34th Army, and the 35th Army, because some of their units were kuomintang rebel troops. Among them, the 33rd Army was formed by the combination of the Huaye Bohai Column and the 59th Army of the National Revolutionary Army that revolted in the Huaihai Campaign, and the 34th Army was formed by the 34th Brigade and the Independent Brigade of the Jianghuai Military Region of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and the 132nd Division of the Nationalist 77th Army, which revolted in the Battle of Huaihai.
However, unlike the 35th Army, Zhang Kexia, the commander of the 33rd Army, was a veteran member of the Communist Party of China in 1929, and he Jifeng, the commander of the 34th Army, also secretly joined the Communist Party of China in January 1939. Both of them were upright people, had certain military talents, and were both subordinates of Zhang Zizhong, and during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, they both charged forward and made great achievements for national independence and national liberation.
However, the commander of the 35th Army, Wu Huawen, was different, this person was a man who saw the wind and made the rudder, and he also served as a traitor during the War of Resistance. Wu Huawen was born in 1901 in Ye County, Shandong Province, and studied at a local Christian middle school in his early years, and later Wu Huawen joined Feng Yuxiang's troops, successively serving as squad leader, platoon leader, company commander and other positions, Feng Yuxiang saw that he was smart, and would escort him to study at the Beijing Army University, and after graduation, he served as the chief of staff of the 28th Division, and the division commander was Zhang Zizhong.
Once Feng Yuxiang wanted to remove Zhang Zizhong, Wu Huawen led three brigade commanders to intercede together, Feng Yuxiang was furious and wanted to join Wu Huawen in dealing with him, so Wu Huawen ran to Han Fuyu and served as a lieutenant general staff officer, and then made him the commander of the second regiment of the pistol brigade. Wu Huawen was very good at human affection, and the relationship with the headquarters, the general staff, and the quartermaster department was very high, and later after the commander of the pistol brigade was removed, Wu Huawen served as the commander of the pistol brigade and the commander of the Jinan garrison.
After Han Fuyu was shot by Chiang Kai-shek in 1939, Wu Huawen's troops were reorganized into the newly organized Fourth Division, after which Wu Huawen gathered local troops and formed the newly organized First Division. In 1942, due to the long-term need to replenish, Wuhua's Ministry of Culture and Culture faced the dilemma of running out of ammunition and food. Wu Huawen then went to test the reaction of the Chongqing side and asked if he could surrender to the Japanese. The Chongqing side has always discriminated against this kind of miscellaneous army, so it only hastily replied: "As long as you don't throw eight roads, you can preserve your strength, and you can do whatever you want." ”
In 1943, Wu Huawen surrendered to the Japanese, and his unit was reorganized by Wang Jingwei into the Third Front Of the Peaceful Founding Army, with Wu Huawen as commander-in-chief and stationed in Bengbu. Wu Huawen repeatedly jumped ship like this, and finally became a traitor, and some subordinates felt that they had no future with him, and they were very dissatisfied, but Wu Huawen said to his subordinates: "Little doll, how can you say that we have no future?" If Japan wins, then we certainly have a future. If the Kuomintang wins the war, old Chiang Kai-shek will definitely need us to help him fight the Communists, and we still have a future. If the Kuomintang can't do it, we still have a future if we go to the Eighth Road. ”
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wu Huawen led his troops to cooperate with the Japanese army in sweeping the Base Area of the Eighth Route Army in Shandong, creating a lot of no-man's land and incurring a lot of blood debts. Until the founding of the People's Republic of China, many people in the old areas of Shandong still wrote to the central authorities, requesting the public execution of Wu Huawen, a traitor.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wu Huawen was not punished, and Chiang Kai-shek, in order to expand the army, appointed him commander-in-chief of the Fifth Route Army of the Kuomintang Army and commander of the Second General Security Corps of Shandong. In 1947, he was appointed commander of the reorganized 84th Division, commander of the 96th Army and commander of the 84th Division. As for Wu Huawen, many Generals of the Kuomintang actually did not believe him, and Du Yuming once said to Wang Yaowu: "Wu Huawen is capricious, superficially obedient but deceitful in heart, unreliable, and we must pay attention to him." ”
Wu Huawen has always been very clear about the views of the Kuomintang generals on him, and in July 1946, Wu Huawen went to Nanjing to attend a military conference and visited his old superior, Feng Yuxiang. Feng Yuxiang denounced Wu Huawen's evil deeds during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, but also pointed him out a path, that is, to contact the Communists. During the Battle of Jinan in 1948, Wu Huawen had a premonition that the big ship of the Kuomintang was likely to overturn, so he ordered his troops to withdraw from their positions and declare an uprising.
After The uprising of Wu Huawen's troops, they have been carrying out rectification training in the rear, the political work department of the People's Liberation Army has carried out ideological education for this unit, and Wu Huawen has also wept bitterly in front of everyone and reflected on the crimes he had committed. In February 1949, Wu Huawen's troops and Huaye Lu Zhongnan Column were merged into the 35th Army, the commander was still Wu Huawen, and the political commissar was He Kexi, the former deputy commander of the first column.
The LuzhongNan Column was a unit established in 1947 by the East China Military Region on the basis of the backbone regiments of each sub-district of the Luzhong South Military Region, and Fu Qiutao (the founding general) of the Luzhong South Military Region served as commander and political commissar. In October 1948, the units of the LuzhongNan Column were reorganized, with Qian Jun (founding lieutenant general) as commander and Zhang Xiong as political commissar, and the subordinate units were unified into the 46th and 47th Divisions, with a total of 6 regiments and 14,000 people, which belonged to the Shandong Corps of the East China Field Army.
During the Liberation War, the Luzhongnan Column fought many hard battles with the main forces and made great achievements in battle, but after learning that it was going to merge with Wu Huawen's traitorous troops, the vast number of officers and men were very dissatisfied and were unwilling to let the traitors become their commanders. To this end, Chen Yi went to the army many times to do ideological work, re-accepted the party's policy of discipline, and demanded that the vast number of officers and men should not discriminate against the insurrectionary troops, let alone treat them as miscellaneous troops, but treat them as their own family members.
Moreover, after the reorganization of the 35th Army, there were not many people in Wu Huawen's troops, and when Wu Huawen revolted, a considerable number of troops fled, and finally only more than 10,000 people were left, and in the process of reorganization, they were dismantled, and finally Wu Huawen's old department was left with a few thousand people. When the 35th Army was formed, at least two regiments of each division were the units of the former Lu Zhongnan Column, and only one regiment was an insurrectionary force.
Many people say that when Nanjing was recaptured, the first to attack the city of Nanjing was the rebel troops, but in fact it was not, because the first to enter the city at that time was the 104th Division of the 35th Army, the commander of the division, Fang Mingsheng, and the political commissar Yan Zheng were both old Red Army troops, and the 312th Regiment of the 104th Division that first rushed into the presidential palace was the original Luzhongnan Column, not the original Wu Huawen's troops.
The 35th Army was abolished less than a year after its establishment, and in September 1949, the 35th Army began localization construction, and the 103rd Division, 104th Division, and 105th Division were combined with Quzhou, Shaoxing Military Region and Hangzhou Garrison District. In January 1950, the 35th Army was abolished, and the military headquarters and the military artillery regiment were transferred to the Navy of the East China Military Region. However, Wu Huawen's life was very good, and after liberation, he successively served as the commander of the Hangzhou Garrison District, the director of the Zhejiang Provincial Transportation Department, and the vice chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and died of illness in Shanghai in 1962.