In mid-January 1979, when the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam was about to begin, the 13 th Army, which had strong combat effectiveness, had rushed to the southern part of the motherland under the command of the Kunming Military Region.
Yang Dezhi, commander of the Kunming Military Region and commander-in-chief of the Western Front, Yang Yong and Zhang Xianyue, heads of the PLA General Headquarters, and several other military region commanders came to the front of the 13 th Army to inspect the combat preparations and affirmed the combat plan of the front command.
The 13th Army planned to use the 37th and 39th Divisions as the main attack, cross the Red River, and annihilate the enemy in the areas of Gu Liu, Long Kin, and Gu Son in Vietnam and the 345th Division of the Vietnamese ArmyThe main force of the 38th Division attacked Ba Sa, served as a reserve after completing the task, and another regiment advanced to the Dai Nai area to seize a favorable position, block the 316A Division of the Vietnamese Army, and ensure the safety of the main force of the army.
In February, after the battle began, due to the tight defense of Meng Shan's enemy, the attack of the 114th Regiment of the 38th Division was blocked, and the interspersed task could not be completed in time, so the 13th Army adjusted its deployment again, ordering the 37th Division and the 38th Division to attack Tangtang on the left and right, and the 39th Division was responsible for blocking enemy reinforcements.
The battle along the way was fierce, and at first the battle of the 39th Division interspersed with the Waibo River was not smooth, and after the task was changed, the 316A Division, the ace of the Vietnamese army, which was trying to reinforce Tangtang in Dai Nai, was blocked, and the battle was dark, and the opponent did not let go of a single soldier. In the end, nearly 1,000 enemies were annihilated, and the attempt of the 316A Division to come to the east and threaten the flank of the 13th Army was completely thwarted, and the main force of the army was able to successfully take Tangtang.
The 39th Division was temporarily expanded by the B Division before the war, and the army commander was originally worried about their combat effectiveness, but as a result, the 39th Division fought bravely and tenaciously in the first war, and it was in the limelight in the whole army and even in the entire Western Front battlefield.
After the war, the 6th Company of the 116th Regiment of the 39th Division and the 2nd Company of the 117th Regiment were awarded the title of "Hero Company" by the ** Military Commission, and 3 combat heroes were awarded;The 3rd Battalion of the 115th Regiment is a "Heroic Battalion for Attacking Fortified Fortifications", of which the 3rd Company was awarded the title of "Heroic Company of Shocking the Enemy" by the Chengdu and Kunming Military Regions, and the 2nd Company was also rated as a combat hero. The 13th Army was known as the "steel knife of the Western Front" in the counterattack, and the role of the 39th Division is obvious to all.
According to the veterans' recollections, because the combat mission was kept secret, the grassroots units did not know when to fight until the last moment, and during the pre-war training time, some officers and men thought that the battle could not be fought, as was the case with the 115th Regiment of the 39th Division.
Before the battle plan was issued, the 115th Regiment was practicing river crossing, and the engineer brothers sent them assault boats, which each company used in turn. One is an assault boat made of fiberglass material, which can be folded;One is an inflatable rubber boat, commonly known as a kayak, which is both motor-driven. At the beginning, the assault boat was placed in the open space of the farm where the unit was stationed, so that everyone could familiarize themselves with the way of riding and practice the speed of getting on the boat.
The company commander shouted from the side: "The right foot on the left goes first!" The left foot on the right goes first! As they practiced, some of the soldiers were blinded, and they got on and off the boat and lifted the wrong foot, and the company commander was so angry that he scolded, "You are a fool, you can't even tell the difference between the left foot and the right foot!" "The soldiers repeated the actions of getting on the boat, setting up their guns, and getting off the boat over and over again, and they had to be familiar enough to sit in their own position on the boat with their eyes closed, and adapt to the combat mission of crossing the river in various situations.
After several days of land drills, the 6th and 2nd companies of the 115th Regiment took their assault boats to a reservoir 10 kilometers from the border and launched the exercise. The sapper brothers were teachers, and there were two sappers on each boat to guide the training, and the soldiers jumped on the assault boat again and again, drove to the other side of the reservoir and drove back again, and after a whole day of tossing, everyone was so tired that they couldn't lift their legs.
During the actual combat exercise, the battalion commanders and company commanders of each battalion went to the regiment headquarters for a meeting twice in three days. One day, the commander of the 1st Battalion and the 2nd Company returned from a meeting and excitedly announced to everyone that the combat mission of our company had been confirmed. The 1st Battalion served as an assault battalion, crossed the Red River, took 5 beachheads by the river, and then covered the division's boat-bridge battalion to build pontoon bridges to cover the main force of the division to cross the river. The task of annihilating the defenders of the beachhead was to be carried out by the 3rd Company, which assisted the operation from the right flank.
The fighters were excited and nervous, and they were finally about to fight. Our artillery is very strong, and everyone thinks that the troops will definitely be able to defeat the Vietnamese army like a sea of mountains and seas.
After the task was clear, the company commanders and platoon commanders had to go to the high ground near the mouth of the river every day to reconnoiter the movements on the opposite bank. One day, the commander of the 2nd company selected more than 30 combat backbones, each of whom tied branches and thatch to his body, made a good disguise, and went to the estuary to reconnoiter together. After walking two kilometers downstream along the river bank and coming to the depths of the woods, everyone dispersed, and following the direction pointed by the company commander, everyone saw several high ground on the opposite bank.
The company commander said that the highest place on the opposite bank was the 248 heights that the Vietnamese army focused on defending, and when the time came, the 3rd Company would attack from the left side and hit the 194 Heights first, and our 2nd Company would first attack the 191 Heights on the right side, and then encircle the 248 Heights and take them in one fell swoop. Everyone looked carefully at the opposite bank, remembering the characteristics of each highland.
The company commander asked everyone to take turns looking at the opposite bank with binoculars and told them that there was a trench behind two barbed wire fences under the enemy's position, and a minefield in front. The company commander's tone was very excited, and he told the platoon commanders his ideas and battle plans, and the platoon commanders also put forward their own ideas and studied how to attack. Returning to the station, the troops found a piece of terrain similar to the other side of the river and repeatedly practiced the battle of rushing to the beach.
On the evening of the thirtieth day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, the whole company gathered in the big shed of the farm and held a simple party. The Chinese New Year's Eve dinner had fried pork slices with fungus and stewed bone broth, and the farm captain specially sent a few pots of white wine to treat everyone. Everyone raised their bowls, and some people said, "Brothers, this may be the last Spring Festival we will have in this world, cheers." Regardless of whether they normally drink or not, everyone drinks it all.
After the first day of the Lunar New Year, the troops entered a state of imminent battle, and they were fully armed when they slept, and their guns were not left with them. According to the requirements of the superiors, the soldiers handed over all the excess items to the logistics department for safekeeping, and packed bedding, clothes and other items in a group of four people. Some people said, "Brothers, if I die, you remember my things and put them on the second level, and you have to pass them on to my family." Others said, "If I die, any of you can use these things." ”
The company specially arranged a day for the soldiers to write letters to their families, which to put it bluntly was a suicide note. In the words of the veteran, at that time, they were all young men, with no property, many people did not have girlfriends, some just loved their parents and nostalgia for life, wrote regrets, and some wrote, and they really didn't know what to write when writing a suicide note.
The young warriors whispered, "Are we going to die?" Was he killed by gunfire, or was he killed by artillery fire? Did you drown, or did you fall into a trap and be stabbed to death with a bamboo stick? "Everyone agreed that it would be better to be killed by guns than to fall into a trap and die, because it would be too shameless to die.
A few days later, the assault battalion, in accordance with the orders of its superiors, began to make its own life-saving equipment for crossing the river. At that time, the country was still poor, and there was no condition to distribute so many life jackets, so the army asked everyone to go to the jungle to cut bamboo and make floats. To a diameter of about 10 centimeters of bamboo tubes, 40 centimeters long, each person to prepare 8 bamboo tubes, when crossing the river, tied to the body, 4 in the front, 4 in the back, in case of falling into the water.
As the days passed, the troops did not receive the order to attack for a long time, and everyone waited anxiously, asking the company commander all day long, when will they fight, and whether they will fight or not? The company commander said, you ask me, I ask who to go. Some people speculated that they might not be able to fight, but they were just trying to scare the Vietnamese.
One day, the company commander came back from a meeting at the regiment headquarters with a solemn expression and said to the soldiers: "The battle will start soon, everyone should be ready!" "Everyone gathered around and asked, was it notified by the superiors? The company commander said no, this was his judgment, and he told everyone in a calm tone, "Brothers, the sappers are digging a cemetery for us, and it is almost done." ”
It turned out that when the company commander went to the regiment for a meeting, he saw that the engineer unit was working on several nearby hills, using bulldozers and excavators to clear the vegetation, and like building terraces, the hills were built into a circle of flat land, and graves 2 meters long and 1 meter wide were dug out at equal intervals on the flat ground, and several consecutive hills were cemeteries.
Everyone looked at each other when they heard this, and no one spoke for a while. The company commander smiled and said, "We know where we are buried after we die, this is our special treatment!" "A few days later, a special visit was arranged in the regiment for each company of the assault battalion to send representatives to visit the martyrs' cemetery, which had been repaired.
After the visit, some people said happily and heroically as usual: "Brothers, our destination is very good, it depends on which of us gets there first!" Someone shook his head and said, "That pit is too small, and it might be crowded for me to lie in." "There were also people who didn't say a word, sat down and smoked cigarette after cigarette.
Soon, the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam began, and the 1st Battalion and 2nd Company were not small in the tragic Dainai Blockade Battle, and the sacrificed soldiers were buried in the dug cemetery, as they said before the expedition, everyone died and did not separate.