Dinh Ho Mountain, located in Guangxi, was the place where the Vietnamese authorities openly declared war on China on November 1, 1978, triggering the fuse of China's self-defense and counter-attack against Vietnam.
In the face of the Vietnamese army's step-by-step pressing, in late November 1978, China's ** Military Commission was forced to make a decision to fight back in self-defense against Vietnam. In this context, Tinghao Mountain was included in the defense area of the Northern Group Army of the Eastern Front with the 41st Army of the Guangzhou Military Region as the main force.
According to the deployment of the Vietnamese troops in front of the defense area, the command of the Northern Group Army of the Eastern Front ordered the 2nd Frontier Regiment of the Independent Division of the Guangxi Military Region and the 361st Regiment of the 121st Division of the 41st Army stationed around Tinghao Mountain to be the main force responsible for recovering Tinghao Mountain.
At the same time, the Tinghao Mountain area strengthened the strength of the 121st Division's artillery unit, reconnaissance platoon, engineer company's anti-chemical platoon, Zhouqiao unit, and other combat units. According to the battle plan, the 2nd Guangxi Frontier Regiment and the 361st Regiment of the 121st Division will quickly attack Chongqing County, Cao Bang Province, Vietnam, and cooperate with the main force of the Northern Group Army to attack the main forces of the Vietnamese army in Shuojiang and Gaoping.
Before the war, the reconnaissance platoon of the 121st Division stationed in the Tinghao Mountain area of Jingxi County, Guangxi, was under tremendous work pressure, and they not only had to collect military information such as the number of Vietnamese troops in the Tinghao Mountain area and the deployment of their positions, but also had to find out the Vietnamese army's minefields and the enemy situation leading to the county town of Chongqing in Vietnam.
An in-depth understanding of the enemy's situation is the key to winning the war. Minefields, position deployments, and configuration of these information can be collected by sending capable scouts to make observations, but it is difficult to obtain information about the number of Vietnamese troops and the number of troops through long-distance observation.
A month before the outbreak of the war, the PLA had gathered about 450,000 troops in the border areas, but due to the good secrecy work, the Vietnamese military only believed that the squadron had 140,000 people.
This shows that we need to find a way to get close to reconnoitre. In early February 1979, Su Huiwen, the leader of the reconnaissance squad of the 121st Division, received an order to find out the number of Vietnamese troops and the deployment of positions in the area of Tingfeng Township, Chongqing County, Vietnam, on the south side of Tinghao Mountain.
This mission was to conduct reconnaissance in disguise, change into the clothes of Vietnamese civilians, and infiltrate Vietnamese positions along the main roads during the day to carry out reconnaissance. Previously, Su Huiwen had successfully completed reconnaissance missions many times.
He recruited a young man who could speak fluent Vietnamese as an interpreter, two local militia fighters as guides, and selected eight soldiers of Liangguang nationality. Before leaving, he assigned the task.
However, when the founding major general Ou Zhifu inspected the troops in the area of Tinghao Mountain, he saw that they were dressed differently from everyone else, so he asked why. Knowing that their mission was to reconnoiter in disguise, Ou Zhifu's face changed, and he scolded: You can't go, you will die if you go. "
Su Huiwen and his comrades-in-arms did not understand why Ou Zhifu stopped their actions, after all, they had already obtained the approval of the division headquarters. However, General Ou Zhifu explained that in a foreign land, reconnaissance in disguise is almost impossible.
Their knowledge of the Vietnamese language is limited, and they can easily be mistaken for spies by Vietnamese or friendly forces. The general's words forced Su Huiwen and his comrades to cancel the operation. They later learned that this was because General Ou Zhifu was dissatisfied with the technical backwardness of the reconnaissance units of the Northern Army.
General Ou Zhifu was a founding general who joined the Red Seventh Army at the age of 16 and later participated in five anti-"encirclement and suppression" operations, the Red Army's Long March, and the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, he was a famous general, and once led 800 people to fight the famous "Yellow Cliff Cave Defense Battle". General Ou Zhifu played an important role in safeguarding the security of the chief, gathering enemy information, and carrying out special operations missions.
General Ou Zhifu is very good at reconnaissance subjects, he is a soldier with a wealth of practical experience, and he received the rank of major general as early as 1955.
In contrast, Su Huiwen and other fighters still have a lot of room for improvement. At the age of General Ou Zhifu, he was already the head of the special service regiment, and now he is the deputy commander of the Guangzhou Military Region.
Now, he is once again in command and serves as the commander-in-chief of the Northern Army on the Eastern Front, which means that he will personally lead the main force of the Northern Army to fight abroad. This undoubtedly put a lot of pressure on the fighters of the reconnaissance units of the entire Northern Army.
You must know that only 9 founding generals participated in the entire Southern Theater, and only 3 of them, Ou Zhifu, Wu Zhong, and Jiang Xieyuan, personally led their troops to the front, and these three veterans were all deputy commanders of the Guangzhou Military Region at that time.
After General Ou Zhifu returned to the headquarters of the Northern Army, he immediately straightened out the troops' pre-war preparations and reconnaissance work, and effectively avoided many unnecessary losses.
Years later, veteran Su Huiwen said that if he hadn't met General Ou Zhifu to inspect the troops, all the soldiers in their reconnaissance squad might have been killed. General Ou Zhifu's Worries General Ou Zhifu submitted a resignation application with the theme of "old cadres abdicate and let young people take over" to the great man *** in early 1982, an act that moved the whole country.
After that, ** began to promote the rejuvenation of cadres. In General Ou Zhifu's view, with the passage of time, the fields of knowledge and technology are constantly advancing, and due to the constraints of various reasons, it is difficult for the elderly cadres to adapt to the needs of the war in which modernization and changes are taking place in the air, at sea, and on the ground.
Therefore, Ting Haoshan's prevention of the scouts from carrying out disguised reconnaissance operations has a lot to do with General Ou Zhifu's proposal to *** to rejuvenate cadres.
On the eve of the war of self-defense and counterattack against Vietnam, the operational concept of the PLA units could no longer keep up with the changing needs of modern warfare, and the middle- and high-ranking cadres in the troops were too old to adapt to such changes.
In the absence of satellite reconnaissance and high-altitude reconnaissance technology, the PLA still uses the old method of reconnaissance behind enemy lines to collect enemy information, and this obviously no longer meets the development needs of the times.
In the process of reconnaissance behind enemy lines, the first thing the fighters faced was the enemy's mine killing, injury and ambush, the anti-infantry mine technology at that time was already very complicated, some mines were made of non-metallic materials, and conventional metal mine detectors could not detect them at all.
The Vietnamese army is good at laying scheming thunder arrays, and the PLA reconnaissance fighters have a very high rate when performing tasks. Secondly, the Vietnamese army is also good at setting up secret posts and ambushes in strategic areas, and even if the soldiers can successfully pass through the enemy's minefield, it is difficult to avoid the eyes of the Vietnamese army.
In particular, the enemy's use of highly vigilant military dogs for sentry makes it difficult for purely manual reconnaissance to avoid these technical problems. Before the war, the Vietnamese Le Duan group had carried out the "Clean Bien Operation" many times, and most of the civilians were evacuated, leaving only four categories of personnel, including the Vietnamese army, local troops, people's army, and their families, to remain in the border areas.
When performing their tasks, PLA reconnaissance fighters need to overcome difficulties such as language, folk customs, and terrain environment, as well as deal with problems such as passwords and passes. The Vietnamese authorities' "Clean Bien Operation" has reduced the number of people left behind in the border counties, and the PLA soldiers have undoubtedly killed themselves by entering the Vietnamese army's defense area with unfamiliar faces.
In addition, PLA fighters are similar to Vietnamese in terms of skin color, appearance, clothing, etc., but there are huge differences in language and living habits. For example, the Vietnamese army does not wear shoes all year round, while the PLA soldiers are used to wearing rubber shoes, which are easy to expose as long as they appear in front of the Vietnamese.
Even if Vietnamese refugees are used for reconnaissance missions, it is difficult to solve problems such as passwords and passes. The Vietnamese army not only has reconnaissance information provided by its allies, but also has a large number of spies in China, so that after the PLA assembles on the border, the Vietnamese army can easily know the commander of the troops.
In the Battle of Cao Binh, the Vietnamese army used its allies to carry out electronic jamming, so that the PLA tank units could not use radio communication, and could only use flags and flashlights to communicate, and were in a passive state.
Although General Ou Zhifu had already achieved a lot in the army, he realized that with the development of the times, the army needed more modern reforms. In particular, many middle- and high-ranking generals in the military have a weak cultural foundation and find it difficult to adapt to the needs of technological development of the times.
Against this background, General Ou Zhifu took the initiative to retire to make way for the modernization and reform of the PLA. Although after his retirement, General Ou Zhifu no longer worked in the army, he still worked hard for the construction of a strong army in the PLA.
He summarized his life experience and analyzed the classic examples of the past to provide reference for young people. His spirit has provided valuable wealth for the modernization and reform of the PLA.