"Tick-tock, tick-tock" The loud and rapid sound of the military horn echoed in the barracks of the 163rd Division. The fighters immediately jumped out of their tents and rushed out the door. The brief order that "the whole division will march to the war zone in 48 hours, and the route of the march will be kept secret" filled the hearts of the soldiers with unknowns and expectations.
It may not be clear to them where this strictly secret march route will lead. "Moo, moo, moo, moo," the screams of pigs reverberated one after another in the barracks.
Each company received an order to kill pigs to comfort the soldiers, so that the soldiers could have a good meal before the troops left. The cooks raised their knives in their hands, plates of sweet and delicious hard dishes were served, and even rare liquor appeared.
Looking at the abundant meal in front of them, some of the fighters began to feel strange. However, isn't being a soldier fighting to protect your family and defend your country? Thinking of this, the soldiers picked up their chopsticks and took a big bite of this rare meat on weekdays, smacking the wine from time to time, feeling the spicy and mellow feeling in their throats.
Even the most cowardly man turned into a bold man that day.
The 163rd Division was ordered to go to the Sino-Vietnamese border to carry out intense combat preparations. They quickly distributed large quantities of ammunition to the grassroots level, and the fighters were ready to fight.
On the way to the front, they were always vigilant and ready for battle. Their station is located in the salient of our territory, two kilometres away from Viet Nam. They adopted a triangular defensive posture, taking turns to train, and the hygienists also actively provided anti-epidemic protection.
Although the fight has not yet begun, the atmosphere of preparation is already very strong.
Around February 10, a tragic order was handed down, and that was to establish a temporary martyrs' cemetery. The soldiers of the 487th Regiment of the 163rd Division, who received the order, came to a hillside near the pass early in the morning with shovels, shovels and other tools.
Although the order sounded like digging a grave for themselves, the young men did not complain, wielding shovels and shovels, digging out with dirt and dirt.
What a tragic scene, a group of young men who are not more than half of their lives digging their own graves! Seeing this situation, many border residents shed tears, but the soldiers did not cry.
Because they are warriors, warriors forged with steel and iron bones, and middle-class people who put life and death outside the realm to protect their family and country! Every grave dug by the soldiers was almost the same length, the same width, and the same deep, and even if the soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army reached the underground of Huangquan, the queue was neat!
It's discipline in your bones! At the same time, the rear of the military district was also nervously carrying out the final deployment of the campaign. General Xu Shiyou had the 41st, 42nd, 43rd, 50th, 54th and 55th armies under his command at that time.
As a barrier in the northern part of Lang Son in northern Vietnam, Dong Deng guards the communication artery of the Sino-Vietnamese border and is a battleground for soldiers, but which unit should be sent to gnaw the hard bone of Dong Deng?
About 10 kilometers southwest of Dong Dang area is the main force of the 3rd Division of the Vietnamese Army, about 10,000 men and horses, and the east side is the main force of the 338th Division of the Vietnamese Army, although it is less than 10,000 people, but the combat power is strong, and the west side is the Independent Regiment of North Pacific Province of Vietnam.
Stationed at the front position in Dong Dang were the 12th Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division of the Vietnamese Army, the 205th Independent Battalion attached to the regiment, the 1st Battalion of the 12th Public Security Regiment and the anti-aircraft artillery battalion of the division.
The 12th Regiment once fought against the U.S. Army, with outstanding achievements, and was known as the "Heroic Regiment" and was the trump card of the Vietnamese Army.
The Vietnamese army set up a large number of fortifications and tunnels on the line of Dong Deng, including 2-3 horseshoe-shaped short holes and a large number of concealed fire firing points, anti-infantry minefields, and "A" shaped civil and wooden fortifications, forming a support point type ring defense system, making Dong Deng a military fortress.
Bian Guixiang, commander of the 163rd Division, was called "Bian Guixiang" because he was injured during the War of Resistance Against Japan, but he still had the audacity to set up his headquarters in the area of Jinji Mountain on the north side of Friendship Pass, less than one kilometer away from the forward position of the Dong Deng Vietnamese Army.
On February 17, 1979, under the order of the commander of the Xu Shiyou Military Region, 10,000 artillery pieces fired at the Sino-Vietnamese border, the artillery shook the ground and shook the mountains, and countless artillery fire poured into the Vietnamese army's position, and the sky was dyed red.
Type 130 rocket launchers, Type 152 howitzers, Type 82 recoilless guns, and countless mortars are all venting their anger and spitting flames. The indiscriminate saturation fire covered the attack for fifteen minutes, and many Vietnamese positions were already burned into a sea of fire, with corpses burned to the point of a scorching smell and even bloody stumps blasted into the sky.
Under the heavy artillery fire of the People's Liberation Army, the supposedly impregnable defense line of the Vietnamese army was finally reduced to ashes.
On February 17, under the calm command of Division Commander Bian Guixiang, the 163rd Division rushed into Dong Deng Town and surrounded the Vietnamese army's "Iron Triangle Defense Line" - Guitun Fort Fortification Group, 339 Heights Group and Tanmou Village Heights Group.
Although the fighters were armed with 50 or 60 semi-automatic rifles, under the cover of the tank units, they attacked the Vietnamese positions as if they were training, and they were divided into squads and platoons.
Although the 12th Regiment of the Vietnamese Army resisted stubbornly, this war was unjust, so their resistance was nothing more than stubborn resistance. The officers and men of the 163rd Division shared the same hatred for the enemy, and the deputy division commander Li Wanwannian was nearly 52 years old, but he still personally led the Sharp Knife Battalion, interspersed for more than four hours, crossed the enemy's five lines of defense, and successfully blocked the retreat of the enemy at Tongdeng.
On February 25, under the well-planned tactics, the fortification group of Guitun Fort and the highland group of Tanmou Village were successfully occupied. The pre-war arrogant Vietnamese army was completely defeated at this time.
The heavy artillery group of the 163rd Division was already able to approach Lang Son from the northwest. When the results of the battle were summarized and transmitted back to the rear military district headquarters, Xu Shiyou was surprised, he did not expect the 163rd Division to advance so quickly, so he immediately sent a telegram ordering Bian Guixiang to stop attacking Lang Son, so as not to scare away the 305th Division of the Vietnamese Army in the area of Gao Ping.
There are fifty-five in the east and one forty-nine in the west" was widely circulated on the Sino-Vietnamese border, and people still think of it when they talk about that war for decades.
This sentence refers to the two heroic and tenacious meritorious units that emerged on the two fronts of our army in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam -- the 149th Division and the 55th Army. The 55th Army was the only unit among the nine armies in the Eastern Front War that annihilated tens of thousands of enemies, and within the 55th Army, the most heroic and good at fighting was the 163rd Division.
The 163rd Division was not the main attacking force, but it suddenly rose to the top, successively captured Dong Dang, Lang Son, and even crossed the Qi Poor River, and once landed under the city of Hanoi. Although it encountered strong resistance from the Vietnamese army, the 163rd Division skillfully used the tactics of interspersed detours and division and encirclement, and successfully completed combat missions repeatedly, setting a record for the largest number of enemy troops annihilated by troops participating in the battle on the eastern and western fronts, and could be called the "champion division" of the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam.
From the beginning of the battle on February 17 to the temporary truce on the border on March 16, in just 28 days, the 163rd Division killed a total of 5,293 enemies, captured 38 prisoners, captured 64 artillery pieces, 3 tanks and armored vehicles, basically annihilated the Third Division of the Vietnamese Army, and inflicted heavy losses on the 327th Division, 337th Division, and 52nd Regiment of the Vietnamese Army, and fought nearly half of the results of the 55th Army with the strength of one division.
This proud achievement stems from the calm and rational attitude of the commanders, the bloody struggle of the front-line soldiers, and the heroic struggle of the whole division in the face of death and the same hatred of the enemy.
The 163rd Division commended a total of 395 first-class meritorious soldiers, of which 161 were martyrs, and only 234 received their military merit medals alive. Although no one wants to see these tombs used, war is always brutal, and countless young lives have been lost in the smoke and smell of gunpowder, and they were once alive one by one.
Today, China and Vietnam have ceased war for more than 30 years, and the smoke of gunfire has dissipated, but the wounds left by the war still cannot be erased. Every time the surviving soldiers come to the martyrs' cemetery, they will recall the voices and smiles of their fallen comrades.
As survivors of war, they know that peace is the greatest honor of a soldier.