From February 17 to March 16, 1979, the People's Liberation Army of China carried out the largest combat operation since the end of the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, namely, fighting back against Vietnam and defending the border. The number of participating troops reached 550,000. The combat area was located in six provinces on the northern border of Vietnam. The combat time lasted 28 days, and achieved the results of capturing 21 counties and cities in Vietnam and annihilated more than 57,000 Vietnamese troops.
Through this self-defense counterattack, he severely attacked the Vietnamese army and won a major victory. The vast majority of the participating troops have not fought in wars for nearly 30 years and have proven that they can still fight through actual combat. The troops were brave and tenacious, not afraid of sacrifice or fatigue, and fought continuously, inherited and carried forward the glorious traditions and excellent combat style of our army, and many heroic and model units and figures with outstanding military achievements emerged. The troops have received great training and have gained valuable experience in combating in tropical mountainous jungle areas. At the same time, they have exposed many problems. The most prominent one is the problem of the disconnection between military training and actual combat.
Military training is for war, and it must start from actual combat needs. It is trained whatever war requires, and the war will be fought, and the soldiers will be trained. From the perspective of summarizing the experience and lessons of military training, this combat practice exposed outstanding problems in military training in daily life.
The training of troops should be "adapted to local conditions" and "adapted to tasks". The battlefield of this battle is located in the northern border area of Vietnam. It belongs to the tropical mountain jungle land. The terrain and climate have many characteristics, such as high mountains and steep slopes, deep ditches and dense forests, few roads and many streams, many caves, and many rain and fog. The troops have difficulty in mobility and are not suitable for large-scale corps combat. There is a lack of careful study on these characteristics, and fewer troops are trained based on these characteristics. Although I seized the time to do nearly 2 months of pre-war training (which played a big role), there were still many problems exposed at the beginning of the battle. Some troops can only move 1 kilometer in one hour, some troops cannot reach the designated position on time, and some troops cannot completely wipe out the enemy if they surround them. Some beat the enemy away.
As the battle progresses, we will summarize the experience and lessons in a timely manner and quickly change the combat methods. The more we fight, the more we can fight. For example, the 116th Regiment of the 39th Division had an strengthening company, and when attacking the 387th Highland, it took only 40 minutes to wipe out a company of defending the enemy. Practical combat proves: We must strengthen research on the combat characteristics of this region and strengthen the adaptive training of troops through forests and mountain climbing. After the troops have conducted certain basic training, they must be taken to the mountain jungle areas for training on walking, fighting, eating and living, and conduct joint training of coordinated combat between various types of troops, so as to improve the troops' ability to fight in such areas.
We need to study the enemy's combat characteristics in depth. has not studied the establishment equipment and tactical style of the Vietnamese army in daily life, and has talked less about it among grassroots commanders and soldiers. This is a big disadvantage in training. Through combat practice, we have learned a lot of new situations. For example, the enemy uses local troops, public security stations, and stormtroopers to guard the front line, and regular troops are arranged on the second line; along both sides of the highway and near towns, key points are controlled by favorable terrain to form a support point-like defense system.
The Vietnamese army built circular trenches on the front line, connected by traffic trenches, with light and dark firepower points, can hide and fight. At the intersection of the front and main roads, there are obstacles such as mines, bamboo sticks, barbed wire mesh, etc. The support points of the company (platoon) are equipped with 12.7 anti-aircraft machine guns, light and heavy machine guns, submachine guns, 60 and 82 mortars, resilient guns, 40 bazooka and other weapons. Several weapons can be used by one person. The deployment of troops and firepower systems are relatively tight, and the combination of firepower maneuvers and force maneuvers can be achieved. During the battle, exposed fortifications were fired in advance, and hidden fortifications were suddenly opened when our army approached. Some of them suddenly fired from the side and back after our attacking troops passed.
After the enemy lost his position, he immediately counterattacked with accompanying artillery and side-fire firepower. After the important high ground was captured by our army, a certain number of troops were organized to carry out counterattacks. The tactical idea of the Vietnamese army is to combine garrison warfare with guerrilla warfare and , and to deal with our army with four combinations of resistance, running, tide and transformation.First, fight our army's attack. If you can't stand it, run away (break it into pieces), hide it (dig into a cave if you can't run away), and if you can't hide it, change it (turn the army to the people). Training should be targeted at the combat targets and carefully study the combat characteristics of the Vietnamese army and the corresponding fighting style of our army.
training content should be realistic. The basic training of the troops usually takes up a lot of time, especially the technical training of shooting, bomb dropping, assassination and other technical training takes up a lot of time, while tactical training takes up a little time. Judging from this battle, there are very few people who use standing posture and run-up to throw grenades with bare hands, and bayonets are also an exception. In the past, spending a lot of time on grenade throwing and assassination was a huge waste. The training content and time allocation must be changed according to actual combat needs.
tactical training time should be increased, especially the training for coordinated combat between various arms should be strengthened. In the early stages of this battle, our army was in dense formations, and the enemy's shell often caused large casualties. In the search and suppression battle, small teams will not be organized to search and suppress the jungle, which also caused unnecessary casualties. The training of the troops should be based on the training plan and requirements of the entire army, combined with the actual situation in tropical mountainous and jungle areas, mainly to fight enemy infantry, and train according to local conditions.
In technical training, we should focus on practicing shooting and bomb dropping at the pitch angle of mountains and forests, and practicing close-range shooting and close-range operations under enemy firepower. In tactical training, we should focus on training more individual soldiers to use terrain and land, and move under enemy firepower. The teams alternately cover the advance, and various combat formations change, close combat and night battles, small team searches and suppression, ambush, counter-ambush, etc. to improve the troops' small group and lone combat capabilities.
should focus on strengthening cadre training. This battle, many cadres had low organizational and command capabilities, did not flexibly organize and use troops and firepower, did not use tanks and , did not organize infantry and artillery coordination, and were not good at using the effect of artillery fire attacks to launch attacks in a timely manner. We must strengthen the organizational and command training of cadres. According to the characteristics of tropical mountains and jungle terrain, the command positions of cadres at all levels must be in front. We must learn to concentrate troops, surround the enemy, cut off the enemy's retreat route, intersperse and divide, and annihilate the enemy's command skills. In particular, we must focus on solving the problem of grassroots cadres flexibly organizing the use of troops and firepower.
In terms of military force use, small groups of multiple key attacks should be adopted. When organizing firepower, focus on solving the coordination of infantry and artillery of the regiment battalion artillery , and strictly organize firepower to cover infantry impacts, so as to ensure that the three elements of firepower, movement and assault are closely combined. When using tanks, it is not advisable to guide infantry impact, but serve as an active fire point to support infantry combat. Training cannot be limited to organs and work on the map, but should lead real soldiers to repeatedly practice the organizational command at the same level, so as to continuously improve the organizational command capabilities of cadres.
The author is a master's degree in history and a university lecturer, focusing on the history of the Sino-Vietnam War.
WeChat public account: Southern Xinjiang Fengyan is ten years of
