[People Profile] Jiang Yuanfang, male, born in December 1943 in Sanqi Village, Shizhun Township, Leiyang County. He joined the army in 1964 and served as a soldier in the 1st Battalion, 29th Regiment of the 10th Anti-Archive Artillery Division of the Guangzhou Military Region.

Jiang Yuanfang: Two unforgettable battles to aid Vietnam

Oral description/Jiang Yuanfang compiled/Zhu Wenke

[People introduction] Jiang Yuanfang, male, born in December 1943 in Sanqi Village, Shizhun Township, Leiyang County, joined the army in 1964, and served as a soldier in the 1st Battalion, 29th Regiment of the 10th Regiment of the 10th Anti-Archive Artillery Division of the Guangzhou Military Region. On October 15, 1966, he aided Vietnam to fight against the United States and returned to China in August 1967. He has served as the squad leader of the wireless squad in the first company, the platoon leader of the third company, the 29th Regiment Operations Office, the Air Force Anti-Air Command, and the Guangzhou Military Region Air Force Training Office. In January 1982, he transferred to the local area and worked in Xiangnan Prison.

My name is Jiang Yuanfang. I am from Sanqi Village, Shizhun, Sandu Town, Leiyang City. I have three sisters at home. I am the eldest and have two younger sisters. After I dropped out of high school, I worked at home to farm. In November 1963, on the fourth day of my marriage, the county armed forces department recruited soldiers. After I learned the news, with the support of my newlywed wife Wen Man'e and my mother-in-law, I resolutely signed up to join the army with the ambition to serve the country, and successfully passed the physical examination and political review, and was honored to join the army.

Our group of recruits has more than 1,000. We were in Maoming, Guangdong for three months in training, put on military uniforms, and sent to the company. Most of us are assigned to the 29th Regiment of the 10th Anti-Air Artillery Division of the Guangzhou Military Region Air Force, Yang Yueting. I was in the first battalion and company, and Chen Caisheng, a fellow villager from Leiyang, who was with me, was assigned to the machine gun company of the 29th Regiment. After that, the troops moved to a mountainous area in Dianbai County. Dianbai, named after the many thunder and lightning in western Guangdong. Because I had been to high school, the army arranged for me to learn command instrument operation techniques. The anti-aircraft artillery commander is an instrument used by anti-aircraft artillery to measure the coordinates of the target and continuously calculate and transmit shooting elements, referred to as the commander. The size of the commander is larger than a table. Master is a veteran from Henan and taught me for two months. After the study, I became a ten-measurement tester, which is to be responsible for power supply and baseline conversion and installation.

In March 1964, the top recruited the first company I was in to go out to do work. I was left in Maoming and learned radio technology in the radio training team. After studying for a year, I went to Yangjiang County. Because after my family returned from the Northeast, I was stationed in Yangjiang County. I served as the leader of the wireless squad in the first company command volleyball team, with five soldiers in the class. Our company commander is Shi Chuanhai, from Shandong. The instructor is Zhu Jinbing, and the commander of the platoon is Wen Zhenhui. We trained in Yangjiang for one year, and in April 1966 we were transferred to Nanning, Guangxi. While defending Wuxu Airport , we carried out strict combat training.

October 15, 1966, a life that I will never forget. The 29th Regiment of the 10th Air Force Anti-Air Artillery Division was assigned to the 1st Air Force Anti-Air Artillery Division to Vietnam, and the number was changed to the 329th Battalion of the 31st Detachment of the Chinese Logistics Force. We changed our time-travel military uniforms in Pingxiang (no badges) and braved the light rain, secretly entered from Friendship Pass North Vietnam Lang Son. Most of Vietnam's highways and railways are constructed in parallel, and enemy planes bombard railways and highways. The "Gas" 63 light truck we were riding in would encounter bombs and pits from time to time, so the vehicle had to detour. It took me more than two hours to walk in Lang Son. Our 29th Regiment is stationed in the Longwai Su area, and is responsible for the task of defending the important goals of railway stations, bridges, and docks. Our camp is on Mountain No. 2, which is a small hill with an altitude of more than 200 meters. The first company, the third company and the machine gun company are at the foot of the mountain, and the second company is on the mountain. Sleep in a tent at night and drill cat ear piercing during the day. The cat's ear pierced by itself, and a class hides the cat's ear pierced. The food is good in normal times. I eat cabbage, green onions, garlic, peeled eggs and rice transported from Shandong. Sometimes I can also drink the Moutai liquor from my motherland.

High-air artillery troops have strengthened their divisions, with a division having at least 4 regiments, and some have reached the military-level scale. The Air Force, Army, Navy, Engineer Soldiers and the Anti-Aircraft Armor Units belonging to the Railway Soldiers all took turns to join the war. At that time, our anti-aircraft artillery company organized three platoons: one gun platoon, four squads, and four 85mm artillery ; one instrument platoon, two squads, command instrument squad, and altimeter measurement machine squad; one command squad, 3 squads, radio squad, telephone squad, and reconnaissance squad.The radio shift I was in charge was equipped with a wireless frequency modulator and a Bayi Cellphone. These two machines were mainly in contact with the regiment command post and two wireless receivers, which mainly received information from the 513 circumferential radar, provided to the mapper, marked the route of the enemy plane flying to the map board, and the command platoon leader indicated the target to the optical equipment of the instrument platoon based on the location of the enemy plane on the map board. Before the enemy plane was in an unprecedented position, the regiment commander used secret words to convey the orders. After the enemy plane was in an international position, it directly used Ming to convey the orders. In order to improve our combat skills, we will memorize various secret words and identification codes repeatedly when we have time and practice the skills of copying and collecting commands. We take special care of the machines we use and inspect and maintain them every day to ensure that they are in a good combat state.

enemy planes come to reconnaissance from time to time and hover over us. I have never fought a war. At first, the air defense alarm sounded, and I felt nervous, my nerves were tense, and I was a little scared. I remember that on the afternoon of November 3, 1966, an American reconnaissance plane appeared in the air. We heard the alarm and immediately entered the designated combat position. I was so nervous that I sweated on my forehead, afraid that the enemy plane would throw bombs. The enemy's reconnaissance plane hovered for a few laps and flew away. After a while, enemy aircraft carried out large-scale air strikes on the Soviet area in multiple batches. The enemy aircraft has a mixed formation of various types, with the main attack and feint attack and cooperating with each other, bombing with heavy bombs to defend targets, and specialized attack positions with light bombs from mother and child. Nearly a hundred large aircraft groups were surrounded by blackness, sweeping over the defense zone and attacked separately. The regiment political commissar Cheng Li and the deputy regiment commander Lu Cai directed the shooting, first shooting down an enemy plane in melee combat with concentrated fire, and then used the squadron as the firepower component to shoot fire. Our first company and the anti-aircraft machine gun fired violently with the 85th cannon, 37th cannon and four-barrel machine guns. During the fierce battle, our army shot down 3 US enemy aircraft and injured 3 US . However, the losses were huge. Fifty or sixty officers and soldiers including the company commander Zhang Chuanbai, instructor Yang Peimao, and tester Zhai Guanggui died. Zhu Wenfu, a photographer at the Bayi Film Studio in the second company's position, also died. Political Commissar Cheng Li and battalion instructor Zhang Zuoliang were seriously injured. After the battle of

"11.3", I heard something that the second company on the mountain was originally very concealed and concealed. In order to promote Mao Zedong Thought, they turned the empty cans inside and outside, with Chairman Mao's quotations written on them, and hung them on the tree. The light reflected by the sunlight attracted the attention of the enemy planes. three carrier-based aircraft F-4 sneaked down the sunlight toward the second company position on the high ground on the mountain. The fist-sized sub-complex sprinkled down, covering the entire position. Later, the second company commander Zhang Chuanbai, instructor Yang Peimao and tester Zhai Guanggui followed the second-class merit . The defeat in the battle educated us, and each company set off a climax of improving bunker protection, digging deep air raid shelters, and practicing hard to kill the enemy. Political propaganda and heroic deeds report inspired the morale of the troops. At around 3:00 p.m. on January 20, 1967, two enemy planes flew in low altitude for aerial reconnaissance. Just a few minutes later, more than a dozen enemy planes roared over and bombed our mountain No. 2 target. We have learned the lessons from the last time. The commanders and soldiers hid in protective cover, and the anti-aircraft guns and anti-aircraft machine guns fired at the same time on the position, causing the enemy planes to turn around and escape. A few minutes later, dozens of enemy planes bombed and attacked our guard targets and anti-aircraft artillery positions in batches. The fire on the positions soared into the sky and the smoke filled the gunpowder. The cluster bomb (commonly known as the mother bullet) dropped by enemy planes has strong lethality. The entire battalion fired at the enemy planes together, forming a three-dimensional cross-fire network, and the enemy planes did not dare to approach at low altitude. I led five soldiers from the wireless squad to closely monitor the dynamics of the enemy in the air raid shelter and constantly issue commands. Zou Ji'an, the squad leader of our fourth squad (or maybe a squad one), was shot dozens of times, and his body was stained with blood. He refused to go off the line of fire and insisted on firing anti-aircraft artillery and shooting down an enemy plane. Four people were killed and more than ten people were injured in the high machine gun company. Chen Caisheng was hit in the chest by shrapnel, and the battle position was stained with blood. 's chest was torn a seven- or eight-inch-long open hole by a bomb, and two ribs on the chest were blown off, and fainted in the machine gun position. Chen Caisheng was sent to China for emergency treatment and finally had a high position amputation. The battle on "1.20" was very exciting. Our army shot down six enemy F-105 and F-4 aircraft, and injured several aircraft.After the battle, my wireless class won the third-class collective merit. High machine gun company soldiers Zhang Hongjian and Zhang Caitao posthumously awarded second-class merits. Zou Ji'an was awarded the first-class merit of , and Chen Caisheng was awarded the second-class merit of , and gloriously attended the military region's heroes and models commendation meeting. I have known about these situations after the war.

I fought in Vietnam for more than eight months and was rated as a technical expert. On the eve of returning home, I also took up the position as the commander of the third company. After returning to China in 1967, the troops rested in Nanning, Guangxi for two months and withdrew from Guangzhou. In the following years, I was frequently mobilized and served as staff officers in the Operations Section of the 29th Regiment, the Air Force Anti-Air Artillery Command, and the Air Force Training Office of the Guangzhou Military Region. Among them, when I was a staff officer in the 29th Regiment in 1979, I was temporarily transferred to the Nanning Air Force Front Command as a staff officer to participate in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam. When we aided Vietnam and resisted the United States, Vietnam was ungrateful and turned against us, which made me feel very angry.

Don’t laugh at the battlefield when you are drunk, how many people have returned from wars in ancient times. Many of my comrades died in aid to Vietnam and fight against the United States and China, and were buried in a foreign country. In January 1982, I, a survivor of the war, transferred to the local area with a job and was placed in Xiangnan Prison in her hometown of Leiyang County. Now, I have retired, with a lot of children and grandchildren, and I enjoy my old age. I often miss those comrades who fought side by side on the Vietnam battlefield back then, and missed those comrades who died. Especially the fierce scenes of the "11.3" battle and the "1.20" battle are vivid and engraved in my mind, and they cannot be removed, as if they happened yesterday.