Although we were unwilling to face it, by 12 noon, all three base shells were fired.
According to the soldiers of the artillery unit, from the beginning of this battle to when the artillery shells ran out at noon, one artillery regiment alone fired tens of thousands of artillery shells, and the barrels were red.
During this process, we always wanted to save some shells, and we did so...if we hadn't consciously used them sparingly, we might not have been able to hold on at twelve o'clock.
In fact, most of the time our army's artillery troops use artillery shells as a last resort, that is, as long as the front-line positions are not fired, they are likely to fall into the hands of the Japanese, which forces us to fire.
But the result of such fighting is that there are fewer and fewer shells.
As it approached twelve o'clock at noon, the density of artillery fire gradually decreased, and then it switched to limited fire support for front-line positions. Finally, there was no sound at all...the last artillery shell was fired.
Facts also prove that these artillery shells we fired are necessary, because the moment our army's artillery fire stopped, the Vietnamese army seized this opportunity to launch a fierce attack on our army's position. In just half an hour, our army's front line
All positions were lost except for Highland 142.
This is not to say that our infantry was not brave enough in combat. In this half hour, countless soldiers defended their position until the last moment and even died together with the Vietnamese army holding explosive bags.
But the thing is as mentioned before, because the Vietnamese army lasted eight hours of continuous attacks... The Vietnamese army took turns attacking our defense line with a strength of 18,000 people, although most of these attacks were blocked by our defense line.
The army's artillery shells were blocked by the wall of fire, but some Vietnamese were lucky enough to break into our defense line.
These Vietnamese troops could only avoid causing damage to our military fortifications. In addition, the mines, barbed wires and roadblocks in front of the positions were all covered with Vietnamese corpses. This gave the Vietnamese troops good conditions for charging.
Using the corpses of comrades to fight... This sounds cruel. If people in a peaceful society say it, it is disrespectful to the dead. However, the battlefield is like this. If you do not use all available resources to defeat the enemy, then
It is very likely that more living people will turn into corpses, and the sacrifice of these soldiers will become meaningless because they cannot capture the enemy's position.
Therefore, the battlefield and the peaceful society are two completely different worlds. This refers not only to the material life, but also to the way of thinking.
The Vietnamese army still used the old methods of using corpses. One was to use corpses as sandbags to pile up machine gun bunkers in strategic places... The terrain in the Laoshan area is steep in the north and gentle in the south. That is to say, the terrain on the side where the Vietnamese army charged was gentler.
The slope was only 30 or 40 degrees, unlike the side where we were charging, which had a slope of 60 degrees. So the Vietnamese army easily built fortifications with flesh and blood on the path of their charge, and there were even some places where
The corpses were piled up to form a traffic trench.
The other is to use corpses as ready-made protective colors... There are corpses all over the ground, right? As long as the charging Vietnamese army lies on the ground, no one knows which of the "meat" on the ground is dead and which is alive.
The Vietnamese army made full use of these two points. First, they launched a group charge against our army's positions... Our soldiers fired rows of bullets, watching the Vietnamese devils fall in pieces like harvested rice.
fell down, but in fact many of these people fell down intentionally.
This trick of the Vietnamese army is actually not new. Our Second Company had seen this trick of the Vietnamese army during the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam in 1979. Therefore, the soldiers on the front line of our army also know very well that many of these Vietnamese soldiers are
"Fake death"... After all, they also have experience fighting against the Japanese. And the veterans also mentioned it to them when introducing their experience.
But even if they knew, there was nothing they could do about these "suspended deaths". There were too many corpses in front of them. Unless they could blow up all these corpses with mortars, they would not be able to clear out the corpses hidden inside.
"Fake Corpse".
Of course, it was impossible for the soldiers to do this. Cannonballs on the highlands could be said to be more expensive than gold, so they had no choice but to let it go.
As a result, the Vietnamese army had an advantage the next time they charged...
At this time, our soldiers have to face enemies from two directions. One direction is the Vietnamese troops who charge towards the defense line under the cover of machine gun fire. The other direction is the Vietnamese troops who hide among the corpses and secretly shoot or throw at our soldiers.
The "fake corpse" of a grenade.
It should be said that this is impossible to guard against, and the Vietnamese army is still a master. At this time, their frontal charge completely ignored the casualties and tried to attract the attention of our army as much as possible. Then when the battle became fierce, the "fake corpse"
Suddenly jumped up and threw the grenade into our trench.
So it didn't take long before news of the loss of our army's front-line defensive positions came one by one.
To everyone's surprise, Highland 142, which was initially thought to be the most difficult to defend, was not captured by the Vietnamese army.
I soon realized that this should be the credit of Huang Jianfu's tank company.
Sure enough, after a phone call was made to the division headquarters, they found out that the tank troops were having a great time fighting the Vietnamese at Highland 142.
Huang Jianfu's tank company has now expanded to twenty tanks. His strategy is to divide these twenty tanks into four parts, with five tanks in each team.
Three of them are located on the left, middle and right positions of No. 5 and No. 6, not far behind Highland 142. From these three positions, they can quickly reinforce the left and right wings of Highland 142 from different directions. The remaining
A part of the team will serve as a reserve team.
The Vietnamese army did not expect that our army would invest tank troops in this area. In addition, the first batch of Vietnamese troops that rushed up were latent troops within Qingshuikou, so they were not equipped with much heavy equipment or anti-tank weapons.
Once this happens, our tank troops will have the opportunity to show off their skills.
Moreover, Huang Jianfu's timing to put the tank troops into the battle was just right... From the very beginning, the 40th Infantry Division knew of the existence of this tank unit in the direction of Highland 142, so Huang Jianfu was asked to go there several times when Highland 142 was in danger.
He called for reinforcements, but Huang Jianfu pretended not to hear anything and kept his troops stationary.
It wasn't until our army ran out of artillery shells that the Vietnamese army rushed up to Highland 142... At this time, the surface position of Highland 142 had been lost. Our soldiers on Highland 142 retreated into the tunnels and continued to hold on. In order not to delay the opportunity to fight, the Vietnamese army
, they used firepower to block the entrance of our army's tunnel and turned the main force to positions 5 and 6 behind Highland 142.
It is precisely because of this that the Vietnamese army invested a considerable amount of troops near Highland 142. According to Huang Jianfu, at least one battalion of Vietnamese troops was assembled on Highland 142 at that time, and these Vietnamese troops were also gathering ammunition and building machine gun positions on Highland 142.
Actively prepare for the attack on No. 5 and No. 6 Highlands.
At this moment, Huang Jianfu's tank troops took action.
Three tank troops attacked at the same time, leading the infantry of the 40th Division into the enemy positions from three directions towards Highland 142... Highlands 5 and 6 were only a few hundred meters away from Highland 142, and the tank troops only used a few
They reached Highland 142 in just 10 minutes, and occupied the unnamed high ground behind Highland 142 in ten minutes, which meant that they cut off the Vietnamese Army's retreat route near Highland 142 and formed an encirclement situation.
So a massacre began near Highland 142.
A battalion of Vietnamese infantry was surrounded by Hill 142 and unable to move. They faced the Chinese steel defense line built by a combination of tanks and infantry. The Vietnamese army had just captured Hill 142 and did not have any fortifications.
In addition, they do not have suitable anti-tank weapons... Most of the rockets they carry are anti-infantry incendiary bombs, so they can only use the most primitive method, which is to hold explosive packets and cluster them under the cover of machine gun fire.
The grenades rushed towards our tanks.
But of course our soldiers will not let them succeed easily.
At this time, our army was not what it was like when it fought the counterattack in 1979. Even ordinary troops such as Commander Jiang's 40th Division had infantry-tank coordination subjects in their daily training. Therefore, tanks and infantry learned from each other's strengths and complemented each other's weaknesses. In the Vietnamese Army
An unbreakable steel Great Wall formed in front of them. The tank guns and the anti-aircraft machine guns carried on the tanks fired pieces of bullets and artillery shells into the crowd of Vietnamese soldiers, ruthlessly harvesting lives.
Later, when I asked Huang Jianfu why he had resisted taking action until now, Huang Jianfu replied like this: "The Vietnamese have no artillery and no anti-tank equipment. That's when we can kill a large number of the enemy's effective forces. If we had earlier
If the enemy is prepared for the attack, wouldn’t that be an advantage for the enemy?"
Hearing this, I just smiled bitterly. Huang Jianfu still lacked a long-term strategic vision. That is to say, the reason why he fought like this was not for other reasons, but to kill more Yue Japanese to satisfy his hatred.
What he didn't know was that his approach actually achieved another goal: at this time, most of the 18,000 people the Vietnamese army invested in Qingshuikou had already been killed or injured, so even if they were several times more powerful than us, they still had no strength.
Inadequate situation, now another battalion was wiped out unexpectedly on Highland 142. For a while, there was no way to organize more follow-up troops to invest in Highland 142.
And because Highland 142 is an outpost on the Songmaoling front line, it directly led to the fact that although the Vietnamese army captured several highlands on the Songmaoling front line, they were unable to obtain sufficient supplies and troop reinforcements in time, and the defense was weak.
On the one hand, this prevented the Vietnamese army from expanding its results, and on the other hand, it also laid a good foundation for our army's subsequent counterattack to quickly achieve victory.
I think that after knowing that there was a problem in the direction of Highland 142, the Vietnamese commander would have been so angry that he would have yelled at his mother! (To be continued...)