Gao Binh Province is a border province in northern Vietnam, bordering western Guangxi in China. The eastern part of the province, adjacent to Guangxi Daxin County and Longzhou County in the east, and connected to Guangxi Napo County and Jingxi County in the north, is a prominent part that extends to China from a geographical point of view.
Before the launch of the operation of counterattacking vietnamese self-defense and defending the frontier in 1979, when drawing up the guangxi directional operation plan, the former command headquarters of the Guangzhou Military Region took into account that there were many roads on the guangxi border leading to the eastern part of Gaoping Province, which would facilitate our army to carry out interspersed detours from the north and south flanks.
Based on this analysis, the Guangzhou Military Region decided that the first stage of the campaign would take Gao Binh as the main direction of attack, concentrate the 41st Army, the 42nd Army, the 129th Division of the 43rd Army and the reinforcement troops, adopt bold interspersed and encircled and roundabout tactics, and quickly annihilate the enemy 346th Division and its local troops in the Gaoping area. The 41st Army and the 42nd Army concentrated their main forces to attack from the direction of Nianjing and the layout respectively, advancing from north to south, and carrying out interspersed assaults on Gaoping City, first closing the gate, encircling the enemy in the Gaoping area, and then dividing and annihilating the enemy.
The specific troop deployment was: the 41st Army on the northern front fought in napo and the west of Jingxi, attacked Gaoping from north to south, and participated in the battle of 3 army divisions: the 121st Division, the 122nd Division, and the 123rd Division; the 42nd Army on the Southern Front fought in the direction of Longzhou, attacked Gaoping from east to west, and participated in the battle of 4 army divisions: the 124th Division, the 125th Division, the 126th Division, and the 129th Division of the 43rd Army.
The above-mentioned total of 7 army divisions accounted for 53.8% of the 13 army divisions in the direction of Guangxi at the time of the attack on February 17, 1979, accounting for 31.8% of the 22 army divisions participating in the battle, that is to say, when the operation began, in the six provinces on the northern border of Vietnam (Laizhou, Hoang Lian Shan, Ha Xuan, Gao Binh, Lang Son, Quang Ninh), the People's Liberation Army of Gao Binh Province had the largest number of troops participating in the battle.
After the operation began on February 17, as the campaign progressed, the former commander of the Guangzhou Military Region successively dispatched the 162nd Division of the 54th Army of the Wuhan Military Region, the 160th Division, the 58th Division of the 20th Army, and the 150th Division of the 50th Army of the Chengdu Military Region to participate in the operation in the Gaoping area. Among them, the 162nd Division was commanded by the front commander of the 54th Army, the 160th And 150th Divisions were commanded by the front commander of the 41st Army, and the 58th Division was commanded by the front commander of the 50th Army.
As a result, the number of army divisions participating in the Gaoping Campaign reached 11, accounting for 57.8 percent of the 19 army divisions in guangxi and 37.9 percent of the 29 army divisions on the eastern and western fronts. According to the above data, in the entire operation, the PLA invested the most troops in the direction of Gaoping, and the Gaoping battlefield was the main battlefield of the self-defense counterattack operation in 1979.
Why was it that the first batch of 7 divisions were not enough troops, and the campaign reserves of 4 divisions were put in, so as to basically meet the needs of annihilating the enemy in Gaoping? The main reasons are the following three aspects.
First of all, there was a serious mistake in calculating the balance of forces between the enemy and ourselves. Before the war, the former commander of the Guangzhou Military Region grasped the enemy situation as follows: The Vietnamese army in the Gaoping Theater had: 1 infantry division (the 346th Infantry Division of the First Military Region, division commander Huang Benshan, political commissar Huang Yuelong. Under the jurisdiction of the 246th Infantry Regiment, the 677th Regiment, the 851st Regiment, the 188th Artillery Regiment) more than 8,500 people, 3 provincial independent regiments (567 regiments and 852 regiments in Gaoping Province, 199 regiments in Lang Son Province) more than 3,000 people, 5 county independent battalions and 45 battalions of special agents about 2,000 people, 11 armed public security tuns less than 1,000 people. The above Vietnamese main force and local troops combined, the total strength of the force is about 15,000 people.
On this basis, the former commander of the military region decided to throw in 3 divisions of the 41st Army, 3 divisions of the 42nd Army, and 1 division of the 43rd Army, a total of 7 divisions, plus units of other arms, with a total strength of about 120,000 troops participating in the battle, and it is expected that the strength of the army can reach 8 times that of the enemy.
However, after the campaign was launched, the former commander of the military region still felt that the strength of the troops was insufficient, and there was a sense of overstretch. The main reason for this is that when calculating the balance of forces between the enemy and ourselves before the war, only the main force of the Vietnamese army and the local troops, that is, the regular army, were considered, and the strength of the Vietnamese paramilitary organization, that is, the civilian army, was not taken into account.
Vietnam's national armed forces system is subordinate to our country, implementing the method of combining the main force, local troops and the civil army, and attaching importance to the construction of the people's army, a mass armed force. The Vietnamese People's Army is organized into labor and production units, with a wide distribution, long lines, and a chaotic organization, which is extremely uneven. In terms of command system, the civil army is directly commanded by the military headquarters of each county (city) and under the unified leadership of the provincial military command.
The highest structure of the Vietnamese Civil Army is battalions, mainly in larger towns, factories, mines, and townships, each battalion is about 300 to 400 people, and the equipment is close to the level of the regular army. Farm farms and larger villages formed civilian company, each with 50 to 70 men, armed with semi-automatic rifles, submachine guns and 60 mortars.
The advantage of this armed force lies in its huge scale, familiarity with the terrain and people's conditions, and under the unified command of military command at all levels, it has divided defensive tasks according to the counties, townships, and villages, section by section, and region by region. During the battle, we used the favorable terrain to gradually block our army's attack, mainly attacking our army's lines of communication, command posts, and rear.
How many civilian troops are there in the entire Gaoping Theater? According to our army's investigation, in Guanghe County, which has a population of 80,000, there are more than 10,000 civilian troops, forming 62 companies. Even compared with other counties and cities, the proportion of the civilian army in this county is the highest in the local population, and it is conservatively estimated that the number of civilian troops in the 8 counties and 1 city in the Gaoping Theater is more than the combined strength of the Vietnamese army and the local troops. However, when the Guangzhou Military Region calculated the ratio of the enemy's and our troops before the war, it did not take into account such a huge armed force, which was a serious mistake, and in the end it could only increase the strength of the troops.
Second, the Gaoping Theater is vast in area, complex in terrain, and has a large demand for troops. In the face of the attack of our large corps, the Vietnamese army did not have enough strength to hold its position and confront it head-on, so it adopted the method of warfare that was most suitable for its own situation, that is, to break up into pieces, disperse up the mountain, and carry out guerrilla warfare with favorable terrain and familiar people's conditions. Due to the vast area of the Gaoping Theater, which is as high as 4,000 square kilometers, coupled with the complex terrain of the mountains and caves, our army can only unfold in pieces and clear the enemy mountain by hole.
To complete the task of annihilating the enemy in 7 divisions, on a vast area of 4,000 square kilometers and complex terrain, the number of troops is obviously not enough. In order to increase the density of troops, the former commander of the Guangzhou Military Region could only participate in the operations in the Gaoping Theater with the main force of the campaign reserve. At that time, there were 6 divisions in guangxi (160th Division, 161st Division, 162nd Division, 148th Division, 150th Division, 58th Division) serving as campaign reserves, of which 4 divisions (160th Division, 162nd Division, 150th Division, 58th Division) were put into the Direction of Gaoping.
Third, vigilance, road protection, and response to unexpected situations also require troops. When our army enters an enemy country to fight, it is necessary to cover the safety of command organs, artillery positions, and logistics units, to ensure the smooth flow of transportation lines, to grasp a certain reserve force to deal with unexpected situations, and so on.
Take the 125th Division of the 42nd Army as an example: on February 20, 1979, the division basically completed its combat mission in the Fuhe area of Ko Binh Province, Vietnam. At 18:20 on the evening of the same day, the former commander of the Guangzhou Military Region gave the 125th Division a new task: to clear and suppress the remnants of the enemy along the Shuikou, Fuhe, Dongxi, and Kuinan Highways in order to maintain traffic safety. In accordance with this order from the forward commander of the military region, the 125th Division was transferred to the clearance and protection of the road on the spot.
The 373rd Regiment was transferred to Dongxi to take on the task of guarding the road from Quenan to Karin; one battalion of the 374th Regiment was commanded by the Traffic Group of the Military Region, one battalion held the main points in the highlands on the west side of Dalang and Gufang, and one battalion of the 375th Regiment cleared the area near BanMo; one battalion of the 375th Regiment confronted the Vietnamese army on the highlands east of Nasai, one battalion protected the Fuhe Pontoon Crossing On both sides of the Pingjiang River, and one battalion rested and waited near Bata; the division artillery regiment was organized into a division artillery group to occupy the firing position near the Gokan Heights, and some of the troops were cleared and suppressed in the area near the sugar factory.
The lessons of the use of troops in the Gaoping Campaign tell us that when drawing up a battle plan before the war, we must correctly calculate the comparison of the strength of the enemy and ourselves, fully estimate the impact of the natural geographical environment on combat operations, and fully consider the needs of guarding and protecting roads and mastering the reserves, so that we can make a scientific plan for the use of troops that meets the needs of actual combat.
The author is a master of history, a university lecturer, focusing on the history of the Sino-Vietnamese war.
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