At 5:00 a.m. on February 17, 1979, after hearing the orders of the central authorities, 200,000 troops quickly crossed the Sino-Vietnamese border to launch an attack on Vietnam, and the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam officially broke out. In just one month of self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, the Chinese army achieved great victories, the Vietnamese army was defeated and retreated, and even almost lost the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, if it were not for the timely withdrawal of Chinese troops, Hanoi would have been conquered by the Chinese army. In the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam, the highest commander of the Chinese army was General Xu Shiyou, but the best commander in the counterattack against Vietnamese self-defense was not General Xu Shiyou, but General Wu Zhong.
General Wu Zhong inspected the front line of the counterattack against Vietnam
General Wu Zhong was recognized as the best general to fight in the self-defense counterattack against Vietnam. General Wu Zhong, a native of Sichuan, joined the Red Army at the age of 12, and through hard work, he grew from a grassroots soldier to a senior general in the People's Liberation Army, and in his military career, he fought many major wars, also participated in the Korean War, and finally was awarded the founding major general in 1955, at the age of 34, becoming the youngest major general in New China.
At the end of 1978, the central authorities decided to launch a counterattack against Vietnamese self-defense, and Wu Zhong, then deputy commander of the Guangzhou Military Region, took the initiative to ask for help and to go to the front line to command. The central government agreed to his request, and the supreme commander of the Chinese army entrusted General Wu Zhong with the important task of conquering the Vietnamese military town of Gao Binh. After taking the task, Wu Zhong began to formulate a plan to conquer Gaoping City. Due to the excellent command ability, coupled with the proper battle plan, the Chinese army under the command of General Wu Zhong, the armored troops drove into Dongxi City in less than 3 hours, the troops arrived at the outskirts of Gaoping, began to annihilate the Vietnamese army in a planned way, and completely occupied Gaoping City in only 2 days.
Our tank units in the Battle of Gaoping