"Twenty-Eight Days of Life and Death: A Chronicle of the Battle of Gaoping by the Forty-first Army Against Vietnam" is the memoir of Song Zipei, former secretary of the Discipline Inspection Committee of the 41st Army of the Guangzhou Military Region. It is a panoramic work that records the history of the 41st Army's participation in the 1979 self-defense counterattack against Vietnam and the defense of the frontier, with a total of about 260,000 words
The author was then the deputy director of the Political Department of the 41st Army, and after the campaign was launched, he led the army working group to follow the 361st Regiment of the 121st Division, which carried out the task of interspersing the main direction of the campaign, to penetrate deep into the enemy and fight for 28 days, and was the only full-division cadre among the units participating in the battle on the eastern and western fronts who fought with the first echelon regiment.
During the battle, Deputy Director Song was born and died together with grass-roots officers and soldiers, prepared for hardships, and experienced hardships. After the war, with an attitude of being highly responsible for the building of the troops and with infinite respect for the officers and men participating in the war, he was determined to record this period of history intertwined with blood and fire.
Proceeding from his own experience in the war, combined with the unit's war evaluation and summary, he interviewed nearly a hundred army, division, and regiment leaders and grass-roots commanders and fighters, and consulted millions of words of combat documents and selected combat examples. On the basis of arduous and meticulous work, with strong perseverance and the guidance of the materialist spirit, it took several years of painstaking efforts to write this book, truly showing the conquest process of the 41st Army in front of people, and admonishing future generations to always remember this history and never forget "the most lovely people of the new generation".
The biggest feature of this book is that while summing up the experience of victory, it attaches great importance to ignoring the lessons of defeat. Objectively, the special terrain, the special enemy, the subjective wrong judgment, and the wrong determination made the troops pay a considerable price and suffered no small loss.
Summing up lessons and lessons in a truth-seeking manner is the greatest respect for history and is a beneficial promotion for army building, and this is the starting point and foothold of the author's writing. The author confessed before his death: "Publishing at the right time is also an assignment I have given to the organization. ”
It is precisely because of the truth-seeking and profound reflection that the book has been warmly welcomed by veterans of the war and the vast number of readers, which has aroused strong repercussions and is a valuable material for us to understand that period of history.
Some readers asked me questions through private messages, saying that they had watched "28 Days of Life and Death", which mentioned that the ministry sacrificed thousands of people, and I don't know what the specific data is?
Upon consultation, the book does contain such a record on page 274, as follows:
"What is even more sad is that the thousands of martyrs, the bones are not cold, there is no home, the ashes are locked in the house or placed in the corner of the wall."
In our Chinese, a few is a number that indicates uncertainty, but anything greater than one and less than ten can be expressed in a few. So how many thousands of them did Song Zipei mention in the book? To solve this problem, we use historical data as the basis for analysis and research.
Historical Material I: The Logistics Department of the 41st Army compiled after the war "Experience of Organizing command in the rear of the Sino-Vietnamese Border Self-Defense Counterattack Combat Army" compiled by the Logistics Department of the Army. This empirical material is recorded in the second paragraph of the main text as follows:
We suffered 4,565 casualties (excluding reinforcements and detachments), of which 1,295 were killed.
Historical Material II: Logistical Combat Examples Compiled by the Headquarters of the General Logistics Department "Logistics Support for Offensive Operations in the Area West of Gaoping of the 41st Army (February 17 to March 16, 1979)". In Appendix 2, this example of the battle is a detailed count of the 1295 deaths recorded in the historical record by unit classification:
The 121st Division lost 411 casualties, the 122nd Division killed 490, the 123rd Division killed 325, and the 123rd Division killed 69, for a total of 1295.
Historical material three: Chinese the "Reduction of the Number of Combat Troops" compiled by the Ministry of Health of the General Logistics Department of the People's Liberation Army. This detailed statistical table by department is part of the "Statistics on health work in self-defense and counter-offensive operations on the Sino-Vietnamese border", on page 17 of the book. According to this statistical table, the 41st Army lost 1316 people.
By looking at the above historical records, we can know that there are two figures for the number of casualties of the 41st Army: 1295 and 1316. Considering that the "Statistics on Health Work in Sino-Vietnamese Border Self-Defense and Counterattack Operations" was compiled in 1980 by the organization of forces, when it was far from the end of the operation, there was enough time for full detailed investigation and data verification, so the number of casualties of the 41st Army in the war against Vietnam should be recorded in the health work statistics: 1316 people.
In addition, the 41st Army had 275 missing persons in 28 days of fighting. On July 2, 1979, the General Political Department and the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued the "Circular on Handling the Treatment of The Families of Missing ServiceMen in The Self-Defense Counterattack Against Vietnam."
The circular clearly stipulates that, in view of the long period of operation and the end of the repatriation of prisoners by both China and Vietnam, the missing servicemen who have not yet obtained their exact information will be treated as sacrificed soldiers for the time being, and a pension will be paid to their families according to the current standards.
Therefore, we can conclude that the number of casualties of the 41st Army in 1979 in the fight against Vietnam in self-defense and the defense of the frontier was 1591.
All the commanders and fighters of the 41st Army fought hard for 28 days in the battle to defend the southwest frontier of the motherland, and wrote a new chapter in the glorious history of the Tashan Jin Brigade, annihilating a total of 7,032 enemies, of whom 5,581 were killed, 1,118 were wounded, and 333 were captured. After the war, the Central Military Commission awarded the ministry 5 units and 12 individual honorary titles. Zhang Xudeng, then military commander, and Liu Zhanrong, political commissar.
History is not an unknowable thing, and on the basis of fully grasping historical materials and through the use of scientific methods to analyze and examine, we can learn the historical truth, or we can get as close as possible to the historical truth. As for those who only know all day long that they can only open their mouths and blindly break this unbelievable, untrustworthy guys, they are just brainless trolls who don't read books, don't study, have no culture, have no knowledge, and don't talk about logic and don't understand science. The mantra of such trolls is: So-and-so troops have run out, so-and-so units have few people left, and the flags of so-and-so units have been surrendered... How much enmity do you have with the People's Liberation Army?
The typical characteristics of this type of person are self-righteous without knowing it, and they are poor in knowledge and unashamed, just like what we usually call mountain bamboo shoots - the mouth is thick and hollow. As soon as you opened your mouth, you said that the historical materials are not credible, the history is unknowable, and how many books have you read? How many articles have you written? How much knowledge is there? You deserve to say that too?
Remembering history and not forgetting the past is the best memorial to martyrs.
In order to have the courage to sacrifice more, dare to teach the sun and the moon for a new day.
Revolutionary martyrs are immortal!
The author is a master of history, a university lecturer, focusing on the history of the Sino-Vietnamese war.
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