Text/Expo History
Edit/Expo History
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In the 1979 counterattack against Vietnam, the vast number of commanders and fighters of our army were brave and fearless, died nine times without regret, and finally won a brilliant victory.
In fact, alongside these warriors, there are also a group of unsung heroes who are unarmed but use cameras as weapons, and they also record one bloody historical moment after another of our warriors with the spirit of seeing death as if they were home.
Among them, there is a photographer, with taking a photo, the mighty mainland mighty army, which made the Vietnamese little scared to the bone, and won the first class merit!
You know, during the war, the heroes who can be honored with first-class merit are basically martyrs who heroically kill the enemy and stain the battlefield with blood.
So, what kind of photograph is this that captures historical moments?
What is the background of the photo?
And who is this photographer?
Lang Mountain
As the old saying goes: Righteous warriors are vigorous, and those who jump beams will be killed!
With the reunification and independence of Vietnam, its leader, Le Duan, began to grow in ambition, believing that his army was "the third in the world" outside the United States and the Soviet Union. As for the mainland, which once provided selfless help to Vietnam like a brother, he did not pay attention to it, and even fought with ambitions to usurp the mainland's territory.
In order to deter the young people who jumped the beams, the mainland launched a rapid self-defense counterattack against Vietnam in February 1979.
If analyzed on paper, our army's counterattack operations can be described as difficult.
In terms of the Vietnamese army, most of its main forces are divisions that have experienced hundreds of battles after decades of war, and they have various assistance from the mainland and the Soviet Union, as well as a large number of advanced equipment left by the US military.
In terms of battlefields, northern Vietnam, bordering the mainland, is steep in mountains, inaccessible and extremely complex. Because it had long intended to attack the mainland, the Vietnamese army built a large number of strong forts in advance by taking advantage of various favorable terrains, laying large minefields and countless traps.
On the other hand, our army, because it has just experienced a special period, has greatly affected its combat effectiveness. The troops are poorly trained, the grassroots commanders are inexperienced, and they cannot even read the operational map. Most of the weapons in the hands of the soldiers lagged behind the Vietnamese army. The staff officers still have Vietnamese topographic data from the 1950s, and many of the data are no longer accurate.
Under these circumstances, in the face of the strong defensive line built by the enemy over many years, it is inevitable that our army will make huge sacrifices in an unfamiliar battlefield environment.
But even so, the officers and men of the People's Liberation Army, with their glorious traditions, launched a tidal wave of offensives against the enemy when the trumpet sounded, and beat the enemy to the head with a fearless revolutionary spirit in the mountainous forests of North Vietnam.
In the view of the top level of the Vietnamese army, within 18 kilometers of the border, the combination of the Vietnamese army and the local armed forces is fully capable of dragging our army into the quagmire of a war of attrition, but they never expected that after only 20 days, the PLA would already point directly at the throat town of northern Vietnam ~ Lang Shan.
Speaking of this Lang Son Mountain, the whole of Vietnam attaches great importance to it. Why?
Because this place is 18 kilometers from the Sino-Vietnamese border, only 180 kilometers from Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, there is a Qi Poor River running through the middle, dividing the city into two urban areas: old and old.
Under the calculation of the Vietnamese army, our army will be entangled in the 18 kilometers of attack on Lang Son and even if it hits Lang Son , it will be the end of the strong crossbow. But they don't dare to take it lightly.
Because with Lang Shan as the dividing point, further south is no longer mountainous terrain, but plains and rice fields with little undulating water network, which is very suitable for the assault of mechanized troops spearheaded by tanks. Moreover, Lang Son is also a transportation hub, with a large number of railway lines and roads leading to Hanoi.
Once our army takes Lang Son Son , it can be supported by strong firepower and can advance Hanoi in a day at most. If this comes true, then Vietnam's disreputement in the international community will be small, and it will be great to return to the mountains to fight guerrilla.
In history, every time the Central Plains Dynasty came to Annan, as long as it took Langshan, the small imperial court would immediately plead guilty. It is no exaggeration to say that if the mainland launches a full-scale war, it is not impossible for Vietnam to die again.
Therefore, the Vietnamese side deployed heavy troops to defend the Lang Son area. The famous 3rd Division, known as "Venus", is the main force.
In Vietnam, the honor of this "gold star" symbolizes "victory". During the Vietnam War, these 3 divisions fought with the US army in blood and flesh, repeatedly made extraordinary achievements, and were famous for their ability to attack and defend well, especially in close combat and night combat, which was simply the shadow of our army.
After the counterattack began, the division also clamored to go to the border friendship pass to eat breakfast and hit Nanning for the New Year. Arrogance cannot be described as arrogant.
In addition, the Vietnamese army also mobilized other main forces and local public security regiments to entrench here, plus the 3rd Division, the total strength of the defense of Lang Son reached more than 20,000 people, and the Vietnamese army defended all directions.
In the arrangement of the defensive line, the Vietnamese army built more than 20,000 fortifications, bunkers and fire points in the mountains and caves around Lang Son Mountain, and there were dense communication trenches connected to each other. At the same time, they also laid hundreds of mixed tactical minefields of different sizes, as well as countless bamboo traps and obstacle fields.
This ring of defense systems formed a dense network of crossfire, and in the eyes of the Vietnamese army, even if our army launched a strong attack with several times the strength, it would be completely defeated by them.
In theory, there was nothing wrong with the idea of the Vietnamese army. But in reality, it is a pity that they encountered the invincible People's Liberation Army in the world.
victory
In terms of our army, after more than 20 days of bloody battles, instead of becoming the end of the strong crossbow, it has become more and more courageous and stronger in battle, which is the inheritance of the spirit of countless heroic predecessors.
In the face of Lang Shan, our army is also unceremonious, forming an all-star team. Among them, the 55th and 54th armies were the main forces of the attack, and the 42nd and 50th armies were responsible for coordinating. The total strength of the four armies was nearly 100,000, five times that of the Vietnamese army.
The 55th Army was brought out by the uprising of General Chen Mingren in the Liberation War, and it was only responsible for suppressing bandits in the country in the past, but it was a dark horse killed in this counterattack war, not only destroying one main regiment of the "Jinxing Division", but also annihilating a total of 19,000 enemies, the most among the nine armies participating in the battle.
The 54th Army was formed by the merger of the 44th and 45th Steel Divisions. Among them, the 45th Army had resisted 6 divisions of Bai Chongxi with 1 division in the Liberation War. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the 54th Army even performed well in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea and the counterattack against India, and was a proper "layman in foreign wars."
Before the Battle of Lang Son , our army fully learned the experience and lessons of the previous operation, as long as it can be flattened with artillery, it will definitely not let the infantry fight hard.
To this end, under the order of General Xu Shiyou, the 55th Army mobilized 19 heavy artillery battalions in one go, and launched a 30-minute fire attack on the barracks, railway station, power facilities and main buildings in Lang Son with more than 200 130 and 152 large-caliber howitzers before the general attack, firing a total of more than 9,900 shells.
After the firefight, all the intended targets were completely destroyed, and the water and electricity supply in Lang Son city were completely cut off. Then the 55th Army launched a ferocious attack.
In the fierce street battles, our army continued to grasp medicine according to the prescription, and when it encountered the enemy's stubborn resistance relying on a strong stronghold, it pulled out tanks, 130 and 152 cannons, and even 37-mm anti-aircraft guns with small calibers but high fire density, and first hit the enemy.
Among them, the 152mm howitzer has the greatest power, the enemy within a radius of 15 meters outside the shell explosion point absolutely does not have a complete corpse, the enemy within a radius of 50 meters is either dead or wounded, even if it is far away, the enemy will be directly shocked to death.
Moreover, the artillery observers of our army have always been charging with the infantry, and when they encounter recalcitrant resistance from the enemy, they can immediately provide the supporting artillery with enemy coordinate positions. After the enemy fortress was completely bulldozed, our infantry charged again. In this way, the enemy's fire points were quickly pulled out one by one.
The Vietnamese army at that time, objectively speaking, was still very tenacious in its will to fight, and also used artillery to launch a confrontation with our army, but under the overwhelming fire suppression of our army, it quickly faded.
At noon on March 2, all three divisions of the 55th Army entered Lang Son and captured the provincial government building. On the evening of the same day, our army occupied the city of Langsan north of the Qiqiang River.
Our army originally planned to be in this class, but the Vietnamese were "dead ducks with a hard mouth" and went so far as to say that our army only occupied half of Lang Son Mountain. At this time, General Xu Shiyou was furious when he heard the news, and ordered all the troops to kill the Qiqiang River.
In the early morning of March 4, the assault units of the 55th Army and the 43rd Army launched another offensive and quickly seized the Qiqiang River Bridge. By noon, the "Venus Division" was completely wiped out, our army completely occupied Lang Son and Hanoi was just around the corner.
It was at this moment that the famous photograph that was mentioned at the beginning of this article was born.
Eternal brilliance
Our army has had a fine tradition since the time of the Red Army. That is, combatants and non-combatants, all of whom can go into battle, including cooks.
In the counterattack against Vietnam, this fine tradition was once again carried forward. Among the non-combatants, although the camera officers could not hold steel guns and kill the enemy, they also sacrificed their lives and forgot to die, recording one heroic moment after another of their comrades in the line of fire.
And they also paid great sacrifices. A war correspondent for the Liberation Army Daily broke an arm by an enemy shell. When the photographic officer of the 121st Division of the 41st Army was advancing with the troops, he encountered a Vietnamese special agent and died heroically.
Even so, Li Yongan, a photography officer of the 163rd Division of the 55th Army, still took the initiative to ask for help and asked to go to the line of fire to shoot.
At that time, the Battle of Dongdeng had already begun, and the photographic officers of the fraternal troops had already gone to the front, and Li Yongan, who was still in the rear, could not sit still, and under his repeated requests, the leadership finally approved him to shoot with the attacking troops.
Since then, Li Yongan has been following the assault force of the 55th Army and is always facing the test of life and death. In order to capture the real footage of his comrades heroically killing the enemy, he threw away all his daily necessities, took only his camera, film and pistol for self-defense, and sneaked into the enemy's artillery blockade to take pictures.
During the battle in the troops, he took a large number of precious photographs, documenting many details of this just battle.
However, Lee Yongan was not satisfied at all, believing that the photographs he took did not reflect the great historical significance of the Vietnam counterattack, or that none of the photographs could represent the just battle.
As a photography officer, he was eager to take what could be called classic photographs such as "Conquering Berlin" or "Storming the Nanjing Presidential Palace".
Just as he was distressed, the 55th Army launched a general attack on Lang Son .
After learning of the great significance of this battle, Li Yongan immediately asked the division commander to fight, asking to accompany the assault troops to the place where the battle was most intense. He had a hunch that this time he would be able to achieve his wish.
On March 4, the 55th Army began to forcibly cross the Qiqiu River. Li Yongan filmed the precious historical footage of our soldiers rushing across the Qiqiang River Bridge.
After the battle, Li Yongan came to the Lang Son Provincial Government Building with the red flag of our army. Despite the war, this building with Vietnamese characteristics is an important building at first glance, with a foundation of more than 3 meters high.
At the foot of the steps leading into the building is an old cannon, and the steps are full of rubble, fallen leaves and blown off branches.
Out of the photographer's instinct, Li Yongan immediately felt that this was an ideal shooting background, so who should the protagonist of the photo look for?
At this moment, he saw two Chinese soldiers in a crouched position guarding the gate of the building vigilantly. So, he shouted: "Two comrades, can you stand up, I will take a picture." ”
As soon as the words came out, he regretted it. Because the battle had just ended, there were still remnants of the enemy being cleared. The two warriors who were hiding appeared so proudly on the steps without any concealment, they were likely to be the target of the enemy's cold shot.
But our warriors were brave and fearless, and without saying a word, they stood on the stairs in a mighty posture. So, Li Yongan immediately pressed the shutter and took this historic photo.
This photo is "Conquering Lang Mountain".
At that time, the Vietnamese government still refused to admit that Lang Son had been conquered by our army. Therefore, the outside world has always doubted the war reports of our army. However, with this photo, Vietnam's lies were immediately exposed, and its image and status in the international community took a sharp turn. The whole world knows the clown who jumps in front of the mainland, and our army is strong and will be killed.
On March 5, our army declared victory and triumph.
Subsequently, Li Yongan received a cordial reception from General Xu Shiyou and Comrade Deng Xiaoping. Moreover, by virtue of his "conquering Langshan", he also became the only second "first-class meritorious service" among the organ personnel of the 163rd Division. The other is Li Wanyu, deputy division commander.
Today, 44 years have passed since the counterattack against Vietnam, but the blood of the warriors has not been shed in vain, and their fearless sacrifices have brought a precious peaceful environment for the development of the motherland and the people's peaceful life. Their merits will shine with the sun and the moon, and they will live with heaven and earth!