The veterans of the People's Liberation Army who participated in the Laoshan operation will not be unfamiliar with the code name of 211 Heights, even if they have not participated in this battle, they must have heard from their comrades-in-arms.
[Laoshan 211 Highlands]
The battle for the 211 heights between the Chinese and Vietnamese armies created the meat grinder battlefield in the Lao Son operation, and the officers and soldiers on both sides paid huge casualties, and the story of this high ground was also widely spread among the Chinese and Vietnamese armies, becoming a landmark battle in the Lao Son operation.
Bloody Battle 211 Heights
The battle on Heights 211 began with a tentative offensive by the Vietnamese army in the direction of Nala, when the 67th Army of the People's Liberation Army was changing its guard and was relatively empty of troops, and the Vietnamese army took the opportunity to launch the so-called M1T5 plan, which was a battalion-sized counter-attack.
【PLA Position】
The 67th Army regained control of the situation after a fierce battle, but the 211 heights were lost as a result.
This is also something that cannot be helped, because Heights 211 is at the forefront of positions in the direction of Nara, and as long as the two sides fight, Heights 211 will be hit.
Judging by the aerial reconnaissance photos, the entire 211 heights are not large, with a length of only about 130 meters. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) previously built 10 cat's ear holes on the 211 heights, and according to the ordinary establishment of 3 to 6 people in one hole, the number of PLA on the 211 heights does not exceed 55 at most.
[211 Highlands]
After reconnoitering the defenses of Heights 211, the Vietnamese sent a battalion-sized unit to launch a tentative attack.
This attack allowed the Vietnamese army to grasp the specific defensive deployment of the PLA, and after nightfall, the PLA would always mobilize troops from various cat's ear holes to gather at the front line to guard against the Vietnamese army launching a night attack.
After this tentative attack, the Vietnamese army headquarters soon issued a general offensive order, and the Vietnamese army dispatched an absolutely superior force to start a breakthrough on the 211 heights from three directions, and the PLA strength disadvantage was further magnified and soon the Vietnamese army approached the front of the position.
【211 Highland Operations】
At that time, the PLA soldiers had been blocked by the Vietnamese army in the cat's ear hole, and with the enemy's removal of the cat's ear hole one by one, our army quickly lost control of the heights, and the People's Liberation Army guarding the 211 heights paid more than 20 sacrifices.
This victory in the local battlefield was widely publicized by the Vietnamese authorities as the beginning of a major counteroffensive, and the PLA was very dissatisfied with this attitude of the Vietnamese army and immediately prepared to launch a counterattack.
The loss of positions may not be a big deal in the eyes of other armies, after all, victory and defeat are a common thing in soldiers, but for the 67th Army, the loss of the 211 heights is a great shame for the entire army, after all, the slogan of our army at that time was never to lose an inch of land.
[67th Army Artillery]
In order to regain control of the heights as soon as possible, the 67th Army made an irrational decision, they concealed the real battle situation on the front line and launched a fierce attack on the 211 heights without the knowledge of the Military Commission.
However, the 67th Army did not make a good operational plan and emergency plan for recapturing the heights at that time, and it was completely reckless with enthusiasm, and it took 11 days to fight a fight, so you can imagine how huge casualties the attacking troops paid.
Even the 67th Regiment of the 199th Division under the 595th Army was almost exhausted, and hundreds of officers and soldiers died on the battlefield.
[The People's Liberation Army is fighting hard]
The 67th Army's commander's practice of blindly giving orders to ignore the lives of officers and soldiers at the grassroots level eventually caused a disaster with extremely bad effects, and one of our soldiers who survived the battlefield completely lost his mind after witnessing the sacrifice of all his comrades.
He rushed into the conference room of the military party committee with a rifle, causing obvious casualties at the scene, and the soldiers were protesting against the erroneous command of the army leadership in this extreme way.
From the establishment of our army to the present, similar things are extremely rare, and with the intervention of the Central Military Commission, the brutal things of the 67th Army were made public, and then people knew that the 211 Heights had become a flesh mill.
【Tragic front-line battlefield】
In particular, the fighting that took place on June 11 terrified all the surviving PLA officers and soldiers, who had never experienced such a tragic battle since they participated in the war against Vietnam.
Kill the red-eyed Chinese and Vietnamese armies
The battle began when the Kunming Military Region ordered the 67th Army to recapture our army's outpost on the 211 heights, and the 199th Division was asked by the commander of the 67th Army to regain control of the heights at all costs.
【Frontline】
However, Heights 211 is not the commanding heights around it, which means that our troops will be attacked by the condescending firepower of the Vietnamese army no matter where they attack from, and there is not much shelter on Heights 211, and it is difficult for the attacking PLA soldiers to find even a suitable bunker.
Moreover, because there was no cooperation of the brother troops, the artillery of the 67th Army alone could not suppress the enemy's artillery fire at all, which made our army lose the greatest tactical advantage, and the attack launched by the 199th Division on the 211 heights completely violated the basic battlefield common sense, and such a battle was not advocated by our army.
After many days of fierce fighting, the 199th Division invested four company-level units were all disabled, the worst of which was the 3rd Company that served as the main attack in the later stage, and only 4 people remained in a fully formed company in the end, and basically the whole company was lost on the 211 heights.
【Corpse-strewn highland】
At that time, the entire road up the 211 Heights was full of the remains of our soldiers and wounded soldiers who could not move, and the scene was extremely tragic, and our army rarely suffered such a big loss in the confrontation with the Vietnamese army.
After this battle, the 199th Division also learned from the pain, and sent an assault team composed of the division's reconnaissance company to secretly infiltrate the 211 Heights, and finally cooperated with the firepower of the main force in the high ground to contain it, and regained control of the high ground with only 2 minor injuries.
Such a result undoubtedly once again proved the huge mistake of the previous 199th Division, and the sacrifice of many soldiers could have been avoided, but as our army seized the initiative, the Vietnamese army also came up, and they made the same mistake as the previous 199th Division, and launched a large-scale counterattack that was completely undisciplined.
At this time, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had already occupied a condescending tactical advantage, and the Vietnamese army had paid more heavy casualties than our army before, with more than 400 casualties and countless casualties.
[The People's Liberation Army cleans up the battlefield]
The tug-of-war between the Chinese and Vietnamese armies on the 211 Heights has also made this a veritable meat grinder, and only the PLA officers and soldiers who have experienced the battle on the 211 Heights can understand how fierce the battle was at that time, and the battle that broke out on the 211 Heights was also the most intense local battle in the Lao Son operation.
Sources:
[1] The position covered by artillery fire is only crying, and the Chinese soldiers destroy the withering and decaying and beat the enemy.Sina [Citation date: 2019-07-20]