Introduction: "Twenty-Eight Days of Life and Death -- A Record of the Gaoping Campaign of the Forty-first Army Against Vietnam" is a heartfelt work compiled by Song Zipei, former secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission of the Forty-first Army, in five years. In the chant to the hero, accompanied by a bit of desolation and tragedy, it makes people cry when they read.
As the author's passionate pen tip dragon walks on the end of the paper, the tragic and magnificent picture of the Gaoping Offensive Battle is presented in a panoramic way in front of our eyes, and the battle process is full of ups and downs, making us sometimes sad, sometimes sad, sometimes hot blood, sometimes tears spilling clothes.
Originally, I wanted to kill the chicken with a knife and make a quick decision, but I fought so fiercely; I wanted to end the battle in 3 to 5 days, and the result was 28 days. The soldiers of the Forty-first Army fought bravely and dedicated themselves to their efforts, and they were worthy of being one of the main forces of the Four Fields.
However, this battle is also too difficult to win, and it can only be said to be a tragic victory. Why, I think every reader will fall into deep thinking after reading this article.
And thinking is the mother of victory, failure is not necessarily the mother of victory, victory is not necessarily the capital of self-confidence, only by seriously summing up the experience of victory and drawing lessons from failure, after full consideration, can we go up a higher level on the shoulders of predecessors, and only then can we be more sure of winning the next war.
We don't have to be harsh on our predecessors, ask ourselves! If we are there, can we be as heroic as heroes? Can we not make the mistakes of our predecessors? This may be the answer that Comrade Song Zipei is looking forward to in five years of condensing twenty-eight days of life and death.
- Luo Yuan
<h1 class="ql-align-justify" > raised in place</h1>
The command organs and commanders of the 121st Division had been starving for several days, and the situation of starvation with wild vegetables and grass roots was very serious. The comrades of the management section, with the guard platoon, reconnoitred around the position and found no villages, although there were villages in the distance, they had been cleared of the walls, and the enemy blockade could not find anything to eat. One day, they found a family of mountain people in the mountains, only two Vietnamese elderly people in their sixties and seventies who were watching the house.
After the administrator entered the room and asked the interpreter to explain his intentions, the old man was silent for a moment, pointed to the rice bucket and said, There is only a little rice, you should leave half of it. The administrator walked to the rice bucket and opened it, and there were about 20 pounds of rice, so he exchanged plastic sheets for about half. When they returned to their positions, the comrades in the cooking class were embarrassed, some said that porridge was made for the chief and the command post personnel, and some said that there were more than 400 wounded. Some people say that it is not easy to distribute porridge, so it is better to make a big pot of rice soup that everyone can drink.
The crowd was full of opinions, but the discussion was not decided. The administrator said with a heavy heart, in this case, the chief will not eat, or cook a pot of rice soup.
The cooking class boiled the rice into a pot of rice soup and sent it to the division command post for the guards to drink for the chief. The guards looked at the chief's face, none of them moved, and Zhou Kaiyuan, the political commissar of the division, asked several guards to carry the rice soup to the wounded, and how could a pot of rice soup (marching pot) of rice soup boiled in these pounds be enough for more than 400 wounded people to drink? The organ detachment did not eat for several days, how to fight?
Deputy Commander Mao was helpless and said fiercely, "Now there is no other way, kill the horse, and cook horse meat for the wounded to eat!" Commissar Zhou was silent and anxious, paused for a moment, or called the administrator to give him instructions to kill the horse.
After the cooking class cooked the horse meat and gave it to the chief, the comrades of the organs all persuaded them to eat a little, and to maintain physical strength to command the battle! But still no one eats. The guards put the horse meat in a lunch box, and the chief asked them to pour it into a pot and give it to the wounded. The wounded heard that the commanders of the army and division did not eat at all, and asked the light wounded to send some back. At this time, Commissar Zhou said to the guards: "Give these horse meat to the comrades on the radio, they work day and night, and they can't eat without eating!"
The comrades of the radio have not eaten for days and nights, and now they are fighting not by physical strength but by spiritual will and infinite loyalty to the motherland. The guards brought the horse meat to the radio, and they sent it back, several times, and each time with tears in their eyes, and it was really touching.
In this deep mountain, old forest, deserted place, even if you "rob the house", there is no place to go! I'd rather die in battle than starve to death, how to overcome hunger? It became the most heart-wrenching problem for the commanders of the 121st Division.
On the night of February 21, the 121st Division advanced to the vicinity of Koutun, and the leaders of the army and division were extremely anxious about the supply of grain and ammunition. The whole division has been without food for 3 days, and most of the ammunition has been consumed. Cadres and fighters endured hunger and bloody struggle for five days and five nights, and they were exhausted. What to do? We are all thinking about this serious problem.
They faced four major fatal difficulties: First, the strength of the troops was extremely dispersed, and the division headquarters could only command less than 2 battalions of troops; Second, the most important defensive areas were held and there were no troops to hold; Third, more than 400 wounded people in the division lacked medical treatment and medicine, and every day the seriously injured people died because they could not be rescued; Fourth, the greatest of these difficulties is still not having food to eat. If you don't feed the warriors in two days, you will kill yourself without a fight!
I found Deputy Commander Mao that night and suggested to him with a heavy heart: "We can't starve the soldiers to death, then everything is finished, can we organize and restrict the way to the nearby villages to get some food?" Only when you have a full stomach can you repair the fortifications and fight the war! "
Vice Commander Mao pondered for a moment and said in a serious tone: "This issue is too big, and it has a bearing on the issue of policy and discipline in the theater of operations.
I understand his feelings, he is waiting for permission from his superiors to raise supplies in the war zone or for the military logistics department to try to solve this problem.
At dawn the next day, I was so hungry that I was trembling with my hands, and I was commanding all the personnel who were too hungry to lie on the ground.
I asked Deputy Commander Mao again, and said anxiously, "Let the troops go down the mountain to get some food, and if you don't make up your mind, you will starve to death!"
He said well, and asked commissar Zhou to personally convene a meeting to arrange it, there must be organization, there must be restrictions, buy it if you can buy it, change it if you can change it, write an IOU if you really can't do it, and don't let it go; It is necessary to set strict requirements on the three chapters of the law, and it is absolutely forbidden to come in a disorderly manner, and it is repeatedly stressed and set limits.
He was still uneasy, anxious.
He feared that a foot above and a foot wide below would undermine theater policy and inflict heavy losses on the country and the army.
At this time, the former command of the military region sent a telegram to the Political Department: "When the supplies of the troops participating in the war are extremely short, they can raise funds on the spot to solve the problem."
When Deputy Commander Mao read the telegram, he felt solemn, sighed, and said to me, "You and Commissar Zhou should arrange it according to the spirit of the telegram, and you should carefully study the connotation of this telegram."
I immediately approached Commissar Zhou to study the spirit of the telegram with him in the Political Department of the Military Region.
"The military region was also unable to solve our supply problem, so it had to raise funds on the spot and ask the soldiers to eat enough to solve the urgent need." I analyzed the spirit of the telegram of the military district and said.
To raise funds is nothing more than to buy, exchange, borrow, take, grab, what else can be done? We must limit ourselves to the first three words, and we must not be more lenient. Commissar Zhou explained to me.
I was immediately sure that his understanding was in line with the spirit of the instructions of his superiors and the wishes of Deputy Commander Mao. But I reminded him that wherever there are Vietnamese people in the war zone, we see either corpses or prisoners, where do we go to find people to raise money? No one has only things, how to buy, exchange, borrow? When we meet and arrange the arrangements, we will limit and emphasize again, even the eight chapters of the Covenant Law are only formalities.
Zhou said, we will first meet to arrange the arrangement, see the situation and then take measures.
The 121st Division forwarded to the regiments the telegram instructions of the former political department of the military district to "raise supplies on the spot" and added restrictive instructions. The political commissar of the division personally convened a meeting of the cadres of the division's directly subordinate detachments and organs, and arranged for the troops to go down the mountain and raise supplies by means of buying, exchanging, and borrowing materials.
As soon as the meeting was over, the cadres and fighters of the division organs and detachments descended the mountain in groups of three or five. Two officers of the Military Political Department also went down the mountain with the comrades of the Division's Political Department. Soon I heard gunfire in several small villages down the hill, like a fierce battle.
After 2 hours, one by one, they returned with a full load, some carrying a few chickens, shouldering the thighs of the pigs, carrying the pig's body and the beef divided into pieces; Some carry rice, rice, vegetables, and melon vines on their backs; Others carry dining tables, chopsticks, quilts, blankets, hanging pots, etc.
After a while, I saw that bonfires were built all over the mountains, and the wisps of green smoke were like thousands of households, cooking cooking, roast chicken, boiling meat, people coming and going. I was very upset. Although this will temporarily feed you and continue to fight, but this is really a helpless move.
Fighting such a war cannot even guarantee the problem of interspersing the food of the troops.
Of course, there are objective factors in the enemy's cunning, stubborn resistance, cutting off our support line, and making it impossible for me to send logistics forward.
But, isn't there any other reason?
At this point, I was so hungry that I was panicking and dizzy. He took a stick to the Political Department of the First Division to find food.
When I walked there, I happened to run into Officer Leng Yongjing cooking chicken, and immediately smelled the fragrant smell, so I said to Officer Leng, "You're cooking chicken, it's so fragrant!" Where did you get it? "
Officer Leng said to me, "Chief, do you know how this chicken was caught?"
"It's either hand-caught or shot, what's the new way?" I replied to him puzzled.
The cold officer wiped the mud from his hands, looking a little nervous and afraid, and he said to me, "I almost got killed for this chicken."
"What's going on? Is there an enemy in the village? I immediately tensed up.
He said it wasn't the enemy, it was his own people. I was both surprised and wondered, how could this happen?
The cold officer said, "I had a hard time walking to a small village under the mountain, looking for something to eat, pigs and cows, but I couldn't move, when I found a chicken in the haystack behind a family's house, and I was about to catch it, when suddenly more than ten meters behind me, one of our warriors said rudely: Don't catch my chicken!" I inexplicably, said how is your chicken? Which unit are you in? How can it be so unreasonable? The warrior said like a quarrel, "He saw the chicken first, and I wasn't allowed to catch it," and pointed the muzzle at me.
If you continue to argue, I am afraid that I will shoot. I said, you go catch me, I don't want it, you can't fight because of a chicken. No way, I had to go somewhere else and catch one. The soldier was probably hungry and crazy, still a veteran, using a submachine gun. "
I realized that I had to make a supplementary notice right away to avoid internal confusion.
I was about to return to the division's command post when Chen Weizong, chief of the Propaganda Section of the Political Department of the 121st Division, saw me and said happily, "We have cooked a lunch box of porridge, and I asked the chief to eat a little."
Now I can eat porridge is a health care stove, and I am really a bit blessed! He poured me a lid on a lunch box, said there was sugar in it, and asked me if I had diabetes and could I eat it?
Now it's time to be sick and eat anything. I took the lid of the lunch box, cooled it a little, and drank it all in a few sips.
I haven't eaten rice in five or six days, and drinking some porridge is like eating a delicious dish, which is very impressive.
After drinking the porridge, I said to Chief Chen with gratitude: "You can really make porridge, and it is delicious and does not have to wash the dishes." He smiled and said; I only got a handful of rice, so I added a little more water. "
This porridge expresses the deep friendship between comrades-in-arms, and I will not forget it. At this time, he was suddenly very embarrassed and even a little guilty and said to me: "Chief, do you know how this rice comes from?" It was the Vietnamese people who were not at home and could not find anyone to buy it, so they had to take it. "
I comforted him and said, don't be sad, this is forced out.
The cold officer said, "Wait a minute, ask the chief to come and eat the chicken, and I told him to cook more soup. He said it was not good to drink without salt, and I said it was better than drinking mud soup (water in the ditch).