Chapter 7: The Tiger in the Jungle (Part 2)
Two
That was 2 years ago when the Chinese People's National Defense Forces were ordered to intervene in the Vietnam Civil War, to help the Vietnamese national president Nguyen Xuan Thuy drive out the coup forces controlled by domestic conservative forces from Hanoi. At that time, the Central Military Commission withdrew troops from the two major military regions of Chengdu and Guangzhou to jointly form the Command Center for the Vietnam and South China Sea Theater.
Like this military operation against Indonesia, Ren Linyu, the youngest deputy commander of the Chengdu Military Region at that time, was appointed as the deputy commander of this newly established war zone command. He commanded the most elite mountain warfare troops of the Chengdu Military Region - the 13th Group Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army to enter Guangxi for ground deployment, while the Guangzhou Military Region dispatched two aircraft carrier battle groups ("Hong Kong" and "Macao") from the South Sea Fleet as well as the military region air force to impose a comprehensive sea-air three-dimensional blockade on northern Vietnam.
At that time, the Guangzhou Military Region was popular with such a saying - this battle against Vietnam is the cost of Chengdu and Guangzhou, two households. The Chengdu side sent the army, and the Guangzhou Military Region sent the navy and air force. However, the military high-level analysis of the form is still optimistic, and such military deployment is not to prepare for intervention in the Vietnamese battlefield, but rather as a military chip for Sino-US joint peace mediation.
But the diplomatic efforts by China and the US soon proved to be in vain, as the powerful conservative forces of the Vietnam People's United Front Army (also known as "Viet Minh"), which controlled over 80% of the Vietnamese army and held sway over North Vietnam, suddenly began to march southwards into the area still under the control of President Ngo Dinh Diem.
This sudden change also caught the Chinese military off guard. At that time, the only ground armed force of the Chinese army that could be used in southern Vietnam was the 77th Marine Brigade of the Chinese Navy, which was ordered to go to Ho Chi Minh City to protect overseas Chinese.
Under duress, Ren Lianyong asked General Qian Shaoying of the Guangzhou Military Region to deploy this unit to the front line for defense, in order to buy time to stabilize the situation. As a result, the transport ship carrying the 77th Marine Brigade of the Chinese Navy changed course midway, and only a vanguard force of 3,000 lightly armed troops landed at Hu? Port, which had already been shelled by the "Vietnamese Array" army's surprise attack.
This is not a very auspicious place. On March 8, 1965, the first batch of US Marines landed on Vietnamese territory in Hue, and the city also witnessed the unprecedentedly brutal "Battle of Hue". But at that time, the US Marine Corps faced only the ground infiltration tactics of small groups of Vietnamese troops, while today, facing the 77th Amphibious Infantry Brigade of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is a regular army of over 250,000 "Vietnamese array" launching a three-dimensional tank-step coordinated attack.
Within the first 24 hours of landing, the Vietnamese overconfidence helped the Chinese 77th Marine Brigade. The Vietnamese 15th Mechanized Infantry Division, which had entered the city earlier, relied on its strong firepower to suppress the Chinese troops in the port area and attempted to cross the Hue City to continue advancing southward. The stubborn Chinese marines took advantage of the night to launch a counterattack, quickly controlling the main streets within the Hue City, cutting off the follow-up troops and supplies of the Vietnamese 15th Mechanized Infantry Division's southern advance, forcing them to stay in the Hue area, and the first attack by the Vietnamese army was repelled.
Logically, the 13th Group Army of the Chinese People's Liberation Army deployed in Guangxi Province should have launched a ground attack as soon as possible, carried out a converging strike, and quickly captured Hanoi to end the war. To the greatest extent possible, alleviate the tremendous pressure on the Chinese Navy's Marine Corps in Hue. However, the troops under Ren Yingqiao's Chengdu Military Region did not act for a long time. Within 48 hours of the full-scale outbreak of the Vietnam War, on two fronts hundreds of kilometers apart, one side was the continuous landing of various units under the 77th Amphibious Infantry Brigade of the Chinese Navy Marine Corps at Hue Port, facing the "Vietnamese array" army that came like a tide. With the cover of sea and air firepower, they stubbornly blocked the enemy's offensive. On the other hand, on the Sino-Vietnamese border hundreds of kilometers away, it was calm as usual. If there were no merchants coming and going, many people would not have thought that this was the border between two warring countries...
The entire Hue defensive battle lasted for 4 days, during which the Chinese Navy's 77th Marine Brigade held off the "Vietnamese array" of two mechanized infantry divisions and two armored brigades in a fierce counterattack. More than 114,000 Vietnamese soldiers were killed or wounded, and over 1,200 tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed. However, when ordered to withdraw, 1,500 officers and men of the Chinese Navy's 77th Marine Brigade remained forever among the ruins of Hue.
The noun "Shunhua" has also been forever retained in the dictionary of the Chinese Navy's Marine Corps, Shunhua has become a heroic force, and it has buried the loyal souls of 1564 young soldiers of the Chinese Navy's Marine Corps. All this is attributed to the Chinese Army's 13th Group Army "Young Marshal".
Ren Lingyu's gift. "Because it was not a unit from our own military region, they didn't care about sacrificing us and had us fight to the death with the enemy on the front line." It can be said that every officer and soldier of the 77th Brigade of the Chinese Navy who experienced the Shunhua Blockade Battle will have this name filled with resentment - Ren Lingyu.
Under the starry sky of the Java Sea, that lonely Y-5D flew very low. Alone, gazing out at the vast blue sea outside the window, Ren Lei seemed to have returned to those days of fighting against Vietnam 2 years ago.
"A perfect ambush position. If the whole of Vietnam is like an hourglass, then Hue is the neck of that hourglass, with the Truong Son Mountains on its west bordering Laos and our southern sea to the east. This terrain is very similar to our army's battle at Ta Mountain during the Liberation War, where the front line was only 20-30 kilometers wide, allowing for the deployment of only one division or so of troops. The numerical superiority of the Vietnamese military would be unable to deploy. Moreover, our army firmly controls the sea and air dominance of the battlefield, and the 77th Amphibious Infantry Brigade can hold out here for two days." The operations staff officer of the Guangzhou Military Region confidently briefed Ren Lingyu and Qian Xiaozhong on the battlefield situation from the bridge of the Hong Kong aircraft carrier.
"Two days? No way. Tell Li Kejian that I want him and his troops to pin themselves down in Shunhua for more than 4 days like nails."
Qian Xiao Zhong waved his hand, and the coastal defense fleet composed of 2 modern Type-2 destroyers and 2 Luda-class destroyers on the distant coastline was suppressing the artillery positions deployed by the "Vietnamese Array" along the coast with dense firepower.
If there was a chance, Ren Lianyu had always wanted to say one sentence "Sorry" to the 77th Land Warfare Brigade. They sacrificed too much for the Republic. The plane continued to fly south, and the rough outline of Java Island had already appeared on the horizon.
At the same time as the first wave of troops successfully landed, the second wave of attack by the Chinese Expeditionary Force was also being intensively prepared. The 77th Amphibious Infantry Brigade's Special Task Tank Battalion of the People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps, which had been specially strengthened before the war, had already boarded and would take off as soon as it received news that the Sanbao Ridge International Airport had been repaired.
The 22nd Airborne Division used the night to airlift two more battalions of troops to Weli Island, preparing for a second airborne assault at dawn. Meanwhile, China's first airborne strike corps - the PLA Aviation Strike Corps' 171st "Snake Catcher" Brigade - utilized its air mobility capabilities to rapidly deploy in southern Kalimantan, an island controlled by the "South Seas Liberation Army" and the Islamic extremist group "Paradise Travelers". The heavy equipment of the PLA's Southern Theater Command's 259th Mechanized Infantry Brigade had also been loaded onto ships at Ho Chi Minh City.
A massive encirclement network surrounding the island of Java, compiled by the Chinese military, has begun to slowly tighten. Meanwhile, ASEAN countries that had promised pre-war diplomatic commitments to closely coordinate with the Chinese military have also started to take action. The Rapid Response Regiment of Thailand's Southern Military Region, under the pretext of maintaining regional stability, passed through Singapore and landed in Bungai Island, Indonesia, controlling the largest airport on the island - Penang International Airport.
