Chapter 280 Building a Position
After reaching the coast, the large ship slowly stopped, while the engineers used oars to row the small boat to the coast. Each boat carries several pre-made standard springboards, and these boats have been simply modified by adding the iron parts needed to fix the springboards to the hull. Engineers only need to align the holes in these springboards with the raised parts of the iron parts and lower them to fix the position. The removal is also very simple, just lift the springboard and remove it. This structure was tried out during the rehearsal at the base camp, and then some minor modifications were made based on the actual situation so that the engineers could assemble it on various temporarily found small boats and not be affected by the ups and downs of the waves. This will cause the fixed part to loosen and slip.
After the boats entered the predetermined position, the engineers put away the oars, pushed out the gangplank on the boat, and began to build pontoons between the boats. The person responsible for directing the operations of the engineers is Harugong, the deputy commander of this combat operation. Although the cavalry company under his command also followed this time, due to the short time it took to form the army and the small establishment, the cavalry company was not responsible for the combat mission of directly facing the enemy. Harugong didn't want to sit in this seat doing nothing, so he took the initiative to take over the command of the engineers. He was responsible for the command and coordination of building pontoons, building fortifications, and setting up camps in the early stage of the landing.
I have to say that the hard training during this period of time has played an role. Although it was the first time for the engineers to actually fight, the entire process of building the floating trestle was relatively smooth. In just twenty minutes, the first trestle was completed. This trestle is more than 20 meters long, with five small boats used as piers in the middle. The bridge deck is made of three two-foot-wide wooden springboards. Its load-bearing strength is enough to bear the transportation of a 12-pound army cannon.
After the first trestle was built, people on board the ship immediately began to land. The first thing that was transported to the shore through the floating trestle were various materials for building fortifications loaded on multi-purpose trolleys. The civilians pushed the trolleys to the shore quickly, and then followed the road signs left by the leading troops, including the goods and trucks, and sent them to the predetermined positions. .
After that, three similar floating trestles were erected from south to north at a frequency of five minutes. Two of the trestles are responsible for unloading various combat supplies, while the two trestles to the south are where troop carriers are docked. Soldiers participating in the war climbed down from the rope net on the side of the ship, and then quickly transferred to the shore through the trestles.
At five o'clock in the morning, the first batch of landed civilians and engineers had arrived at Qian Tiandun's location and quietly began construction to build a defensive position. At this time, the sky was already dark, and even without using a telescope, the South Vietnamese army camp two miles away could be observed with the naked eye. The terrain between the defensive position and the South Vietnamese military camp is flat. Except for some bushes, there are not even tracts of woods. This is what the command is most worried about - if the South Vietnamese army discovers the existence of the landing force early in the morning, they will organize it immediately. If the offensive is carried out to attack, the vanguard force, which has neither defensive positions to rely on nor heavy fire support, is likely to be unable to withstand it.
Fortunately, such a situation has not happened so far. The teams observing the enemy's situation from the commanding heights on both sides of the north and south will report the situation to their companions in the positions below through walkie-talkies every two minutes. The patrol soldiers of the South Vietnamese Army only circled within a hundred meters of the camp, with no intention of expanding the scope of their reconnaissance. Moreover, they obviously did not notice that there was a large group of people sneaking around two miles to the east. Fortifications were being built.
What the Executive Committee designed was a defensive line located at the narrowest point of the pass and recessed toward the coast. The outermost layer is an area composed of several snake-belly barbed wire fences, deer villages and Juma. Several obstacles are arranged crisscrossed together to form an obstacle zone about six to seven meters wide, which is enough to delay the opponent's offensive when they launch an attack. These obstacles are all semi-finished products transported from the base operation. The civilians use multi-functional vehicles to transport them to the predetermined location and assemble them directly before placing them on the position.
The second obstacle after this obstacle zone is the trench that the civilian workers are digging desperately. The command headquarters once hoped to dig this trench to at least two meters wide and one meter deep before the war started, but the former engineer soldier Qiao Zhiya rejected this possibility - without the help of construction machinery, it is impossible to complete such a large amount of excavation in two or three hours with manpower alone. Two or three days is probably about the same. Therefore, in the end, the command had no choice but to compromise with reality and changed the construction standard of trenches to a very vague statement of "the depth that can effectively block the enemy."
The third line of defense is a simple defensive wall composed of multi-functional carts and a large number of wooden prefabricated parts. This defensive wall can effectively defend against the shooting power of matchlock guns at a distance of 100 meters. As for the bows and arrows used by the South Vietnamese Army, Not a problem. If there was enough time, the civilians would use the earthwork from trenches dug around the perimeter of the defensive wall to reinforce the wall to further increase its defense.
There will be a movable gap in this wall about every forty meters. When necessary, the multi-functional trolley at the gap will be removed, and the gun emplacements blocking the back will be exposed. There are five such gun emplacements along the entire defense line, each with four to six artillery pieces deployed. Of course, the monkey version artillery exported to North Vietnam will not be arranged together with the original genuine ones used by the Hai Han Militia. This is not because there is any secret that needs to be guarded against the North Vietnamese military, but purely for the sake of combat effectiveness - the monkey version of the artillery is not as good as the original version in terms of range and accuracy. The same aiming method will have different shooting effects, and This time, the sighting and command of the artillery unit were all handled by the crossing officers. If the two types of artillery were mixed, it would easily cause confusion in the shooting effect.
Due to its prefabricated design, this simple defensive wall is also very fast to build. According to the speed calculated when the base camp organized the military exercise, with sufficient material and manpower support, the construction of the 100-meter-long defensive wall only takes about fifteen to twenty minutes. If you build a traditional log wall, you have to dig out the ground trench first and then bury it. No matter how fast it is, it will take two or three times as long.
Compared with previous exercises, this combat operation also added a new defensive device behind the wall - the ceiling. This is also a new gadget that the base camp rushed out based on the battle reports sent back from the front. It can basically only be used for position defense. The structure is very simple, it is just a wooden shed supported by a number of wooden pillars. Its main function is to prevent the opponent's archery troops from being shot. Its coverage was specially calculated for the range of the South Vietnamese archers to ensure that the South Vietnamese army's bows and arrows would not cause large-scale damage to one's own positions. Later, when the civilian husband is free, he will cover the wooden shed with a layer of floating soil to prevent the opponent from using rockets to attack.
During the offensive and defensive battle on the mountain defense line, the South Vietnamese Army's tactics of inflicting damage on the North Vietnamese Army by intensively throwing arrows left a deep impression on the military observers of the advance team. Compared with those worthless peasants and soldiers in North Vietnam, all the Haihan militia soldiers who invested heavily are treasures. In order to reduce the casualty rate, the Military and Police Department has tried every means to provide as much as possible on the basis of existing technology. Give soldiers better protection.
Due to the particularity of the weapons and combat methods currently used, the protection methods of the Military and Police Department are still relatively biased. Whether it is defensive walls or ceilings, they are mainly aimed at collective combat environments, not individual soldiers. In the eyes of the North Vietnamese officers, the reason why the Hai Han soldiers wore rattan helmets was because they were extremely confident in their combat capabilities and did not need protective measures such as iron armor at all.
At 5:30, the ships have returned to the two offshore islands to start the second round of transportation. In addition to a large amount of combat materials, this second round of transportation also included frontline headquarters. All command personnel headed by Yan Chujie will move from Hunguo Island to land to direct this operation on the front line. Although this approach is extremely risky, it also reflects the military and police department's sufficient confidence in its own strength - if you still don't have the strength to defeat a group of monkey soldiers after traveling for more than half a year, then don't even think about it. What about competing for global hegemony and daydreaming about "there is only one China in the world"?
About twenty minutes later, a group of South Vietnamese soldiers patrolling outside the camp finally noticed the noise coming from the direction of Linhai Pass in the east - more than 500 civilians and engineers were working hard to dig trenches and build fortifications in front of the camp. , the crackling noise has been carried down the wind to the west.
At this time, the entire defensive position has begun to take shape, with 90% of the peripheral obstacle laying work completed, 70% of the walled wall completed, trenches being dug, and nearly half of the planned area behind the ceiling has been built. Five of the seven companies under the Haihan Militia have arrived at the front-line positions, and 70% of the North Vietnamese Army's combat team of more than 2,400 people has been in place. The remaining personnel are also in the process of being transported from the island to the land, and the landing is expected to be completed within an hour.
This patrol team that discovered the abnormal situation had a chance to interfere with the process of the landing troops building defensive positions, but then they made a huge mistake - the officer leading the team did not send someone back to the camp to report in time, and He led the team directly towards the position, probably because he wanted to confirm what was going on here first.
"Attention to the base, attention to the base, this is Lookout Post No. 1. A group of South Vietnamese troops are approaching the base on foot from the west, about 800 meters away, with about 20 people... equipped with four archers, and no muskets are seen. "Weapons of this type." A warning from the early warning post on the nearby hill came from the radio station of the headquarters. Yan Chujie immediately issued an order to the combat troops on the front line: "A patrol from South Vietnam is approaching us. Prisoners will be given priority. If If you can’t achieve it, then eliminate them on the spot, don’t let them escape alive”
"It's done!" Qian Tiandun put down the walkie-talkie and immediately asked several platoon leaders to summon the special operations company to assemble. Since the opponent is only a patrol team of twenty people and has no firearms, it is perfect for his own special operations company to fight.
After the follow-up troops arrived at the position, Qian Tiandun's special operations company had already given up its frontal position to other combat troops, while his own troops concentrated in the dense forest at the foot of the mountain to the north. After receiving the order to attack, the special operations company slowly marched northwest along the mountains from the forest.
Under the command of the lookout post on the top of the mountain, the special operations company avoided the path of the South Vietnamese patrol. More than a hundred soldiers hid in the forest, silently watching the South Vietnamese soldiers approach from a distance of about a hundred meters away. Go east.
Covert operations like this are one of the daily training subjects of the special operations company. The soldiers have already done many forest marching, concealment, and lurking drills like this in the dense forests of Cat Ba Island, and they are considered familiar with it. Here, No one made any noise during this time. It wasn't until the South Vietnamese army walked out for a while that Qian Tiandun gave the order to outflank the South Vietnamese patrol. Hundreds of soldiers slowly walked out of the dense forest from their hiding places and outflanked the South Vietnamese patrol's rear path.
The patrol did not realize that its back road had been blocked at first, and continued to move eastward. When they passed through the last bush that blocked their view, they suddenly found a low wall nearly five feet high in front of them, only forty or fifty feet away. Hundreds of people were silently digging trenches in front of the wall. . Behind the low wall, several wooden watchtowers were being built. Although the other party did not raise any banner, it was obvious that these people did not belong to South Vietnam.
"Not good!" After this thought flashed through the mind of the South Vietnamese officer leading the team, he immediately subconsciously prepared to send someone to report back to the camp. The South Vietnamese Army never thought that North Vietnam could actually deliver troops to the battlefield by sea, and that such a large-scale fortification was built here overnight. Could it be that the North Vietnam invited some experts with magic skills to help? But when they tried to return the way they came, they found that they were blocked by a group of troops wearing colorful short shirts and holding muskets.
The officer leading the team naturally recognized the uniforms of the North Vietnamese Army. The group of people who appeared in front of them were not dressed as the North Vietnamese Army, and they were all equipped with muskets. He didn't care to find out the opponent's background. He was very clear about the power of the musketeers. At this moment, conveying the military information back to the camp was the most important thing, so he immediately ordered everyone to break out.
There was nothing wrong with the order itself, but when it came to the special operations company, it happened to be an enemy. The distance between the two sides was already very close. If he ordered a collective charge, the special operations company, which was still in marching form, would not have time to start combat. In addition, it was the first actual combat, and they might be able to earn some money from the fight. . But such a dispersion will completely expose one's own shortcomings to the opponent. The number of people in the special operations company is nearly ten times that of this patrol. When the individual soldiers' capabilities are already stronger than their opponents, how can something slip through the net?
As soon as the officer leading the team came face to face, Qian Tiandun stabbed his shoulder with a bayonet and he fell to the ground. Then several militiamen came up and twisted his arms, stripped off his armor, and tied him up from behind.
Others who tried to escape had no chance at all. They were quickly caught up by the militiamen, and then several bayonets were fired at them. They lost their lives one after another without even a chance to struggle.
The only injury suffered by the special operations company was that a militiaman was shot in the thigh by a South Vietnamese archer who put up a stubborn resistance. Fortunately, the vital part was not injured. It was enough to go back to camp and have a minor surgical operation to remove the arrowhead, but I was afraid that he would not be able to participate in the subsequent battles. . However, compared to being hit by an arrow in the thigh, the fate of the South Vietnamese archer was much more tragic. Before he could shoot the second arrow, he was surrounded by a whole squad of militiamen and stabbed in all directions with bayonets.
The entire battle lasted less than three minutes and ended, and the result was unsurprisingly one-sided. The special operations company wiped out the South Vietnamese patrol without firing a single shot, once again demonstrating its strength in front of colleagues in the military and police department.
During the previous reconnaissance mission to the south, the North Vietnamese military was not able to witness the performance of the special operations company on the spot, but this time they actually saw how Hai Han soldiers fought. The entire patrol was neatly wiped out by these Haihan soldiers in a matter of seconds. This result also gave the North Vietnamese Army, which was still a little uneasy, a little more confident.
Although the screams of the South Vietnamese patrols were inevitably heard during the fighting, the special operations company still relied on this operation to help itself win another half hour of precious time. By the time the lookout post reported that the South Vietnamese Army camp in the west had sent an organized unit to the defensive position, 90% of the combat troops had already landed, and both the CCP Army and the Haihan Militia had already lined up their teams and were in batches. It was just after 6:30 in the morning when we started to enter the combat position. In addition to the relatively shallow trenches, several other defensive fortifications have also been laid out. Even a nine-meter-high observation tower behind the position has been put into use.
The extensive use of prefabricated parts in the landing construction was the main magic weapon that enabled the Haihan Militia to build a defensive position in just two or three hours. The North Vietnamese officers who witnessed the whole process had nothing to say except admiration. Such design and construction capabilities are completely unimaginable by the current North Vietnamese army. It seems that these things are not complicated. If they really want to build them, it seems that North Vietnam can also build them. However, this kind of creativity and coordination is something that the North Vietnamese army does not have.
Some North Vietnamese officers even secretly wondered in their hearts, if the Han militia in Shanghai was the North Vietnamese army, how should they prevent the other party from launching a landing operation from sea to land? With the current state and combat level of the North Vietnamese Army, can they compete with the coastal militia near the coast?
"All front-line construction personnel have returned to their positions, and all troops have entered a state of preparation for war!" The latest order issued by the headquarters indicates that the battle that the military and police department has been waiting for for a long time is finally about to begin.
(End of chapter)