Memoirs from the Sino-Vietnam War
1. Fresh Meat
We left for the front in July. We had arrived slightly late, missing a regimental-sized Vietnamese attack by three hours. En route, we passed an artillery company, and heard the commanding officer yelling his orders: "target coordinate XXXX, three rounds for effect, fire!" The thunderous roar of cannon numbed my skull with a deafening vibration. Even though they were some distance off, the shockwaves were strong enough to rattle the covers on the truck that we were riding in. I was filled with a grandiose, melancholy emotion, silently reciting some ancient verses glorifying the Han warrior. I was determined to do justice to our heroic ancestors.
Two soldiers revealed themselves from the tall grass beside the road, and waved us to a stop. We were now in range of the Vietnamese artillery, and our lieutenant, who was a veteran of the campaign, ordered us to dismount and move in squads with combat separation. We would be walking from here, led by veteran guides from the front.
After an hour of trudging through the woods, there was a shrill warning as we came to a grassy clearing.
"Get down!"
I hit the ground, and watched a shell explode in the distance. It was a ranging shot. All the veterans were still standing, while the new troops had gone prone.
"Spread out," the lieutenant ordered. I thought it would be a good idea to stick close to a veteran, so I attached myself to his ass and hurried into a nearby shallow hole. He glanced at me, and then got on the radio and reported, "We've just been shelled," almost as if it wasn't supposed to happen. Soon after, many cannon rounds flew over our heads toward Vietnam, dimly visible streaks against the sky.
We stayed down for five minutes, and nothing else happened. The lieutenant ordered squad leaders to keep their men moving, but only a few squads at a time. It wasn't until later that I found out the Vietnamese had a habit of holding their fire after getting their guns ranged. Once we gave the all clear and stood up, they would let loose, and all the while, their observers would be hidden nearby, directing the shelling. Hence, the lieutenant ordered us to move in batches.
However, I didn't move from the hole. He said, "Go find your squad leader." I replied that I didn't know where he was.
"Which squad are you in?"
"Squad two."
"That way," he pointed. I scrambled out of the hole and dashed in the general direction as two dozen imaginary machine guns tracked my movement. That was before I heard all the landmine stories, otherwise I might have found myself unable to either move or stay still.
After that it was all mountain trails, and it would have been exhausting except for the copious amounts of adrenaline coursing through my body. Two hours later, we came to a dark and foreboding cave. It was both a staging area and an armory, and supposedly there were hundreds of such caves were dug during the preceding wars. The closer to the front, the better concealed they became, to the extent that nobody knows where some of them were.
There were stories of Vietnamese Special Ops teams sneaking into one of these caves, and blowing the whole thing into a mess of collapsed rock and dirt, killing some fifty people. They spoke fluent Mandarin and even regional dialects, and had intimate knowledge of the geography on both sides of the border. During the wars against the French and the Americans, these were their hideouts, training areas, and supply depots.
We sat in rows on the cool floor, eating some rations and having a drink of water, while some of the veterans educated us on life in the trenches. We had been briefed thoroughly by officers in training, but this was the real deal. They told us glamorized accounts of victory and heroism, but these veteran guys only spoke of bloodshed. It was like the veterans and the officers from camp were talking about two completely different wars.
After the vets finished their stories, we split into groups, and had a chance to ask questions. At first everyone was enthusiastic, but as the questions were answered, we became increasingly terrified and didn't dare ask anymore. Looking back now, they were only telling us the truth, but at the time it really petrified us with fear. Our morale took a sudden dive.
The government propaganda had painted the Vietnamese as incompetent idiots, who fled at the first gunshot. Only now did I realize that they were determined, wily fighters. I kept trying to think of evidence to support the government propaganda, as a way to comfort myself. But no matter how I tried, I failed, and a persistent shadow loomed over my thoughts.
"Don't venture out alone. There are Vietnamese Special Ops as far into our territories as Nanning and Kuenming. They could kill you at will, so stay in camp." I didn't know what to make of it. Was I in my own country or Vietnam? Later, when I got to the front, the stories were even more outlandish. Mayors were being kidnapped; police chiefs were being killed in their bedrooms… all kinds of stuff. Any romantic notion I had about the war had been replaced with nervous apprehension at this point.
Truthfully, I now believe that I was indeed lucky. At the time, we had been at war with Vietnam for almost ten years. After its trial by fire, the Chinese military was no longer as naïve as it once was. The men realized the lethality of the enemy, and became cautious and deliberate. Had I joined the conflict ten years ago, I might have been sent out as fodder as soon as I arrived.
Subsequently us new arrivals were divided up, and assigned to our respective companies. Operations at the regimental level were rare, and even battalion-wide actions were relatively few, replaced by small skirmishes of companies and platoons. I was assigned to a rear-guard unit situated in a small valley nestled within some hills, which rarely saw front line action. However, I was close enough to hear the artillery firing, further down the line. The ranking officer in the small camp was a second lieutenant, who decided all and everything. He'd tell you where and when to take a piss, if he had the time. We had to maintain discipline, and soldiers who disobeyed orders could be shot on the spot: "execute first, report later." So, that second lieutenant ran the camp like his own little dictatorship, and he'd probably turn down a promotion just to stay there and keep doing it.
As a civilian, you could come face to face with a general and not give two shits. After being in combat, even seeing a non-commissioned officer prompts you to salute. We didn't have much to do the first couple of days, and I wanted to take a walk out of boredom. I hadn't made it two steps before being stopped by a guard on duty.
"Where are you going?"
"To take a walk."
He gave me a weird look, "You can't go."
"Why, are there orders?"
"No, but there are landmines."
Landmines are a lot more persuasive than any order, but I didn't believe him. Surely the minefield couldn’t be right outside the entrance to camp? After all, we only arrived via the same road not three days ago. The guard picked up a rock, glanced at me, and threw it into the woods. Nothing happened. Seemingly a little flustered, he threw another one. Just as I was craning my neck to see better, there was a loud explosion from the vicinity where it landed. I hit the ground.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Roared the lieutenant as he stuck his head out of his office. I pulled myself up into a crouch, not really sure how to respond.
Our first drill was concealment. The lieutenant hung some empty cans on a tree, and told us to hide so that we could see the cans, but be completely undetectable from a distance of ten meters. I thought I was well hidden, but I was the first to be seen by him. He couldn't remember my name, so he just yelled "I see you, new guy." I wasn't sure he was talking to me, so I didn't move. He walked over and put his boot on my ass. "Are you hiding or making a pile of lawn clippings?" It turns out he didn't see me, but he did see the tragically obvious pile of irregular brush that I had threw on top of myself.
"You'll be the first to eat a bullet," he grunted, and proceeded to teach me how to do it right. I learned quickly, and he did not find me the second time we were tested. The lieutenant appeared to be impressed with that, because another guy who arrived the same time I did never quite got it down. He ended up having to be transferred to a different unit, as a night sentry. The Vietnamese were good sneaks, and a night watchman was prone to getting his throat slit from behind. Often, the morning sentry would find man-sized indentations in the grass near his post – the previous night's hiding spot for Vietnamese sentry-killers. Sometimes, the sentry would fail to show up when it was time for a shift change. The search party next morning would find his body in the woods, with a slit throat or a bloody hole in his chest, over his heart. The Vietnamese don't attack the camp even after killing our sentries; there are still other sentries around, and the mines.
Other times, they would sneak up behind your sentry post, and set up a trip mine before sneaking away again. When you stood up to go back to camp in the morning and set the damned thing off, they'd already be at home sleeping. Or, they would keep still and memorize the route you take to get back to camp after your watch, to be sure that there weren't mines and traps. At night, they came back along the same path, and shot up our tents with automatic weapons. I was somewhat envious of that ability – I sometimes had trouble remembering how to get some place even after two or three trips.
The lessons I learned in the days leading up to being at the front are too many. Even sentry duty is a complex task with problems and dangers enough to write a whole book, much less the other stuff. After we learned concealment, we practiced volley fire on command. "The enemies are like rabbits," said our lieutenant. "They disappear into the bushes as soon as we fire the first shot. So we have to make the first volley count." If we missed, they would hide, and harass us endlessly, taking potshots from cover. In the jungle, they were the teachers, and we were the students. The exams were handed out from the end of a rifle barrel, and failure meant death.
We stayed prone for ten minutes, and still didn't get the order to fire. My neck was aching from having to hold up the weight of my head and the helmet, and just as I was being distracted by discomfort, the lieutenant ordered us to shoot with a throaty shout. Almost instantaneously, all the cans on the tree were light up with bullets. Then, embarrassingly, came the awkwardly late burst from my rifle, followed by the laughter from the other soldiers.