"Battalion commander!" Zhao Jingping reported to me: "The No. 4 mountain pass has been lost, and the Soviet army continues to march towards the No. 3 mountain pass!" ”

"Now it seems ......," said the instructor, pointing to several mountain passes on the map, "it may be difficult for us to seal the Soviet troops in the mountain passes...... If the Soviet devils fight hard, this combat effectiveness should not be underestimated...... In addition, their equipment is more advanced than ours, do I think they will accept it when they see it? ”

There is some truth in the instructor's words...... Strictly speaking, it is not very significant for us to completely annihilate the Soviet army in the Shigio Valley.

The first is that our strategic purpose has been achieved...... The Soviet army's plan to take the Higio Valley had failed, and it had failed badly, and it would be pointless to encircle and annihilate the Soviet army under this premise, especially in Afghanistan.

You must know that the Soviet army in Afghanistan has only 100,000 troops, while the entire Soviet army is as large as ours...... Also millions.

The reason why the Soviet army sent only 100,000 troops in Afghanistan was entirely due to international pressure and logistical supply constraints...... Now that countries around the world are calling for the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, even if the Soviet government can resist the pressure not to withdraw its troops, it will not continue to increase its troops, which is likely to be regarded as a contempt for the international community. On the other hand...... Afghanistan's poor logistics are enough to sustain 100,000 Soviet troops and 100,000 Afghan government troops, and any more troops in Afghanistan will not only not help the war situation, but may make things worse.

In this case...... As far as the Soviet government is concerned, if the Soviet army dies more in Afghanistan, it will send more people from the country to replenish 100,000 people, in other words, no matter how many people we kill, the Soviet army in Afghanistan will always remain at about 100,000. Therefore, even if we succeed in encircling and annihilating the Soviet army...... Nor will it help the war in Afghanistan. It won't help the Higio Valley in any way. On the contrary, in the process of encirclement and annihilation, it is very likely that we will hurt ourselves, and it may also make the Soviet army plant a deep hatred for us, and we will have to get rid of this Xijieo valley as soon as possible!

"Why don't you ......," the instructor continued to persuade when he saw that I was not speaking, "Let's let the mountain pass go...... Just teach the Soviets a lesson when they fled! ”

"You must put it!" I said, "There's no point in killing a few more Soviets, but I don't think I can just let them go so lightly...... The reason is very simple, if they are let go lightly now, it is very likely that they will misunderstand that our army is not capable of blocking the offensive of the Soviet army, and it will not take long...... They're going to attack the Higio Valley again! ”

"What the battalion commander meant...... "Listening to my words, the instructor was a little puzzled.

"We're going to let them know that we're more than capable of sealing them up in the valley!" I said, "And then conditionally release them...... This is not only a warning and a threat to the enemy. At the same time, it can also strive for some substantial benefits for the Higio Valley! ”

The instructor nodded and smiled: "You are an expert in this area, of course I will not have an opinion, let it go...... I fully support it! ”

"Pass the order on!" I turned to Zhao Jingping and said, "Order the No. 3 mountain pass to defend ...... In any case, we must buy our troops half an hour to prepare, and at the same time order the mortar units and anti-aircraft machine-gun units of the other valleys to move to the high ground on both sides of the No. 2 pass and No. 02...... Within half an hour it was necessary to reach the destination and build fortifications, ready to stop the Soviet troops! ”

"Yes!" Zhao Jingping answered, and passed on my order through the walkie-talkie.

My method is very simple, it is to use the No. 3 Pass to delay time, so that the main forces of our army can assemble in Valley No. 02...... You know, the pass is only a few hundred meters wide, if we can muster enough mortars...... Then as long as there are enough shells, the pass can be sealed with only mortars. Whether it is tanks, armored vehicles, or infantry...... If you want to break out, you'll have to let the mortar blow it up again.

Among them, the Soviet helicopters may be a little troublesome...... But the problem is that there are now only six Soviet helicopters in total. Not to mention that the pilots of these six helicopters have been fighting for more than ten hours and are already exhausted, these six helicopters still have time to go back to replenish ammunition after they run out of ammunition, and we also have a lot of anti-aircraft machine guns and anti-aircraft guns in Valley 02...... All of these can pose a certain threat to the Mi-24 at a certain distance, so the damage that the helicopter can do to us should be said to be very small.

So the plan was quickly launched......

In this battle, I tried not to send the Chinese army to the battlefield to directly confront the Soviet army, on the one hand, because the Chinese army is not very familiar with Afghanistan and may not be stronger than the Afghan guerrillas in the complex terrain of the Hijeo Mountains. On the other hand, because the battle required a considerable number of anti-aircraft machine guns, anti-aircraft artillery, as well as mortars......

These new equipment are not difficult to fight, but simply reload, aim and pull the trigger...... But it's another thing entirely, especially mortars and anti-aircraft artillery, which require a lot of math to get accurate...... This is difficult for the guerrillas, but it is not difficult for us Chinese soldiers.

Therefore, the Chinese soldiers played more of a role in this battle, including mortar units, high-altitude aircraft units, and anti-aircraft artillery units...... Of course, the role of the sniper unit is to disperse to the mountains and lurk in the mountains to carry out reconnaissance and snipe the enemy's important targets.

This forced me to hand over the defense of the mountain passes to the guerrillas, and at most to arrange a few Chinese soldiers to serve as military advisers in each mountain pass.

I have to admit it...... This arrangement is actually what I wanted, because the battle at the mountain pass was often a face-to-face battle with the Soviet infantry, which would undoubtedly increase the casualties of our troops...... And the role of us Chinese soldiers is not only to fight a war, so it can be said that it is a very stupid thing to defend directly in the mountain pass.

Garrisoned at Pass No. 3 was a guerrilla named Apuchu, who was Aduzai's subordinate...... As a native of the Hijeo Valley, he certainly has the advantage of being familiar with the terrain, but it wasn't just because I chose to garrison Pass No. 3...... You must know that Pass No. 3 played a role in connecting the past and the future of the mountain passes besieging the Soviets in the north, so of course I would carefully consider who would garrison it.

Apuchu was born into a family of Orion...... This is rare in Afghanistan, where there are so many deserts that you would have starved to death if you had hunted elsewhere...... This is not the case in the Higio Valley, which is blessed with natural conditions, abundant water, large areas of vegetation and forests...... These are the conditions for the survival of animals, and if there are animals to survive, of course, there will be hunters, so there are people like Apuchu who exist.

A hunter who grew up following his father to set a trap in the mountains, or quietly waiting for the prey to appear with a shotgun...... Then his cousin on the battlefield is naturally almost somewhere.

Because that's what he's specialty...... All he had to do was change the object of his previous hunt from an animal to an enemy.

And so it is...... It is said that during the first sweep against the Soviet army, this Apuchu killed more than a dozen enemies alone, including three Soviet soldiers.

This laid the foundation for Apuchu to join the guerrillas...... But like all Orions, they are always accustomed to finding prey alone in the mountains, and they are not very good at leading a force to fight the enemy...... So someone like him is actually better suited to be a sniper than a leader.

But...... There were very few people like him in the Afghan guerrillas, and having him as a leader would also help spread his combat experience among the guerrillas, so I asked him to bring more than a hundred guerrillas to garrison Pass No. 3, and at the same time have Saheid as his military adviser to garrison him.

There's a reason why Saheid would be his military advisor...... On the one hand, as a platoon commander in the special agent company, Saheide had previously served as a company commander in the 40th Division, and he was very experienced in commanding troops to fight. On the other hand, Saheid can speak Persian, so he will not have any difficulty communicating with Apuchu, so he can cooperate well and even contact us on the battlefield.

Sure enough, it was just as I thought...... The defense of Pass No. 3 was a bit different from the rest of the world as soon as the Soviets attacked......

The first is the obstruction of the fortifications...... In other places, the barbed wire fence was erected with wooden frames to block the position, which could indeed cause some trouble to the enemy, but the disadvantages were also obvious...... High in front of the position, like a wall...... The enemy will definitely hit this thing with a volley of shells before attacking, and blow up a few gaps first.

But Apuchu didn't do that, he used to put the barbed wire on the ground...... And they used a lot of barbed wire, and then they made some mines under the barbed wire, and then a simple trap was laid.

The advantage of this is that you don't know where the barbed wire is when you look at it from afar, and you only notice it when the infantry walks up the slope...... Although the barbed wire is not very effective on the ground, it can often trip the fast-charging Soviet troops because of the barb, and there is the threat of mines...... As a result, it caused great trouble to the Soviet army, and the partisans stationed on the high ground took advantage of this time to fight.

The second is that Apuchu's defense is more flexible...... I don't know if this was Saheid's idea or Apuchu's masterpiece, they did not hold on to the third pass, but retreated, attacked, retreated, and attacked again on several defensive lines, so that the Soviet army was often caught off guard and at a loss...... (To be continued......)