Chapter Eighty-Six: The Earth Under the Mushroom Cloud (I)

Northern Vietnam, on the outskirts of Hanoi, in the Red River Delta

With the sudden collapse of the Japanese Empire and the hasty withdrawal of Japanese troops, the whole of Vietnam has been in extreme chaos for the past year – the Vietnam Independence League (Viet Minh) led by Ho Chi Minh, the more established resistance groups of the Vietnam Nationalist ♂ Party and the Vietnam Revolutionary League, the Cao Dai Sect (a very funny Vietnamese cult organization, which can be imagined as the Boxer Rebellion in China) and the Catholic Church, the various bandits and Tusi chieftains turned into warlords, There are also former French colonial troops and officials who have been released from the prisoner of war camps, all taking advantage of the chaos to grab guns and seize territory. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info Even the "Bao Dai Emperor" of the Nguyen Dynasty, Nguyen Phuc Vinh Swe, a puppet who was purely a vase, took the opportunity to make a move (after the French conquest of Vietnam, they did not directly abolish the royal family of the Nguyen Dynasty, but retained it as a puppet, roughly similar to the Puyi Emperor of Manchukuo), delusionally thinking about what kind of "royal retro" to play.

All of a sudden, all kinds of "jihadist army", "cathar army", "volunteer army", "free alliance", and "royalists" all appeared in the narrow land of Vietnam...... Among these competing forces and organizations, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh was clearly the most powerful.

Backed by the support of the Chinese and Soviet Red Armies, Comrade Ho Chi Minh, who was good at dancing with long sleeves and good at dancing, had already successfully occupied a solid base in the border area of northern Vietnam and raised an insurrectionary army of more than 10,000 people long before the withdrawal of the Japanese army. When the Japanese army retreated, the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh suddenly succeeded in taking the lead, and before other forces could react, they quickly rushed into Hanoi and received a large amount of munitions and materials left over by the Japanese army and the French colonial army, which further expanded the power of the Viet Minh, and the entire northern Vietnam was invincible.

Next, Ho Chi Minh announced the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi, appointed himself the supreme leader, and openly expressed his determination to unify the country.

By the time the calendar turned to the spring of 1946, the Viet Minh army had successfully suppressed the Catholic and Cao Dai rebellions in the north, and then marched south to conquer Hue, the old royal capital, and drove the "Bao Dai Emperor" Nguyen Phuc Vinh Swe and his cronies and nobles out of the palace and fled to Singapore for refuge. In addition, it also sent elite troops further south, and cooperated with the Vietminh guerrillas in the south to launch the Battle of Da Nang, which was almost about to sound the victory horn of the unification of the whole country.

However, it was at this time that the British came to stir up the situation - and the situation of the civil war in Vietnam suddenly reversed......

-- In order to carry out Churchill's crazy plan to "recover the East", the Royal Eastern Fleet turned to the war of intervention against Vietnam after shelling the Hainan Island base of the Chinese Red Army and rescuing the American and British prisoners of war left by the Japanese in the Sanya prisoner of war camp.

I have to say that the so-called rotten ship still has three catties of nails, and the emaciated camel is bigger than the horse. As the world hegemon that once dominated the world and ruled the seven seas, even if the British Empire was already dying at this time, it was enough to stir up a storm in those colonial countries just by relying on the residual power accumulated in the past years - the British fleet had just arrived in Vietnam with a group of members of De Gaulle's "Free France" organization, and the defeated generals from all walks of life who had been beaten by Ho Chi Minh came to join one after another. De Gaulle, who had just been driven out of France again by the Soviet Red Army and had nowhere to stay for a while, was overjoyed when he heard the news, and actually flew to Hong Kong with a large number of people in person, and then transferred to a British destroyer to Vietnam to preside over the re-establishment of the "French Indochina Federation" government in Saigon, the largest city in southern Vietnam. Churchill also ordered the Royal Eastern Fleet and a small number of U.S. troops stationed in China to go north to shell Haiphong Port and start a war with the Viet Minh, which was in the limelight.

After a brief battle of beachhead defense, the Viet Minh army, which was severely lacking in naval and air forces, had to abandon the port of Haiphong and gradually retreat inland. The British, French, and American forces and various Vietnamese "puppet armies" immediately followed, tracing up the Red River and continuing to march towards Hanoi, the capital of the Viet Minh.

Then they were held back for four months in the mud, beachheads and tropical forests of the Red River Delta.

At this time, in the rainforest outside Hanoi, the capital of the Viet Minh, a long and arduous tug-of-war was still raging.

The so-called rainforest is not just a forest that often rains, it is a nightmare for strangers who set foot in it, the intricate roots of mangroves and banyan trees are entangled with a large number of aerial roots hanging from above. The trees were littered with knee-deep swamps that could sink into it if you stepped on it, and low-lying areas where stinky water bubbled out. Colorful snakes and insects gather on decaying tree trunks and rattans, poisonous spiders' webs wrap around the dry foliage, blocking the flowing air, and the dense layers of foliage make it difficult for light to penetrate, and the sun is blazing in the sky, but the depths of the rainforest are still in the dark.

Most of the land in Vietnam is a geography of tropical rainforests and rice fields. Even during the dry season, the air in the rainforest is always so hot and humid that you can sweat and breathe when you move. In addition, there is a rotten sour smell that makes people cover their noses and walk around. Once the long and dreary rainy season arrives, the endless heavy rain is enough to extinguish the fighting spirit of any warrior.

Unfortunately, when the British, French, and American forces that landed at Haiphong Port began to attack the Red River Delta, it was just in time for the rainy season in Vietnam...... As a result, the humid rainforest turned into a muddy swamp, and after leaving the coastline, British, French, and American GIs had to brave the rain and stumble through the mud and fight the elusive Vietminh guerrillas in leech-filled streams—an environment that native Vietnamese have adapted to for generations. But white soldiers from Europe and the United States could not afford to suffer from this. What's more, even if people can barely hold on, what about heavy equipment such as tanks, artillery, trucks, etc.?

The land route from Haiphong Port to Hanoi becomes a huge quagmire during the rainy season, which is prohibitive, and the waterway from Haiphong Port to Hanoi is also difficult to walk. The Red River Delta region has a dense network of waterways since ancient times, with some channels as wide as rivers and others as small streams that can be crossed in just one step. There are also a number of artificially excavated canals between the natural channels, most of which are only accessible for small sampans, but some are wide enough for larger motorized boats. If a layman who doesn't know the details of the boat breaks in, it is as if he has crashed into a maze. In the rainy season, when the water level rises suddenly, all the waterways in the Red River Delta will change drastically, and even maps will not be very useful - as for the relatively safe and stable main channel of the Red River, mines and obstacles have been laid by the Viet Minh, and there are batteries on both sides of the river to blockade it.

In the Vietnam War in another world, it took the Americans several years to gradually find a set of effective tactics in the Mekong Delta battlefield in a similar environment, and built special shallow water river gunboats for this purpose, so that the Navy SEALs could drive them to fight the Viet Cong.

However, at this time and space, the British, French, and American forces that intervened in the Vietnam Civil War did not have so much time to think and study, nor did they have specially designed river ships and specialized equipment, and even invested very few troops - only about 6,000 soldiers, three destroyers, and a light cruiser were sent to the North Vietnamese battlefield, plus an escort aircraft carrier (converted from a passenger liner) to provide air cover, and less than 40 military aircraft......

There is no way, at a time when the flames of the world war are in the ascendant, the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy is sweeping across the Pacific Ocean, and the ironclad torrent of the Soviet Red Army is sweeping across the European continent, the United States and Britain really can't squeeze out much strength to interfere in the situation in the Far East.

Moreover, even on the Far Eastern front, the importance of the Vietnam battlefield to the United States and Britain is far less important than that of the Chinese and Philippine battlefields. Whether it is the millions of Chinese Red Army or the Philippine "Hook" guerrillas who have been fighting against the Japanese army for several years, their combat effectiveness is not comparable to that of a hastily formed half-baked red army like the Viet Minh. What other SEALs do you want to deal with this kind of weak chicken? Dream on!

As for de Gaulle's "Free France" organization? This product has now basically become a government-in-exile that can only be used as a disguise.

Well? And a series of anti-communist ♂ allies such as the local Catholic Church in Vietnam? Please, if these scum with less than five combat strength can beat Ho Chi Minh on their own strength, do they still need to trouble the noble white lords to reluctantly go out in person?

Although the Viet Cong's Red Army is probably the weakest of the current "socialist family", the officers generally lack professionalism and fall off the chain when they fight a slightly larger battle, which is only slightly better than the rabble. But Ho Chi Minh's opponents at home...... Well, that's not even a rabble. Because they all started to pull up the ranks after the Japanese retreated, they were even poorer than Ho Chi Minh, and many forces couldn't even get the most basic rifle grenades, so they had to rely on spears and sickles to fight the Viet Minh fighters!

However, today's European and American allies are also very tight-handed, and they have to use captured Japanese weapons, so naturally there are no extra weapons to distribute to their allies.

As a result of the above, the European and American intervention forces and their allies reached a stalemate on the battlefield in the Red River Delta and were unable to enter Hanoi.

However, in late September, as Vietnam's rainy season comes to an end, gunfire will ring out again and blood will continue to flow.

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In the early morning mist, three small paddlewheels painted black were heading west on the Red River, huge paddlewheels rolling up murky water on both sides of the ship's side, and the British rice flag and the French tricolor flag fluttering proudly on the mast. The coal burned in the hearth of the bilge, causing the antique steam engine, which was at least forty years old, to puff out striking puffs of black smoke and make a cacophony of noise.

On the decks of the three antique paddlewheel steamships, sailors from the British and French intervention forces were manipulating improvised heavy machine guns and small-caliber machine guns, nervously aiming their muzzles at the banks of the river, which were covered in dense vegetation.

Seriously, at the end of the 19th century, such a fleet might still have a bit of a sense of grandeur, but in the 40s of the 20th century, even in Vietnam, which was far away from the "civilized world" of Europe and the United States, it was already an old antique that made people laugh. However, the intervening forces were also helpless, and the water depth of the tributaries of the Red River was not enough, and the ships of the ocean-going navy did not dare to venture deep at all, otherwise there was a risk of running aground. And they did not have shallow gunboats suitable for going deep into inland rivers - ten years ago, Britain had a large river gunboat on the Yangtze River and the Pearl River in China, but unfortunately by now, it has long been wiped out in the flames of the Sino-Japanese war. In order to suppress the Vietnamese rebellion, the French colonial authorities in Indochina before the war also had some armed boats with shallow draft and fierce firepower, but now they were first confiscated by the Japanese, but all of them were transferred to the hands of the Viet Minh......

As a result, this impoverished intervention army, which was scraping together to pick up garbage everywhere, had to temporarily refit a batch of captured inland river boats, welded all kinds of messy machine guns and heavy machine guns to make do with them, and compared with the Viet Minh, which received the ships left behind by the Japanese army, the intervention army was even more downtrodden.

Obviously, such a ragged and miscellaneous water force will definitely not be able to defeat the Viet Minh. Several water encounters in the Red River valley during the rainy season ended in a one-sided defeat for the interventionists. The British sailors, who were in a hurry, even drove a destroyer in without hesitation, and then encountered a large array of drifting mines laid by hundreds of Viet Minh sampans on the Red River......

As a result, the commander of the Eastern Fleet of the British Royal Navy, Bruce Brown, who had not many ships left. Admiral Fraser, distressed to death, ordered the fleet not to enter the river again. And the intervention forces on the front line of the Red River Delta had no choice but to continue to make do with armed civilian boats - for such an irresponsible and dangerous death, the American GIs who helped the war in friendship said that they would not participate, and could only suffer the British and French to take the lead.

After another few moments, the Intervention convoy of three paddle steamers finally arrived at its destination, a small, abandoned village, ready to join the Vietnamese Catholic militia who had come by land. However, the pier at the quay has been washed away by the floods of the rainy season, and only a few broken piers remain. The British and French sailors had no choice but to put down the dinghy and let the infantry carried on the steamship ashore in the dinghy – which, unfortunately, turned out to be a bad idea. The floods that have just ended the rainy season have left both sides of the river full of sticky mud. The shallow mud can also submerge the knees, and the deep ones reach the hips. As soon as the soldiers jumped out of the dinghy, they found themselves trapped in a mudflat tens of meters wide, and the slurry-like mud was as sticky as glue that could trap a person in it. When you try to pull your feet out of the mud, you will feel a force that will pull you back. And the tangled mangrove roots in the mud caused even more trouble for the soldiers who landed on the shore.

Then something even more terrible happened—just as the British and French soldiers were still struggling through the mud and struggling through the damn muddy ground, a red flare suddenly rose on the river bank ahead, and then hundreds of Viet Minh soldiers in grass-green camouflage uniforms jumped out of the bushes and rushed from the shore: although the ground on the shore was not much drier than the mudflats, it at least allowed people to stand and walk.

Next, a torrential rain of bullets swept head-on, blooming blood on the bodies of the British and French soldiers......

“…… Damn it! There is an ambush! We've fallen into the trap! ”

“…… Counterattack! Counterattack! Shoot! ”

“…… Fools on board! Hurry up! We need fire cover! ”

The Intervention soldiers, who were stuck in the mudflats and unable to move quickly, were in chaos, some screaming in despair, others calling for help from the fleet behind them, and others trying to return fire on the spot, only to find that their weapons were all covered in mud and had turned into burning sticks before they could be wiped clean......

Fortunately, the sailors on the armed steamship did not watch them die, but fired back as fast as they could. Although it was only a small 25-millimeter machine gun, for those who were in the middle of it, the scene of the shelling could still be described as gorgeous and spectacular - wherever the shells rained down, everywhere turned into a sea of fire, and the Viet Minh fighters who rushed up with great momentum were met head-on and were quickly forced to retreat.

Seeing the enemy disappear from view, the British and French soldiers who were struggling in the muddy mudflats couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief and began to think about how to retreat. But in the next moment, both they in the mudflats and the sailors on the armed steamship let out a desperate wail again.

-- Six small armoured gunboats left behind by the Japanese army, with bright scythes and hammers on their masts, quietly emerged from both ends of this section of the river, rotating their turrets in a big way, completely blocking all the way of the interfering fleet...... Obviously, under the interception of these armored gunboats belonging to the Viet Minh, the three armed steamships of the British and French intervention forces must have neither been able to defeat nor escape......

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After another half hour, the ambush on the Red River waterway finally ended with a complete victory for the Viet Minh army. Of the three armed steamships of the British and French intervention forces, one was stranded on the surface of the water and burned steel junk, and the other two were hoisted with white flags.

As for the infantry trapped in the mudflats, in the face of the muzzles and barrels in all directions, they had to raise their hands with the current.

-- Seeing the groups of mud-covered and dejected captives raising their hands and being searched and escorted away by the arrogant Vietminh fighters, Vo Nguyen Giap, chairman of the Vietnamese Military Commission, who happened to come to the front line to inspect and supervise the war, couldn't help but show a somewhat smug smile on his face: It seems that what the advisers and comrades sent by the Soviet Union and China said is really right, and the current European and American Western colonizers are obviously already feathered phoenixes that are not as good as chickens!

With such a small number of troops, such shabby weapons, and such a weak fighting spirit, it is really impossible to see the mighty faction of the imperialist powers at all!

Moreover, Chairman Wu Yuanjia also keenly noticed that among the so-called "Anglo-French coalition" prisoners in front of him, there were not many serious white faces, but blacks and Indians accounted for the majority. Even those white people don't look like Europeans, but more like Arabs...... Could it be that the blood of white Europeans has really been shed in this world war, as some gossip says?

Well, that's great news for Asians......

Wu Yuanjia thought so, and was about to interrogate the commander of the attacking enemy army, but suddenly heard the exclamation of the guard.

“…… Chairman! Look! There are planes in the sky! It's an enemy air strike! ”

Air raid? Wu Yuanjia looked up at the eastern sky, and sure enough, he found a string of small black dots. However, neither he nor the Viet Minh fighters who were present were particularly afraid of this, during the rainy season in the past few months. Whenever the weather improved slightly, the intervention forces occupying Haiphong Harbor would send planes to bomb it. However, first of all, there were not many sorties of enemy aircraft, and each air attack never exceeded 10. Even if a few bombs were dropped, they could not ignite a fire in the humid environment of the rainy season, and the actual damage caused to the Viet Minh side was negligible, but it fully exercised the air defense response ability of these rookies.

I saw that after the air raid sirens were blown, everyone began to evacuate and hide in an orderly manner. The formation of armored gunboats on the surface also quickly left the center of the river and hid in the shade of the trees on the shore. Others set up anti-aircraft machine guns, ready to return fire as enemy planes dived, strafed and dropped bombs.

However, this group of enemy planes did not lower their altitude or drop bombs, but maintained an altitude of 10,000 meters, flew straight over their heads, and continued to advance westward...... Could it be that you want to bomb the city of Hanoi? After the air raid siren was lifted, Wu Yuanjia, who drilled out of the bomb shelter, listened to the lookout's report and was about to make a phone call to Hanoi to inquire about the situation, but in the next moment, he witnessed a terrifying scene.

——The distant sky in the direction of Hanoi suddenly flashed a dazzling flash without warning, and then, after an unknown time, a roar enough to shake the earth swept across the face, as if ten million bombshells exploded at the same time, making the air seem to tremble!

At the same time, a dazzling giant fireball, like another sun, rose from beyond the horizon in the distance, forming a huge mushroom cloud that was bright and dazzling, billowing with fire and smoke, and constantly spreading, climbing high, and finally reaching into the sky......

The captives and Viet Minh fighters present all stared at the spectacle in the sky in the distance, so surprised that they could not say a word.

Only the well-informed Wu Yuanjia reacted after a short period of shock and sluggishness and understood what all this meant!

“…… This, this...... How could an American do such a thing? An atomic bomb was dropped on Hanoi?!!! ”

At this moment, he finally felt his own weakness and powerlessness again, as well as the ferocity of the colonizers of the imperialist powers......