Voices from the Vietnam War: Stories from American, Asian, and Russian Veterans

Chapter 22: Chinese Railroad Engineering Operations

Chapter 22 Chinese Railroad Engineering Operations Col. Hou Zhenlu and his regiment had been busy working in Vietnam for five years, from 1965 to 1970, as China’s railroad engineering troops. They fought hard to keep rail transportation moving as Beijing supplied Hanoi throughout the Vietnam War. From 1965 to 1973, China shipped to Vietnam 1.86 million small arms, 60,000 artillery pieces, 16 million artillery shells, 1.1 billion rounds of ammunition, 15,000 vehicles, 552 tanks, 320 armored vehicles, 155 airplanes, 148 naval vessels, 180 surface-to-air missiles, and many other weapons and pieces of equipment, including communication and command equipment, medical instruments, missile radars and launchers , engineering equipment, and repair and rebuilding facilities. All of these weapons and equipment could arm 2 million men.1 China also took care of most of the NVA’s logistics, including food, clothing, fuel, and many other supplies . According to one of the agreements signed by the NVA and the PLA, for example, the Chinese would provide each Vietnamese soldier 800 grams of rice, 80 grams of meat, 30 grams of fish, and other food items every day. The Chinese also agreed to provide three sets of uniforms and three pairs of shoes for each Vietnamese soldier every year. The estimated value of the Chinese aid during these years was about $5 billion. During the U.S. Operation Rolling Thunder, a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam, railroads were the primary targets for U.S. air strikes. As the American attacks intensified, they cut major rail lines and made Hanoi desperate for help. According to Chinese intelligence, U.S. air raids paralyzed the five main railroads in North Vietnam, totaling 1,100 kilometers . Rail shipping totaled only one hundred tons a day in April 1965, 216 Logistics Support much less than the minimum of three thousand tons a day needed for North Vietnam. The Chinese report suggested building three new east-west railway lines linking the two major north-south railroads; moving the train stations out of the cities, where they were vulnerable to U.S. air strikes; and replacing all the outdated Vietnamese rails with new standard rails. Without these urgent improvements, the report warned, the existing Vietnamese railroads would not be able to deliver Chinese and Soviet military aid to the front lines.2 Upon Ho Chi Minh’s request in May 1965, Mao Zedong agreed to send the Chinese railroad engineering troops to North Vietnam to keep the railways open. On June 9, 1965, the First Division of the Chinese railroad engineering troops began to enter North Vietnam, and numbered 30,000 men by July. As a regiment commander in the First Division, Colonel Hou’s story explains the plans and operations of the Chinese troops, their problems, and their learning experience in China’s longest foreign war.3 Col. Hou Zhenlu Sixtieth Regiment, First Railroad Engineering Division, Railroad Engineering Corps, PLA (China) I was born in 1925 in Shandong Province, China, and joined the Chinese Communist army during World War II. Fighting against Japan’s occupation , I served as a private and later as a sergeant in the PLA. In the Chinese Civil War of 1946–1949, I became a lieutenant and participated in the Shanghai offensive campaign in the spring of 1949. When China sent its troops to the Korean War, my unit, the 174th Regiment, Fifty-eighth Division , Twentieth Army, Ninth Army Corps, was part of the second wave, which entered Korea in November 1950, fighting against the UN/U.S. forces. Later that month, we engaged with the U.S. First Marine Division at the Chosin Reservoir, one of the bloodiest battles in the Korean War. In 1952, I was promoted to captain. When we returned back to China in 1953, the PLA high command told us that we had won the Korean War, and taught America a hard lesson. They won’t bother China anymore. We won’t have to fight another war against America. I never thought, nobody did, that China would fight America again in the Vietnam War twelve years later. In 1958, when the PLA established the Railroad Engineering Corps, I Chinese Railroad Engineering Operations 217 was transferred to the PLA-REC and promoted to major. My battalion as a railroad construction unit participated in the construction of the railways in 1959–1962, preparing a cross-strait campaign against Taiwan and other enemy-held offshore islands...