The CCF infantry division, with a paper strength of 10,000 men, averaged from 7,000 to 8,500 men in Korea, according to various estimates. Triangular in organization, it included three infantry regiments and an artillery battalion.
Divisional units consisted of reconnaissance and engineer companies of about 100 men, a 150-man transport company, a 100-man guard company, and a 60-man communications company. Transport companies had only draft animals and carts, since little motor transport was organic to a CCF division at that time.
The CCF infantry regiment, averaging about 2,200 men in the field, broke down into the following units: three infantry battalions; an artillery battery of four to six guns; a mortar and bazooka company; a guard company; a transportation company; a medical unit with attached stretcher personnel (often composed of impressed civilians) and a combined reconnaissance and signal company.
The CCF infantry battalion, with an authorized strength of 852 men and an actual strength of perhaps 700, consisted of a mortar and machine gun or heavy weapons company, a signal squad, a medical squad and a small battalion headquarters in addition to the three rifle companies of about 170 men each. Each of the latter was composed of a headquarters platoon, a 60mm mortar platoon and three rifle platoons.
The CCF artillery battalion, organic to every division, must be considered theoretical rather than actual as far as Korean operations of 1950 are concerned. As a rule, only a few horse-drawn or pack howitzers were brought into action by an infantry division depending chiefly on mortars.
The Chinese Peasant as a Soldier
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the CCF, from the viewpoint of a Western observer, was the lack of any official provision for the honorable discharge of a soldier. Once he became a cog in the CCF military machine, a man remained in the ranks until he was killed, captured, became a deserter, or was incapacitated for active service by reason of wounds, disease or old age.
Theoretically depending on a “volunteer” system, the recruiting officers of the CCF knew how to apply political or economic pressure so that a man found it prudent to become a soldier. After putting on a uniform, he was vigorously indoctrinated in political as well as military subjects.
Both self-criticism and criticism of comrades were encouraged at platoon meetings held for that purpose. Every recruit was subjected to a course of psychological mass coercion known to the Chinese as hsi-nao and to the non-Communist world as “brain-washing.” Spying on comrades and reporting political or military deviations was a soldier’s duty.[221]
[221] Walker, China under Communism, 51–76.