The first CCF units in action had canvas shoes with crepe rubber soles. Later arrivals were issued a half-leather shoe or even a full leather boot. Chinese footwear was of poor quality and few of the troops wore gloves in cold weather. The consequence was a high rate of frostbitten hands and feet.[225]
[225] X Corps msg X 11792; G-2 SAR, 21–22; SSgt Robert W. Tallent, “New Enemy,” Leatherneck Magazine, xxxiv, No. 2 (Feb 51), 12–15; 3/1 SAR 26 Nov-15 Dec 50, 11.
The CCF soldier usually carried a shawl-like blanket in addition to the small pack containing his food as well as personal belongings. These were few and simple, for it could never be said that the Chinese Reds pampered their soldiers.
China’s “Hate America” Campaign
It was essentially an Asiatic guerrilla army which came to the rescue of beaten Red Korea in the autumn of 1950. CCF strategic aims had been summed up years before by Mao Tse-tung himself:
We are against guerilla-ism of the Red Army, yet we must admit its guerrilla character. We are opposed to protracted campaigns and a strategy of quick decision while we believe in a strategy of protracted war and campaigns of quick decision. As we are opposed to fixed operational fronts and positional warfare, we believe in unfixed operational fronts and a war of maneuvers. We are against simply routing the enemy, and believe in a war of annihilation. We are against two-fistism in strategic directions and believe in one-fistism. We are against the institution of a big rear and believe in a small rear. We are against absolute centralized command and believe in a relatively centralized command.[226]
[226] Mao Tse-tung: Strategic Problems of Chinese Revolutionary Wars, Ed by LtCol F. B. Nihart (Quantico, 1951), 17–18. Adapted from an English translation published in the China Digest, of Hong Kong.
Mao was held in such reverence as a veteran Chinese Communist leader that long passages of his writings were committed to memory. His strategic ideas, therefore, deserve more than passing consideration. In the first place, his concept of war itself differed from that of Western nations.
“There are only two kinds of war in history, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary,” he wrote. “We support the former and oppose the latter. Only a revolutionary war is holy.”[227]
[227] Ibid., 4.