Press correspondents were fond of referring to “the human sea tactics of the Asiatic hordes.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality the Chinese seldom attacked in units larger than a regiment. Even these efforts were usually reduced to a seemingly endless succession of platoon infiltrations. It was not mass but deception and surprise which made the Chinese Red formidable.
They also had an advantage over Western soldiers in their ability to withstand hunger and cold while making long night marches. After all, the rigors of a winter campaign in Korea were not much worse than the hardships the Chinese peasant had endured all his life. Usually he was a veteran of at least five years’ combat experience, for China had known little but war since the Japanese invasion of 1935. Many of Mao Tse-tung’s troops, in fact, were former Nationalists who had fought for Chiang Kai-shek.
The Chinese Reds held another advantage in Korean terrain well suited to their tactical system. This factor has been ably summarized by U.S. Military Academy historians:
The mountains are high, and the deep gorges between them are a bar to traffic even when the streams are dry or frozen. Roads are few, and those that do exist are not suited for heavy traffic. Transportation then becomes a problem for the pack mule and the human back rather than the self-propelled vehicle. Telephone wires are difficult to lay and, with guerrillas on every hand, are doubly hard to maintain. Even radio is limited by such terrain, with a considerable reduction in range. In all, most observers have agreed that American forces have seldom fought in terrain to which modern means of war are less adaptable.[44]
[44] U.S. Military Academy, Operations in Korea, 28–29.
The fanaticism and political indoctrination of the CCF soldier must also be taken into account. His introduction to Communism began when he was persuaded that China’s small farms would be taken away from the hated landlords and divided among the people. This is the first stage of every Communist upheaval. Next comes a reign of terror calculated to liquidate the entire class of landlords and small shopkeepers. Communist China, almost literally wading in blood, had reached this second phase in 1951, the “year of violence.” Mass trials were held in which the People’s Tribunals, keyed up to a frenzy of fury, sentenced group after group of “Capitalist oppressors” to death without bothering about the evidence. The executions were public spectacles. An estimated million and a half of them took place in 1951 alone as loudspeakers on street corners blared out first-hand descriptions.
Drives were organized for everything in Red China. So rapidly did they multiply that humorless Communist leaders saw no absurdity in announcing a new drive to reduce the number of drives. And when the Youth League tried too zealously to please, a drive was launched “to Correct the Undesirable Habit of Filing False Reports.”[45] Under these circumstances it is understandable that great emphasis was placed on Red China’s “Hate America” drive early in 1951. The illiterate masses were made to believe that Americans practiced all manner of bestialities, including even cannibalism. This was the indoctrination of the CCF soldier in Korea, and political commissars with a captain’s authority were attached to each company to see that no backsliding occurred. In case of doubt, it was a simple matter to compel the suspected political deviate to kneel at the roadside and await a bullet from behind.
[45] Richard L. Walker, China Under Communism (New Haven, 1955), 119, 307.
A Tactical Formula for Victory
It might well be inquired where Red China raised the funds, for even wars waged with human cannon fodder do not come cheaply. Much of the money was donated by new farm owners as “voluntary” contributions exceeding by far the rent and taxes of pre-Communist years. The slave labor of millions of Chinese sent to concentration camps also helped to foot the bill. In the long run, however, the Communist lords found perhaps their most effective means in the extortion of ransom from Chinese living outside the country on pain of torturing or killing relatives dwelling within its borders. Enormous sums were collected in spite of the efforts of foreign governments to put an end to this form of secret terrorism.[46]