[782] Marshall, Pork Chop Hill, pp. 20–21.
The most telling characteristic of the Chinese Communist soldier, who essentially was a guerrilla fighter, may thus be his ready capacity to learn from experience, particularly the fine art of deception.
As important as any of the lessons from the battlefield was the experience of dealing with the Communists at the truce table. Cease-fire talks dragged on interminably over a period of 2 years and 17 days. Some 158 meetings were held, with more than 18 million words recorded, most of these dealing with the prisoner exchange that had been the major stumbling block since early 1952. During the two years of the truce talks, from July 1951-July 1953, an additional 56,000 Americans had been killed or wounded, bringing total U.S. combat losses to more than 136,000.[783] (U.S. forces suffered some 80,000 casualties in the first year of the war.) And in the end, the final solution to the POW problem was substantially that first proposed by the UNC in April 1952.
[783] Marshall, Military History of Korean War, pp. 77, 78.
Commenting on the Communist strategem that opened the truce talks in July 1951, U.S. government officials observed at the time the negotiations began:
The suggestion was received with caution since the free people of the world have learned that Communist words and Communist intent seldom coincide. Regardless, our leaders initiated action for preliminary ceasefire talks with the hope that the Communists were acting in good faith.[784]
[784] Semianl Rpt SecNav (1 Jan-30 Jun), 1951, p. 187.
Despite this early realistic appraisal of the enemy, the degree to which the Communists were to employ truce negotiations as simply an extension of the battlefield was not immediately evident.
A key factor is involved here. The proverbial Chinese quality of passivity and seemingly endless patience, both on the individual and national level, was fully utilized to their advantage. In contrast, the Western people, particularly Americans, are characteristically impatient to complete a task once it is started. As Admiral C. Turner Joy, USN, who initially headed the UNC delegation to the Korean Armistice Conference, commented, “We are a people who like to get things done.... The Communist negotiating method recognizes and seeks to gain advantage by aggravating our American tendency to impatience through the imposition of endless delays.”[785] The American attitude is to feel that a deadlocked issue should be resolved by mutual concessions, which puts the enemy on favorable ground in employing his delaying tactics. The Communist view is that by deliberately slowing the progress toward completion of the armistice the position of their opponent will gradually be undermined. Thus, Communists regard any concession made by their opponents as a sign of weakness. Whereas Westerners often feel that to accept part of a negotiating proposal will encourage the Communists to respond in kind, such an action is apt to lead to an even more unyielding position on their part.
[785] Joy, Truce Negotiations, p. 39.