Human Sea

In point of casualties, the U.S. in Korea is fighting its fourth biggest war (after the Civil War and the two World Wars). In point of knowledge about the enemy, the U.S. is fighting its most unknown adversary. It is a remarkable fact, for instance, that U.S. intelligence is still not sure who commands the Chinese troops pitted against the U.N. forces.

In two months of battle experience, U.S. evaluation of the Chinese enemy has fluctuated widely. At first the Chinese seemed to burst from their Manchurian "sanctuary" like a limitless, indoctrinated, irresistible horde. Gradually they slowed down, passed from advance to a stubborn holding action. Weaknesses became more apparent: deficiencies in air power, tanks and heavy artillery; primitive supply lines, relying in part upon oxcarts and manback; pitiful lack of medical care.

In broad outline, the shape of China's Red army has become familiar to Pentagon observers and others. Altogether, Communist armed forces number about 5,000,000. More than 2,000,000 men serve in the regular army; the remainder are local militia and auxiliary troops.

The First Field Army (about 280,000) garrisons China's northwest, stretching from Kansu province to the distant Sinkiang border of Russian Kazakstan. Its boss is wily General Peng Teh-huai. A politician as well as soldier, Peng is also deputy to Chu Teh, the Red army's commander in chief; he and Chu are the only generals on the five-man secretariat that administers the Chinese Communist Party machine.

The Second Field Army (about 420,000) holds the south and southwest. Under one-eyed General Liu Po-cheng, parts of it recently marched into Tibet and are lending aid to the Indo-Chinese Reds against the French. Liu trained for his profession at the Red Army Academy in Moscow, once fought with the Red Russians against Manchurian Warlord Chang Tso-lin, led the vanguard of the epic Long March from central China to Yenan in 1934-35, rates as one of the army's boldest tacticians.

The Third Field Army (about 620,000) now seems mostly stationed in North China, and especially on the strategic Shantung Peninsula. Its commander is the redoubtable Chen Yi, conqueror of Nanking and Shanghai, a warrior-poet who is now mayor of Shanghai. After V-J day, from his lair in Shantung, he kept the Nanking government cut off from its great northern cities. Rumors have reached the U.S. that Chen Yi would like to sell out.

The Fourth Field Army (about 800,000) was Red China's best up to the time of the Korean war. Organized with Russian help in Manchuria after the Japanese defeat, it was led by General Lin Piao, the Communists' top military theoretician and a zealous party doctrinaire. While most of his fellow commanders are of peasant stock, Lin comes from China's bourgeoisie; his family ran a small textile mill in Hupei province. Lin got his early military training at Whampoa Academy, the Nationalist school set up with Soviet Russian help in the 1920s. One of his instructors was Chiang Kaishek. Between 1947 and 1949, Lin led his new Manchurian army southward to crush Chiang's forces at Mukden, Peking and Tientsin.

Most of the Chinese troops now in Korea, or backing up in Manchuria, come from the Fourth and Third Field Armies.

How Expendable? The Red army's biggest asset, so far, has been its expendable manpower. On the Korean front, U.N. troops have had more than one bloody taste of the so-called "human sea" attack, in which wave after wave of Chinese Communists advanced into murderous fire.

But it is misleading to speak of "the bottomless well of Chinese manpower." Military manpower is always limited by what the economy of a country can support, and by the number of trained cadres available. It seems certain that in Korea the Chinese Communists have already lost some of their finest units, perhaps the flower of Lin Piao's Fourth Field Army. Such losses in turn cut down the number of battle-seasoned instructors for new cadres, and weaken the morale on the front. China's Red army is big, formidable, but also in many respects primitive and vulnerable.

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