http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/online/Bookshelves/KW.htm
It is not remotely true that "the horde attack was all they had". Several items in the article are all too true. When they intervened in strength late in 1950, the Chinese achieved strategic surprise. US and ROK forces were unprepared and poorly disposed to meet them. In forces directly engaged, the Chinese did not have any great numbers edge at that time - they did have large reserves in Manchuria, but could not supply them and so held them out of the battle at first. They nevertheless took the initiative and handed us very serious defeats, some of the worst in US military history.
The means used to accomplish this are pretty fairly explained in the article, despite the hyperbole. Our forces were too road-bound, a fault they had from the very begining of the war, which even the much less effective NK army had been able to exploit the previous summer in the push south to Pusan. The Chinese strength lay in what we would call "mountain infantry", which was effectively the "mobile" arm in the difficult terrain of Northern Korea. They were able to repeated achieve large scale infiltrations and attack us from all sides, simply because our own lines through the highest, most difficult country were non-existent. We regarded terrain as impassible that they used regularly. US physical conditioning was, in general and at that particular time, inadequate to compete in mountain fighting.
Moreover, the initial reverses create command paralysis, shock, and a serious morale problem at all ranks. MacArthur lost control of the battle in Korea, and spent his energies on fruitless fights with his superiors, seeking escalation, instead of on pulling his existing force together or learning to master the new enemy. This led to his recall. Matt Ridgeway proved the command vaccum existing in Korea when he arrived to take over the 8th army, was shocked at what he found, and was rapidly able to restore the army to fighting shape. Within a couple of months, he had the Chinese army's number. But the interim had not been pretty, and deserves serious and objective study by our own military.
Ridgeway learned first that we had to get out of the trucks and off the roads and up into the high ground. That we needed continuous fortified fronts backed by massed and centrally directed artillery and air. These alone did not, however, remedy the situation. The Chinese remained extremely dangerous, funneling down endless streams of reserves from Manchuria, massing them and ammunition for enourmous offensives. The early hill fighting of this period was a bloody affair of exchanges we could not afford to keep up, while they could.
Ridgeway discovered their Achilles heel, alluded to toward the end of the article, once they were a fair ways down the penisula and their supply lines were thus relatively stretched. Their logistics system was extremely primitive. Their force was all "teeth" and little "tail". This did not prevent them from fielding large forces and executing major offensives, despite US air power hitting their supply lines. But it did prevent them from *sustaining* a high combat tempo for long periods. They had to operate in a definite alternating tempo of flurry and lull, rebuilding in the quieter periods the supplies and replacements expended in the hot ones.
By comparison, the robust US logistics system could and did deliver the mountains of artillery ammunition needed to sustain "flurry" levels of fighting for extended periods. And Ridgeway found the way to exploit this edge. He adopted a flexible, counter-punching defense, which avoided the Chinese when their supplies were flush by short withdrawls, and then counterattacked when their supplies were low. He timed successive operations unpredictably. Their dumps were in the wrong places, eliminated by capture after successful counterattacks, etc. Ridgeway combined this with a focus on avoiding unnecessary losses on our side, substituting massive logistics-driven firepower (artillery and air) for infantry blood.
By doing so, Ridgeway was able to restore a colonial-era casualty ratio of 10-20 to 1 against the Chinese. During the long period of fighting between mid 1951 and the eventual armistice, we were in full control of the situation. Driving up the penisula was not worth the cost, because Ridgeway's solution depended on keeping Chinese supply lines stretched, and were most effective in defensive fighting. Of -that- period, it may fairly be said the Chinese were reduced to failed horde attacks. But not of the prior period, around the intervention, and before Ridgeway's new system was developed.
Among the lessons of the whole affair for us, are the following -
1. Underestimating the enemy is always costly. Empty bragging helps nothing and in fact gets men killed. Plan for what a smart and capable enemy could do with the capabilities he has.
2. Laziness in vehicle bound forces is a serious threat. Physical conditioning is a life or death matter. Both continuous lines and perimeter defenses are necessary. Supposedly impassible terrain is not impassible if organized, fit men chose to cross it.
3. Issues of logistics, teeth-to-tail, combat tempo, defensive and offensive stance, cannot be set in concrete in manuals. Commanders must manipulate these elements according to the strengths and weaknesses of own side and enemy forces. They must foresee the enemy's problems with such matters, not merely the constraints they represent to their own side.
4. The commander must always remain fully in touch with the essential elements of the battle. He must be on the spot, not out of country in a distant command post running the war by report. Morale and command shock are very real, and can hit even the best armies and leaders. Sentiment cannot enter assessments of such matters. Any officer, regardless of rank, who falls out of touch with or becomes overwhelmed by events must be relieved immediately.
If the Chinese have only learned the things discussed in this article from the experience, then we have little to worry about, because there is precious little sign here they learned anything. Probably, this is just the public propaganda spin. The subjects alluded to toward the end of the article are where they got their heads handed to them - after the intervention, in the spring and summer of 1951. They probably know this, but they don't talk about it for public propaganda purposes. Their loss - open and objective assessment of lessons makes one stronger, not weaker.