Talk:Task Force Faith

I wrote the original article. I first heard of Task Force Faith, many years ago, when I was in the Army and scheduled to go to South Korea for my first assignment. I read an article, Chosin Reservoir, in a book called, Combat Actions in Korea, thinking it would be about the U.S. Marines and their famous, "advance in another direction." I was surprised to find it was about the Army, and that this Chosin Reservoir...did not have a happy ending, to put it mildly. At the time there was nothing else in print about Task Force Faith, and what happened to the Army troops east of the reservoir. They had been forgotten.

Later, in the 1980's, Clay Blair's, The Forgotten War, and Roy Appleman's, East of Chosin, were published. Both are excellent, and have restored to history, to some extent, the men of Task Force Faith. I would also recommend the official U.S. Army history of the Korean War, all three volumes(for a general overview of the war itself), though they lack the personal touch and human interest that Blair and Appleman provide. Finally, there are various websites for the Korean War and 7th Infantry Division which make reference to the task force, although the information found there is not as well presented, or as accurate as the works I have already cited.

The Controversies

There are still hard feelings between the Army and Marines over TF Faith, and the role of Army troops in the breakout from the Chosin Reservoir. Many Army veterans of the Korean War, especially the survivors of the task force, resent the world-wide fame the Marines earned in the battle, while the role, even the presence, of soldiers at Chosin Reservoir is largely unknown, even today. Saying this, it is interesting to note that one of the most effective officers in TF Faith was Captain Stamford, the Marine air liason. Without his skillful and heroic direction of air support, TF Faith would have been destroyed much earlier than it was. Nevertheless, many books have been written about the U.S.M.C. at the "frozen Chosin." Exactly one has been written about the Army there.

The Marines, of course, deserve the glory and honor which they won at Chosin Reservoir. Their's was a magnificent feat of arms. But Task Force Faith deserves more recognition than it has received. By engaging the Chinese 80th Division and wrecking it as a combat worthy force, TF Faith prevented it from joining the Chinese attack on the Marines, and also bought time for General Smith(the 1st Marine Division commander)to get his units concentrated and ready for battle. If not for the sacrifice of the Army troops at Chosin, the key Marine base at Hagaru-ri might have been captured, the loss of which would have blocked the Marines' only escape route.

There are also grudges held by some(not many, I think, but some) Chosin Marines against the Army. In a number of books by Marine veterans of the battle, the Army troops are dismissed as little more than cowards, or, at best, as something of a rabble who ran away from combat, abandoning their equipment along the way, which was then recovered by the Marines in their breakout march.

The coward story has a basis in fact, though only a small basis. Most of the soldiers who reached Marine Corps lines from TF Faith were wounded(many several times)and/or badly frostbitten. As stated in the article, the able-bodied of these(including many who were lightly wounded or mildly frostbitten)formed a provisional battalion which fought alongside the Marines in their, "advance in another direction." In other words, they continued to participate in the battle.

However, there were some(not many, but some)survivors who, though fit to fight, feigned or exaggerrated their injuries so they would be evacuated by plane. Only a few actually slipped through and were flown out, the rest being assigned to the provisional battalion, but the incidents became common knowledge among the Marine infantry, fighting their way out of the trap.

The story about the Army abandoning equipment for the Marines to pickup is actually true. But it didn't happen at Chosin. The 5th Marine Regiment, which fought at Chosin, had also fought at the Pusan Perimeter the previous summer. On one occasion there, an Army column was ambushed and its soldiers panicked and fled, abandoning vehicles and equipment to the enemy. The 5th Marines(fighting as part of the Provisional Marine Brigade)counterattacked, driving the enemy back and recovering all that had been lost. Apparently, in the memories of some Marines, what happened at Pusan became mixed up with what happened at Chosin.

Finally, there is the controversy about the withdrawal of Army troops from Hudong, which was reached the following day, in its dying gasp, by TF Faith. Roughly 350 troops and 17 tanks had been stationed there after being blocked by the Chinese from joining the task force to the north. This force was powerful enough to probably have saved at least some of the task force from destruction if it had not been ordered south to Hagaru-ri the day before.

The question of who ordered its withdrawal is still debated. There is no written record of the order or who gave it. The army officers at Hudong did not know who originated it, only that it came from "higher up." Some accounts "blame" General Smith, the 1st Marine Division commander, who had operational control over Army units at the reservoir. Hagaru-ri was under siege and in danger of being taken by the Chinese, and Smith wanted the 31st Tank Company and the other troops from Hudong to reinforce his perimeter at the Marine base.

Another story, probably more reliable, cites Major-General Donald Barr, commander of the 7th Infantry Division, who supposedly told General Almond that he(Barr)had ordered the pull-back from Hudong because he believed the task force troops to be lost and didn't want to lose any more.

65.54.154.25Beau Martin/aka dubeaux65.54.154.25

---

I've added and will be adding a few things of interest but I also made a slight correction to the original submission regarding the name "Task Force Faith". The unit was never actually called that; the name was coined years later by Lt Martin Blumenson, a US Army historian who wrote the book cited above.

I also corrected the number of Chinese units involved.

--M. Page aka P1340

Chinese Armor

Fine article, and consistent with that I know about the battle. However, you mention that the Chinese used "enemy tanks and armored vehicles" and that these were knocked out. It's my understanding that the Chinese at this stage of the War were stricly light infantry. It wouldn't have been worth the risk of detection of getting armor south of the Yalu. What are your sources for this information? Were these captured vehicles? Given the extreme stress and fatigue they were under, was RCT 31 certain they were under attack by enemy armor? Antarctica moon (talk) 21:53, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the Chinese army did use T34 "Stalin" tanks and SU-76 self-propelled guns in the Chosin campaign; both were used in the opening attack on the 1/32 perimeter (knocked out by a recoilless rifle) and there were other vehicles which were reported to be SU-76s which were knocked out by an air strike near the consolidated perimeter a day or so later. This was mentioned in "East of Chosin" and "Escaping the Trap" by Roy Appleman, as well as "America's Tenth Legion" by Shelby Stanton.

Both of those types of vehicles also were encountered and knocked out by the Marines around Chosin - I've seen photos of them. The belief is that these all originally belonged to the battered remnants of North Korean units which had fled northward, and these were put into service by the Chinese (it's also been surmised that North Koreans accompanied the Chinese east of Chosin, but that's another story).68.121.87.128 (talk) 08:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

They are North Korean armor units in support of the Chinese light infantry, and they got knocked out even before they could join the battle. The Chinese themselves had left all their heavy weapons at the north bank of Yalu.

POWs

It has been widely recorded that Chinese allowed a lot of UN POWs go free, but that happened at the Gauntlet against the US 2nd Infantry Division on the other side of Korea. Did someone confuse RCT 31 with US 2nd Infantry Division here? Jim101 (talk) 19:08, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

I never kept track of the sources since it never occurred to me that a controversy would occur over whether or not PLA soldiers failed to round up prisoners from Task Force Faith. But, I have encountered personal accounts and official military histories attesting to this, including the claim that the Chinese even assisted Task Force survivors in reaching Hagaru.

This from the book "Give me Tomorrow" which quotes the "official history"...... "Far from hindering the escape of the Army wounded, the Chinese actually assisted in some instances,thus adding to the difficulty of understanding the Oriental mentality."

98.193.174.197 (talk) 19:00, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

98.193.174.197 (talk)

Interesting...official US Army history did not say anything about this, nor does official PLA history. Most of my sources, including Appleman, stated that there was a massacre of wounded happened after the fight was finished, and my understanding was that the Chinese were too busy looting the dead for food and clothing than functioning as a cohesive force...can anyone narrow down which "official history" (Marine's?) is this cited from? Jim101 (talk) 21:17, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

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Chinese treatment of pows

I just finished watching Task Force Faith. None of the soldiers spoke of great treatment as pows. Instead one said how he watched soldiers forced back into burning trucks by Chinese soldiers. Another saw his buddies shot one by one and by some miracle the shot to his head missed. Another another spoke about his buddy after being captured being shot in the head by a Chinese soldier for not keeping up. There were no tales of magnanimity by Chinese soldiers. Brzumwalt (talk) 02:04, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

# of KATUSA soldiers?

The article cites two different figures for the number of KATUSA soldiers in RCT-31 at Chosin Reservoir: 700 and 750. However, Seelinger didn't give the source for 700, and Vallowe was cited but he actually gave the number 1,500, not 750. So which one is correct? "31st Infantry Regiment SITREP September to December 1950" was also cited, but since no page number is given, I can't verify the number with it.

31st Infantry Regiment Association says there are 1,857 KATUSA in 31st IR, Vallowe says there are 1,873 KATUSA in 32nd IR on Sep. 19, 1950. Assuming more or less equal distribution of KATUSA among battalions, two battalions of RCT-31 would have around 1,200 KATUSA. 700 or 750 seems simply too low, as it would mean a very skewed distribution of KATUSA among battalions of 31st and 32nd. Happyseeu (talk) 19:11, 1 December 2022 (UTC)