"Did Korean War Chinese Wear Puttees?" Topic

I was under the impression that puttees weren't worn by Chinese Communist troops after the civil war, but at least three of the four figures in the Chinese Support pack in the forthcoming Warlord Games range are depicted in them.

Is this correct for the period?

I believe so … Scroll thru here – link

I think I read that too, just the other day, here on TMP.

Apparently not.
link

Many of those images are from conflicts other than the Korean War, Legion, and a lot of attributions are dodgy, but there do seem to be a few potential genuine examples of puttee use by Chinese forces of the early 1950s; mainly from the Sixth Army, for some reason.

I did notice that all those photos, pics, etc., were not from the Korean War. That is why I said scroll thru them. However some of the photos did look accurate for the Korean War. And sadly in photo arrays like that online. Many times you see some photos/pics that really have nothing to do with the topic, e.g. porn at times.

Even just looking at my old copy of an Osprey book on the Korean War. I did not see a photo of, or comment about them wearing puttees(?). And some of those pictures in the link freerangeegg posted were from that Osprey book.

However, it would not surprise me if in fact as you noted that the Chinese 6th Army was wearing them. They had a very large military. And some units may have not been issued all the same uniforms, etc. And somewhere in my study of that war, I may have ran across some photos of them wearing puttees ?

But I can guarantee this, for 22 months, '84-'85, I was stationed in the ROK with a forward deployed US Army Mech Bn. With 2 tours on the DMZ. I never saw any Chinese troops wearing puttees …

By then they'd put them in storage in case they come back into fashion some day. You know those devious Reds always play the long game.

Interestingly, amongst those images there was also a photo of North Korean troops in the Chinese summer uniform, worn either in its entirety or with a NK cap substituting for the Chinese style; opens up some head swap possibilities.

They never let anything go to waste ! Not with as many troops/people they have. 20% of the planet !

It wouldn't surprise me if there were uniform mixing/swaps, etc., between the Norks & the Chinese. E.g. the Norks had all USSR and/Chinese equipment during the war anyway, AFAIK.

I've even see pics of the Chinese having WWII Japanese and some US tanks(M3 Stuarts?) in there forces. Don't know if any of them made to Korea though. Of course we know how effective the Nork's Russian T-34/85s were in the beginning of the war. And IIRC they had some SU-76s too.

When I was there in '84-'85, they again had mostly Russian and Chinese weapons or their copies/versions of those.

There are plenty of images of Korean War PVA troops in puttees. Not unsurprising given puttees were widespread in the Chinese forces in WWII. Here is just one such example – a quick google will highlight several other periods photos with puttees being worn.

Cheers,

Paul Sawyer
warlordgames.com

Puttees it is ! Thought I did see them somewhere …

They're a bit difficult to make out, but as far as I can tell only the fifth prisoner from the right is possibly wearing them. All the other prisoners appear to be wearing unenclosed, ankle-length padded trousers. If worn, puttees seem to have been very much a minority affectation, then.

More pics of Chinese with puttees from a VERY quick Google search:

‌chinese_captured by Paul Sawyer, on Flickr

‌Chinese with puttees by Paul Sawyer, on Flickr

‌t01af3cdd9c8b402d2b by Paul Sawyer, on Flickr

‌Leggings by Paul Sawyer, on Flickr

We have provided a mix of long trousers and puttees for our summer uniform range of Chinese primarily as we would think many gamers would make use of them as WWII Chinese who predominantly wore puttees.

We have yet to showcase the full Chinese range – there is a good mix of puttees and long trousers.