Memories of Chosin Reservoir recall both sacrifice, survival

Most of the old timers will remember something about this story; younger people will not, as unfortunately in the U.S. most younger people don’t know much about history. 

It was in the Korean War, the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. It was a two-week battle putting 30,000 U.S., South Korean and British troops up against 120,000 Chinese soldiers. It took place in the bitter cold winter of 1950. 

Temperatures were below zero; if you stopped moving, you froze. Americans and Chinese were locked in eye-to-eye, hand-to-hand combat. To most of the Army and Marines, the terrain looked more like the set of a Himalayan mountain-climbing movie than a place for battle.

The Chinese just kept on coming, tens of thousands of them, with their bugles every night. By November 1950, the 1st Marine Division and the 31st Regimental Combat Team were surrounded, vastly outnumbered and on the verge of being annihilated. As casualties mounted, the generals realized that there was only one way out—break out to the sea. So over the next seven days, the Americans fought as General Smith said, “attacking in a different direction.” He would not say “retreating.”

By the time U.S. forces reached the sea, with thousands of North Korean refugees in tow, nearly 6,000 Americans were dead or missing, not counting the South Koreans dead and/or missing, nor the British. Thousands more were wounded. None of the survivors of the horrific battle would ever be the same. 

Mao, the communist dictator, had lost an estimated 50,000 soldiers, including his eldest son. At the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., it reminds us, “Freedom is not free.”

Roger Gregory served as a captain in the 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam. He is a Priest River businessman.