Sixty Years Later -- Chosin

While the North Koreans play the silly little game they've played for the past 57 years -- feeling ignored on the world stage, they do something stupidly provocative, and threaten the whole world if they're ignored, in order to win something for an empty promise to behave -- it's a good time to remember an epic that played out at this time of year, in the frozen wastes of North Korea, between the northern end of the Chosin Reservoir, and all the way to a place called Funchilin Pass, on the road back to Hungnam, on the east coast of North Korea, 60 years ago.

North Korea's attempt to militarily overrun the South -- in the summer of 1950 -- had been defeated and thrown back by South Korean and UN military force, a significant amount of which was American. With North Korean forces shattered and in full retreat by mid-September, a fateful decision was made to finish the job, and attempt to reunify the Korean peninsula, this time from south to north. With approval from the Truman administration, General MacArthur sent UN forces north of the 38th Parallel (South Korean military units had already moved north) in October.

While the US Eighth Army and two corps of the South Korean (ROK) Army moved up the central and west side of the peninsula, South Korean units and the US X Corps (US Army's 3rd and 7th Divisions; US Marine 1st Division, and supporting units), landed at Wonsan and moved north/northwest along the east coast, toward the Yalu River.

MacArthur knew that the Chinese had threatened to enter the game if UN forces moved north; he assured Truman that it was little more than "diplomatic blackmail".

It wasn't.

While the Eighth Army, X Corps, and other South Korean/UN units advanced and spread out, 300,000 Chinese, comprising two army groups, poured across the Yalu and took up positions in rugged and formidable terrain. Despite warnings of their presence (elements of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, US 1st Cavalry Division, were savaged in a meeting engagement near the Chongchon River in the west in early November; in the east, the 7th Regiment, First Marine Division, met and repulsed two regiments of the Chinese 124th Division well short of Funchilin Pass), MacArthur urged the twin offenses, west and east, on. He wanted to "bring the boys home for Christmas".

It wasn't to be.

In the early hours of November 26, the Chinese Thirteenth Army Group, comprising 18 divisions and approximately 180,000 men, began attacking advanced elements of the US Eighth Army; the South Korean ROK II Corps was shattered; the Turkish Brigade, 5,000 strong, moving north toward a junction with the US 2nd Division, ran into a Chinese buzzsaw; and two regiments of the US 2nd Division were hit hard, losing 4,000 men and a good deal of the division's equipment, running a several mile-long 'gauntlet of fire' back from Kunu-ri.

On the evening of November 27, it was X Corps' turn: the Chinese Ninth Army Group, comprising 12 divisions and roughly 120,000 men, having surrounded the spread-out Marines and elements of the Army's 7th Division, began attacking the Marines west of Chosin Reservoir near Yudam-ni, and a task force of the 7th Division (Task Force Maclean, later Task Force Faith), on the east side of the reservoir. Before the night was over, the Marine 1st Division -- spread out between Yudam-ni and Funchilin Pass -- was up to its eyeballs in Chinese, as was Task Force Maclean/Faith.

Surrounded and vastly outnumbered, Task Force Maclean/Faith tried to cut through back to Hagaru-ri, but was cut to pieces, losing perhaps 2/3s of the task force's effective strength.

The Marines -- the 5th and 7th Regiments in Yudam-ni; a reinforced company at Toktong Pass; a battalion and support units in Hagaru-ri; and another battalion and support units in Koto-ri -- fought back furiously, holding their ground against seemingly overwhelming hordes of Chinese.

Then, and before X Corps realized the scope of the disaster at hand, the Marines began "attacking in another direction", and fought their way out of Yudam-ni, and back down the road through Toktong Pass, then Hagaru-ri, then Koto-ri, and finally down through Funchilin Pass, where an engineering miracle was needed to bridge a deep gorge the Chinese had blown the only passage across. The Marines -- with support of bridging supplies dropped by the USAF, and a bridging unit from the US Army -- pulled off that miracle, and fought their way out of a trap that the Chinese Ninth Army Group had laid for them.

While the news media was reporting on what they called the worst disaster to American arms since Bataan, and officials in Washington were quoted as saying "only diplomacy can save MacArthur's right flank", the 1st Marine Division was orchestrating their own miracle, and destroying significant formations of the Chinese Ninth Army Group (over 25,000 by some estimates).

Sixty years ago during this time -- late November through early December -- the 1st Marine Division, and elements of the Army's 7th Division, fought their way out of a trap, that the springing of, had found them surrounded and outnumbered 8 to 1. Yet they fought their way out, back to the sea, and were successfully embarked and returned to South Korea, where much bloody campaigning remained to be done before the armistice brought an end to active combat operations in Korea in July, 1953.

The Chosin Reservoir campaign -- the Frozen Chosin -- remains one of the most intrepid and epic moments in the history of the USMC and US Military.

Remembered here, as it happened, sixty years ago.