Battle of Chosin, The (1988)

Post by **bunniefuu** » 01/31/26 16:52

[propeller whirring]

[expl*si*n]

NARRATOR: In the last days of November ,

, men of the First Marine Division,

along with a few thousand Army soldiers,

found themselves trapped high in the mountains of North Korea

near a reservoir called Chosin.

Their leaders had been caught off guard

by the sudden entrance of the People's Republic of China

into the five-month old Korean w*r.

The Americans were surrounded, outnumbered,

and at risk of annihilation.

The two-week battle that followed

is among the most momentous in U.S. history.

It helped set the course of American foreign policy

in the Cold w*r and beyond,

and it remains one of the most renowned

in Marine Corps annals.

MAN: I think all battles are terrible,

but this one might well have been

the very worst in American history.

These were some of the harshest winter conditions

that American forces have ever fought in.

MAN: You were not only

physically frozen, you were emotionally frozen,

not knowing how much more you could give,

and yet wanting to survive.

MAN: The hardest thing I ever did in my life

was pick up the frozen bodies

of the Marines that had been k*lled,

and their arms and legs were bent in the position

in which they had been k*lled.

MAN: I wrote a letter home.

"Dear Mom and Dad, by the time you get this letter,

"you'll know the Marine Corps has been annihilated, or...

...or coming out of here with some pretty good honors."

MAN: The Marines marched up into those mountains,

and when they marched out of those mountains,

they were different, the w*r was different,

America was different,

and, really, the entire world was different.

[engine roaring]

[planes buzzing]

NARRATOR: On Thanksgiving Day ,

American-led United Nations troops

were on the march in North Korea.

The forces of democracy, according to the New York Times,

were "brushing away scant resistance."

What remained of North Korea's communist army

had apparently turned and fled.

U.S. Marine and Air Force pilots owned the skies,

and proved it by distributing holiday bounty

up and down the peninsula...

even to the men at the tip of the spear,

near the northern border of Korea, within sight of China.

MAN: They made a monumental effort to put that kind of meal out

under those conditions, and it was wonderful.

Turkey, mincemeat pie, pumpkin pie,

cranberries, the whole works.

MAN: It was cold turkey, let me tell you.

The cooks did the best they could.

But it was Thanksgiving,

and we did have optimism that the w*r would be over

and maybe that's thanks in itself.

NARRATOR: The commander of the U.N. forces,

General Douglas MacArthur, flew into Korea the next day

to launch the final offensive

of what was shaping up to be a short and successful w*r.

MAN: MacArthur tells the troops and his commanders

that the fundamental goal of the Korean w*r,

to unify the peninsula

under the control of the South Korean government,

will soon be accomplished, and he says to the soldiers,

"I hope you boys will be home by Christmas."

WOMAN: The northern boundary of North Korea

is the Yalu River, and so his cry became that

he wanted to go to the Yalu and conquer all of North Korea.

They were just going to go up the mountain,

just like cutting through butter,

and they were gonna go to the Yalu

and it was gonna be great.

MILLS: I was really excited about it.

I thought, "Boy, this is what we should do."

And I thought that, you know, it was in the bag.

I thought we were gonna pull it off.

MAN: Everything was just wide open,

"Let's do it" routine at that point.

We had won the w*r.

It was over.

It was that blunt.

NARRATOR: Five months into the Korean w*r,

American troops and commanders had reason for confidence.

Split across the middle at the th parallel

in the political settlement that followed World w*r II,

the Korean peninsula had solidified

into two separate states by .

North Korea had the support of the Soviet Union

and of Mao Zedong's new Communist China;

the United States and other Western democracies

backed the South.

This uneasy balance held until June , .

[a*tillery fire]

The North Korean army blasted through

the th parallel that day,

scattering South Korean defenses.

[a*tillery fire]

It captured Seoul, the capital of the South,

in less than hours, and kept going,

making plain its goal to take the entire peninsula.

MAN: When the North Koreans invaded,

they had Soviet equipment, they had Soviet tanks,

they had Soviet advisers.

The American people believed that what was happening is that

it was Stalin's proxy w*r against the United States.

NEWSREEL: On hearing the grave news,

President Truman flies to Washington

from his Missouri home.

The president describes the invasion

as a threat to the peace which cannot be tolerated.

TRUMAN: This is a direct challenge to the efforts of free nations

to build the kind of world

in which men can live in freedom and peace.

This challenge has been presented squarely.

We must meet it squarely.

NARRATOR: Within days of the invasion,

the United Nations Security Council

resolved to repel the North Koreans from the South

and to restore peace and security in the area.

The United States was to lead a multi-national force

tasked with enforcing the U.N. resolution.

MAN: I was years old when the w*r broke out.

I knew very little about Korea,

but I knew we were in direct conflict with the Soviet Union

and that the Soviets were out

to spread communism worldwide.

I knew that.

MAN: They activated all of the Marine Reserves at that time

because they needed troops now-- like right now.

[crowd cheering]

MAN: I just wanted to be a Marine in the worst way.

I was too young for World w*r II.

There were at least , of us, all the same thing.

We were kids just out of high school,

and all wanted to be a Marine,

a gung-h* Marine--

carry a r*fle, sh**t at somebody.

MAN: I remember getting on the train, and we pulled out.

I remember my mother waving to us.

But then later on, I realized that she really wasn't waving;

she was giving us her blessing as we drove by.

[a*tillery fire]

NARRATOR: By the time the first big wave of reserves arrived,

the North Korean army had nearly pushed U.S. troops

off the peninsula.

But Douglas MacArthur remained confident

he could reverse the losses.

He ordered his forces to attack deep into enemy-held territory,

at the port of Inchon.

GRAY: MacArthur took the chance

and tried to conduct a landing there at high tide,

which only had a range of a few hours

to debark troops there.

And, also, it wasn't a good beach at all.

There's a seawall there.

But the enemy didn't expect us to land there,

so it became a tremendous surprise to the enemy.

And it wasn't very well defended.

[a*tillery fire]

[a*tillery fire]

The success at Inchon was a bold stroke of genius.

NEWSREEL: On September,

the st Marine Division moves through Inchon.

This city is recaptured against relatively light resistance.

Allied casualties are few.

As these men move through Inchon,

their objective is Seoul.

SHISLER: The success at Inchon changed everything.

The North Korean supply line was cut.

There was a direct route from Inchon into Seoul,

which was the capital, and taking it was not only

a military victory, but also a psychological one

and a political one as well.

MAN: The goal begins to change now

because what MacArthur first thought was,

"Well, we'll just disintegrate the North Korean Army

and we'll reestablish the borders."

But then he begins to realize,

"Ah, maybe I can pursue the North Koreans

"into their own country, into North Korea,

and destroy the last remnants of that army."

It becomes this idea of taking the entire country.

And it's not just MacArthur;

it's really all the leaders in Washington.

There's a glimpse of total victory.

NARRATOR: President Harry Truman had a major reservation:

he was worried that Communist China

might enter the w*r to defend the North Korean regime.

His general waved it off.

SIDES: MacArthur was very disdainful

of the Chinese as a fighting force.

They were a peasant army, they weren't very well armed,

they didn't have an air force to speak of.

He really was quite scornful of this notion

that the Chinese posed a threat.

NARRATOR: MacArthur's instructions from his bosses

at the Joint Chiefs of Staff

were to proceed with caution in North Korea.

Only soldiers from South Korea would be allowed to fight

all the way to the Chinese border.

But MacArthur believed he knew best.

Three days after his men captured

the North Korean capital of Pyongyang,

the general directed his commanders to speed forward,

using all available forces.

GRAY: The troops became even more jubilant

because here we not only repulsed an enemy

who was aggressive, we taught him a lesson.

Now we're taking his territory.

The word of optimism went around:

"We'll rout these North Koreans completely

and we'll go all the way to the Yalu."

NARRATOR: By the last week in November,

MacArthur had the Yalu in his sights,

and he had a plan to get there.

His armies on either side of the Taebaek Mountains

would act as armored pincers.

They would close the divide between them,

form a solid front, and then race north

before the long and brutal Korean winter settled in.

"This should for all practical purposes end the w*r,"

MacArthur told the press,

"and restore peace and unity to Korea."

MAN: I didn't know what the orders were.

All I knew is we were moving out.

It was about seven miles uphill to where we were going.

REININGER: We advanced rather slowly

because that's about the only way you could walk up there.

You had two directions to go in North Korea,

and that was either straight up or straight down,

because it was a very mountainous,

very rugged terrain.

GRAY: It was real hazardous for us

because that main supply route was an ox trail.

That's all it was.

Oftentimes, it was just one lane wide

along a side hill cut

with a big bank on one side

and then a plunging cliff on the other.

MAN: We finally got into a village called Yudam-ni,

and it was just the most desolate country

you ever wanted to see:

a pile of boulders and rocks, and of course snow and wind.

Everybody was grumbling and crabbing,

but that's the Marine Corps.

If you're not crabbing, you ain't a Marine.

GRAY: The temperatures were plunging at night

to as much as below zero,

and the northwest wind was blowing

, miles an hour out of Manchuria.

But still we were cheered up, thinking with optimism,

"Well, we won't have to endure this for long.

Maybe they're right and maybe the w*r will be over."

NARRATOR: MacArthur's willingness to sacrifice caution for speed

had consequences.

On the eve of its final offensive,

the First Marine Division was strung out

on a single supply route, nearly miles long,

leading to the Chosin Reservoir.

, men were making camp

at the bottom of the reservoir at Hagaru-ri,

where division headquarters and a much-needed airfield

were taking shape.

Five miles ahead, on the west side of the reservoir,

was a small contingent of Marines

defending the high ground above the road.

The bulk of the forces, , Marines,

were digging in near the village of Yudam-ni,

preparing to spearhead the next day's offensive.

To the east were , U.S. Army soldiers

and several hundred South Korean fighters

placed there to protect the right flank

of the attacking Marines.

As darkness fell on November ,

the men on both sides of the reservoir

were settling in for their last night of sleep

before their big attack to the Yalu.

HAFFEMAN: There was one tree up on that hill,

a fully-grown tree with pine branches.

And I took my entrenching tool

and knocked some of those branches off.

And I laid it down, put my sleeping bag on top,

and I was gonna get a good night's rest.

And I heard, "Bang! Bang! Bang!"

[flares sh**ting off]

[horns blaring]

BALLEZA: Blares, like a bugle blowing,

whistles, clangs, screaming.

And illumination flares being shot up.

And all you could see ahead of us

was Chinese coming at us, a lot of 'em.

You know, so we set up our fields of fire

in defense positions, braced for the attack.

MAN: The first sergeant was screaming for everybody out:

"Get out of our tents and get on the ground,

and get your r*fles out, because they're coming."

[explosions]

[men shouting]

GRAY: All of a sudden, here come

a whole bunch of Chinese.

They were in these quilted uniforms,

coming down inside our perimeter down the valley toward us.

I shot the one nearest me, and he just staggered.

I had to sh**t him twice before he went down.

EZELL: Some Chinese Communist jumps up about ten yards out in front,

and somebody yelled, "Duck! He's got a grenade!"

[g*nf*re, explosions]

MILLS: It's terrifying.

You know you're gonna die

and you wonder how it's gonna happen.

[expl*si*n]

PARKINSON: We used everything we had--

our M-s, the Carbines, if you could get it to work,

we had our machine g*ns,

and it was just one solid field of fire as they come down.

You didn't have to look where they were.

They were in back of you, in front of you, around you,

right in the middle of you.

MAN: You'd be sh**ting, you'd be stabbing,

you're using your r*fle as a club.

Sometimes, they'd be six, eight feet away from you

before you even knew it, on that.

And that's when either the bayonet or your r*fle

become a club.

[g*nf*re]

PARKINSON: When things got hot and heavy,

my good friend Sergeant Bob Debbins

got a burp g*n right through the back of his head.

We tried to keep him alive, but we had nothing to work with.

I took my T-shirt out of my backpack--

I had an extra one--

and I tried to stop the blood with that,

but he bled to death.

We were just hanging by a thread.

NARRATOR: When the attack subsided the next morning,

one of MacArthur's most trusted subordinates,

General Ned Almond, choppered into the command post

on the east side of the reservoir

to buck up the badly shaken Army unit.

One of the highest-ranking officers on the ground,

Lieutenant Colonel Donald Faith, was just then making sense

of what had happened the night before.

GRAY: Faith told him, and it should have been convincing,

"General, we're in deep trouble.

"We captured Chinese soldiers from two different divisions.

"That indicates we've got two divisions

"right here in our vicinity.

"What are we doing, General?

"We just barely survived.

We fended them off, but we need help."

And General Almond, he said, "What do you mean?

"You're gonna let a few Chinese laundrymen stop you?

We're gonna continue the attack."

[cheering]

NARRATOR: The leader of the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong,

had won a long and deadly civil w*r a year earlier

and united the country under his communist flag.

But he was a man made wary by a lifetime of fighting.

Chairman Mao was wary of his foes inside China.

He was wary of the growing Soviet empire

on his northern border.

And he was especially wary of Americans,

who had backed his enemy in the civil w*r

and whose army was threatening his border in the fall of .

CUMINGS: What Mao had on his hands,

and this is a reverse of what people thought in the U.S.,

people thought Mao was an evil, crazy communist dictator

and MacArthur was a great hero but from Mao's standpoint,

MacArthur was the irrational one.

He just wanted to plunge ahead.

"What would the U.S. do

"if the Chinese Communist Army were marching up Mexico,

"talking about rolling back American capitalism

in the Southwest?"

NARRATOR: Mao had begun preparations

to enter the w*r in North Korea back in October,

around the time MacArthur's troops

first crossed the th parallel.

When MacArthur's army kept pushing north,

nearing the Chinese border,

Mao set his battle plan in motion.

WOMAN: U.S. intelligence knew that there were troops

that were being amassed in Manchuria.

We just didn't know what they were doing there, right?

And of course what they were doing there

was slowly and quietly infiltrating into North Korea.

GRAY: The Chinese used a night cover to camouflage their movements,

and they were moving away from the roads,

hidden at night from our aircraft surveillance,

and also in the daytime

by staying within the forest under the trees.

FOLSOM: They moved at night and they stayed up on the ridgelines.

The U.S. forces, in general, stayed on the roads

and went hell-bent for the border.

But meanwhile, in between the forces,

Chinese were coming quietly down on foot.

NARRATOR: Mao knew his military was far inferior

to the Americans in tanks, a*tillery, and airpower.

But he had taken the measure of MacArthur

and discerned a weakness.

In early November, Mao sent small cadres of troops

to attack all along the approaching American front.

Then his men pulled back

in what looked like a full retreat.

MILLS: The Chinese hit hard.

Then they just disappeared.

There was nothing out there anymore.

MacArthur said, "Full speed ahead" again.

SIDES: This became part of the strategy,

which is to lure the Americans further into North Korea,

have them penetrate deeply

and then ultimately surround them.

There's a certain shrewdness about Mao.

He knows who he's dealing with.

He knows that MacArthur is quite arrogant.

This is a strategy that plays into that arrogance.

MAN: We had interrogated North Korean prisoners,

North Korean civilians, and even a few Chinese,

and what we learned from all these interrogations

was that there are large amounts of Chinese army

on the other side of the Yalu River,

which is the border between North Korea and Manchuria.

And we passed the word to Division,

Division passed it to Corps,

Corps passed it to Army, which was MacArthur,

and he disbelieved that.

He said, "Nah, they're not gonna come into Korea."

FOLSOM: They couldn't seem to accept that

yes, the Chinese are coming down.

Even when the first fingers touched us, it wasn't accepted.

"This doesn't mean anything."

It was that sort of thing in the headquarters.

[imitates scoffing]

WEINTRAUB: Mao lured American troops quite literally to the Yalu,

and they were surrounded on all sides.

[men shouting, bugles blaring]

NEWSREEL: United Nations troops are obliged to fall back

on all fronts in the face of attacks by Chinese Reds.

This is the bitter fate of the Allied armies,

who almost had the independence of Korea a settled question.

In northeast Korea, the situation is even graver.

Here, thousands of Marines and other United Nations forces

are trapped.

NARRATOR: The worst of the Chinese onslaught

landed on the First Marine Division,

then under the command of General Oliver P. Smith.

Soft-spoken and cautious, Smith had doubted the wisdom

of MacArthur's headlong march to the Chinese border.

And now the consequences of MacArthur's boldness

were falling on Smith and his men.

SIDES: He realizes that it's a completely different w*r now.

The advance to the Yalu, as far as he's concerned,

is over.

He genuinely feared that

the entire First Marine Division was in jeopardy,

that it could be wiped out.

His job now was to figure out a way out of this trap.

NARRATOR: At least six Chinese divisions, some , troops,

were on the attack

against Smith's loosely consolidated ,.

Smith understood that his own headquarters

at the village of Hagaru was on critical ground.

Hagaru had not yet been attacked,

but Smith knew the Chinese were coming.

The crossroads town had to be held

if there was to be any hope

of extracting his endangered men.

SHISLER: Hagaru was very thinly defended.

There really weren't very many combat troops there at all.

General Smith had cooks and bakers and PX people

and he had the engineers that were building the field.

It was a really motley crew.

NARRATOR: While American fighter planes kept the Chinese pinned down,

Smith pushed his engineers

to finish construction of the airstrip

so pilots could fly in reinforcements.

And he deployed almost every man at his disposal

to defend the perimeter of Hagaru,

many at a spot called East Hill,

the high ground that rose above the ammunition dump.

MAN: Ammunitions are coming.

They just drop.

Every hour, just drop and drop, drop.

It was my job to get the supply by airdrops.

The Chinese start to fire at us

when we are picking up the supplies.

NARRATOR: The vital airdrops ceased as darkness descended on Hagaru

just before : on November .

The men dug in to hold East Hill

could see the engineers at work under floodlights,

racing to finish the airstrip below.

A light snow began to fall at around :,

and for the next few hours, all was quiet

but for the scrape and roar of the bulldozers.

[bulldozers scraping against earth]

Just after :, the calm broke.

[a*tillery fire]

[bugles blaring]

MAN: The Chinese recognized the fact

that East Hill was the key,

so they really concentrated on it that night.

[flares sh**ting off]

We were at the bottom to halfway up the hill,

and not with infantry.

We had engineers, a*tillery men,

cooks and bakers, whoever we could gather.

You have to do it.

You have to hold it.

[explosions]

[rapid g*nf*re and explosions]

[mortar shell whistling]

MAN: You hear a mortar shell coming.

[imitates whistling]

And then boom!

And then you'd hear a scream.

Somebody had been hit.

The Chinese were just coming and coming and coming,

and we were scared.

KENNEDY: It wasn't typical sorts of warfare that we had learned

during our training as young Marines--

that there would be enemy

coming at us in these huge numbers

with very little regard for their own safety.

[men shouting]

[expl*si*n]

CAREY: The only way they could overwhelm us

was with sheer force of numbers.

The first wave would all have weapons.

The second wave wouldn't all have weapons.

They would pick up weapons of the first wave.

And the third wave would be commissars with burp g*ns.

Nobody retreats.

[g*nf*re]

SIDES: Smith's men were hugely outnumbered.

The Chinese divisions were coming in from all sides.

Smith was really doubtful

whether Hagaru could actually hold.

[g*nf*re]

NARRATOR: While the makeshift unit struggled to hold Hagaru,

their fellow Marines west of the reservoir

were preparing for a second night of attack.

MILLS: I had no idea what was coming.

I knew it'd be bad, and I hope I...

I was just, you know...

"I hope I can do what I was supposed to do

and don't let anybody down."

BALLEZA: You learn to control your emotions.

You pledge yourself to fight for your buddy,

and he has the same to fight for me.

So he's not gonna leave me there

and I'm not gonna leave him there either.

MAN: You reached back and found out what you're made of.

It's not trying to be heroic or anything,

but you are out there to do a job,

and if you don't do it,

it's not only gonna get you k*lled,

it's gonna get your whole outfit k*lled.

[rapid a*tillery fire]

PARKINSON: They really came down on us.

They overrun our position.

Our machine g*ns were firing so hot and heavy,

they were burning the barrels out.

There were a few times

that I actually had to take the damn machine g*n

and turn it all the way around

and fire over the heads of our own men

that were behind us

because they were breaking through.

EZELL: Now they're starting to move up the hill

and we were sh**ting at 'em.

And so now I'm firing,

and people are starting to run through

on the side of the rocks that way from us,

maybe five, ten yards that way.

[expl*si*n]

So my r*fle jams now.

And this guy throws a hand grenade over.

I took one step and the hand grenade went off.

[explosions]

I feel myself flying through the air,

but I don't feel myself hit the ground.

[rumbling]

REININGER: I think it was a mortar that hit right in the hole,

and I flew up in the air and I landed on the ground.

And I looked around and I thought,

"Hey, some poor guy's lost a leg."

And I got up, I fell flat on my face,

and I looked down,

and there was that leg laying over there,

and that poor guy was me.

It was my right leg was gone at the knee.

PARKINSON: I prayed that night for the first time in my life.

"God, don't let me die."

[crying]

"Not here, not this far from home.

"I just wanna see the sun come up one more time.

Just give me another day."

[faint g*nf*re]

NARRATOR: When the first light of morning rose,

the Chinese retreated back to their daytime hiding spots.

The Marines still held all of Hagaru,

as well the crucial hills around Yudam-ni.

The cost had been dear.

MILLS: I found this one Marine.

He was on top of the hill.

He was in a hole that... I thought he was dead.

He wasn't nothing or moving at all,

but you could see his eyes moving.

His face was all ashen gray, and we picked him up

and we carried and drug him down the hill

to the aid station.

PARKINSON: They had fellas all over the floor

on straw mats, under blankets,

and doing the best they could for 'em.

The odds were against trying to save a guy,

but yet, fellas that had gutshot wounds--

I mean bad, bad gutshot wounds--

it was so cold, the blood froze

and these guys managed to survive.

Guys without a leg from here down.

It was so cold, everything congealed

and they managed to live.

They'd lost their leg, but they were still alive.

WOLF: Everything was complicated by exposure to extreme cold.

They had stopped bleeding because the area froze,

and then when we got them, we looked at them,

and as they thawed, they started bleeding

and we discovered four or five additional b*llet holes.

You did the best you could do, and when you finished,

you moved on to the next patient.

GRAY: They tried to cover 'em with blankets or tents

or anything else they could against the cold,

but they'd still freeze to death.

NARRATOR: That morning's after-battle reports were sobering.

General O.P. Smith wasn't sure how much longer

the men at Yudam-ni could hold on.

There was little word

from the badly outnumbered Army units

on the east side of the reservoir.

Even worse, the Chinese had now driven far south of Hagaru,

cut the main supply road behind Smith,

and attacked the First Marine garrison at Koto-ri,

just miles away.

Hagaru was now menaced on three sides.

SIDES: Smith was really worried that Hagaru was going to fall

and that the fighting at East Hill

was reaching a critical point.

He desperately needed reinforcements.

CAREY: We needed more tanks,

more infantry, we needed people to reinforce.

NARRATOR: Just before : on the third morning of the battle,

at Smith's order, men left Koto-ri to reinforce Hagaru.

Under the direction

of British Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Drysdale,

the task force comprised British commandos

with a few attached American units,

supply vehicles, and tanks.

SIDES: Smith felt that if Drysdale didn't make it,

Hagaru would not hold, and that would lead

to the destruction of the entire division.

The Chinese knew what was going on,

and they did not want to let those guys through.

MAN: It started out well, but it took time.

And then we ran into a lot

of machine g*n, mortar, heavy mortar fire,

and we got bogged down.

[faint expl*si*n]

[a*tillery fire]

You've got wounded and dead Marines

you're putting on trucks.

Trucks are being blowed up, they're being shot up.

As each truck stopped,

the men on that truck had to protect that truck.

That was their w*r.

You didn't know what was happening

two trucks in front of you or two trucks behind you.

[a*tillery fire]

NARRATOR: The Chinese cut off and destroyed the middle

of Drysdale's convoy.

The men at the rear turned

and fought their way back to Koto-ri.

Drysdale radioed Smith to report the unfolding disaster.

When Drysdale called General Smith,

he wanted to know if he should turn around

and go back to Koto-ri.

General Smith knew that he had to have these reinforcements.

He told them to come ahead at all cost.

I told my assistant gunner, "This doesn't look good, Joe."

NARRATOR: They were ten hours behind schedule,

and a little less than half the men remained.

But Task Force Drysdale, including of its tanks,

did manage to straggle into Hagaru.

"To the slender infantry garrison

were added a tank company and some seasoned infantry,"

a much relieved O.P. Smith noted.

He now had the forces

to hold the crucial ground around East Hill.

HARBULA: They said, "Put your men over here in this field

and get some sleep."

You couldn't build fires, you couldn't dig foxholes.

Everything was frozen like a rock.

There was some dead Chinese bodies laying around,

so we stacked some of them up to keep the wind off of us.

NARRATOR: The condition of the Army unit

in the mountains east of the reservoir

was still largely unknown.

General Smith's headquarters had lost contact

with the commander now in charge,

Lieutenant Colonel Donald Faith.

The men down on the ground were growing anxious.

GRAY: The Chinese forces were increasing all the time.

We had a throng around us.

It looked like an entire division,

or a division and a half.

McMILLIN: We were running out of ammunition,

we were running out of gasoline for the vehicles,

we hadn't had any food really for a couple days.

The planes came in and dropped the wrong supplies to us--

-millimeter rounds for -caliber machine g*ns.

And just... we were running out of everything,

including people, and we knew it.

MAN: Somebody was prompting us that,

"Well, the tanks are trying to break through to you."

And well, after a couple of days of this, say,

"Well, we've heard that one before."

Because if we're gonna...

we're gonna hear 'em before we'll ever see 'em

because they make so much noise, and we don't hear anything.

NARRATOR: Faith's men were starting to lose all hope

when a helicopter carrying the Army's divisional commander

flew into their shrinking perimeter.

GRAY: We were exhilarated for a moment

because we thought help was on its way.

Here was our division commander.

He's showing concern.

Here he was.

That means help must be on its way.

But that wasn't the message.

McMILLIN: The general said, "You're gonna get no help."

We had to fight our own way out.

NARRATOR: By the time General Douglas MacArthur

left his headquarters in Tokyo to reckon the damage,

he appeared to have lost his characteristic self-confidence.

SHISLER: It must have just shaken him right down to the ground

to have this happen.

It just was not in his game plan.

I don't think he could understand it.

NARRATOR: The Chinese had redrawn the battle map

in less than hours.

MacArthur's army in the west of Korea

was in headlong retreat,

having abandoned supplies and weapons to Mao's forces.

His First Marine Division at the Chosin Reservoir,

outnumbered in some places by more than ten to one,

was threatened with extinction.

FOLSOM: MacArthur came over.

I was there.

I watched him get out of the airplane.

He was a distraught individual at that point.

He had been winning a w*r.

It was over.

And all of a sudden, he was losing it.

He was to me at that moment

a damaged and distraught old man.

GRAY: Every newspaper and every magazine

was just full of the news.

My wife didn't know anything about the details of it,

but the headlines are big and broad:

"st Infantry Annihilated."

PARKINSON: My father kept a collection of newspaper clippings,

and there are stories that the Marine Corps

has been annihilated, it's a lost legion,

Marine Corps is trapped, they're isolated.

The papers had given up on us.

MAN: My wife had lost a brother

aboard the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor,

and she was thinking that she might lose me.

SHISLER: My grandmother would have been listening on the radio

when one of the famous broadcasters of the time said,

"If anyone has a son or a husband

"in the First Marine Division, pray for them.

They may be lost."

NARRATOR: President Harry Truman's national security advisers

had been struggling to adjust themselves to a new reality

in the days since Mao's spectacular attack.

[flashbulbs popping]

They admitted among themselves

that the United States lacked the resources

to defeat the Chinese in a protracted w*r in Korea.

The best they could hope for

was to draw a line somewhere on the peninsula, shore it up,

hand it over to the South Koreans,

and get out with some measure of honor intact.

But top officials at the Pentagon

weren't sure they had enough troops to hold any line.

Press reports filled with talk of World w*r III

and of the Soviet Union rolling into Western Europe

while the U.S. was distracted in Asia.

Truman even hinted he was willing to unleash

the atomic b*mb in defense of South Korea.

If aggression is successful in Korea,

we can expect it to spread throughout Asia and Europe

and to this hemisphere.

We are fighting in Korea

for our own national security and survival.

SIDES: No one really seems to have the answer,

but Truman is very clear that he is not gonna give up Korea.

This is a tremendously

significant moment in American history.

The talk is that our very civilization

is on the line here.

NARRATOR: The U.S. commanders on the ground in Korea

got little direction from Washington.

The Pentagon did give them leave to abandon northeast Korea

and to get the First Marines out to safety,

but this was no simple mission.

General Smith's men would have to make their way

from the top of the Chosin Reservoir

through Hagaru, Koto-ri,

and all the way to the Sea of Japan--

miles into the teeth of a subarctic winter,

through tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers

waiting in the high ground above the single road out.

SIDES: Military historians have always said that

a fighting withdrawal is the most difficult maneuver

to pull off successfully.

Everything has to be perfectly timed

with close air support, with a*tillery,

with getting the casualties out at the right moment.

It's a very, very complex operation.

HAFFEMAN: The division was getting geared up.

They were burning a lot of things,

they were getting rid of a lot of weapons,

things that weren't usable,

and we were gonna start our way back south.

NARRATOR: On December ,

after four long nights of fighting off enemy attacks,

the First Marines

on the west side of the reservoir

began their perilous journey.

CAREY: You only had one road,

one point of entry and egress on each side of the reservoir

and up to the reservoir-- dirt road

flanked by hills on either side.

A nightmare, an absolute nightmare.

SIDES: Mao thought that

if he could destroy the First Marine Division,

this would create great fear and doubt in Washington

and cause the w*r to end quickly.

His goal was not just to punish the First Marine Division

or damage them,

but to completely annihilate them.

[g*nf*re]

OVERHOLT: The regimental train was on the road

and the r*fle companies were up in the hills

doing the fighting, and we were moving south.

There was firing going on up in the mountains

all the time.

HAFFEMAN: We were going up hills and down hills

because the enemy was all around us,

and you could hear firefights going on all over the place.

[g*nf*re]

MILLS: We were taking the high ground along the way

to try to cover the road wherever possible.

And we were going up this hill,

and the guy next to me was from Alabama.

This shell went off between him and I,

and it knocked me around and down,

but as I spun around, he was falling.

He had his hand up like that and the blood was just gushing.

It looked like his whole face was torn off.

NARRATOR: The First Marines had only one clear advantage

in their fight south:

the United States still controlled the skies.

Air Force and Marine pilots from nearby Yonpo airfield

and Navy pilots from carriers in the Sea of Japan

were quick to answer calls from spotters on the ground.

MAN: Our job was just to try to keep the numbers down

so the Chinese

wouldn't completely overrun the Marines

just by sheer numbers.

We had multiple missions almost every day.

You really had to be on your toes.

Mountain peaks were all over the place,

plus the fact that we had some very bad weather.

PARKINSON: If the sun came out, it brought the planes.

No sun, no planes.

And when there's no planes, the Chinese were all over us.

[expl*si*n]

BRADLEY: That's the big thing about this Chosin Reservoir operation.

We did so much close air support,

and close is really close.

OVERHOLT: Occasionally, they were so low

that you could actually see the face of the pilot

through the c*ck window, you know, the glass.

It's amazing,

the courage those guys had coming down like that.

[engine roaring]

[expl*si*n]

OVERHOLT: The serious stuff that we saw was napalm,

That's a jellied gasoline.

[expl*si*n]

[plane engines roaring]

BRADLEY: Napalm was a new device.

It is very potent stuff.

When that explodes, it covers a big area,

and it can do a tremendous amount of damage.

You walked through an area

where the napalm had hit the enemy

and their bodies were burned.

The skin split,

and you could see the yellow fat.

And there were smells that to this day I can't get rid of.

NARRATOR: The Army units east of the Chosin Reservoir

were still feeling forsaken.

[g*nf*re]

They were holding out against a force of Chinese

that outnumbered them by as much as ten to one.

[g*nf*re]

The dead and wounded were increasing day and night.

Supplies dwindled.

And there had been no word from General Smith in Hagaru.

VALLOWE: Lieutenant Colonel Faith, he said,

"Well, I've got all these wounded

and I've got no orders to withdraw."

So he makes up his mind.

"We're gonna pull out of there.

We're gonna try to make a run for it and go back to Hagaru."

GRAY: We knew that our tank company had been at Hudong-ni,

and we'd hoped maybe

if we could join up with the tanks

with their firepower

that then, we would be escorted in safely

to the Marines at Hagari.

VALLOWE: Once we get back to the tanks, we got it made.

We're home free.

We got supplies back there and everything.

GRAY: We had to wounded that had to be carried by truck,

and the only way we could load 'em

was to triple deck 'em.

We stacked layers of wounded in the trucks.

VALLOWE: The dead you had to leave.

You had to stack 'em on a pile and we had to leave 'em.

GRAY: We had to strip the dead of their clothing

in order to provide some warmth for those wounded on the trucks.

We also went through the clothes looking for ammunition,

we were so short of ammunition.

It was grotesque, it really was.

Horrible.

Nightmare.

NARRATOR: At : on the afternoon of December ,

Faith's soldiers started the attack south.

They were cheered at first

to hear the roar of fighter planes overhead.

GRAY: Marine aircraft came in

to napalm the Chinese on the road

in front of our advancing column.

But one of 'em had a malfunction and it was dropped too early.

[expl*si*n]

And it was dropped on our advancing troops.

McMILLIN: There was this blast of fire,

and a lot of the guys that were in front of it

didn't get back up.

GRAY: Our troops were diverted

trying to put out the flames of soldiers on fire.

It was disconcerting, to say the least.

VALLOWE: We moved about a mile down the road,

and there was a bridge.

The bridge was blown.

Well, we were losing time.

We've only moved about maybe two miles.

My gut feeling was

there's no way we're gonna get out of here.

I mean, just no way.

GRAY: We were trapped to follow the road

because that's the only way we could rescue the wounded.

We could have saved ourselves by abandoning the convoy,

but to me, that was a coward's approach.

We were morally bound.

McMILLIN: We got up to Hill ,

and another truck had gone into the ditch,

and our driver pulled up behind them, shut the truck off,

got out and disappeared.

Now, I don't know if that truck

was still operable or why he did that,

but those two trucks were left there filled with wounded.

That's where I was captured.

GRAY: All the soldiers there that were still alive

became prisoners of w*r.

But the rest of the convoy got through.

We got down to where we hoped we'd meet up with the tanks

only to see 'em gone.

Our hopes were dashed.

VALLOWE: We thought we were on the goal line.

It's like, "Here's our goal post."

They said, "Sorry about that, you're only on the yard line.

You've got four more miles to go."

So we were totally on our own,

and that's when it all fell apart.

FOLSOM: I flew up over the reservoir on the east side.

I could see every movement on the ground.

The Chinese were coming down the ridgeline

and attacking this Army unit on the road.

And I watched them gradually being overwhelmed.

I've been in World w*r II, I've seen all kinds of battles,

but I'd never seen U.S. forces being destroyed like that.

GRAY: We watched one truck on fire

in which the wounded, their clothing on fire,

screaming in agony.

I never have felt so desperate in my life,

and that I could do nothing about it.

VALLOWE: Most of us have already calculated the situation,

said, "Well, we've done everything we can."

It was like every man for himself at that point.

GRAY: You would either become a c*ptive

or you would try to save the men that were with you

and get across the reservoir.

We had a wild scramble across the ice.

I lost my helmet in the panic.

I lost my compass off of my p*stol belt,

and I fell down several times.

My wounded thigh was just k*lling me.

I told one of the guys, "Leave me here.

"I can't make it any further.

I'm spent."

WOLF: We got a call that, "Doc, clear the deck.

You've got multiple casualties coming in."

And here come, over a period

of about three days, several hundred Army casualties.

And many of them had been out on the ice

for two and three days.

When they came in, these men were frozen, literally frozen.

McMILLIN: Out of that , guys about that we had,

I think that they got guys back to the Marines

that were fit to fight.

That's a pretty high casualty rate.

GRAY: When we finally walked in to Hagari,

we were like walking corpses

from having been neglected for five days.

NARRATOR: As the remains of the Army unit made it into Hagaru,

the withdrawing Marine convoy west of the reservoir paused

about five miles away.

They rescued what was left of the single infantry company

that had been holding the crucial pass above the road

for the previous five days.

Less than half the men at the pass were battle ready.

Nearly all were suffering frostbite or gnawing hunger.

Bodies of dead Marines were stacked, frozen,

between the aid tents.

BOULDEN: To bring all of our dead and our wounded that we could,

that was just a Marine tradition.

As long as we were able, we'd carry them with us.

OVERHOLT: Most of the wounded were able to walk,

and those that couldn't walk rode on vehicles.

They were piled up on trucks and on the backs of tanks

and on a*tillery pieces.

HAFFEMAN: There was sn*per fire,

and walking alongside the convoy were troops.

And when there wasn't any firing going on,

they'd come and crowd around the Jeep,

try to get warm,

and if the convoy continued, we had to tell 'em, you know,

"You're gonna have to walk again."

And these poor guys maybe got ten, minutes' sleep

and then they were back up again.

CRUMBIE: We didn't have a chance to sleep,

so you'd fall asleep walking.

And there was no food, no water.

CORK: All of us were kind of like in a daze

because we were just kind of worn out.

Just completely exhausted.

SIDES: The Chinese are constantly throwing up roadblocks:

logs and rocks and boulders.

Anything to slow down the convoy

so they can begin to attack them.

Every twist and turn as they work their way south,

they encounter something.

PARKINSON: We were on the road there,

and the whole column come to a complete halt.

I says, "Why is the column standing still?"

He says, "We got prisoners all over the road."

So I went up further, and right then and there,

I lost it.

I see these prisoners.

They were done, they were out of it.

They were shot up and I didn't realize it.

I took my M- by the stacking swivel

and I started swinging at 'em.

"Get off the road, get off the road,

get out of the way, get going, move, move!"

And they would roll over,

and these guys had no legs, no arms,

their bodies were blown apart,

their feet were black with frost.

And I said to myself, "Oh my God, what are you doing?

You're a maniac."

You're not the same person.

You're a different person.

You're just something you never thought you'd be.

NARRATOR: Men inside the Hagaru garrison heard the rumble of trucks

just before : on the evening of December ,

the end of the first full week of the battle.

Then they spotted the lights

at the head of the Marine convoy from Yudam-ni

moving toward the northernmost checkpoint of the perimeter.

OVERHOLT: As we got near the lines,

we were aware that we were getting into Hagaru-ri.

Somebody said, "Count, cadence, count!"

And people started getting in step.

You could hear the shoepacks,

first "clumpity-clump- clump-clumpity,"

and then they were "clump-clump-clump."

People were getting in step.

We were marching.

CRUMBIE: We marched into Hagaru,

the sound of feet crunching in the frozen ice.

Someone watching us said,

"Look at those b*stards, those magnificent b*stards."

OVERHOLT: Somebody started singing

the Marine Corps hymn.

I couldn't believe it.

They were singing the Marine Corps hymn,

we were coming through the lines,

and somebody handed me a canteen cup full of hot coffee

and a box of graham crackers, and I just sat down in the snow

and had probably the best meal I ever had in my life.

That night, I slept in my sleeping bag

on the straw inside a tent.

That was like luxury.

GRAY: After the Marines' regiments had gotten back

from west of the reservoir and consolidated there,

there was a lot of correspondents there too--

Time Magazine, Life.

They said, "General, it's not like for Marines to retreat."

General Smith told 'em, "Retreat?

Hell, we're just advancing to the rear."

[laughing]

SIDES: Smith bristled at the notion

that this was a withdrawal or a retreat.

There was no front, there was no rear.

He was surrounded in all directions,

and therefore any movement in any direction

is essentially an attack.

NARRATOR: When General Smith insisted his men were not retreating,

but "attacking in another direction,"

at least one reporter in the camp

suspected the bravado was masking a deep concern.

"As I looked at the battered men," she wrote,

"I wondered if they could possibly have the strength

to make this final punch."

MILLS: I cannot remember having a meal at Hagaru.

We were pretty short of everything.

The worst part was the shoepacks, they called them,

those rubber boots that came up about halfway to your knees,

the bottom portion of 'em were rubber,

and as long as you were moving, they worked good.

But climbing those hills,

your socks would get wet from sweat,

and then you had no way to change the socks,

so if you laid in the snow all night long,

your feet would freeze.

CRUMBIE: The rubber boots had a felt insole

about a half-inch thick

that was supposed to absorb perspiration.

Instead, the insole would freeze and it was like walking on ice.

I was thawing out, I guess,

because they give me some hot coffee and morphine.

But they took my boots off

and I saw that my toes were black,

and I sort of lost it.

I wanted to cry.

I didn't, but I wanted to cry.

I said a few curse words.

Somebody come over and says, "Knock it off.

"You act right.

Act like a Marine."

So I shut up.

CORK: My boot was frozen,

so they had to chop the boot off,

and part of my toes had come off inside the boot.

And when they took the boot off,

all of the toes are gone.

The tip my toes, gone.

That's big toe, little toe, and all through there.

And two or three of 'em was found inside of that boot.

HARBULA: One of the miracles of Hagaru and the Battle of Chosin

is that they flew out , wounded on C-s.

It's almost impossible.

LEE: A doctor has to certify that

this patient is serious enough to be flown.

So a doctor's main job

was actually dividing those

who were to be sent with the airplane

and those who are to be sent by a truck.

WOLF: I remember vividly one man

with part of his skull shot away,

and brain was showing.

Had we been in South Korea or in other circumstances,

he would've been sent to a hospital,

and, yes, he would be terribly injured,

but he would have a chance of living.

Here's another man who has a sucking chest wound,

got a b*llet hole that's going through into his chest

and air is coming in and out.

But we knew that this man would certainly live

if we can get him to Japan, and he would go.

And this other man put a dressing on it

and give him morphine for pain and set him aside.

And it's a morbid thought that we set him aside to die,

but we did.

That's what we did.

HAFFEMAN: There must have been of us, maybe of us on board,

and we flew for about an hour and a half, maybe two hours

from Hagaru to Japan.

And when I got to Japan, then I felt,

"Wow, I'm out of the w*r zone,"

and, you know, "I'm really gonna be okay."

NARRATOR: The air evacuation came to a close

as the Marines prepared

to abandon Hagaru to the Chinese.

The last flight out had room enough

to carry letters from the surrounded Marines

to anxious relatives back home,

and to pack a handful of frozen corpses in

among the casualties.

But the question remained:

how many of the , troops still at Hagaru

would make it out alive?

NARRATOR: As the Marines at Hagaru braced for the next battle

in their fight for survival,

their head officer was in New York City,

laying down a new marker in America's Cold w*r strategy.

"Idealism is fine,"

the Marine Commandant told a defense industry gathering,

"but if we are to assume leadership in a free world,

"we must have armed forces to make our will felt

wherever our interest is threatened."

SIDES: In the State Department

and in the Department of Defense,

what they are talking about is making the United States

essentially in perpetuity the policeman of the world.

Anywhere where communism is going to rear its head,

we have to be ready to attack it.

NARRATOR: President Truman was preparing

to declare a national state of emergency

to galvanize the country in an effort to roll back

what he called "communist imperialism."

We had to "get strong fast," said one of Truman's advisers,

even if it meant giving up

"such things as refrigerators and television."

CUMINGS: What the December crisis did

was to convince the American people

that they had to spend a lot more money

and make a lot more sacrifices

in a cold w*r that had turned hot in Korea

and might turn hot someplace else.

And as a result of that,

you had fundamental changes in American history.

That built the national security state,

built military bases abroad, a large standing army

for the first time in U.S. history.

And all of that transpired in December

courtesy of the Chinese intervention.

NARRATOR: On the morning of December ,

as the rearguard dismantled the camp at Hagaru,

destroying supplies and equipment

that would not fit on the trucks,

the lead Marine units

were already running the next gauntlet.

OVERHOLT: When we left Hagaru-ri

and we were moving on toward Koto-ri,

there were Chinese all over the side of the mountain.

And I was standing up

behind our Jeep trailer, which was fully loaded,

and standing up there firing my carbine.

And the guy next to me got hit and went down.

HARBULA: One of the worst things of all is sitting on the lines

and one of your fellow Marines is shot.

And in his last dying breath, he's calling for his mother.

And nothing is sadder or more heart wrenching

than hearing that.

OVERHOLT: One of the myths is that men don't cry,

and that is bullshit.

I saw people cry, especially when their friends got hit.

When you're in pain, you cry.

KENNEDY: You had a feeling of isolation.

You didn't get too close to any other Marine

because the death of a very close buddy

would be devastating.

BOULDEN: All of a sudden,

there was automatic weapon fire coming out of this bunker.

And so this other Marine and I

crawled up the side of the hill to this bunker

and threw in grenades.

[expl*si*n]

One guy, he was sitting in there with an automatic weapon,

and one grenade had landed right down in between his legs,

and it blowed his legs

and his stomach was hanging out, but he was still alive.

And he kept talking to me in Chinese.

I told the officer that was behind us,

"We got one left alive."

And he says,

"Well, you know what they did to us at East Hill."

But as he's talking to me,

was he telling me about his family?

Was he pleading to me to dispatch him?

Or was he trying to save me?

But he was gonna die anyway.

He was just all tore to people.

With that, I dispatched him.

I still think about him at night sometime,

just wishing I could've understood what he was saying.

It's nothing, nothing to k*ll 'em at a distance.

It's when you look a man in the eye, that's different.

NARRATOR: The cold had not let up

in the nine days since the battle began.

Temperatures dropped as low as below some nights

and rarely rose above zero, even when the sun was out.

But Mao was still insisting that his army continue its mission,

no matter the heavy losses to his troops.

Nearly half the , Chinese soldiers

facing the First Marines were already k*lled or wounded.

MILLS: When they're coming at you,

especially at night, you look at 'em as superhuman.

You feel like there's nothing you can do to stop 'em, really.

The people who wanted to surrender,

it's just the opposite.

They looked helpless and they wanted help,

and they were starving.

JAGER: The Chinese were sent into battle

without proper clothing, without enough ammunition,

without enough food, many of them.

A lot of them had to just sort of fend for themselves,

and many of them perished during the winter.

We're talking about huge numbers that died

not just of battle casualties, but by death by freezing.

OVERHOLT: On their feet, all they had was sneakers.

You'd see a prisoner,

and his feet were like a block of ice.

I remember seeing a prisoner one time,

his ears were swollen up this big,

like a potato, you know?

It looked like somebody...

a potato on each side of his head

that somebody had nicked with a knife, you know?

They were bursting from having been frozen.

They suffered terribly, a lot worse than we did.

BALLEZA: I always remembered that

no matter what the conditions were that I was in,

so were the Chinese.

Up to this day, if I were to meet

a Chinese soldier that was there,

I'd hug him like a brother,

because I know he suffered the same thing I did.

NARRATOR: By the time the head of the column reached Koto-ri,

the Chinese were unable to mount any serious attack on the camp

or to put up more than scattershot resistance

on the road.

But word was going through the ranks:

another obstacle lay ahead.

CAREY: South of Koto-ri several miles is a pass called Funchilin Pass,

and there's a bridge there,

and the Chinese had blown the bridge.

We had to have a bridge put in.

We had to have a way to cross that canyon,

otherwise we wouldn't have gotten our vehicles out,

we wouldn't have got our wounded out.

It was a pretty desperate situation.

PARKINSON: If memory serves me right,

it was probably about a span of about feet,

and there we were with a big hole.

We can't go nowhere.

[wind blowing]

NARRATOR: While the column sat

waiting for the engineers to repair the breach,

a front swept in from the north.

Temperatures plummeted.

Men who were there insisted it was near below zero.

SIDES: It goes from bad to worse.

They go through everything they've been through,

and then to now be facing a blizzard

with this unbelievable cold.

CAREY: When you're so damn cold,

you really have trouble breathing, even.

It is that cold.

It was cold.

Man, it was cold.

LEE: It's so cold that you just cannot function physically

and mentally, too.

You cannot think of any complicated thing.

You may not be able to even count ten.

It really just... brain just doesn't function.

CRUMBIE: One of the tricks I learned was to catch a nap

by sitting on my helmet, which had a round bottom.

And as I'd fall asleep, I'd fall over and wake up.

But just before I'd fall asleep, I'd feel warm

and at total peace,

and I think that's the way it feels

just before you freeze to death.

KENNEDY: I felt, "How are we ever gonna get out of here?"

There was a feeling, you know, I had that,

"Well, this could be it.

I'll never get back to see my dear wife."

And you just felt that...

just a deep sense of helplessness

and hopelessness.

NARRATOR: At Koto-ri, the Marine commanders had to make choices

about what they would be able to haul out

on the remaining trucks

and what they would have to leave behind.

OVERHOLT: They used some expl*sives

to blast off the top part of the dirt,

and then they could get a bulldozer blade in there,

and they made a big hole.

KENNEDY: They really had a difficult time

because they had to blast and bulldoze a huge pit.

And then Marines were dropped in.

[wind blowing]

CRUMBIE: They buried right behind my howitzer.

It was pretty devastating,

pretty gruesome sight to look at.

KENNEDY: One very close buddy, he was a Detroiter,

and he was k*lled at Yudam-ni.

And I had the feeling that, you know,

he and some others that I knew

were being dropped into that hole.

OVERHOLT: Regimental Intelligence Officer Captain Donald France

was one of 'em.

His assistant, Lieutenant McGuinness, was one of 'em.

And our driver, I think his name was Lundberg, he was one there.

They all put 'em in this hole and just covered it up

the best we could do at that point.

NARRATOR: The Marines at Koto-ri were not alone in their misery.

North Korean civilians had seen their homes destroyed

by American bombers and a*tillery

in the previous weeks,

their winter food stores pillaged

by starving Chinese soldiers.

Scores of thousands were already fleeing south

in hopes of finding warmth and safety.

A growing number of refugees had trailed the column

of retreating Marines all the way from Yudam-ni.

OVERHOLT: They presented quite a challenge.

You know, you can't tell

if this person who's Asian in appearance

is an enemy or not enemy.

If they come into your lines, they had to be searched,

you know, to make sure that there were no weapons and so on.

So it was a challenge to accept them.

MILLS: They didn't have food,

and they didn't have near the gear that we had.

I don't know how they were able to do it.

I mean, it was heartbreaking, the kids crying and carrying on,

and there was nothing you could really do for 'em.

BALLEZA: What can you do?

There's so many of them.

All you can do is pray to God that they fare well

and make it through the day and the night

and the next day and so forth,

and until they get to a place where they can be safe.

KENNEDY: I remember seeing old people, old women, old men,

and there were reports of women even having babies out there

in this sub-zero, below zero or below zero.

At night, a moan would come up,

and it was sort of a collective moan.

The suffering that they went through...

[beeping]

NARRATOR: The request was urgent

and came from General Smith himself.

So the Air Force agreed to undertake an operation

never before attempted.

MAN: We had to get that bridge in, and I had a brilliant staff,

and they decided that we could air drop

different parts of a Treadway bridge into the perimeter,

bolt them together,

and cantilever 'em over the gap

where the bridge had been blown up by the Chinese,

and we'd be able to evacuate.

WEINTRAUB: Every steel girder required an entire plane to carry it,

a C- Boxcar

with two huge parachutes on both sides to drop it

because they couldn't land.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Flying Boxcars head for the area

where the plight of the beleaguered troops

has aroused the entire nation.

Bridge sections to replace a crossing blasted by the Reds

are parachuted to reopen the only escape route.

This is the first time a bridge has ever been airdropped.

NARRATOR: Early on the morning of December ,

after nearly three days sitting at Koto-ri,

the Marines finally got the order

to make their way toward the newly repaired bridge.

LEE: When we are walking, we feel we are surviving.

So I guess we were able to resist the cold

with the hope that this is the only way we can survive.

All we have to do is just go a little more.

That kind of sort of unconsciously hits your brain.

Then you'll be able to follow the guy ahead of you.

KENNEDY: We came down and walked along that single-lane road

with Chinese sh**ting at us, but we sort of ignored it.

Every once in awhile,

you'd hear somebody yell out with a scream.

You knew they got hit,

but you just kept putting one foot ahead of the other.

[sporadic g*nf*re]

There was nothing you could do about it.

There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,

nowhere to take cover, and so you accepted your fate.

[sporadic g*nf*re]

CRUMBIE: I've always wondered

how that first driver felt

when he pulled over on that bridge

if it was gonna hold him or not.

SIDES: Nothing like this had ever been tried before.

No one was sure it was going to work,

and it was a very, very scary couple of minutes

until the first few vehicles passed over.

And the men who marched across could look down through the gap

and see feet, , feet down into the valley.

CRUMBIE: As I reached the bridge,

there was a man standing there saying, "Walk across this side,"

and I knew then that I was glad it wasn't daylight

because I couldn't see down what I was going over.

KENNEDY: I don't have any direct memories

of even walking across that span.

By that time, my brain was frozen.

All I knew is, "Don't stop."

[sporadic g*nf*re]

BALLEZA: There was this truck on the side of the road

with some guys on it.

They were wounded.

And he said, "Can you drive a truck?"

I said, "Sure, I can drive a truck."

So I actually drove a truck across that chasm

with these wounded guys back there

and the Chinese trying to k*ll the drivers.

But I thought,

"Once we get across this bridge, we're home.

We've got it made."

NARRATOR: It took almost two days to move the , surviving troops,

along with trucks, tanks, and a*tillery pieces,

over the makeshift bridge.

The last of the Marines and the attached Army units

made it across late on December , ,

two weeks to the day after the initial Chinese attack.

BALLEZA: Coming down into the flatter land

off of them mountains, it got warmer.

It was degrees-- we were taking off clothes.

It was hot for us.

It's a feeling of elation

that you don't have anybody sh**ting at you anymore

and you're not sh**ting back.

Just a total relax, happy to be alive.

KENNEDY: When we got to the bottom of the pass,

our column was halted, and when we stopped,

we just fell to the side of the road

and just laid back and went dead asleep.

We were so exhausted, we didn't have much left.

We were out of there in time, just in time.

[bugle playing "Taps"]

PARKINSON: On the th of November at quarter of :,

that's when the Chinese hit us.

And every year on the th of November,

I take a walk up on a hill and I sit down.

I just thank God for letting me survive that,

and I pray about the other fellas that we lost.

[man shouting]

[g*nf*re]

[man shouting]

[g*nf*re]

[man shouting]

[g*nf*re]

CUMINGS: It's a testimony to the Marines that so many of them survived it

and managed to fight their way out.

But fundamentally it was a Chinese victory

that was a key battle in clearing North Korea

of U.N. forces, and they've never been back.

SIDES: The Chinese forced the Americans from the field,

but they suffered staggering casualties.

Mao threw everything he had at the Marines

and they eluded his grasp.

HARBULA: When we got down off the plateau into the sea coast there,

the Chinese never threatened us.

We were able to get , civilians out,

North Korean civilians.

The Chinese never stopped 'em, never made any threat.

BALLEZA: I still believe that the sacrifice

not only of the Marines, but the Army and Navy

and everybody that supported that engagement

did the right thing.

South Korea is still alive,

and they're proud people, hardworking people,

and I support 'em to this day.

And I don't begrudge a second of the time

I spent over there in their defense.

Not at all.

WOLF: They used to say that it's a forgotten w*r.

I have to say it's a winning w*r.

We didn't win it

in the sense of reuniting North and South Korea.

That didn't happen.

But we were able to maintain South Korea as a viable country,

and what we were able to maintain

was worth the fighting, worth every bit of it,

and I'm proud to have been part of that.

CORK: When I talk to people about the Chosin Reservoir,

I tell people I'm one of the survivors.

I'm grateful that I was able to get out there

with no more than a little arthritis and lost a foot.

I am proud of this because I was part of history.

KENNEDY: It was something that has stayed with me

my entire adult life.

I didn't realize what an impact that experience would have

on my soul, on my being.

I fought in many other battles after that,

nothing to compare

with the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.

♪