Combat· Korean War
Chosin Reservoir Campaign
After the Inchon triumph, the 1st Marine Division was sent into the mountains of northeast North Korea as part of X Corps' drive toward the Yalu.
As the division pushed up a single tortuous road to the frozen Chosin Reservoir, Communist China entered the war, and ten divisions of its Ninth Army Group surrounded the strung-out Marine and Army units in subzero cold. What followed was not a retreat but a fighting withdrawal, the Marines turning to attack in a new direction, breaking through successive Chinese roadblocks and ambushes down the mountain passes to the sea, bringing out their wounded, their equipment, and their dead. Fighting an enemy that outnumbered them many times over and a cold that inflicted thousands of frostbite casualties, the division shattered the Chinese formations arrayed against it. Chosin became the most storied campaign in Marine Corps history, an epic of cohesion and discipline under extremity.
Engagements in this conflict (14)
Record no. 46