Chosin Few Recall Miracle Of Surviving Korean Battle -- 44 Years Later, Marines Tell Tale Of Bloody Fighting
PORTLAND - Tom Green is still surprised, 44 years later, at how calm and fatalistic he was about it all that day.
"The only thing that mattered," he says, "is that we didn't surrender."
In truth, neither he nor his crewmate, Tom Taylor, had much choice. Here he was, at age 22, sitting behind a .50-caliber machine gun on a hilltop in the mountain country of northeast Korea.
Somebody had screwed up. Gen. Douglas MacArthur had staked his reputation on his belief that Communist China would not intervene in the war between North and South Korea.
Now, as the arctic winds screamed down from Siberia to freeze his bones solid, Green knew the Chinese were all around him. He would find out later that there were more than 120,000 of them.
Worse than that, the Marines were split into three pieces along a 23-mile road. The Chinese had the high ground in the rocky hills along the road and plenty of ammunition.
So Green figured he was going to die. He would never again see his wife, Pat, and his 13-month-old daughter, Kathy, or their little apartment back in Portland. So he kept his eyes on the horizon and prepared to die.
But fate has a strange way of dealing hands to troops in the field. That's the only way to explain why Green didn't die that day, or in the next two weeks. He was one of the lucky ones. One of the Chosin Few.
There are 82 of them now. They're in their mid-60s, at least, and are mostly retired. Save a handful, they all live in Oregon. Some 60 live in the greater Portland area.
They are an exclusive club of very lucky men. They fought and survived the two-week Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, between Nov. 27 and Dec. 11, 1950.
The numbers tell the story of the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir: Some 25,000 Americans, British and South Koreans fought their way out of the winter trap set by Chinese troops. They fought in knee-deep snow and in temperatures that reached 35 degrees below zero.
If the enemy didn't get them, frostbite often did. Three thousand men died. Thirteen were awarded Medals of Honor, six posthumously. Another 70 won the Navy Cross.
The Oregon men who honor each other each year at this time do so because nobody else does. They are organized into a chapter of the Chosin Few. To get into the chapter, you had to have been there.
Green was there. So were Dick Jackson, Bob Jacobson, Clyde Henderson, also of Portland. They were in the Marine Corps Reserves at Swan Island when the war broke out; they were old men when it finished.
The war was going badly. The North Koreans had captured Seoul and roared down the peninsula. The Americans' last toehold was a tiny perimeter in the southeast corner of Korea at Pusan.
The Oregon Marines and their buddies changed the direction of the war by landing behind the North Koreans at Inchon. They fought their way to Seoul, retook the city, then prepared to chase the enemy all the way to China.
The best way to consolidate the victory, the allies figured, was to drive to the Yalu River and shut off the North Korean supply lines. So the 1st Marine Division and U.S. Army units sailed around the peninsula to Wonsan on the eastern shore of North Korea.
The division proceeded up to the port city of Hungnam, then turned up into the northern mountains. Chosin Reservoir - Changjin in Korean - was on a plateau at the 4,000-foot level. The Marines were to spread out on the west side and rest for the drive to the Yalu.
The Chinese counterattacked Nov. 27. The Americans expected them - but not 10 divisions. Something had gone terribly wrong.
"I was only a snuffy (low-ranking troop)," Jacobson says, "so I didn't know much about what was going on. But I knew we were in a lot of trouble."
The Oregon Marines were home before 1951 ended, but not without emotional scars. For Green, it was having to throw the lifeless body of his friend, Sgt. Leland Ehrlich, into a huge common grave.
Jacobson had formed a habit of leaving his arms free, even in his mummy sleeping bag. He would not be able to sleep with covers over his arms for years.
Henderson had nightmares for 30 years after the war. He would thrash in bed, cursing violently at the enemy. Sometimes he would break down and cry.
The nightmares and crying stopped when the local chapter of the Chosin Few formed in Portland in 1988. "I finally," he says, "had somebody I could talk to about it."
This is kind of a holy season for the Chosin Few of Portland, but their work is not finished. They are frantically trying to raise enough money to erect a memorial at Willamette National Cemetery to the 277 Oregonians killed in Korea.
It will go up next summer, if enough money comes in by then.