Growing up during war years, neither White nor Whited could wait to enlist. This is the story of two Chosin veterans and their experiences on the frigid front lines.

We’re just advancing in another direction.” In the words of Commanding General Oliver P. The Chosin Reservoir battle has become one of the most storied exploits of grit and sacrifice in Marine Corps history. And victory, seemingly in reach, evaporated, leaving the war to slog on for several more years. Ultimately, some American units took the brunt of the attack, allowing others to escape on a hard-fought 70-mile march to the sea. Even bullet wounds sometimes froze, keeping soldiers from bleeding out until they went inside heated tents. Feet froze into blocks of ice inside boots. In a place where it was too frigid to dig foxholes without explosives and bulldozers, combatants piled frozen bodies in lieu of sandbags. In a surprise attack, more than 100,000 Chinese troops trapped American forces in some of the harshest, most remote territory of the region-in temperatures that regularly fell to 25 degrees below zero.

Then, Communist China entered the conflict at “frozen Chosin,” shifting the war’s momentum again. Military leaders talked of ending the war by Christmas and reuniting the nation under democratic rule. But by the end of that summer, a coalition of South Korean and United Nations forces, led by the United States and General Douglas MacArthur, had regained territory and made significant inroads into the north. The Korean War began in June 1950, when communist-backed troops from the north of the recently divided nation stormed into the Western-aligned south.

Marines that carried both men through America’s darkest hour in the Korean War: the harrowing retreat from North Korea’s Chosin Reservoir, where American forces were surrounded, vastly outnumbered and facing mass slaughter in brutally cold mountains near the Chinese border. It was this unbending faith in their service as U.S. And they never doubted the merit of the war they were sent to fight in Korea. For Robert Whited and Jean White, there was never a question that they would serve in the military.

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