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 With that in mind, it is worth remembering the
Marine Corps’ desperate fight in late 1950 at the Chosin Reservoir,
deep inside North Korea. Carl Greenwood, a young Marine with the
First Marine Division, was there, fighting in bitter cold as the
Marines and U.S. Army troops were overwhelmed by a flood of Chinese
soldiers. The Marines were forced to withdraw, but with such valor
that the Chosin Reservoir is heralded as one of the Marine Corps’
finest moments.
Greenwood was only 19 in 1950, a young kid from the river town of
Havana, Ill., where his father hunted and fished in order to keep
food on the table. Greenwood followed his dream and joined the
Marines in 1947.
The Korean War began in June 1950 when Kim Il-sun, Kim Jong-un’s
grandfather, unleashed the North Korean Army in an attempt to unite
the Korean peninsula under communist rule. The United States rushed
troops to the port city of Pusan and with the aid of the United
Nations, halted the Communists just short of their goal. Then came
the Marines’ surprise landing at Inchon, followed by the UN’s drive
deep into North Korea toward the Yalu River and the border of China.
By the end of November, the Marines had reached the Chosin
Reservoir.
Greenwood was assigned as a machine gunner in his unit’s heavy
machine gun platoon. His weapon was a water cooled .30 caliber
machine gun they named Beulah. Their mission: dig in at Koto-ri and
guard the road connecting the lead Marine and Army units a few miles
north at the Chosin Reservoir with the Korean port city of Hungnam.
But then came one of the worst intelligence failures in American
history. The Chinese launched a massive offensive on Nov. 27 with
hundreds of thousands of seasoned troops, veterans of the Chinese
Civil War, who caught the Americans flat footed. They quickly
surrounded the UN forces at the Chosin and along the entire length
of the road, cutting it in several places.
Greenwood remembers one night vividly. It was bitter cold, and he
and his squad mates were fighting a losing battle to stay warm.
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“We had a cup of cocoa out of the C rations,” he
explained during an interview with the Oral History Program at the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. “That cocoa tasted
pretty good. … Just before dark, before we settled in—we’re just
finishing off this little cup of cocoa and Lucas said, ‘I thought I
heard a bugle.’ And I said, ‘Well, I know darn well I did.’”
“The bugle blew and here they come, screaming, hollering. Well, they
walked into a pair of heavy machine guns down on that flat ground.”
Before it was done, recalled Greenwood, some 300 Chinese lay in the
snow.
That was only the beginning of a desperate fight against a
relentless foe, fought in the rugged North Korean terrain where
temperatures dropped as low as 40 below zero.
“It was a combination of hell,” said Greenwood. “It's bad enough
just trying to survive during that condition. … That cold weather
just plays on you.”
“You're sleeping on the ground, and it's just a gradual
deterioration of your body,” he continued. “… And then when the
people are shooting at you at the same time, it's a nightmare. But
when you look around, you see your other guys doing the same thing,
and if they can do it, you know, by God, you can do it.”
Greenwood and his buddies kept their sector of the road open, then
fought their way south along with the rest of the UN forces, with
the Marines taking their casualties and their equipment with them.
Over 2,900 Americans died during the battle, and thousands more were
wounded. Another 7,000 Marines suffered cold weather injuries,
including Greenwood, who ended up with a case of “walking
pneumonia.” His lungs have been scarred ever since.
“I'm not a hero,” Carl stated at the end of his interview. “I didn't
do anything that anybody else didn't do.” The Marine Corps takes a
different view, however. They consider the fight at the Chosin
Reservoir to be one of their finest moments, a heroic stand against
overwhelming odds.
Mark DePue is the Director of Oral History at the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum. You can hear Carl Greenwood’s
entire story, as well as hundreds of other veterans, at the
program’s web site at
www.oralhistory.illinois.gov.
[Text from file received from
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