Marines recall chilling 'miracle' at Chosin Reservoir

The Chinese would come for them at night. They'd bang cymbals and blow horns. Then the Chinese soldiers would scream at them through loudspeakers from the dark.

"Tonight, you die, Marines," would come the warning in English.

And many Marines would die there in the North Korean mountains. For some, the end occurred with those Chinese attacks. Others froze to death in temperatures that dropped to 45 degrees below zero at night.

They were trapped. Surrounded and outnumbered in the Chosin Reservoir by 120,000 Chinese forces 60 years ago today, some 15,000 American and United Nations troops had to somehow find their way more than 70 miles to friendly lines.

Tom Willett survived carrying shrapnel in his back and arm from a grenade attack. His hands and feet were frostbitten. He subsisted on Tootsie Rolls, Lifesavers and Pepsodent toothpaste when his rations froze.

"It was hell," said Willett, 78, of East Huntingdon. "It was when hell froze over. To this day, we don't know how we got out."

Some 3,000 allies would die in the battle, which officially ended on Christmas Eve after the troops completed the escape and led about 100,000 North Korean civilians to freedom.

On that day, a wounded Willett woke up in a makeshift hospital to the sound of Korean school girls singing "Silent Night," -- 12 days after making it out of the trap.

The awakening was bittersweet. He was alive and safe, but he and his fellow Marines thought they'd be home by Christmas when they invaded in September.

Everything was going the allies' way. The North Korean army seemed to be falling apart.

After Thanksgiving, the tide turned. The weather started to change, reaching temperatures of 20 below.

And just as Willett and his comrades thought they had the North Koreans on the run and were nearing the border with China, they found themselves surrounded.

The troops fought their way through one roadblock after another, day after day after day, in an attempt to break through the trap. They were always wary of a Chinese attack. Sometimes the enemy would dress in the uniforms of dead Marines as a trick.

"The Chinese would mix in with (civilians) and fire on us, and we couldn't fire back because there were women and children," he said.

There was no rest for the weary. Willett remembers dozing off while walking and waking up to find himself 100 yards down the road. Some men would fall while marching, and nothing would rouse them. They'd freeze in place if they didn't get up.

Some who took time to sleep were bayoneted in their sleeping bags. An injury wasn't a ticket to getting off the front.

"There were a lot of walking wounded," Willett said. "We needed every weapon and every person who could pull a trigger."

Snow served as water when canteens froze.

Willett wrapped himself in a discarded parachute to help stay warm. A medic rubbed Burma-Shave cream on his feet to soothe them, but the frostbite set in anyway. He lost part of a finger on his left hand to frostbite. His hands and feet are numb to this day because of it. He's on oxygen because of the damage the cold air did to his lungs.

Still, he believes the layers of clothing saved his life when he was hit from grenade shrapnel during a nighttime attack on Dec. 8, 1950.

"If you got hit, you didn't have to worry about bleeding to death," he said, because blood froze in the extreme temperatures.

Penn Hills resident Ed Vogel was wounded the same day as Willett. He thinks being shot in the left shoulder was a blessing in disguise.

"I was more fortunate or less fortunate. I'm not sure how it would be perceived," he said. "I was fortunate because I was wounded, but not severely, and they flew me out of the airport that had been constructed by the engineers at Koto-Ri."

It was late afternoon on Dec. 8 when his unit was ambushed. Vogel, 78, was lucky he was near a makeshift air strip that had been built by Marine Corps engineers. They scraped the air strip out of a frozen rice paddy, working round the clock with bulldozers under flood lights to get the job done.

When Vogel was airlifted out, the DC-3 he was on was overloaded with the injured.

"The Chinese were over on the hill surrounding the airstrip and we had some bullet holes in the plane," he said. "As it took off, they were shooting at us. We couldn't see, but we sure could hear. But none of those planes crashed."

He ended up in Japan with other wounded, eating four or five helpings at each meal to make up for the lack of food in Chosin.

"There were a lot of things that were different in that Chosin Reservoir area than any of our Marines had experienced, but that's typical of military people; you learn to deal with what you have," Vogel said.

Willett ended up one of the "walking wounded," continuing his duties even with shrapnel embedded in his body.

But days later, his unit broke through the trap. He was taken to a hospital where he slept for nearly two weeks, waking only to the sounds of "Silent Night" in Korean.

"All of us who were in Chosin, we shake our heads and wonder how in the hell we got out," Willett said. "It's a miracle, really."

Additional Information:

Story told

After 60 years, Ed Vogel of Penn Hills is glad to see the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir is finally getting its due.

The documentary film, 'Chosin,' which is in limited release, tells the story through the words of the men who lived through it.

Vogel was interviewed by the filmmakers, themselves Iraq War Marine veterans, last year in Pittsburgh. He's not sure yet if any of his words made it into the movie.

'It doesn't matter if I don't,' said Vogel. 'The important part is it's a story that's now being told by those who were there.'

For more information about showings of 'Chosin' or to order a DVD, visit www.frozenchosin.com .