I can HIGHLY recommend this documentary...
"In the winter of 1950, 15,000 U.S. troops were surrounded and trapped by 120,000 Chinese soldiers in the frozen mountains of North Korea. Refusing surrender, the men fought 78 miles to freedom and saved the lives of 98,000 civilian refugees. After 60 years of silence, the survivors of the Chosin Reservoir Campaign of the Korean War take us on an emotional and heart-pounding journey through one of the most savage battles in American history. Produced by Iraq War veterans Brian Iglesias and Anton Sattler. Directed by Brian Iglesias. World Premiere at the 2010 GI Film Festival."
Speaking of the Frozen Chosin
When I was 8 my parents gave me a book called
The Story of the US Marines. It was a kid's edition, illustrated. I still have it. The first and last chapters were devoted to 1st Lt John Yancey and his platoon of 32 men (E Co, 7th Marines) and their assault on a frozen hill designated 698...the slopes of which were already littered with heaps of dead Marines from D Co who had assaulted it twice without success. He and his 32 men went up the hill, bayonets fixed, through barrages of grenade and mortar fire. He and six men reached the top. All were wounded. Yancey had been shot through the mouth. One Marine, with a belly wound, crawled around gathering ammo from their dead brothers. On the top of that hill, with a BAR, a .30 cal MG and M1s, they fought off counterattack after counterattack, killing hundreds of Chinese. Yancey walked off that hill on his own two legs and won the Navy Cross. He was my hero and still is.
Many years later, in the mid-80s, I wrote a letter to
Leatherneck Magazine, which was published, in which I wrote how Yancey had inspired me to become a Marine and how his story had steeled me on a difficult night in April '71 when my bros and I were all hit. A few weeks later I got a letter from Yancey's daughter. He was alive and well and living in Little Rock (where he had owned a liquor store! How cool was that?) and was very proud of the fact that his story had inspired me. I wrote her back and told her I was planning a trip to Texas and wanted to veer off to Arkansas and meet her dad.
I was preparing the trip a month or so later when I got a letter from a law firm in Little Rock. It was from a lawyer who told me he had been John Yancey's best friend and fellow Marine and that Yancey had passed away. The lawyer wrote that he and others had been involved in an effort to have Yancey awarded the CMOH. He also told the story of how, when the Marines went into Danang in 1965, he and Yancey had gone down to the recruiting office together to
enlist to go fight in Vietnam. Their request was forwarded to HQMC. And a few weeks later John Yancey received a letter from the Commandant expressing his regret that because of Yancey's age and injuries suffered on Hill 698, in particular the grevious facial and jaw wounds and loss of teeth, neither he nor Mr Blankenship (the lawyer) would be eligible for enlistment. Yancey wrote back:
Sir, I don't want to bite the sonsofbitches, I want to shoot them.
Hijack over.
