No white-marble markers at their final resting places

On this Memorial Day weekend, as a nation fresh off its latest war again pays homage to its dead of all wars, we are reminded that not all of our fallen heroes lie interred in the motherland. Many, like the men of the U.S. Army’s 7th Infantry Division, lost when units of that division were surrounded and decimated at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War more than a half-century ago, sleep on foreign battlefields.

As Roy E. Appleman, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, puts it in his book, “East of Chosin,” published in 1987 by Texas A&M University Press, these men “have no white-marble markers at their final resting places as do thousands of others memorialized in Arlington National Cemetery, in other national cemeteries and in other lands. They have no markers of any kind – only the fragile link of memory that endures from generation to generation in the recollection of their countrymen who know our nation’s history.”

It was to preserve this link of memory that Appleman decided to tell the long-neglected story of soldiers from the hastily assembled 31st Regimental Combat Team of the 7th Infantry Division who fought valiantly in late 1950 to protect the east flank of the 1st Marine Division at Chosin. While most of the Marines surrounded at “Frozen Chosin” eventually fought their way to the coast at Hungnam in a memorable breakout and lived to tell the tale, many soldiers did not. In telling their story, Appleman’s book serves as a timely Memorial Day primer on the price of freedom.

The 31st RCT fought for four days and five nights in late November and early December east of Chosin in the mountainous plateau south of Manchuria, where the Siberian-like winter weather spawned temperatures of 35 below zero at night.

“The Army’s battle story at Chosin contains as many ‘if’s’ as Kipling’s poem,” according to the author. “Its hallmarks were misery, soul-crushing cold, privation, exhaustion, heroism, sacrifice, leadership of high merit at times, but, finally, unit and individual disaster. For many it was a lonely death in a distant land…”

The disaster had its genesis in the fact that the soldiers were neither as experienced nor as well-trained as the Marines, Appleman acknowledges. As well, the 3,000 men from disparate units of the 7th Division were hurriedly loaded into trucks, most of them nearly 100 miles from their assigned Chosin destination, with no time for planning or the provision of adequate supplies. But Appleman, the dedicated Army man, gives the Marines their due. “I believe that the 1st Marine Division in the Chosin Reservoir Campaign was one of the most magnificent fighting organizations that ever served in the United States Armed Forces,” he writes.

With his successful 1950 Inchon landing behind him, Gen. Douglas MacArthur had a plan to end the war by driving the Communist forces beyond the Yalu River into Manchuria to the north and had set in motion a last major offensive to accomplish his goal. But like many a best-laid plan this one went awry when, in Appleman’s words, “A mass of soldiers out of China, dressed in quilted, padded uniforms, wearing fur caps, and laden with grenades and automatic burp guns, suddenly appeared before the unsuspecting soldiers in the darkness of the night. That was the beginning…”

An Army officer describes the scene after members of his cut-off task force had been under unrelenting, sometimes hand-to-hand combat for 80 hours in sub-zero weather: “None [of the men] had slept much. None had washed or shaved; none had eaten more than a bare minimum. Due to the season of the year, darkness covered about 16 hours of each 24-hour period – and during the hours of darkness the enemy exploited his terror weapons such as bugles, whistles, flares, burp guns, and infiltration tactics. The ground was frozen so solidly as to hamper digging, so riflemen and weapons crews occupied very shallow trenches.

“The dead, concentrated in central collecting points, had to be used as a source for all supplies including clothing, weapons and ammunition. Everyone seemed to be wounded in one fashion or another and to varying degrees of severity. Frozen feet and hands were common. The wounded who were unable to move about froze to death. Trucks and jeeps and trailers were ransacked for ammunition and any kind of fabric that would serve for bandages or clothing…”

Hollywood would have been hard-pressed to duplicate the horror, the officer reported. All wars are horrific, of course. But to the Frozen Chosin survivors, Korea – America’s “Forgotten War” which ended 50 years ago this coming July 27 – must have seemed exceptionally so.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.