With UN troops getting dangerously close to the Yalu River, Mao Zedong's orders were simple: destroy the 1st Marine Division. In late November 1950, he sent 12 divisions—more than 120,000 troops from the elite 9th Army Group—into the frozen mountains around North Korea's Chosin Reservoir to trap and annihilate 30,000 American, British and South Korean forces.
The Chinese had numerical superiority, tactical surprise and home-field advantage in terrain so brutal that men froze to death in their fighting positions. By every measure, the UN forces should have been wiped out.
But they survived. And the story of how a rag-tag group of survivors—Marines, Army soldiers, British Royal Marine Commandos and South Korean troops—fought together to turn certain destruction into survival remains one of the Korean War's most compelling stories.
The Chinese Enter the Conflict
As UN troops pushed deep into North Korea, rumors and whispers of Chinese troops in the area began to spread through the ranks. Reconnaissance units and nighttime patrols reported engaging Chinese troops. Douglas MacArthur and other commanders dismissed the reports and kept pushing north.
The temperature plunged to 36 degrees below zero on Nov. 27, 1950, when Chinese bugles sounded throughout the battlefield. Across multiple positions around the 78-mile road network near Chosin Reservoir, tens of thousands of Chinese troops launched coordinated attacks.
The 1st Marine Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Oliver P. Smith, had been advancing north under orders from X Corps commander Maj. Gen. Edward Almond. Smith didn't trust the intelligence reports dismissing Chinese intervention. Against Almond's orders, he deliberately slowed his advance and established supply depots at Hagaru-ri and Koto-ri—a decision that would prove crucial in his division’s survival.
At Yudam-ni, Chinese forces hit the 5th and 7th Marine regiments. At Hagaru-ri, the division headquarters came under direct attack. Between these positions, a single Marine rifle company held a frozen hilltop that controlled the only escape route.
And on the reservoir's eastern shore, an undermanned Army task force faced the full weight of two Chinese divisions.
Fox Hill: 220 Marines Against the Chinese Army
Capt. William Barber's Fox Company—just 220 Marines—occupied a rocky hilltop overlooking Toktong Pass, the narrow gorge connecting Yudam-ni to Hagaru-ri. They had no idea the Chinese 59th Division, roughly 10,000 troops, surrounded them under the cover of darkness.
At 2 a.m. on Nov. 28, the Chinese hit their position hard.
Pfc. Hector Cafferata jolted awake to gunfire and explosions. The rest of his fire team was killed or wounded within minutes. Still in his sleeping bag, Cafferata couldn't find his boots or coat in the darkness. Despite the winter conditions, he fought in his socks.
Fellow Marine Kenneth Benson was temporarily blinded when a grenade exploded near his face, shattering his glasses. Benson began reloading rifles while Cafferata fired.
“For the rest of the night I was batting hand grenades away with my entrenching tool while firing my rifle at them,” Cafferata later recalled. “I must have whacked a dozen grenades that night with my tool. And you know what? I was the world's worst baseball player.”
Cafferata shot his M1 rifle so much it overheated and he had to cool it with snow. When a grenade landed near wounded Marines, he grabbed it and threw it back. The grenade detonated in his hand, severing part of a finger and embedding shrapnel in his arm. He kept fighting until a sniper's bullet severely wounded him.
Barber, hit by a ricochet bullet that fractured his pelvis on the second night, refused evacuation. He directed the defense from a stretcher, moving up and down the lines encouraging his men through five days and nights of continuous attacks.
By the time Fox Company was relieved, only 82 of the original 220 Marines could walk off the hill. More than 1,000 Chinese soldiers lay dead in front of their positions. The 59th Division—tasked with blocking the road and destroying Fox Company—had been effectively wiped out.
Both Cafferata and Barber received the Medal of Honor.
The Army's Forgotten Sacrifice
East of the reservoir, Regimental Combat Team 31 faced terrifying odds. The 2,500-man force included elements from the 31st and 32nd Infantry regiments, two artillery batteries and 750 Korean soldiers. Unlike the Marines, they were understrength, poorly coordinated and still wearing summer uniforms.
They had no idea the Chinese had them completely surrounded.
On Nov. 27, Chinese forces from the 80th and 81st divisions—part of the elite 27th Corps—swarmed their positions. Most senior officers and NCOs were killed or wounded on the first night.
Col. Allan MacLean tried to consolidate his scattered units. His men fought ferociously while awaiting Marine reinforcements.
Mistaking Chinese troops for his relief, he ran onto the frozen reservoir to meet them. Chinese riflemen shot him repeatedly. Four times he struggled to his feet before Chinese soldiers dragged him to their lines. He died four days later.
Command fell to Lt. Col. Don Carlos Faith Jr., a World War II airborne officer with two Bronze Stars. Faith reorganized survivors into a single perimeter. For three days, RCT-31 held off relentless assaults in temperatures that froze weapons and froze men to death in their foxholes.
Marine Corsairs and Navy fighters provided close air support coordinated by Marine Capt. Edward Stamford, who fought alongside the Army troops.
By Dec. 1, with nearly 600 wounded, Faith realized help wasn’t coming. He decided to load everyone into trucks and fight south to Marine lines at Hagaru-ri, 14 miles away.
Chinese roadblocks were at every turn. Faith led assault after assault, firing his pistol and throwing grenades. Around 30 yards from one roadblock, grenade fragments tore into his chest. Soldiers loaded him into a truck cab, but Chinese fire raked the vehicle. Faith was hit again and killed.
Without effective leadership and under continuous attack, the convoy disintegrated. Chinese troops threw grenades into trucks full of wounded. Soldiers scattered across the frozen reservoir toward Marine lines.
Of 2,500 soldiers who began the withdrawal, only 385 reached Hagaru-ri combat-ready. More than 1,000 died or perished in Chinese captivity. Marines holding on to their positions had no idea what the soldiers had just gone through. They saw bedraggled Army troops, many missing their weapons and ammunition, fleeing in the face of Chinese forces. Marines dismissed the Army as cowards while the press back home even blamed them for the entire disaster.
But Task Force Faith had accomplished something amazing. According to historian Roy Appleman, they essentially destroyed two Chinese divisions. The 80th and 81st divisions weren't spotted on the battlefield again until April 1951. More importantly, they prevented Chinese forces from cutting off the Marine withdrawal route to the south.
Hell Fire Valley: The British Enter the Fight
At Hagaru-ri, Smith faced a critical shortage of defenders. He ordered Lt. Col. Lewis “Chesty” Puller to assemble a relief force.
On Nov. 29, Task Force Drysdale pushed north from Koto-ri—921 troops from 41 (Independent) Commando Royal Marines, G Company of the 1st Marines and B Company of the 31st Infantry.
The Royal Marines, commanded by Lt. Col. Douglas Drysdale, wore their green berets and carried American weapons. They had arrived in Korea just weeks earlier after volunteering for amphibious raiding duty. Task Force Drysdale pushed forward, hoping to open a vital supply and withdrawal route for the 1st Marine Division.
The Chinese 60th Division hit the column hard. What followed became known as Hell Fire Valley. British Marines and supporting troops from other nations repelled wave after wave of Chinese troops. Under constant attack, the task force became disorganized. A destroyed truck split the column into two segments.
Roughly 100 Royal Marines made it to Hagaru-ri. Sixty British Marines fell as casualties. But those who reached the town immediately went into action, launching a counterattack to retake East Hill, a crucial location for Hagaru-ri's defenses.
When a U.S. Marine asked one Royal Marine, Gordon Payne, why he was going back into combat, he replied, “I'm not done with them yet!”
Drysdale’s column not only gave a small boost to the Marine Corps’ defenses, but also helped pave open the withdrawal route that would ensure they could escape North Korea.
The Breakout from Chosin Reservoir
On Dec. 1, Smith began the movement that would get the 1st Marine Division and the other survivors to safety. Smith famously said “Retreat, hell! We’re just attacking in a different direction.”
The 5th and 7th Marines fought south from Yudam-ni to Hagaru-ri, singing “The Marines' Hymn” as they marched in with their wounded and dead. The 385 surviving soldiers from Task Force Faith formed a provisional battalion and fought alongside the Marines for the rest of the breakout.
Marine and Navy fighter-bombers flew continuous sorties, striking Chinese positions in the column’s path. Transport planes evacuated the wounded using an airfield scraped from frozen ground by Marine engineers.
The breakout continued through Koto-ri and Funchilin Pass, where Chinese forces had destroyed a bridge. Engineers parachuted steel sections into the pass and assembled them under fire.
On Dec. 11, the 1st Marine Division reached Hungnam. Task Force 90 ships evacuated over 105,000 military personnel, 98,000 Korean civilians, 17,500 vehicles and 350,000 tons of supplies out of the region. The Marines managed to survive to fight another day.
The Strategic Cost
The Chinese achieved a victory—they forced X Corps out of North Korea. But they paid an extraordinary price that Marines to this day view as a badge of honor.
The Chinese 9th Army Group suffered between 40,000 and 80,000 casualties from combat and the cold. Two entire divisions were forced to disband. The entire army group was pulled from the front lines and didn't return to full strength until the spring of 1951. Mao Zedong’s eldest son Mao Anying was killed during the battle.
Those losses—40 percent of Chinese forces in Korea at the time—prevented follow-on attacks against UN lines in early 1951. The failure of the Chinese advance allowed UN forces to maintain their foothold in South Korea. Though the Chinese would advance into South Kora, and even capture Seoul, they would again be pushed back to the border.
The 1st Marine Division reported 604 killed, 114 dead of wounds, 192 missing, 3,485 wounded and 7,338 non-battle casualties from frostbite. But the division emerged combat-ready.
Fourteen Marines, two soldiers and one Navy pilot received the Medal of Honor for actions at Chosin. The 1st Marine Division and 41 Commando received the Presidential Unit Citation for their heroic actions during the battle.
RCT-31 and its sacrifice were dismissed and forgotten by most veterans of the battle and historians. It wasn’t until 1999 that they too were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation.
Mao had ordered the destruction of the 1st Marine Division. Instead, his 12 divisions met Army soldiers who held the line until annihilated, Marines who refused to yield frozen hilltops, British Commandos who charged into Hell Fire Valley, and Korean troops who fought alongside them all.
The Chinese numerical superiority meant nothing against that kind of courage.
