After another eight tours in the middle east? That’s about next tuesday, if the Dear Leader continues at his present rate.
My father, a Korean War vet, told me of a C-ration that was popular at that time. It was a can which had a piece of meat in gravy at the bottom with mashed potatos and gravy on top. He said it was popular because it had better flavor than most and the piece of meat was at least a reasonable size.
No doubt it was utterly delicious too! :shock:
Your Father is to be praised, anyone who has actually been in it has my respect.
Your Father is to be praised, anyone who has actually been in it has my respect.[/quote]
Thank you my friend. He faught in the bloodiest battle in the history of modern warfare - Chosin Reservoir Campaign. When i look at my father, I feel small.
Chosin reservoir is a campaign now?
tell us a story, go on!
Uh huh.
CHOSIN RESERVOIR CAMPAIGN’S 50th ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATED
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2000/b11292000_bt713-00.html
Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korea 1950
by Martin Russ
http://www.koreanwar.org/html/bookstore_book.html?BOOKSTORE_ID=39
Chosin Reservoir Campaign remembered at the Navy Memorial
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pnav/is_200101/ai_1496065829
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
HISTORY AND MUSEUMS DIVISION
Chosin Reservoir Campaign
http://hqinet001.hqmc.usmc.mil/HD/Special_Interests/KWC/Images_Chosin.htm
Those coats look like the thickest ocats ever issued to soldiers, it must have been very cold!
tell us more go on.
Ironman…Your dad is a true hero…give him my thanks. My dad was a Navy corpsman with the Marines during the battle of the Chosin Reservoir.
On another note I knew a Maj William Barber USMC who won the CMH during that battle. I have a Japanese Sword that he got in his only battle of W.W.II. That battle was Iwo Jima…he won the silver star in that battle. I have pictures of him giving me the sword and I also took a video.
On a sad note he died last year. 
Interesting. It’s possible albiet unlikely that your dad and mine crossed each other then, since the Navy always transports the Marines to where they need to go. I’ve seen pics of Navy warships punding the coast in Korea.
Hats off to the Frozen Chosen - The Chosin Few! I ran into a Marine in Wal-Mart the other day and told him my dad faught at Chosin. He said, “Oh yes, the Frozen Chosen!” It’s so legendary that when you have family that faught there, you cannot help but be humbled by it.
STAY WARM AND DRY!
Ironman…was your dad USMC ? Navy Corpsman were considered Marines by the Marines. Ive always wondered why the marines used US navy for their medical aid.
Yes, he was in the 7th Marines Division. Initially this was support and artillery for the 1st Marines Division, but the battle got so outlandish that they were drawn into it with firearms with the 1st marines Division.
"Isolated and surrounded, the 1st Marine Division managed to decimate 10 Chinese infantry divisions in its fighting withdrawal eastward to the North Korean port of Hungnam. Along the way, the Marines received critical close-air support launched from the carriers of Task Force 77. At Hungnam, the Navy and Merchant Marine successfully re-deployed more than 100,000 Marines and soldiers of the X Corps and evacuated more than 100,000 North Korean refugees.
Chosin-Hungnam stands as one of the greatest stories of Americans succeeding against all odds in both combat and humanitarian operations. Fourteen Marines and two sailors were awarded the Medal of Honor for their gallantry during the campaign."
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2000/b11292000_bt713-00.html
Never has an army done this before or since. As far as I know, the Navy not only perfors their own roles of air power, but also provides transport and medical for the Army and Marines. Navy warchips have excellent medical facilities onboard, and US navy physicians are some of the best trauma doctors in the world. An aircraft carrier has a small hospital inside it. But I suppose you knew all of that.
Your Father is to be praised, anyone who has actually been in it has my respect.[/quote]
Thank you my friend. He faught in the bloodiest battle in the history of modern warfare - Chosin Reservoir Campaign. When i look at my father, I feel small.[/quote]
why is chosin the bloodiest battle? isn’t the bloodist Stalingrad?
Your Father is to be praised, anyone who has actually been in it has my respect.[/quote]
Thank you my friend. He faught in the bloodiest battle in the history of modern warfare - Chosin Reservoir Campaign. When i look at my father, I feel small.[/quote]
why is chosin the bloodiest battle? isn’t the bloodist Stalingrad?[/quote]
That’s what they say - that Chosin was the bloodiest battle in the history of modern warfare.
I think you’d have to understand the battle more to see what they mean. It became a battle where in soldiers were reloading their weapons as fast as they could to survive - by the thousands. Now imagine that battle fought with firearms at medium to close range distances - say up to 250 yards maximum distance for most of the fighting. Tens of thousands of men firing hand-held weapons in an area less than 300 yards square. The enemy came at them from several directions. That’s the kind of battle it was.
It was so heated that the USMC turned their 105mm cannons level and fired directly into the hordes (thousands at a time) of Chinese soldiers running at them over a hill 250 yards away. Many USMC dropped their Garands and picked up an M1 Carbine. M1 Carbines were issued Pell Mell because of their higher capacity and fire rate. Reloading could mean death at times. A great many soldiers picked up a dead brother’s weapon and fired it at rushing soldiers because his weapon was out of ammunition. Many USMC used a pistol as a last resort because every rifle within reach had been emtied and there was not time to reaload anything. Many soldiers faught with frozen fingers or feet, permanently lost to the cold, in the -40 weather, but had no time to worry about the pain, they just had to keep firing and reloading as best they could. Medics carried ampules of morphine in their mouths to keep them from freezing so that they could be injected into the wounded. Many soldiers who had lost a limb or eye continued to fight untill blood loss took their lives. Medics were forced to use weapons and abandon wounded soldiers or die at the hands of the 500 Chinese soldiers to thier left side less than 200 meters away… running straight at them while tossing hand grenades and shooting Sphagins and cheaply made Chinese sum-machine guns. Artillery was landing all over the place - so close to the fighting that it almost killed the side shooting it. The USMC called in artillery for such close support that the shells landed mere meters in front of them. They had to. This kind of fighting went on for over a week, at night, during the day, with sometimes no more than a few hours of relative calm in between attacks by hordes of Chinese soldiers. The USMC was dug in and surrounded. They were caught and made immoble for a week before they made a break for it and faught their way out with the help of the British and Australians and Canadians at their rear, where the enemy was relatively few in number, trying to keep a hole clear for the retreat, which they were unable to attempt for over a week.
The kill ratio of USMC to Chinese was 10 - 1. 240,000 Chinese attacked and most of the fighting was done by the US 1st marines Division, some of it was done by the 7th Marines Division, which got caught up in it. The British, Canadians, and Ausssies provided support from the rear but were not able to get into the battle at the front, and were ordered not to try. Because they would be moving over open ground, they would have been mowed down trying to get to the front by Chinese machinegun positions.
Machinegun barrels warped from the heat and had to be discarded. Grenades exploded every 20 - 50 meters for hours at a time. There has never been a battle quite like it in modern warfare.
I guess that’s why they call it the bloodiest battle in the history of modern warfare.
which historian says it is?
and, to no disrespect, to your dad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chosin_Reservoir
china had 120,000 men, we had 25,000
they suffered 37,500 battle-causalties while we suffered 7,700
(not-including frostbite)
while figures change according to historians and information gets released, i think while the us losses are probably dead-on the chinese losses are probably a US estimate. Us estimates tend to overestimate enemy causalties/numbers.
Well, it seems to me that this was a traditional human-wave assault, probably soviet-taught to the chinese.
While i’m sure that this was extremely intense, especially the sector that your father fought in, there are countless situations like this on the eastern front.
My grandfather was a german officer, so he had experience fighting off human-wave assaults supported by tanks. the russians would gather up an immense supremacy in a certain sector and attempt to steamroll it, regardless of losses.
from his experience, one of the most difficult fights he had was during the battle of moscow. The Heer supply channels failed to deliever winter overcoats and weapon oils (to prevent small arms weapons,artillery from freezing up) and the soviets attacked in massive force.
The troops with him had to repulse an assault with only boxes of grenades, sharpened spades, and hollow charge mines and newly captured, greased-up russian small arms…
or yes, and about that carbine part, I’ve heard from my grandad that it sometimes has mediocre stopping power over longer distances, he saw someone get shot with it in the chest, (albeit wearing a heavy coat) and got up and walked away…
I agree with Hosenfield (shock horror). While no doubt being an intense battle I dont think it compares to some on the OstFront for length and brutality.
Do the marines not nominally belong to the Navy? Therefore Navy Corpsmen would make total sense I think.
“Around 20,000 UN troops, with advanced weaponry and air power, clashed with 200,000 poorly equipped but well organized Chinese soldiers. In extremely fierce fighting that lasted until December 11, there were 15,000 UN casualties (7,500 to cold related injuries) and possibly 40,000 Chinese casualties as the UN forces were badly mauled in their withdrawal to Hungnam.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/battle-of-chosin-reservoir
“MacArthur now had a measure of Chinese strength. Around 200,000 Chinese of the XIII Army Group stood opposite the Eighth Army.”
http://members.terracom.net/~vfwpost/koreanwar.html#breakout
The Chinese had almost 500,000 men in Korea. If you consider the support troops, then the Chinese had over 200,000 men in the battle area, and the UN had just 27,000. Of those who actually faught, the 120,000 you mentioned faught 17,000 UN, the vast majority of which was the USMC.
I assume by “we” you mean the UN troops. The USMC however, which is whom I referred to, had a 10-1 kill ratio. That is and has been the average for the USMC in every war they have faught in since WWII.
At Chosin, the majority of the fighting against the Chinese was done by the USMC 1st and 7th marines Divisions. Of those the 1st Regiment of the USMC 1st marines Division did the most fighting. In fact, this single regiment did more fighting that any other force of the UN troops at Chosin, and the Chinese General at Chosin is quoted as sending a message to another General that he should bring four divisions with him, because the 4 that he had at Chosin were not sufficient to defeat the USMC 1st marines Division 1st Regimant, by itself.
“Isolated and surrounded, the 1st Marine Division managed to decimate 10 Chinese infantry divisions in its fighting withdrawal eastward to the North Korean port of Hungnam.”
http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2000/b11292000_bt713-00.html
A Chinese Army Division is 10,000 men.
Yes, but not so intense and for so long.
[b]“Historians have termed Chosin the most savage battle of
modern warfare.”
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/chosin/Purpose.HTM
- The Official site of the Chosin Few: An association of Chosin Reservoir Campaign Veterans who were personally invited by the US Navy to the Christening of the USS Chosin.[/b]
“It has been termed by historians as the most savage battle in modern warfare, and was cited by President Reagan in his first inaugural address as one of the epics of military history.”
http://www.grunt.com/scuttlebutt/corps-stories/korea/chosin.asp
Yes, it was a low powered rifle. However, it became the hand-weapon weapon of choice for the USMC when the Chinese attacked because of it’s fire rate and magazine capacity. There were an uncommonly high number of Carbines deployed at Chosin because of this. By first-hand accounts, there were nearly as many USMC using Carbines as Garands used in the battle at Chosin Reservoir…
There has not been a battle in the history of modern warfare as “brutal” as the battle at Chosin Reservoir. Not even in WWII.
There has not been a battle in the history of modern warfare as “brutal” as the battle at Chosin Reservoir. Not even in WWII.[/quote]
Where did you get this unusual information from IRONMAN ??? :shock:
How on earth can you make that statement?
On what criteria are you basing that on?