The Most Harrowing Battle of the Korean War

It was this unbending faith in their service as U.S. Marines that carried both men through America’s darkest hour in the Korean War: the harrowing retreat from North Korea’s Chosin Reservoir, where American forces were surrounded, vastly outnumbered and facing mass slaughter in brutally cold mountains near the Chinese border.

It wasn’t supposed to go that way. The Korean War began in June 1950, when communist-backed troops from the north of the recently divided nation stormed into the Western-aligned south. But by the end of that summer, a coalition of South Korean and United Nations forces, led by the United States and General Douglas MacArthur, had regained territory and made significant inroads into the north. Military leaders talked of ending the war by Christmas and reuniting the nation under democratic rule.