At the Chosin Reservoir from 27 November to 13 December 1950, about 30,000 United Nations troops, mostly US Marines, were surrounded by roughly 120,000 Chinese soldiers2 in sub-zero cold. The Chinese intervention forced the UN to abandon northeastern Korea, a Chinese strategic victory1, but the Marines fought their way out intact1 to the port of Hungnam in one of the most celebrated breakouts in military history.
Late in 1950, deep in the frozen mountains of North Korea, a huge Chinese army closed around the Marines and soldiers at the Chosin Reservoir. In cold that froze weapons and wounds alike, the surrounded men turned a trap into a fighting march to the sea.
Part of The greatest battles in American history · Before: The Battle of Inchon · Next: The Battle of Ia Drang · Key figures: Chesty Puller
China enters the war
After the UN landing at Inchon and the drive north, UN forces pushed toward the Chinese border, confident the war was nearly won. Instead, China intervened in force. Its 9th Army Group moved secretly into the mountains and, in late November 1950, sprang a massive ambush around the Chosin Reservoir.
The trap at Chosin
The Chinese cut the single mountain road and surrounded the scattered UN units, aiming to destroy them piecemeal3. The Marines under Oliver P. Smith gathered their forces, held their perimeters against night after night of mass attacks, and prepared to break out rather than surrender.
Cold and encirclement
Temperatures fell far below zero. Weapons jammed, rations and medical supplies froze4, and frostbite filled the aid stations alongside the wounded. Both sides suffered terribly from the cold; the Chinese, more exposed, lost enormous numbers of men to it.
The breakout to Hungnam
Rather than a retreat, Smith called it an attack in a new direction.2 Fighting through roadblocks and blown bridges, bringing out their wounded and much of their equipment, the UN column battled down the mountain road and reached the coast, from which the whole force was evacuated by sea at Hungnam5.
Why Chosin mattered
Strategically the battle was a Chinese success: it drove the UN out of northeastern Korea and changed the course of the war. But the breakout preserved the encircled forces and became a legend of endurance, remembered for the men who fought out of it, the Chosin Few2. The war itself had begun to turn at Inchon months earlier.
