It was the misery of frozen crackers and snow for dinner. It was the agony of bitter 30-below zero cold that excruciatingly blackened fingers and toes. It was the terror of sudden, deadly enemy fire. It was- the frigid hell Marines called the Chosin.
It is a place Sgt Maj. Ernest W. Arthur is unlikely to forget. In 1950 he was one of 15,000 men, primarily Marine Corps reservists who doggedly pushed their way over 78 miles of icy, mountainous terrain and through a wall of 70,000 Chinese soldiers surrounding them at the Chosin Reservoir to claim victory in retreat.
