Gunny John Goodall, USMC - The Chosin Few

What follows is an excerpt from, Ride the Warrior's Fury. Big Fatty tries to explain to Kerrie, a girl whose ambition is to be a warrior, the horrors of the worst battle he'd ever experienced and how the warrior life made him a changed man:

     “What’s the worse battle I ever was in? Why that’s easy girl. The end of 1950 at the God damned Chosin in Korea. I been through Guadalcanal, Okinawa and others, but that shit paled next to fightin at the Chosin Reservoir. Now don’t get me wrong; that hellhole Guadalcanal turned out bad enough and long enough to drive any man crazy. But at the Chosin, we fought our way into and out of that frozen hell hole. The coldest winter I ever lived through too, or hoped to ever live through. I can’t abide the cold to this day. At first we were the Chosin Few, but when it was all said and done, they called us the Frozen Chosen.”

(Source: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2000/n12072000_200012071.html A column of troops and armor of the 1st Marine Division move through communist Chinese lines during their successful breakout from the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea.

     

      Kerrie said, “Worse than any other battle, Big Fatty - how?”

     “Jesus, my men were droppin like flies. If we weren’t gettin blown up, shot or picked off by snipers, we froze like popsicles. I’ll never forget the unending mud and torrential rain and those sneakin Japanese at Guadalcanal, but at the Chosin, shit, we couldn’t drop our pants to take a crap without freezin our cocks and balls off.”

     Big Fatty shivered. “Fuck, I get cold all over just thinkin about it. And Christ Almighty, the fuckin chinks were everywhere; every fuckin rock, pebble or boulder and every God damned bush n blade o grass, hordes of em.”

     Big Fatty looked right at Kerrie but he gazed through and past her. “Tried to tell us they were North Korean; bullshit, I know a God damned chink when I see one, doesn’t take a fuckin genius.” He grimaced and continued. “You know girl, sometimes it seems I been killin or dealin with some kind of gook all my life so yeah, I can tell the difference between a Jap, a Korean and a Chinaman. A Chinaman, his head slopes more and his eyes slit more, and he’s yellower than the rest of em and he dresses in those God damned padded pajamas.  Fuck, I hate a Chink.  Didn’t even like em when I shipped out to North China after Double You, Double You Two and spent near two years there; sneaky bastards they are, sneaky.”

     “When did the worst of it start, Big Fatty?”
 

     “That October, that damned Prima Donna, MacArthur ordered the 1st Marine Division to march to the Yalu River on the border of North Korea and China. They told us we’d be home for Christmas but huh, I knew better; I could smell it. That dumb ass MacArthur completely rejected the threat of Chinese troops entering the war.  Finally, so-called official rumors of Chinese crossin the Yalu started comin in. Estimates were way low, though. The fuckin Chi-Coms showed up in the central mountains, surprising the hell out of thousands of American Army troops and over-runnin em. Those troops tried to make it out alive, but most didn’t; they were massacred.

Map of the Battle of the Changjin (Chosin) Reservoir.

Source: http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/kw-chinter/chinter.htm U.S. Army Center of Military History

      Some fuck heads were still tryin to tell us these were North Koreans or just a small force of Chinese protecting the Yalu River border. Course that turned out to be bull shit. The Chinese would sneak back to the hills durin the day like rats, and wait. I gotta give the fuckers one thing, they were masters at camouflage. They’d go all day covered in leaves, not movin a fucking inch so our reconnaissance planes couldn’t spot em. Then finally reports came to us that there were 50 to 70 thousand of em, but if those reports had added another 250 thousand they woulda been closer to right.”

     “How many Marines were there, Fatty?”

     “Well, girl, let’s see; to give ya an idea how many, ya start with Major General Oliver Smith who led the 1st Marine Division. 1st Marine Division, now they was mostly made up of three infantry regiments: the 1st Marines, the 5th Marines and the 7th Marines, along with the 11th Marines who were an artillery regiment. Got it?”

     Kerrie nodded her head. "Uh huh."

     “Okay now, the division totaled 12 battalions with right around 1,000 men in each battalion.  Then each battalion had anywhere from four to six companies. I led about 180 marines in my company.”

     “What all did you do?”

     “I did the plannin and organizin of the movement of all my men, all our equipment and all our supplies. The brass told me where to take our men, what our objective was and when it was; and then I took care of it.  But by November all through to about mid December, we had to fight our way back out of the mountains and by then the fuckin temperatures dropped to 40 below zero

     Bein a California boy, I’d never seen much snow. That’s not to say I never saw it, we have mountains in California as ya know.  I’d just never seen so much white ground at once. But by the time we left, that ground lay covered in black gunpowder n blood. Damnedest sight I ever saw. Frozen solid too; you could hear your footsteps, crunch, crunch, crunch.

Sergeant Frank C. Kerr, U.S. Marines (Official Marine Corps Photo # A4852)
(http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/images/KWC/Combat_photos/Chosin/A-4852.JPG

      Most of my guys were just kids you know, about your age, 18 or 19. Think about it; outnumbered and cut off behind enemy lines. And every fucking night when the sun went down those fucking Chinese started whooping like God damned Apache Indians comin after covered wagons, blowin bugles and screamin how they were gonna kill us all. The sounds fuckin echoed off the mountains and went on and on.  Then the mother fuckers would come at us in waves and not fuckin stop until dawn’s light crept up. They hit us from every direction, swarmin like hornets.”

     “It sounds like the cold became your enemy like the Chinese,” said Kerrie

     “You got that right girl.  Jesus Christ, the fucking Corpsman had to hold morphine in their mouths to keep it from freezing. Nothin worked in the cold and food got short. We practically lived on fucking Tootsie Rolls for a while. I wouldn’t eat one a those now if you offered to pay me. But you know those fucking things were great for plugging up the bullet holes in tires, even engines; mother fuckers would freeze and hold tight. I can’t say enough about the cold, though. It made our weapons inoperable, so we’d resort to hand to hand fighting like barbarians in the fucking dark; hour after hour in the frozen cold.  Then daylight would come and it became real quiet and you’d see all these shapes layin in the frozen black and red snow, just frozen bodies everywhere and the smell of smoke and blood.

Sergeant Frank C. Kerr, U.S. Marines (Official Marine Corps Photo # A5465)
(http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/images/KWC/Combat_photos/Chosin/A-5465.JPG

     Man, Ground like cement so we couldn’t dig fox holes. We hadda build walls out of the dead bodies; the only way to build a barrier in that frozen wasteland. I didn't feel sorry for the bastards, though. It came down to them or us and by God I wasn’t about to let it be us. They were comin in bigger and bigger numbers so we kept firin at the cocksuckers. I didn’t even give a shit after I looked at their corpses. Hordes and hordes of em so’s you didn’t have to aim, you just shot at the shadows in the dark.  I’d constantly try and keep the morale and fightin spirit up so my men wouldn’t lose heart, same way I kept em goin at Guadalcanal in those unending rains in the Pacific. A Marine doesn’t fucking surrender.”

     “What happened then, Big Fatty?”

Photo DOD (USMC) A546 - Napalm Strike at Chosin - 

 http://libraryautomation.com/nymas/Photo%20Breakout%206Dec.jpg

     “Jesus girl, by then our division stretched across 80 miles of fucked up terrain and on November 27 we faced an attack from the Chinese troops who had slithered across the border like snakes. During 17 fuckin days of unspeakable types of combat, more’n 4,000 of our Marines were killed or wounded, but we obliterated around 30,000 Chinese slope soldiers. We still had to retreat but we fought like bastards all the way to the fucking sea with near 100 thousand evacuated civilians along for the ride. We fuckin fought our way to freedom through almost 80 miles of unforgiving, mountainous terrain, and we took a ragtag horde of Koreans to safety with us. Every one of my god damned men were heroes.”

     Big Fatty looked at Kerrie and smiled sideways. “I know I was a rough n before then, but Guadalcanal and then the Chosin on top of that, made me a changed man. Seemed like I couldn’t live around normal people so well anymore, even in the military. Part of the reason I got out at 20 instead of stayin to 30 in the Marines. Yeah, it made me see a whole new world and I didn’t like it much and I had a bad reaction to it. I think it took away a part of my sanity.”

     Big Fatty shook his head. “You know we lost about 1,000 at Chosin, but they say the fuckin Chinese lost about 25,000. Fuck em and fuck the US of A when they don’t recognize what we did there in Korea. The fuckin Koreans love us and are grateful. I think the Koreans are the best gook there is. I like em to this day. I’ll say this and dare anybody to call me a liar; our mission in Korea was justified and we defeated communism there. We showed those fuckin Chinamen and God damned Ruskies that they couldn’t just come and take a country. I’m fuckin proud of what I did there. Some other fuckin military leaders were talkin shit about doin away with the Corps before that. Jealous fuckin fools. This God damned country can’t get along without jarheads and that’s that.”


Peace to you all whatever you may choose,
Nancy Frye-Swope, The Retired Biker Housewife

Nancy Frye-Swope 2010 © All Rights Reserved