China Strikes Back: UN Forces Retreat from Ch'ongch'on River

Three hundred thousand Chinese troops surged across frozen mountain ridges to smash into UN forces at the Ch'ongch'on River and Chosin Reservoir, launching the largest military ambush since World War II. The surprise offensive sent the longest retreat in U.S. Marine Corps history and shattered MacArthur's promise to end the Korean War by Christmas. The Chinese intervention beginning on November 25, 1950, transformed the Korean War from a near-victory into a grinding stalemate. General MacArthur had ordered a final offensive to reach the Yalu River, the Chinese border, assuring President Truman that the troops would be home by Christmas. Chinese forces, which had entered North Korea in secrecy over preceding weeks, waited until UN forces were stretched thin across the mountainous northern terrain before striking. At the Ch'ongch'on River, the Chinese 13th Army Group hit the Eighth Army's exposed right flank, routing South Korean and Turkish units and forcing a chaotic retreat that covered 120 miles in ten days. The Eighth Army suffered over 11,000 casualties. Simultaneously, at the Chosin Reservoir, seven Chinese divisions encircled the 1st Marine Division and elements of the Army's 7th Infantry Division. The Marines' 78-mile fighting retreat to the port of Hungnam, conducted in temperatures reaching minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit, became one of the most legendary episodes in Marine Corps history. The Marines brought out their dead and wounded, destroyed their equipment rather than leave it for the enemy, and inflicted devastating casualties on the Chinese forces attempting to block their withdrawal. The evacuation from Hungnam in December 1950, which removed 105,000 troops, 98,000 civilians, 17,500 vehicles, and 350,000 tons of supplies, was the Korean War's Dunkirk.