In the last days of November 1950, twelve thousand men of the 1st Marine Division along with a few thousand army soldiers found themselves trapped high in the mountains of North Korea near a reservoir called Chosin.
Their leaders had been caught off guard by the sudden entrance of the People’s Republic of China into the five month old Korean War.
The Americans were surrounded, outnumbered and at risk of certain defeat.
The two week battle that followed is among the most momentous in the history of the United States, it helped set the course of foreign policy in the Cold War and beyond.