Surrounded and outnumbered 8-1 : A forgotten story of the Korean War (431)

19:32Steve Fogel:Incredible, incredible. So Faith decides to start the breakout attempt on December the 1st, and they're putting wounded onto trucks, aren't they, to try and get them out as well. But the start of that breakout attempt, well, it's pretty disastrous, isn't it? Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla? Smooth caramel, maybe. Or a white chocolate mocha. Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.

20:08Cold War Conversations Hosts:Did you know Sam's Club isn't a store? It's actually a club. With cool finds and, like, a whole community. It's a club! Of course, Jason. It's in the name. Sam's Club. Oh, yeah. Come join us. Sam's Club. Yes. So this point, Faith has about 600 wounded after that fourth night of attacking. He's been given no orders one way or the other as to whether he should break out. But he's concluded that because they're just about out of all ammunition at this point, that there's no choice but to try to break out. And they're hoping that they'll be able to get air support from Marine Corsairs, which have been very effective against the Chinese during the daylight hours.

20:54Cold War Conversations Hosts:So on the morning of December 1st, Faith orders all the trucks to be emptied of all kinds of remaining kitchen supplies, tents, desks, whatever, to be tossed out. And they fit in 600 wounded soldiers into about 30 trucks. They only have about 30 trucks that are really functioning well enough to actually operate. The cold weather has disabled many of them. And of course, our Chinese artillery and other fire has destroyed other trucks. So they have about 30 trucks crammed with wounded soldiers. The morning of December 1st is completely sucked in. The clouds are down at the ground. There's snow flurries falling.

21:43They can't get any air support until it clears up.

21:47Cold War Conversations Hosts:So the weather starts clearing at noon and Corsairs are able to come in and Faith orders the breakout to start. And this force of some 2 ,800 Army soldiers starts fighting its way south through a Chinese roadblock. They run into pretty heavy resistance quickly and Faith asks for a Marine Corsair airstrike on a Chinese position. And a Corsair drops some napalm, which was a relatively new weapon, but very effective and terrifying against the Chinese. But this canister falls a bit short and it falls on the front of the American breakout and it envelops some 15 or 20 soldiers immediately who were horribly burned, many of them killed.

22:40Cold War Conversations Hosts:Others are able to still fight on despite horrendous wounds. So this immediately is a pretty disastrous start to the breakout. But they only have a few hours of daylight to move, so they continue fighting south. And the Chinese have been able to bring in another division to try to stop the Americans. So they have fresh regiments that are coming in to attack this very underarmed and pretty uncoordinated breakout attempt. Because, again, they have no radio contact between the units. They're spread out along the reservoir shore and they're not able to get much support at all.

23:21Steve Fogel:So they're on this road on the reservoir shore and the Chinese are on the high ground firing down on them all the time and blocking the road as they move forward.

23:31Cold War Conversations Hosts:Right. They set up several roadblocks and then they blew out a bridge that the trucks would need in order to cross and continue south. So this bridge delay, which happens around maybe one or two o 'clock in the afternoon, forces the convoy to back up as some of the trucks try to cross over this frozen terrain, going off the road, down a gully, across this frozen marsh. And some of the trucks, their tires break through the ice and they're stuck. There is an American M19, which is an anti-aircraft tracked weapon that has no more ammunition, but is able to winch these trucks across the frozen stream one by one.

24:20Cold War Conversations Hosts:This takes several hours. In the meantime, the Chinese have another roadblock positioned at this hairpin curve. they control all the high ground and have machine gun nests firing at the the approaching army convoy and so again the trucks are stuck on the road as the lead trucks are are knocked out but more chinese troops are coming from the rear and attacking they have chinese on the hills atop them it was just as as horrible a situation as you can imagine and the corsairs overhead are are trying to give as much support as they can. And that certainly helps. But then there are more friendly fire incidents.

25:03Cold War Conversations Hosts:So it's a very grim situation.

25:06Steve Fogel:Because the Chinese are closing in so close, it's hand-to-hand fighting at one point here. So there are actually Chinese troops climbing onto these trucks.

25:16Cold War Conversations Hosts:Yeah, they are. Some of the trucks in the rear are overrun. The Chinese were firing white phosphorus shells that set some of the trucks on fire. So wounded who are able to get out of the trucks are getting out and just crawling, trying to get away. You have the infantry and army soldiers who are trying to protect the flanks and the rear of the truck convoy who are getting mowed down themselves by the Chinese fire. So some of the trucks are overrun, But all the desperate, incredible shellacking that the Americans are taking, they manage to attack up Hill 1221, which more or less commands the roadblock.

26:04Cold War Conversations Hosts:And they disperse the Chinese who are holding those positions, taking terrible casualties as they do so. And finally, as darkness falls, they're able to clear out the Chinese roadblock and get the convoy moving again. But as part of that process, Lieutenant Colonel Faith, who is leading the attack on foot, just as they start clearing the roadblock, he's wounded by a Chinese grenade and very severely wounded and has to be carried back to one of the trucks. And Faith was this remarkably dynamic, courageous who had basically, through force of will, gotten them as far as they had. And with Faith now out of the picture, the situation is, again, grim.

26:51But with the roadblock cleared, the lead trucks of the convoy are able to get through. And there's still some hope, at least among the troops at the front, that they're going to be able to get out.

27:02Steve Fogel:incredible is too mild a word for this i mean the efforts that they're trying to make to get through these chinese blocks and back to link up with with the marines is is immense and you've got some great personal quotes in here of people who were there and one of the ones that stood out for me was Corporal Dot Bloom and he describes the Chinese actions after they overrun the tail end of the convoy and the Chinese climbed onto the trucks loaded with wounded then shot and bayoneted helpless men it was murder pure and simple just indescribable what's happening there so So how many of Task Force Faith actually make it through these Chinese blocks?

27:56Cold War Conversations Hosts:Well, after they've broken through the roadblock at Hill 1221, they come down, lead trucks make it down to another bridge that's been blown. But the American soldiers accompanying the trucks, they find a nearby railroad trestle bridge that the trucks can just barely make their way across and continue. At this point, the number of Americans who were still able to fight had greatly diminished. Many had been killed in the fighting to get to that point, going uphill 1221. Some of the soldiers had headed out to the ice already. Others, as they are continuing down south with the trucks, they can see a Chinese regiment on a hill overlooking the road.

28:51And as they approach, the Chinese begin firing and knock out the lead trucks blocking the road.

28:58Cold War Conversations Hosts:And at this point, the task force pretty much disintegrates. I mean, the Chinese have essentially an open field of fire now. Now they're just launching rockets and machine gun fire into these trucks, you know, overrunning them. The Americans who have stayed to fight are largely killed or captured. Many of the wounded are trying to crawl away and a surprising number of them are able to, to make it to the ice or to various huts villages where the North Korean civilians lived. And they're in many cases taken in by North Korean civilians who hide them in barns and huts. The Chinese are primarily focused on destroying the trucks.

29:49Cold War Conversations Hosts:And in the end, probably about a thousand GIs have been killed in the attack. Another thousand eventually make it to Haguru. some of them it takes days for them to get there they're being rescued by the marines by other army soldiers who who have made it to hagaruri they've and the chinese at this point are largely not too focused on on you know killing the survivors they they're sort of they kind of turned a blind eye to to many of the rescue attempts because now the the focus is is returning to attacking the marines on the west side of the reservoir. So it's a remarkable rescue effort that goes on for several days.

30:37North Korean civilians are bringing in some of these horrifically wounded GIs in the back of sleds or in carts. The Army and Marines send up some tanks to bring other GIs back to Hagurui.

30:53Cold War Conversations Hosts:Meantime, an airstrip has finally been completed at Haguru, and they're able to start flying out some of the wounded soldiers and marines. So about 1 ,000 army soldiers are evacuated via these evacuation flights. And then you have about 385 GIs who make it out of the inlet through the breakout and who make it back to Haguriri and are able to continue fighting. There's several other hundred more American GIs who were further south, weren't trapped at the inlet, who also are part of this force. And you then get the Marines are able to break out against the Chinese roadblocks on the west side, and they make it back.

31:44Cold War Conversations Hosts:Probably more than 7 ,000 of them make it back. They've suffered hundreds of casualties as well. But then at this point, you have a large American force that's consolidated at Hagurui, and now they're still going to have to fight their way out of the mountains and back to the sea.

32:00Steve Fogel:So they're not completely out of the woods at this point, because a fighting retreat is one of the most difficult military maneuvers to carry out. How do they fare in their retreat back to the sea? Well, in many ways, this is when the press has finally been able to make it into Haguriri.

32:23Cold War Conversations Hosts:And the state of the Marines in the Army was pretty shocking to the reporters who arrived there. They also have the Royal Marine Commandos, who are part of a force that's been set up to the town of Kodori, which is a key point on the road back to the sea. and they've bolstered the Marine 1st Regiment, which is holding that key town. And some of them have fought their way up as part of Task Force Drysdale, which was by a Royal Marine Commando, Colonel Drysdale. These Royal Marines proved to be a real key to bolstering the 10th Corps force that's up there in the mountains. At this point, the thing is, the Chinese have been horrifically been decimated by the attacks.

33:12Cold War Conversations Hosts:Now, Task Force Faith, as it became known, had essentially been destroyed. But in the process, they had essentially almost destroyed an entire Chinese division, the 80th, and badly damaged another, the 81st. So these two divisions were largely combat ineffective at that point. and they could not join these attacks against the retreat. They hadn't been able to capture Hagoruri, and now they weren't able to really put up that much resistance once this combined force of Marines and soldiers begins moving down out of Chosen to Kodo-ri. And once they reach Kodo-ri by December 8th, the feeling was the Chinese were not going to be able to stop them.

34:00Cold War Conversations Hosts:They are not able to put up nearly as much of an attack as they'd been doing earlier in the fighting. They've suffered so many casualties. The Marines had inflicted terrible casualties on other Chinese divisions on the west side of the reservoir. And now that they were completely exhausted and the Marines are actually well supplied, they've got a lot of ammunition at Kota-Ri, they're getting supply from the air. So the Americans now have the advantage. And once they reach Kota-Ri, They're able to continue south. And the closer they get to the sea, the less the resistance there is. The Chinese are basically a defeated force now.

34:42Cold War Conversations Hosts:The biggest drama was a bridge that had been blown over this huge chasm and this part of the past that's leading up to the reservoir. So if they aren't able to get out, they still might be trapped. But the Americans drop a treadway bridge, pretty remarkable operation just by itself that they're able to use to bridge over this gully and they're able to continue the march south. And by December 11th, the forces have reached the safety of the American perimeter at Hognam.

35:21Steve Fogel:Wow, well, it's good to hear the Royal Marines come in and help out as well there in the story.

35:30Cold War Conversations Hosts:I've met some of them because they come to the reunions of the chosen few, and they're always a jaunty and very well-respected group. There's a real bond, particularly between the U.S. Marines and the Royal Marines who fought there that still exist to this day.

35:47Steve Fogel:Brilliant, brilliant. That's really good to hear. As we sort of said when we started this episode, the story of the 1st Marine Division sort of shapes the story of the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. How was Task Force Faith remembered after the Korean War?

36:10Cold War Conversations Hosts:Well, the 1st Marine Division under Major General O.P. Smith had pulled off one of the most remarkable retreats. They don't even like to call it a retreat. They just called it attacking in a different direction. and they were rightly lauded as heroes. This Marine Division, which was probably one of the finest that has existed in any war, had pulled off something that would become legendary. It became legendary almost immediately in Marine Corps history, just considered one of those proud moments like Bella Woods during World War I or Uojima in World War II. and they were rightly saluted as heroes.

36:52Cold War Conversations Hosts:They sailed back, you know, and joined the forces back in South Korea. Many of the press, some of the, you know, the great reporters of the day, like Maggie Higgins and Omar Begart, had, you know, wrote these stories lauding the Marines. And, you know, this atmosphere of celebration continues to this day, essentially about the legendary 1st Marine Division at Chosen Reservoir, and rightly so. But with the Army unit at Task Force Faith, what happened with them was the one thing, they had suffered 85 % casualties. They'd been essentially decimated. The survivors who made it back to Haguriri, which included not many officers, because most of the officers had been killed, were in such pathetic shape after, you know, four nights of this horrific fighting that, you know, many of them were flown out.

37:49Cold War Conversations Hosts:They weren't much of a fighting unit anymore. And these rumors began spreading among the Marines who saw these survivors coming in and, you know, just in general, that the Army unit must not have put up much of a fight. Essentially that these stories started spreading that the officers tried to flee to the rear. They abandoned their men. They fled as soon as the Chinese showed up, dropped their weapons. And there was a Navy chaplain who was with the Marines who wrote an article that was published in the United States that essentially said, you know, the Army unit, in contrast to our heroic brave Marines, they were a bunch of cowards.

38:33Cold War Conversations Hosts:They didn't face much of a Chinese opposition. It wasn't any kind of large units they were facing. You know, this story spread like wildfire in the United States. There were hearings. The story was carried in many newspapers and magazines. Investigations were ordered. And that story was spread. And it was largely untrue. I mean, there were soldiers who did not perform heroically, but there are many others who gave their lives trying to get their wounded comrades out. you know the stories of heroism that you know you can read in in the book i mean there's so many that as as one of the soldiers who was there said heroism became like a just a common thing there were so many heroic acts of sacrifice of people um knowing they're very likely to be killed but trying to fight to get their their wounded comrades out and sacrifice their lives but there was no one really who was there who made it back who was able to you know tell the story of what had happened because most of those soldiers were evacuated and their story was not heard officers there were no official reports really written of what happened with the the unit so this stain of cowardice hung over the unit now the investigations showed that these charges were largely unfounded I mean, the idea that officers fled to the rear in Jeeps was just so ludicrous because there wasn't a single vehicle from Task Force Faith that made it out.

40:11Cold War Conversations Hosts:So it wasn't as if the officers just drove back in Jeeps and left their men there. That was just asinine. And then the allegation that, well, they didn't have many Chinese attacking them was also completely false. And in fact, the nine to one odds that the task force Faith fought against the last two nights were, that was a larger ratio than any other unit, including any of the Marine units faced at Chosen Reservoir. So they faced unbelievable odds. Also, the Chinese units that suffered the most casualties at Chosen were the ones that the army units had been fighting against, the 80th in particular.

40:51Cold War Conversations Hosts:No division suffered more damage than the 80th Chinese division. So nonetheless, this pall of shame essentially hangs over Task Force Faith. And General O.P. Smith, the Marine commander, who was a remarkable commander and just one of the real reasons the Marines were able to make it out, thanks to his, you know, deliberate, cautious decisions, you know, against the wishes of General Ned Allmond or General MacArthur. He was the main reason the Marines were able to make it out. But he had a very low opinion of these Army soldiers. He heard the same rumors and there were these allegations that a lot of the GIs who made it out were faking their injuries, which was ridiculous.

41:37Cold War Conversations Hosts:The pilots who flew these men out say that so many of them died on the flight back to Japan that the ones who actually survived was much lower than the ones who were actually flown out. So it was all these allegations. And the Marine General O.P. Smith decided to remove them from the presidential unit citation, which was given to the 1st Marine Division. The units of Task Force Faith were initially added by the Army to this citation, but General Smith removed them. And so the mark of shame was on them for over half a century. And it wasn't until around the year 2000 at the 50th anniversary, which is when I first became aware of the story, that a band of survivors began telling the story of what had really happened.

42:32Cold War Conversations Hosts:and they worked to correct the record. And eventually the Marine Corps and Navy agreed that they had been unfairly left off this citation and they added the units of the 31st Regimental Combat Team, i.e. Task Force Faith, to the presidential unit citation. Wow.

42:52Steve Fogel:Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Too late for a lot of the veterans, I guess, as well.

42:57Cold War Conversations Hosts:Sadly, absolutely.

42:59Steve Fogel:One of the things I really enjoy about the book is you've got some great first-hand accounts. And I think one that sort of sums up the bitterness of the veterans of Task Force Faith in how they've been treated is one you've got from Sergeant Joe Ager, where he says, so I wish that the record is set straight about those of us east of Chosin. We fought to the very end. And there's another one which I thought was particularly poignant, which was a Task Force Faith veteran visiting the Punchbowl in Hawaii. His name's Bob Hammond, and he's looking at the names of the missing on the Korean War Memorial there and realizes that his whole squad is listed.

43:47Steve Fogel:He was the only one that had made it out, and he didn't know it. He didn't know that until that point. Right.

43:55Cold War Conversations Hosts:Yeah. The circumstances of the end of Task Force Faith were such that most of these guys don't know what happened to their comrades. In some cases, until years later, when they finally began holding some reunions in the 1980s and 90s. Joe Ager, you know, I saw him actually just about two weeks ago because I spoke at the Chosen Few, which is the organization of surviving veterans. And he was the only army survivor who still there, but he spoke out at this gathering several times saying, we need the true story to be told. And, you know, so it was great to see him still fighting to get that story out.

44:41Cold War Conversations Hosts:So yeah, I think recognition is finally coming to what these men did, what they went through, the sacrifices they made. And, you know, the conclusion now, something that I argue in the book, is that if it hadn't been for the stand that Task Force Faith made over those four nights, essentially tying up two Chinese divisions and parts of others, Haguriri likely would have fallen, and all 10th Corps up at Chosen would likely have been destroyed. So the scale of disaster would have been far worse than what it was. So I think hopefully this story will help correct the record that it wasn't just the Marines who were responsible for the escape from Chosen that the army played a critical role as well.

45:35Steve Fogel:Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm pleased that Cold War conversations can amplify this story.

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47:08Steve Fogel:Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. We've talked in detail here about the circumstances of this action, but there is far more detail in the book. And I think one of the things that I found almost most poignant is Don Faith was killed in that final breakout and his body is lost until 2012. Do you want to tell the story of that, Steve?

47:40Cold War Conversations Hosts:Yeah, I mean, that's a really remarkable part of the story that I included in the final sections of the book. But essentially, most of those who were killed up at Chosin remained there for decades until the 1990s, when there was a bit of a rapprochement between the United States and North Korea. And some limited excavations began up at Chosin in 2001. where joint North Korean and U.S. military teams worked, dug around the inlet at Hill 1221, many of the other key battlegrounds up there, and began recovering remains. And those excavations went on for several years, at one point accompanied by a couple of the veterans from Chosun that were the first Americans back at that reservoir in over half a century.

48:40Cold War Conversations Hosts:But it took a while with the DNA sampling, and there were some remains that were recovered in 2004. They were almost the final ones that were recovered at that point because the excavations ended in 2005 amid escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States. But these remains that were discovered in 2004 were in 2012, they were identified as belonging to Lieutenant Colonel Don Faith based on DNA that had been supplied by his daughter who had been four years old at the time he died. And, you know, I met her several times. He had been posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.

49:23Cold War Conversations Hosts:And his funeral at Arlington National Cemetery was a very emotional event. And she was there. There were some other survivors from the Task Force Faith who were there. a number of battalion commanders from the United States Army who had subsequently commanded the 1st Battalion of the 32nd Regiment, which was then part of the 10th Mountain Division fighting in Afghanistan, they attended the funeral. And yeah, it was hard to believe that at this point, more than 60 years after the battle, that Don Faith, this pretty legendary American officer had come back. And that wasn't the end of the story because it would continue in the years that followed.

50:06There were some more remains that were turned over by North Korea in

50:10Cold War Conversations Hosts:2018. And again, it's taken some years, but in the last couple of years, many of these remains have been found to belong to the army soldiers who are East of Chosen. So it seems like almost once a month, you have another identification being made. And I've attended a number of these funerals that have been in this area, you know, at Arlington National Cemetery or in Maryland, Virginia, places in this region where families 75 years later are finally getting remains back. In many cases, one in Maryland that I went to several years ago, Roy DeLouter, who had been 22 when he died at Chosun, he came back, I think it was three years ago now.

50:56Cold War Conversations Hosts:His older sister was still alive, you know, Buddy, as she called him, and she, you know, cried on his casket. His two daughters, who'd been one and two years old when he died, were there as well. And, you know, this was a small little town in Maryland, and you had half the town there, you had all the police and fire departments, you know, standing at attention, really remarkable, um, tribute to these men, uh, decades and decades after they, they died. And this is continuing to this day. And, you know, finally, some, some of these men are, are returning home and getting some recognition for, for the sacrifices they made.

51:41Yeah.

51:42Steve Fogel:Wow. Wow. That's an incredible story. Do you know how the Chinese remember this battle? Because they suffered immense losses as well as the U.S. Yeah.

51:55Cold War Conversations Hosts:And, you know, Mao, who celebrated the victory when he got the news that the army regiment had been destroyed, he was just ecstatic. But, you know, a few weeks later, he starts getting the casualty reports. and they'd lost 40 % of their combat strength in the 9th Army Group, which was like his elite force. This was the force that he'd been planning to send to Taiwan, to Formosa, to finish off the civil war and end the nationalist presence that, of course, continues to this day. They didn't invade Taiwan. Instead, they were sent to North Korea and they were unable to fight again for another six months.

52:35So Mao, you know, was pretty heavy hearted.

52:39Cold War Conversations Hosts:In fact, I think those are the words he used. My heart is heavy at these incredible, these dismaying casualties. And at the same time, it's very interesting today that China, you know, unlike we're in the United States, where the Korean War is largely forgotten, Korean War is very much remembered in China because this was kind of a sort of a coming out party for Mao. was the entry of the new People's Republic of China onto the public stage. Mao wanted to make sure that the world knew the Chinese were not a paper tiger. And though they suffered terrible casualties, it's part of the mystique now of the People's Republic of China.

53:21And even now, the Chinese Communist government has been, as part of this approach of the 75th anniversary of Chosen,

53:30Cold War Conversations Hosts:has made a big deal out of Chosun. It was actually a movie commissioned several years ago by the Chinese government, became one of the biggest blockbusters in Chinese history. And it tells the story from a very different perspective. It has the Chinese defending Korea from invaders because the idea is that the Americans were planning to invade China and that it was South Korea that had started the war, you know, not North Korea. So they have, they kind of rewrite the story of the aggressor who began that war. But it's part of the Chinese government's, I think, strategy now is to use Chosin in the Korean War as a rallying point for Chinese nationalism, that, you know, we stood up to the Americans then And, you know, our soldiers who fought there were heroes.

54:26Cold War Conversations Hosts:And it's definitely remembered in a different way in China than it is in the United States.

54:33Steve Fogel:Hi, this is Rhonda in Virginia. And I support Cold War conversations because I think the work that Ian is doing is critically important. I think it's vital to record the firsthand accounts of people who lived and experienced the Cold War. because it illustrates history in a way that a book never can. So thank you so much for the podcast. It's my favourite podcast and I look forward to it every week. To be like Rhonda and help to preserve these incredible stories of the Cold War. As a monthly or annual supporter, you'll be able to listen ad-free, you'll become one of our community, get the sought-after Cold War Conversations drinks coaster as a thank you, and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing that you're helping to preserve Cold War history.

55:21Steve Fogel:Just go to coldwarconversations.com slash donate to find out more. I think they describe it as the war to resist US aggression and aid Korea.

55:33Cold War Conversations Hosts:Exactly, exactly.

55:34Steve Fogel:That's nice and snappy, that title. Are there any movies that do centre on Shou Xin apart from that Chinese film?

55:44Cold War Conversations Hosts:Well, there was an American movie that was made that began production by Warner Brothers within a month of the battle ending. Because as we discussed, this heroic story of the Marines coming out really captured the attention, the imagination of Americans. It was just this incredible feat surrounded by this enormous Chinese army that they were able to march out proudly and make it back.

56:13Steve Fogel:so it's a bit like the Alamo but with a better ending

56:15Cold War Conversations Hosts:right yeah exactly they made it out and you know it was like the name of the movie was Retreat Hell which was a quote that O.P. Smith was supposedly said when asked by a British reporter during the battle are you planning to retreat down to Cotorri and O.P. Smith was reported to have said retreat hell We're attacking in opposite direction. So he didn't say that actually, but that became the famous from Chosin. So this movie was called Retreat Hell, and it focused entirely on the Marines. And in fact, it made no mention at all of the U.S. Army. So this was the way that the battle was portrayed to the American public, that this was a heroic episode in Marine Corps history, which it most certainly is and remains, should be one of the proudest moments in Marine Corps history.

57:10Cold War Conversations Hosts:But the full story wasn't told. And what happened to the Army unit to Task Force Faith on the east side of the reservoir is a story that was little known at the time. And to the extent it was, it was soon entirely forgotten. And it's part of that story. It should be part of the legend. It's not as glorious by any means as what the Marines pulled off. But it was a story of sacrifice and bravery and tragedy that I think more people should be aware about.

57:42Steve Fogel:you have been listening to steve fogel the author of a task force called faith the untold story of the u.s army soldiers who fought for survival at the chosen reservoir and honor back home there are links in the episode information where you can buy the book and support the podcast as i said earlier we've only scratched the surface here so there's loads more detail in the book so please purchase it and support Cold War Conversations. The episode extras such as videos, photos and other content are available via a link in the episode information. The podcast wouldn't exist without the generous efforts of our financial supporters and I'd like to thank one and all of them for keeping the podcast on the road.

58:30Steve Fogel:The Cold War Conversation continues in our Facebook discussion group. Just search for Cold War Conversations in Facebook. Thanks very much for listening and look forward to seeing you next week.

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