This 3,000-man RCT was virtually wiped out just east of the Chosin Reservoir by the Chinese 80th, 81st, and 94th Divisions. The few survivors managed to link up with the 1st Marine Division at the reservoir shortly before the Devil Dogs made their famous march to the sea.
I have an elderly gentleman who often comes into the Lowe's store where I work who always wears a 31st RCT ballcap. I commented on it one day, and he informed me that he was a member of the 31st when they were captured at Bataan and he ended up spending the next three and a half years as a POW in Japan. He recuperated from this and rejoined the regiment just in time to be sent to Korea, where he was one of the few hundred who managed to escape the Chinese and link up with the Marines.
Well done.
from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton
Sweet brother, if I do not sleep
My eyes are flowers for your tomb;
And if I cannot eat my bread,
My fasts shall live like willows where you died.
If in the heat I find no water for my thirst,
My thirst shall turn to springs for you, poor traveller.
Where, in what desolate and smokey country,
Lies your poor body, lost and dead?
And in what landscape of disaster
Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?
Come, in my labor find a resting place
And in my sorrows lay your head,
Or rather take my life and blood
And buy yourself a better bed —
Or take my breath and take my death
And buy yourself a better rest.
When all the men of war are shot
And flags have fallen into dust,
Your cross and mine shall tell men still
Christ died on each, for both of us.
For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain,
And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring;
The money of Whose tears shall fall
Into your weak and friendless hand,
And buy you back to your own land:
The silence of Whose tears shall fall
Like bells upon your alien tomb.
Hear them and come: they call you home.
With a salute and a solemn bow, we finally welcome you home, Pvt. Meyer. You served well...rest now in peace.
A welding casualty?