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This is the best telling I know of the 31st RCT action at the Chosin. I have talked old soldier talk with Chosin men, marines, and it was very hard. The cold weather was very cold indeed, 40 degrees below zero Fahrenheit with winds gusting over thirty miles per hour. There was no shelter of any sort.

To keep the Chinese away from the wounded - only the seriously wounded rode in the trucks available, fuel was very short - and to keep the Chinese from building heavily dug in roadblocks on the only road to the Sea (going cross country would have meant abandoning the wounded), while being outnumbered many times by very brave Chinese intent on killing them all, was the job at hand. The hill tops had to be held to keep the Chinese from mortaring the retreat. The large Chinese manuever elements attempting to cut off the retreat had to be broken up. It took suicidal determination to get the job done. Good sleeping bags and enough ammunition (close, though), and good air strikes helped.

Talked with an old Gunny who got the Cross there over drinks once, he told me over and over again about cowardly officers who would not do their duty. So he did it for them. He felt more than half screwed to death, too. Well, that is a common feeling. Seeing your duty and doing it properly is beyond so many so much of the time even when they aren't likely to be killed. It gets worse when something really has to be done, and "there is no likelyhood of survival," as Commander Evans put it when he ordered the escorts of Taffy 3 to attack a Japanese battle group with, as I remember, four battleships and eight cruisers and numerous destroyers. Evans had two destroyers and two destroyer escorts. Evans was killed. Posthumous Medal of Honor. Look up "the battle off Samar", during the Leyte Gulf battle. Sam and Snippy have written that one up well here in the Foxhole.