During World War II, U.S. Marine Lee Bergee served in the steaming jungles of the Philippines and was wounded during that campaign. He arrived back in the United States on December 13, 1945, and reached his home in Iowa on Christmas Eve, with the temperature hovering at 34 degrees below zero. Little did he realize that five years later he would be back in combat as a platoon sergeant in a Marine rifle company–shivering in the subzero cold of North Korea.

Bergee has written two books. His first book, Rendezvous With Hell, published in 1963, is about the Korean War, including the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter, the Inchon landing, the recapture of Seoul, and the Chosin Reservoir campaign. His 1987 book, Guest of the Emperor, is the story of former prisoner ofwar Corporal Frank O. Promnitz, U.S. Marine Corps, who survived the horrors of Bataan, Corregidor, the Death March, the prisoner-of-war camps and the Japanese 'hell ships.' The latter book was selected for the Bataan Memorial Museum library in Santa Fe, N.M.

Many words have been written about the fighting and the bravery during the Chosin Reservoir battle, but not much has been said about what it felt like to be there. Bergee, interviewed recently for Military History, tells the story of the so-called Chosin Few.

Military History: President Ronald Reagan cited the Chosin Reservoir battle in his inaugural address as one of the classics of military history. I imagine that you agree.

Bergee: Yes, I do. There have been many bloody and savage battles by U.S. armed forces, and every battle seems rough for the participants, but I do believe that Chosin was a classic example of a small but well-disciplined force prevailing over a tenacious enemy, severe weather and overwhelming odds. Other battles have had high battle casualties and fierce fighting, but it was the severe weather and the fact that we were fighting off six Chinese divisions that made the Chosin Reservoir campaign so different from the rest. I met a Marine after the battle who had served with the U.S. Army in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. He told me that he had always believed nothing could be worse than the Bulge, but the Chosin campaign changed his mind.

MH: Do you regard Chosin as unique in Marine history?

Bergee: At the time I enlisted in the Marine Corps, we were known as the 'Old Breed.' The survivors of the Chosin are known as the 'Cold Breed.' That campaign was probably the most powerful experience most of the Marines had ever had in their lives. If you go through something like that with men like that, you develop strong bonds. They are the finest people I know. Chosin was much worse, in terms of weather, than other American battles, and the knowledge that there was no rescue team on the way [as at Bastogne] made it worse. If we were to get out of there, we had to do it on our own.

MH: I have read that the Chosin campaign has been compared to the World War II fight for Tarawa. There, too, about 15,000 Marines were involved, and they also suffered about 7,000 casualties. How do you compare the two?

Bergee: I agree that it compares to Tarawa, but at Chosin we also had the weather to contend with, plus the fact that we were not invading an island, but were on the defensive–completely surrounded by six Chinese Communist divisions. That fact alone, I believe, puts Chosin in a class all by itself. It reminds me of the Spartans and their stand at Thermopylae long ago!

MH: What are your most vivid memories of the Chosin campaign?

Bergee: In 1965, I visited Lt. Gen. Lewis B. 'Chesty' Puller at his home in Virginia, and the first thing he said to me as we shook hands was, 'Have you thawed out yet, Sarge?' After 15 years, the first thing he mentioned was the cold. Yes, we all have our memories of buddies killed, of the hordes of Chinese assaulting our frozen lines and the long, dangerous walk out, but I truly believe the uppermost thought in our minds, when we think of that campaign, is the cold! Those long nights in a ditch, or a foxhole, with the thermometer hanging around 40 degrees below zero, will long be remembered. I said to myself, when I awoke in a naval hospital in Japan after being evacuated from Koto-ri: 'I pray that I NEVER am this cold ever again!'

MH: It's hard to imagine fighting in that cold.

Bergee: I had a Sheaffer fountain pen that I carried in my breast pocket, and the ink in it froze and split the pen. The water in our canteens froze. We had to work the operating handles on the breechblocks of our M-1 rifles every now and then so they wouldn't freeze shut. Beads of ice formed in our beards and in our nostrils, and some of the men had to get the corpsmen to chip the ice out of their noses. Standing watch, you stomped your feet constantly and wiggled your toes inside the shoepacs to keep the circulation going. The cold seeped through your clothing, and you were always miserable. The wind hit your face until it was raw, and the driving snow whipped into your eyes and half-blinded you as you searched for enemy activity. You dreamed of being close to a roaring fire. I remember at Koto-ri when several of us set a railroad boxcar on fire and climbed inside until the flames drove us out. Day or night, it was extremely cold!

MH: What was the lowest temperature?

Bergee: I didn't have a thermometer, of course, but there was one at regimental headquarters, and one morning it registered minus 54 degrees. I recall having hot cereal one morning, and they poured hot milk on it, but after I walked about 30 feet to sit down to eat, the milk was frozen solid in my mess kit. I read, after I arrived back in the States, that the winter of 1950­51 in North Korea was the coldest since records were first kept back in 1888. At night, it was damn scary lying in a ditchor a hole in that pitch-dark deepfreeze waiting for the enemy to strike. The severe cold bit into our bodies like a knife.

MH: How did you survive?

Bergee: Well, to tell you the truth, it wasn't easy. Even the youngsters looked like old men with the layer of frost that was covering their faces. The snow was thick, and in the blinding whiteout it was difficult to see at times. The wind cut into your face. The Chinese had an advantage in that we had to pass through their well-placed zones of fire when we ran into a roadblock. Progress was always slow, and the casualties rapidly reduced our already depleted numbers. The flank guards, off to the sides of the road, waded in hip-deep snow, and since they had to struggle along the hillside, they would become exhausted. When we came to a roadblock, we had to attempt to climb around the Chinese firing positions, which were holding back our advance. Their small-arms fire was heavy, automatic weapons hitting us from the front and from the high ground on both sides of our column. It was when we had to stand or lie down alongside the road while a roadblock was being eliminated that the severe cold really got to us. It seemed we didn't notice it as much when we were on the move, but during the wait, we simply froze! I grew up in the blizzards of Iowa, but I have never witnessed winter weather like that at Chosin. And can you believe, with the snow came lightning? Yes, I saw lightning bolts when it was snowing. We often prayed for the skies to clear. When it cleared and stopped snowing, our 'equalizers'–Vought F4U Corsair fighter-bombers–would give us support. It was so cold that many of the wounded on the trucks would get frostbite. I remember looking into the rear of one of our trucks at a group of wounded and seeing them lying there, helpless; the urge to get them to safety rekindled the old spark.

MH: Did the walking wounded participate in the fighting?

Bergee: Yes, that was a common happening. Some were wounded for a second time, and several were even hit a third time. I recall seeing a Marine captain, blinded in one eye, one leg in shreds, supporting himself with a mortar aiming stake, as he led his men. I also remember a young Marine who had been hit in the face with shrapnel. As the corpsman was giving him first aid, a Chinese machine gun opened up, and the snow and dirt flew all around the two of them. That wounded Marine just shook his fist at the hillside and yelled: 'Damn it! If you're going to kill me, then kill me, but stop trying to scare me to death!'

MH: Pardon a more prosaic question, but how did you relieve yourself during that terrible weather?

Bergee: That's not an unreasonable question, and you're not the first to ask. We would wait until the 'heat of the day,' which was around 3 p.m., and then do our best to get the job done. It wasn't easy, and hundreds of men were constipated throughout the campaign.

MH: How were you able to fight under those freezing conditions?

Bergee: It wasn't easy. Sometimes you were so cold your fingers ached as you fired your rifle. It would empty, and then the magazine would eject with that well-known 'whang.' You had to push another clip in–fast. Hundreds of Chinese were rushing at you. But your fingers were so cold. You tried and tried to push that clip into your rifle. It was so difficult, and the enemy kept on coming. That sort of thing went on night after night.

MH: Were rifles all you had to fight with?

Bergee: Our automatic weapons jammed a lot. The howitzers had to be fired every now and then just so they would function properly. All of the vehicles had to be kept running so they wouldn't freeze. Once they were shut off, they might not start again. I remember watching one of our tanks, with the brakes locked, sliding on the icy road and off the mountain with all the crew members aboard. The most heartbreaking experience came when trucks or weapons carriers turned over on icy roads in the middle of the night, and the already wounded men would be killed or would receive further injuries. Trying to pick up those wounded men and find places for them on other vehicles previously loaded with wounded, while Chinese machine-gun bullets were flying around, was a nightmare I shall never forget.

MH: Do you personally blame anyone for the Chosin entrapment?

Bergee: Yes. I blame the top officers atX Corps and General Douglas MacArthur's headquarters for the mess we found ourselves in. Weeks before, the 1st Marine Division had reported the presence of Chinese troops in the mountains. We had killed some and we had actually captured some, but the 'boys in the rear' didn't believe us. One of the regimental commanders asked the commanding general of the X Corps to come see for himself. We had several in our makeshift stockade. General O.P. Smith, the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, voiced his disatisfaction at having his division strung out for more than 40 miles. An infantry division and its supplies should be together and consolidated. We were too far apart over a single mountainous road, some 50 miles from the nearest help. We were taking orders from the Army's X Corps, and I blame its commanding general, Maj. Gen. Edward Almond, and his staff for our ordeal. He sent the Army's task force, made up of part of the 7th Division, up the east side of the reservoir without proper support or communications, and they were literally wiped out.

MH: What was General MacArthur's role in the debacle?

Bergee: MacArthur had been told by top Japanese officers not to conduct a winter campaign in those mountains. They had ruled Korea for a long time and knew how dangerous it was to have the 1st Marine Division and part of the Army's 7th Division out on the well-known 'limb' near the Chosin Reservoir.

MH: How did the medical personnel operate during the battle? Surely the freezing temperatures affected them.

Bergee: The corpsmen and doctors were superb, as always. Those Navy people had to administer first aid and operate under severe conditions and always with a good possibility of being killed. Several times, Chinese infiltrators would tear a long slit in the medical tent and try to get inside, shooting anyone who got in the way. One ambulance, on the road between Koto-ri and Hagaru-ri, was machine-gunned viciously, and the chaplain of one of our regiments was killed, along with his assistant and the wounded. Yes, the medical personnel were heroes, in the truest sense of the word. They were under constant fire; there was no such thing as a hospital. The corpsmen had to keep the hypodermic syringes taped in their armpits to keep the liquid in the syringes from freezing solid, and they stuffed morphine ampules inside their mouths to keep the doses from freezing. One corpsman told me, 'By the time you would cut through the different layers of clothing to reach the wounds, your hands would be numb from the cold.' One thing I might mention is that it was so cold that when one was wounded, the blood didn't run as it did in the tropics. The blood coagulated, which saved many a Marine's life.

MH: How would you describe the leadership at the sub-divisional level?

Bergee: Our leadership was strong, extremely strong. The officers and NCOs were combat veterans of World War II, and even the Reserve officers and staff NCOs were battle-tested. The youngsters who had been through the fighting in the Pusan Perimeter, the Inchon invasion and the recapture of Seoul were now combat veterans, and the young reservists came through with flying colors. Many of them had no combat experience, but they listened to their leaders and upheld the tradition of the Marine Corps. Little by little, though, exhaustion began telling on us. When we fell, it took longer to get up. At the end of the Chosin campaign, I was so fatigued that after I gave an order, I asked that it be repeated because I wasn't sure whether or not I had actually given the order. I remember one of our machine-gunners singing 'There's No Tomorrow' one cold, bitter night. David Duncan, who had served as a World War II Marine and was working as a Life magazine photographer at Chosin, asked one man if he had one wish what would it be, and that man looked at him and replied, 'Give me tomorrow.' That is the way it was up there. Live each day as it comes and pray that you would be alive tomorrow.

MH: When did you realize that you were caught in a trap?

Bergee: When our battalion mail jeep came back full of holes after running into an enemy roadblock. I remember we had been told that we were surrounded by six Chinese divisions, but it didn't really soak in until that jeep came back.

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