December 05, 2017

Over several years, Julie Precious conducted interviews with our members about their experience at the Chosin Reservoir.  These interviews served as a base for her incredible documentary, "Task Force Faith-The Story of the 31st Regimental Combat Team".  Until recently the documentary was only available on the website.

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The documentary is now available for rent at Amazon Video.  As of November, there have been over 40,000 views in the US and Great Britain.  The reviews have been very positive and the documentary has 4.9 stars out of 5.0.  This documentary is a must see for anyone interested in the true history of the Army at the Chosin Reservoir. 

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If you would like a DVD copy, they are always available for purchase at www.taskforcefaith.com.

December 09, 2016

Dillon Prus

​Personal Narrative

In Search of the Chosin

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I found it in a dusty used bookstore in Portland, Oregon. I had come all this way during my furlough to the United States from Thailand, where my parents are missionaries, to find an out-of-print book written by a veteran of the Korean War that chronicled Dog Company during the battle of the Chosin Reservoir. Its text revealed no new clues, until I reached the last-page list of the surviving members of the company in the 10th Combat Engineer Battalion. My next step became evident.

Two of the only living survivors had since passed away, but the final soldier listed remained elusive to locate, adding another year to my search. I finally found the last survivor, now eighty-five, living in South Dakota. Now only a phone call away, I hoped to talk to one of the “Chosin Few.” He could have known my great uncle, Bernard Beemon, who paid the ultimate price in an icy hell called the Chosin Reservoir in Korea on the night of November 28, 1950. Thus my quest could soon come to an end surrounding the death of this twenty-one year old boy who fought as a man. I picked up the phone and dialled the last survivor’s number.

“Hello,” he answered.

“I’m searching for information concerning a relative of mine who fought with Dog Company at the Chosin. Do you have a few minutes to talk about your experience with the company?”

He paused. “Yeah...I have a few minutes.” He didn’t sound too pleased. The interview continued, but when prompted about details of the battle, he suddenly seemed rigid and avoided direct answers to questions. He didn’t know Bernard because he had only joined the week before they had been sent to the reservoir soon to be ambushed and overrun.

In the end, I learned nothing new, but thanked the soldier for his time, “Although a lot of people call the Korean War the ‘Forgotten War,’ I haven’t forgotten what you and your company did in that peninsula, fighting for the freedom of the Korean people against the oppression of Communist rule.”

Another long pause, then...“Well I guess I haven’t either.” After all the effort I had put in over the course of two years, had my quest just ended in failure? I still didn’t know any more about my hero than I did to begin with.

In the months since that phone call, I’ve realized that my efforts were not in vain; in this single phone call, my perception about the sagacity brought by maturity had changed forever. Coming into the interview, I thought that the many years of real-life pain, forgiveness, and reconciliation that had passed over time would somehow wipe away the painful memories the soldier had. However, this couldn’t have been farther from the truth. I could hear over the phone in the survivor’s shaky voice anger, regret, guilt, and fear accumulated over sixty years.

Why would this old timer just clam up over the phone when a stranger who happened to care so much about him and his forgotten-by-the-rest-of-the-world unit calls him to ask a few questions? Possibly he had been plagued by phone interviews about his company’s actions before, so his skepticism may have been understandable. My second thought was worse. Had I hurt the man? Did our conversation bring back memories that had been deliberately buried in the reservoir to be dug up every day? My third thought, in retrospect, was that I wish I had the

guts to confront the last survivor about the grace and freedom that comes with the acknowledgement and reconciliation of pain. If he had been my peer, I think I would have. ...during my research, I found that many veterans deferred the praise of heroism. Instead, they said the real heroes were the men that are still buried in ice. My thoughts go out to the families of those killed in action at the Chosin…lives forever changed by this tragedy.

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May 21, 2016

​By Anna Marie Lux, Gazette Xtra, Janesville, WI

As a young soldier, Grant McMillin had no idea that he would fight during one of the coldest winters on record in North Korea and that he would spend more than two years as a prisoner of war.

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ELKHORN—Grant McMillin doesn't know why he decided to go on the annual VetsRoll trip to Washington, D.C.

Maybe to be surrounded by other veterans or to see the war memorials built in their honor.

Early Sunday, the 85-year-old will leave on buses from Beloit with 200 other vets, mostly from the Korean War era like himself. Others served in World War II and Vietnam. Some are Rosie the Riveters, who worked in factories at home during World War II.

During the next four days, they will see the sights in the U.S. Capitol, including the Korean War Memorial, all at no cost to them.

The purpose of the journey is to honor the veterans and to say thank you, courtesy of the nonprofit VetsRoll based in South Beloit, Illinois.

For many, including McMillin of rural Elkhorn, the trip will be a time to remember.

He was only 19 and had just bought a 1947 red convertible when his sergeant told him he was shipping off to Korea.

“Four of us volunteered to go,” McMillin said. “We heard the North Koreans were treating our men badly. We thought the four of us could straighten that out.”

The young soldier had no idea that he would fight during one of the coldest winters on record in North Korea and that he would spend more than two years as a prisoner of war.

In November 1950, United Nations forces launched what was supposed to be the final offensive of the war. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Communist Chinese soldiers poured into North Korea and overwhelmed U.N. troops.

On Nov. 27, McMillin of the 57th Field Artillery woke to the sound of his commanding officer yelling for everyone to get out because the Chinese were coming.

“That morning was the first time it occurred to me that we were in a war,” McMillin said. “Most of the men's guns had frozen overnight. It was 35 below, and we were wearing field jackets. We could see the Chinese coming down the mountain.”

During the next three days, McMillin fought hard on a frozen battleground on the eastern side of the Chosin Reservoir. A soldier near him died after a bullet struck him in the head.

“It could just as well have been me,” McMillin said.

On the third day of fighting, a bullet hit his ankle.

He crawled to an aid station, but no one was there. So he poured sulfa powder on the wound and wrapped it with a bandage. His ankle swelled so badly he could not put on his boot.

On the fourth day of fighting, the wounded were loaded onto trucks to be evacuated. As troops in the field began to move toward the vehicles, U.S. air power mistook them for invading Chinese and dropped napalm on them.

Eventually, the remaining troops surrendered to the Chinese.

“They took 10 of us and shot others,” McMillin recalled. “We were told to kneel in a ditch, where I thought we would be killed. Then, they marched us north past the dead.”

The enemy forced McMillin to a prisoner of war camp in a place the POWs called the Valley of Death.

“We had no medical care,” he explained. “They took 300 of us in. Only 100 came out.”

He and two colleagues summoned up all the grit inside them when they saved a fellow soldier whose feet had frozen and turned black.

“We were afraid gangrene would kill him,” McMillin recalled.

With only a pair of rusty scissors, they began amputating the dead tissue. McMillin held the patient while the other two did the cutting.

When his colleagues could do it no more, McMillin took the scissors and finished the job.

“I tore up some sheets and bandaged his legs,” he said. “He learned to travel on his hands and knees.”

Years later, McMillin met the man again. He walked on artificial feet and introduced McMillin as “the man who saved my life.”

McMillin returned home from Korea in 1953.

He and his wife, Anna Marie, have three sons, who have all served in the military. His son Larry is traveling with him on the VetsRoll trip.

McMillin and his family moved to Walworth County in 1995, when he retired. His last job was as a civilian who administered contracts for the military.

McMillin calls himself different from many veterans because he has always talked about his war experiences.

He especially likes to share them with high school students.

“I try to impress on them that they are not wasting their time in school,” McMillin said. “I try to tell them that what they learn may save their lives one day.”

He said that what he remembered about tendons from biology class helped him take off a fellow POW's feet.

He emphasizes self-reliance.

“If you are in a situation like that, you are the only one you have to rely on,” McMillin said. “You have to take responsibility. You can't leave a job half done.”

Through the years, he agrees with historians who often refer to Korea as “the forgotten war.”

“I've never backed off from talking about it,” McMillin said. “A lot of times when people talk about wars, they don't mention Korea.”

April 16, 2016

By Yung H. Hwang, Springfield New-Leader, Springfield, MO

From April 20 to 24, a group of “Chosin Few” families will be gathering in Springfield for a memorial service.

Chosin Few is a national organization for the surviving troops who served in the Battle of Chosin (Chang-Jin) Reservoir during the Korean War, in November and December 1950.

The Chosin Few is named after the Chosin Reservoir Battle where the fiercest fighting took place against the enemies of Chinese troops (around 120,000 Red Army). These enemies had the U.S. 3rd Infantry and the 7th Division ground troops completely surrounded at Chosin River (Chang-Jin) Reservoir area.

The strikes by 1st Division U.S. Marines and air attacks by U.S. Air Force broke up the Chinese stronghold, enabling our ground forces to withdraw and escape to a road leading to Hung Nam Harbor, where 193 ships assisted with the evacuation.

This action resulted in over 100,000 injured troops, as well as a similar number of civilian refugees, being transported safely to Pusan, South Korea.

In this epic Chosin Reservoir battle, the U.S. and Allies suffered 12,000 casualties, and the enemy losses numbered over 4,500 deaths. These casualties were not only attributed to the war but also to the bitter cold, subzero temperatures (30 degrees below zero).

In later years, survivors and historians recorded this epic battle as the hardest and worst battle in American military history, although Newsweek magazine rated this event second to Pearl Harbor losses.

Today, Americans and Koreans believe that there would have been no Chosin Reservoir fighting if the Chinese would not have been supportive of the North Koreans. The Chinese government continues its relationship with North Korea and serves as a strong influence in building divisions and blocking the peaceful unification efforts of the United States and other Western allies.

China also stood against South Korea and America by using military exercises for themselves and encouraging North Korea to do the same. China has established a military presence in the small islands of the South China Sea in order to block the ship routes of America and all allies of South Korea (Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, etc.).

China’s interference is very obvious! In a time when world peace is of utmost importance to civilization, one must wonder why China is reluctant to join the peace movement — a movement that is sure to help many nations in many positive ways.