Heroes of the Medal of Honor
During the epic defensive stand at the Chosin Reservoir in the winter of 1950, this captain earned his country’s highest honour fighting against Chinese Army troops
The situation was desperate. Amid the harshest winter in a century on the Korean peninsula, the US 1st Marine Division was holding the line against more than 120,000 troops of the Chinese Army in a thinly held perimeter at the Chosin Reservoir.
The Chinese had warned that they would inter vene in the Korean War to stem the tide of United Nations forces that approached their boundar y with North Korea at the River Yalu. When they struck, the Chinese sent UN forces reeling. Now the defenders at the Chosin were suffering from the sub -zero temperatures and fighting for their lives against over whelming odds.
Captain Carl L Sitter was already a combat veteran. He had joined the US Marine Corps at the age of 18 in 1940, served eight months in Iceland, and then transferred to the Wallis Islands as a corporal after the US joined the Second World War. He received a field commission as a 2nd lieutenant and fought during the campaigns against the Japanese at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands and Guam in the Marianas. He sustained a serious leg wound on Guam but refused to be evacuated, remaining in command of his platoon for three more days until a second wound forced his evacuation.
For heroism under fire at Guam, he received the Silver Star, and the citation read in part: “Lieutenant Sitter, leading his platoon into combat under the most adverse conditions, constantly subjected himself to intense enemy rifle, machine gun and mortar fire, without regard for his personal safety, so that he could personally direct the fire and tactical disposition of his troops.”
In August 1950, just weeks after the outbreak of the Korean War, the 1st Marine Division deployed. Sitter par ticipated in the surprise landing at Inchon in September, which temporarily turned the tide of the conflict in favour of the UN forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. But the Chinese inter vention changed the character of the war. The Marines were on the defensive, and Sitter’s Company G, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, was in the thick of the fighting.
On the night of 27 November, approximately 120,000 Chinese troops attacked across the length of the UN perimeter at the Chosin, intent on annihilating the 1st Marine Division and other units fighting under the UN banner. For the next 13 days a savage battle raged. Near the southern tip of the reservoir at Hagaru-ri, every available soldier and Marine from clerks to cooks had been pressed into service as a rifleman, and key high ground known as East Hill had to be wrested from the enemy. Repeated attacks had failed, and rei
