At the Chosin Reservoir 12 to 13 thousand Marines attacked in a "different direction' the over 100,000 Chinese troops that surrounded them

CBS News:
You may have seen the pictures before: American fighting men pushed to their limits and beyond. But unless you were at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea in the brutal winter of 1950, you have no idea.

"Survival is probably the strongest of our instincts, and we all just did what we had to do to survive," said Warren Weidhahn, now 90, who was a young Marine at Chosin Reservoir. "People can't imagine 40, 50 below zero. Everything froze. Vehicles froze, rifles froze, people froze. If you got wounded, you couldn't walk, you froze to death."
...
The Marines were moving north along a single road that twisted higher into the mountains up to the Chosin Reservoir, which was supposed to be just a way station on their way to the Yalu.

Sides said, "This was kind of a perfect trap because they had to go singe file up this very narrow road. Any commander knows this is a terrible way to move because you get strung out."

The Chinese sprang the trap on the night of November 27.

Weidhahn said, "We heard bugles and whistles, and the Chinese came pouring over the mountain in front of us – thousands firing and shooting, coming down the valley towards us. Every weapon we had was firing at the Chinese. Nothing stopped them. They just kept coming.
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"Their job was to annihilate us," said Weidhahn. "Every night, as soon as it got dark, they attacked, and en masse right into the lines – hand-to-hand fighting."
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General Oliver Smith, the Marine commander, estimated his 13,000 men were surrounded by 100,000 Chinese troops.

Sides said, "They have to begin to think about a word that the Marines do not like, which is the word 'withdrawal,' or 'retreat.'"

Weidhahn said, "We didn't call it retreat. We never call it retreat."

When Gen. Smith was asked if he was retreating, his reply was, "Retreat? Hell, we're just advancing in another direction."
...
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, keeps a picture of one of those Marines on his office wall: his father, who was a Private First Class and already a combat veteran by the time his unit reached Chosin Reservoir. "He turned 20 the night of 27 November, 1950," said Gen. Dunford.
...
Other estimates of the number of Chinese fighters were as much as 120,000.  The Marines killed over 25,000 as they broke out of the trap.  A reinforced company of a little over 299 hundred Marines kept a pass open for the Marines holding off 19,000 Chinese troops.

There are few other examples of a surrounded and outnumber force destroying the enemy surrounding them.  But the Chinese units engaged in the fight were no longer "combat effective" after the battle.

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