On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle

by Hampton Sides

The Chinese fell in long rows, but new waves of soldiers were rushing right behind. They blasted away with their burp guns and Thompsons, kicking up the snow in stutters. When one phalanx was cut down, the next would crawl over the bodies, sometimes grabbing a dead comrade’s weapon. Yancey’s Marines couldn’t comprehend them: Either they were inordinately brave, inordinately stupid, or inordinately fearful of their own superiors, for they kept advancing, with no apparent regard for their staggering casualties. “There was just so many of ’em you could kill,” said Easy Company private Robert Arias, who was part of a machine-gun crew. “If you had a conscience it was hard, because you knew they had a family back home. But you had to kill them—sometimes at point-blank range. Just as soon as you mowed them down, they’d come back in another wave.”