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

by Hampton Sides

Mao and Peng had decided to send one of their best armies, the Ninth Army Group, to the Chosin Reservoir to confront the First Marine Division, which they believed to be the strongest of all the U.N. forces approaching the Manchurian border. “It is said,” Mao wrote to Peng, “that the 1st Marine Division has the highest combat effectiveness in the American armed forces. Your generals should make its destruction their main effort.” The Chinese officers had passed down through the ranks the notion that the U.S. Marines were uniquely diabolical—bloodthirsty murderers and rapists and, according to one account, “highly competent criminals.” A rumor was passed around that to be inducted into the Corps, a prospective Marine had to kill a member of his own family; a distant cousin wouldn’t suffice—it had to be a direct relative. Another rumor said Marines were known to eat babies.