Myers was not the only recipient of the Medal of Honor out of the Cold Fight. Situations like this (leading unfamiliar troops under deadly conditions) are challenging. This involved setting an example for his troops and that meant getting out in front. Given a scraped-together force of truck drivers, cooks and personnel from other services, he led them on an attack that kept the main road open for the division to pass. As a major, he had been the XO of a battalion in the 1st Regiment at the reservoir. Throughout the session, I was mesmerized by the top ribbon on his uniform blouse-light blue with a sprinkling of white stars. He got it over quickly, making sure I understood that all rules and regulations were to be obeyed. I’ll never forget the cold, unblinking eyes of LtCol Reginald Myers. This was not the most-comfortable position for a newbie to be in, but I had no say in the matter. I had transgressed in some way, and the Marine Corps thought it necessary for me to go explain my deficient behavior to the Executive Officer of the school. Not long after I entered the Marine Corps, I was at Quantico’s Basic School with several hundred other second lieutenants. In my view, the men who did these things were giants. This was the nature of what I call the Cold Fight-at the Chosin Reservoir-where it was the deadliest kind of infantry fighting under the worst kind of circumstances.
Every physical act was much more difficult to perform, and the difficulty was magnified by a lack of sleep and cold food. Most of them agreed that the main effect of the sub-zero weather was to grind you down physically. This battle took place in November and December of 1950, and there were many reservoir veterans still on active duty when I became a Marine in 1957. On top of the freezing temperatures, the Marines faced tens of thousands of mostly Chinese soldiers around the Chosin Reservoir. Only a thermometer silenced the Brownings. We also found that some of their equipment didn’t perform well in below-zero weather.
It literally was necessary to teach them how to care for their bodies when the food wasn’t proper and the issued clothing inadequate. The Marine Corps built at Pickel Meadows to give every Marine some cold-weather training before he arrived in Korea. It quickly became obvious that the weather was going to be as big a problem as the Chinese and North Korean armies. By then the Chinese sent thousands of their troops to aid the North Koreans and we had a serious war on our hands. The Marine Corps responded to the attack across the 38th parallel in the summer of 1950 and by the winter of that year, the entire 1st Marine Division was in Korea. This base is still in use as a mountain warfare training facility and I had the privilege of serving there for a couple of years in the late ’50s.
But everyone knew how important the training really was. The troops who manned the place immediately dubbed it the Cold Water Battalion because the heaters that came with the field shower units didn’t work. When first established, the base was a rag-tag cluster of tents and a few Quonset huts and was known as the Cold Weather Battalion.
Across the border in California, it is quite a bit higher up in the mountains and much colder. Pickel Meadows has been a Marine Corps training base since the early ’50s. But just an hour’s drive to the south, there’s a place that is a monument to fighting in cold weather. We don’t usually have really bad winter weather and with preparation, the snow and cold along the east slope of the Sierra are more than bearable. Among other things, he is the best winter dog I have ever seen. He’s his own guy, but he can do a pretty good imitation of a dutiful dog when he feels so inclined. Teddy, the big Labrador, is nosing around the yard and is going to come in the house for a bit. It’s good to be inside where there is coffee, eggs, bacon-and warmth. It’s a midwinter morning as I write this, and we’ve got about an inch of new snow up here in northern Nevada.