Marine Corps veterans from battle of Chosin Reservoir during Korean War hold reunion in Springfield

From MassLive.com: Marine Corps veterans from battle of Chosin Reservoir during Korean War hold reunion in Springfield

SPRINGFIELD – Six decades later, they can almost laugh about it.

After dozens of night patrols searching for North Korean troop locations, the First Marine Division’s Reconnaissance Company had no trouble finding the enemy on Nov. 27, 1950 – the night that 100,000 Chinese troops began attacking from all directions around the Chosin Reservoir.

“They can’t get away from us now; we know where they are – they’re all around us,” said Carlo J. Marchetti, 80, former Springfield resident and U.S. Marine Corps veteran recalling an officer’s remark at the start of the 17-day battle.

“Yeah, we said, ‘Anywhere we shoot, we’ll be shooting at them’,” added Glenn Kasdorf, 81, of Milwaukee.

The unit – perhaps best known for helping to hold off the Chinese offensive at Chosin, buying time for an epic, 70-mile retreat by United Nations troops – reassembled in Springfield this week for its annual reunion.

Since 1986, the unit’s surviving members have come from across the country to rekindle friendships that began 6,000 miles away and endured combat, frostbite and the passage of time.

Sixteen Marine veterans, their wives and widows of unit members gathered at the Sheraton Springfield Monarch Place Hotel for the event, which featured a tour of the Smith & Wesson plant on Friday and a banquet Saturday night.

Kasdorf, a retired Milwaukee police officer, received a Purple Heart at the battle of the Chosin Reservoir, along with frostbite on his toes, feet and lower legs.

Besides being vastly outnumbered by the Chinese troops, the Marines had to contend with temperatures that dropped to 30-below zero, leaving the ground too frozen for foxholes.

With thousands of United Nations troops retreating down a single, narrow dirt road, the Marines held off the pursuing Chinese, inflicting heavy casualties every mile of the retreat.

By Dec. 13, more than 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed, another 9,000 were wounded or missing, and 7,300 suffered frostbite or other injuries.

Kasdorf, firing a Browning Automatic Machine Gun, fought off three Chinese soldiers who got close enough to grab his gun barrel, only to be wounded moments later by a percussion grenade.

Later, a doctor treating his frostbitten toes said the Marine came very close to getting his feet amputated.

“People ask me why I still live in Wisconsin, and not in Florida or Arizona,” Kasdorf said. “But it’s my home.”

Even when the temperature plunges in Milwaukee on winter nights, Kasdorf said, “It’s just nothing like it was over there.”

Marchetti, the longtime executive director of Springfield Central Inc. now living in Sarasota, Fla., joined the unit in 1953 during the stalemate that led to cease fire.

“I don’t miss the winter,” Marchetti said, referring to the climates of Korea and Western Mass. “I don’t miss it at all.”

Along with other unit members, Marchetti has attended reunions from Tallahassee, N.C., to Washington, D.C. Thanks to unit member G. Richard Reed, the group was given a tour of the White House in 2002.

“They said we were one of the first groups to be allowed in there after 9/11,” said Reed, who attended Penn State after the war, then worked as a computer analyst for the Department of Defense.

Like the other Marines, Reed and Marchetti downplayed the obvious dangers of reconnaissance work, and offered casual, matter of fact accounts of their wartime exploits.

If Korea War has largely faded from public memory, the Marines still recall it right down to the sparks emitted by the potbelly stoves they huddled around for moments of fleeting warmth.

“You’d get more body heat from the other soldiers than you’d get from that stove,” Reed said.