Pushkin.

A deadly winter storm whipped across the jagged Hill in North Korea.

It was the last day of November nineteen fifty and it was more than twenty degrees below zero.

The marines of Company G tried to find a foothold on the hill.

It was pure ice.

They kicked their frozen guns, hoping to get them to work.

They tried to carve fox holes in the rock hard ground.

They searched for some way to shelter from what was coming, and they had to do it fast.

They heard the sound of bugles and whistles.

The Marines knew what that meant.

They were about to face an onslaught of enemy soldiers, and they were totally and completely outnumbered.

UN forces had been trying to hold this ground for days.

Many had already been wounded or killed, and some had snuck off the hill.

They knew certain death when they saw it, but not the men of Company G.

There was something that kept them going.

It sure wasn't food.

Their cans or rations were frozen solid.

It wasn't adrenaline either.

It was their captain, Carl Sitter.

He moved from one position to the other.

He checked their guns, but mostly he talked to them.

He told them they could do it.

They could fight off the enemy, they could survive and hold that hill.

Secretly, in his heart, Carl believed that he might not survive.

In fact, he was pretty sure he would never make it home, but he had faith that his men would.

I'm j R.

Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.

Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.

This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

Carl Sitter wasn't your typical marine.

He was an amazing physical specimen, all muscle and brawn.

He was kind of pudgy, round faced and kind.

But he had a superpower, a talent for taking care of his men, shepherding them through the worst days of their lives, inspiring them.

They knew for sure he would never leave them behind.

And here's the crazy thing.

Carl wasn't really supposed to be there.

His story of leadership is filled with crazy good luck and crazy bad luck.

His story is about fate and faith, the kind of faith that can keep you alive against impossible odds.

When Carl Sitter got to Korea in nineteen fifty, he wasn't supposed to be leading any marines at all.

He was supposed to be a Special Services officer.

And if you don't know what that is, it's the officer in charge of equipment.

In Carl's case, that equipment wasn't guns or ammo.

It was basketballs, footballs, and jockstraps.

Not exactly the job he'd wanted.

Carl was only twenty seven, but he was pretty out of shape, so out of shape that his superiors had him in a desk job.

But Carl wanted to be on the front lines, so he pushed and pushed.

But Special Services was the most the brass would give him.

It was a demotion.

Still, Carl didn't complain.

It was a job in the war, and he took it for a second because right after he got to the base in Japan with all that equipment, a typhoon blew it into the water, all of it gone, and that's how his career in Special Services ended.

The brass had no choice but to give him the job he'd wanted in the first place, on the front lines, so he was given command of Company G.

When his marines looked at him, they couldn't quite believe this dumpy guy was going to be their leader.

He didn't have a six pack, but he had something that a lot of other guys didn't experience.

He had enlisted when he was just seventeen years old, right out of high school.

He served in World War II, rising quickly through the ranks, and by the time the Marines landed in Guama in nineteen forty four, he was a lieutenant and had received the first of what would be four purple hearts.

But he also picked up a habit wearing his pistol holstered over his heart.

Here's why.

During one battle he felt the slam of a bullet into the left side of his chest.

He thought, this is it.

I'm going to die.

But wait a minute.

He was definitely alive.

So he touched his chest and he felt warm blood, But he also felt the cold steel of his pistol.

It had stopped the bullet.

He would wear the pistol there for the rest of his combat career.

By the time the war was over, Carl had a Silver Star and a life in the Core.

Sure, maybe he'd gotten little soft since World War Two, but that didn't mean he wasn't keen to fight in the next conflict Korea.

On Sunday, June twenty fifth, Communist forces attacked the Republic of Korea.

That's President Harry Truman.

We know that the cost of freedom is high, but we are determined to preserve our freedom no matter what the calls.

At first, it looked like the United Nations forces would make quick work of this new war.

General Douglas MacArthur led them into South Korea, and they easily drove the North Koreans back above the thirty eighth parallel.

But then MacArthur decided they should try for a second victory, this time in the north.

By the winter of nineteen fifty, UN troops had landed in North Korea and were moving inland.

They went up treacherous mountain passes into a trap.

They didn't know that around four hundred thousand Chinese troops had secretly crossed the Manchurian border.

To aid the North Koreans.

Some were battle hardened veterans, and most were so called volunteers who had been forced into combat.

They didn't have enough weapons, they were fed very little.

But there were so many more of them, and on the night of November twenty seventh they attacked.

Chinese soldiers surrounded the group of Marines who had gotten the farthest into the mountains, and the Americans realized they were outnumbered by the thousands.

General MacArthur ordered a hasty withdrawal, but then those withdrawing troops got trapped.

They were miles inland near the Chosen or chang Jin Reservoir.

There was only one road out, and the Chinese forces captured it.

They were hopelessly stuck.

Reporters were there to witness the mayhem.

Here, thousands of Marines and other United Nations forces are trapped by overwhelming masses of Chinese reds who encircle them near the chung Jin Reservoir.

Carl and Company G were in North Korea, but far from the fighting.

That didn't last long.

Stephen Olmsted was a young Marine private in Carl's company.

Then we got the word, you guys are going to join up.

With your parent the time.

They were going to bring ammunition, food and supplies to the trap marines.

The people up around the reservoir desperately needed reinforcements, particularly more tanks.

Most of the troops were near the UN force's last best foothold, a town called hagarou Re.

It had makeshift hospital facilities and to have constructed airstrip.

It was their only hope to unite the separated groups of marines.

Hagaroo Reed had to be held at all costs.

Carl's men would have to fight their way there up the main supply route, that dangerous mountain road.

Then they would clear the path for all the UN troops to retreat to the port and get out of North Korea, and they would be outnumbered ten to one.

There's something important you need to know about the Battle of the Chosen Reservoir.

It wasn't just the enemy that was deadly.

It was the weather.

It was the cold this Korean winter in one hundred years.

Raymond Davis was there, like Carl.

He was commanding a group of marines.

The snow came, the tempted to a drop of forty below zero in the mountains.

My Weather service said the wind child was something like seventy below zero.

Weapons froze, shut truck batteries died.

Faces covered with the ice.

Radios wouldn't work.

They were frozen food, frozen water, frozen.

Terrible conditions.

And the men didn't have the right gear.

After all, everyone including leadership, had been sure they'd be home by Christmas.

Their coats were thin.

On their feet, they wore something called shoe packs.

They weren't winter boots, just rubber soles and a leather top.

They made your feet sweat when you marched and freeze when you stopped.

Tons of men got frostbite.

Anytime I find the marine down, I would get him on his feet because he'd freeze to death.

And now Carl and his men were going deeper into the mountains.

Carl's company had joined forces with Colonel Douglas Drysdale of the British Royal Marines.

On November twenty ninth, they all set out for the un camp at Hagarouri.

Here's Stephen Olmsted again, that private in Carl's company.

We boarded trucks and there was kind of like an old Western movie going through what is later called Hellfire Alley.

Hell Fire alley is right.

On one side of the road, there were steep drop offs going down thousands of feet.

On the other side, Chinese fighters held the high ground.

They turned that mountain road into a shooting gallery.

We're going to jump out and gauge them, drive them away, and go and do it all over again.

Carl was focused and calm as they made their way towards Hagarui.

At one point they came under intense fire.

The Chinese had set up a roadblock up ahead, and Company G were sitting ducks.

Unless they got out and cleared it, their trucks would explode where they stood.

Now.

We don't have access to recordings of Carl, but he was interviewed many times during his life.

Our editor and good friend of the podcast, Ben Nadaf Haffrey, is going to read his words here.

This is what Carl told Leatherneck Magazine in nineteen eighty six.

I yelled for everybody to get off the trucks, and it's it seemed like anybody close to me was getting shot, like I was protected by an invisible shield and I wasn't being hit.

Carl didn't have time to marvel at his survival as the bullets rained down.

He raced to the front of the convoy.

He had to check in with Drysdale, but when he got there, he discovered that Drysdale had been shot.

He could no longer lead the group.

He gave command to Carl.

In case all of this action has wiped your memory, let me remind you Carl wasn't even supposed to be on the front lines, and he certainly wasn't supposed to be leading this group of men on this deadly mission.

But he didn't question it.

He had a sense that if he was there, it was for a reason.

By this point it was night.

The surviving Marines cleared the roadblock and jump back in the trucks.

They rattled forward through the dark, unsure of how far they had come and how much further they had to go.

Tracers and explosions lit up the night as they inched towards Hagarouri.

Then they saw the distant lights of the marine encampment.

Carl breathed a sigh of relief.

There were tents on the side of the road.

They had to be Americans, they weren't.

Chinese fighters jumped out of the tents and the Marines were right back in the battle.

Three of the trucks went over the side of the road on fire, lost for good, and the rest of the convoy hit the gas and made it out of the ambush, and at nine pm they finally reached Hagarouri.

The twelve mile journey had taken twelve hours.

Of the nine hundred men who started out that morning, one hundred and sixty nine were killed, one hundred and fifty nine were wounded, and three hundred and twenty one were missing or captured.

That left them with less than a third of their fighting force.

Once they got to camp, Carl told his men to get some rest.

They would have to sleep on the frozen ground.

Half the people didn't have sleeping bags.

I didn't have one.

I gave my nup.

When they woke up the next morning, they were covered in snow.

You could see all these holes where people had melted through the snow while they slept.

They were freezing and exhausted.

But if the un troops ever wanted to leave the chosen reservoir, Carl and his marines would have to fight again.

They had to take East Hill.

East Hill rose about five hundred meters above the valley floor.

It was the high ground whoever controlled East Hill controlled that one road in and out of Hagarui.

Plus, if the Chinese took East Hill, the Marines would never be able to finish the airfield.

That means they would never get more supplies.

They wouldn't be able to bring out their wounded, and they're dead.

If we had not controlled it, physically controlled it, first Marine division in all likelihood put them in annihilated.

Carl would be going to relieve Major Reginald Myers.

Myers had been fighting on East Hill for two days.

He and his men were just barely hanging on.

Myers needed help badly.

Here's what interests me as a leader.

Myers was the opposite of Carl Sitter, a tough marine with an old school way of leading his men.

If he felt they weren't moving fast enough, he just well, I'll let him tell you.

You kicked them and you shot at them.

Rather you pulled your pistol out and you.

Fired the sh in the air and did everything you could to get him removed.

Basically, you treated your men like cattle, which is how a lot of guys treated soldiers.

But let's be honest, that didn't always work.

A lot of Meyer's men had gotten off the hill as quickly as they could.

They took wounded soldiers down to the aid station and somehow never managed to go back up.

And now Myers was down to just seventy five men.

So on the morning of the thirtieth, Carl and his marine started up that icy hill, slipping and crawling, passing the bodies of fallen soldiers as they made their way higher.

The Chinese machine guns kicked up dirt and shards of ice around them, but finally they got to the top, they began to dig in.

They tried to carve out fox holes in the ice, but their tools snapped like magsticks.

They knew the counter attack was coming, and at ten point thirty that night it did.

A Chinese illumination grenade went off, and the sky turned to a sickly green, and the dim light the Marines could see the hill below them.

There were so many men climbing up it looked like the ground was moving.

The sound of their bugles and whistles cut through the icy air.

Carl told the Richmond Times Dispatch in nineteen ninety three that it was the scariest sound in the world.

If you're not afraid, you're stupid.

I think everybody was afraid.

Carl's men looked up at him with hopelessness.

They were so outnumbered, but Carl knew what his job was, not to force them like myers, not even just lead them, but to motivate them by understanding what they were going through.

Those people were depending on me, and when they depend on you, you have to live up to their expectations.

And soon enough the enemy soldiers were right on top of them.

It was hand to hand grenades that night.

You're all hepped up and the bugles screaming and people screaming.

It seemed to me they kept coming and coming.

It was a free for all, everyone shooting at close range, and when the bullets ran out, they hit each other with helmets, ab them with bayonets.

Carl was hid in the face and chest by grenade fragments, but he kept shooting back with that pistol he kept holstered on his heart.

The blood froze on his wounds, but against those crazy odds, Carl's men held the line.

They held that hill all night.

Once the sun came up, Carl had a view across the valley, and what he saw was awful bodies everywhere, and about a thousand more Chinese troops forming up to get back into the hills.

He knew they would return that night, and he knew he didn't have enough men to take them.

So he had a crazy idea.

He called down to the bottom of the hill and asked for any able body man to be sent up East Hill.

Cooks and supply people and engineers answered the call.

This ragtag crew made their way up to join Carl and his marines.

Carl was already an improbable leader, and now he was leading men who weren't even supposed to be fighting.

But if anyone could inspire them, it was Carl.

In nineteen ninety nine, he told a Richmond Times Dispatch reporter that he had total faith in those men, even if he wasn't sure he would survive.

I had no doubt we were going to get out of there, but I didn't know if I personally would make it.

As darkness descended again, the enemy returned in full force, just as Carl had feared.

The hill was rocked with mortar fire.

The Chinese soldiers attacked, and group after group, their numbers seemed endless.

All through that long night, Carl exposed himself to fire again and again, just so he could take care of his guys.

He went from foxhole to foxhole, adjusting machine guns, telling his men to stay strong and hang on.

Once again, he was wounded, hit with shrapnel in the face, chest and arms, but he would not leave.

All of his other officers had been hit or evacuated or killed.

He felt it was his duty to stay.

They knew that I wouldn't leave them, and when they believe in you, then things can get done that maybe under normal conditions would never get done.

These were abnormal conditions, and people had faith in themselves and their units in the core, That's what all boils down to.

And then just before dawn, the attack slowed as the sun rose.

It was quiet.

They were alive.

Carl Sitter had led his team of supply guys, cook somebmarines through the darkest night.

He had believed in them, and so they had believed in themselves.

Carl and his marines would spend one more night on East Hill, but the attacks waned.

Soon the airport at hagaroo Ree was opened.

Reinforcements and supplies were finally on their way.

Carl had survived only ninety of his men walked off that hill with him.

He took no personal credit for the victory.

Maybe he thought, this is why he had that invisible shield around him on the road to Hagaruri, this is why God had saved him when so many others had fallen.

Carl's grandfather was a Presbyterian minister.

Religious faith was core to the family, and I think that faith helped Carl feel like he could do what he needed to do.

The UN forces fought their way back down those mountain passes towards the port.

The men must have all been shell shocked by that point, exhausted, but Carl's leadership didn't waver.

He made sure that his men knew that they mattered and that he would not leave a single person behind.

Stephen Olmsted remembers it well.

I felt that if I were hit, killed, or badly wounded my fellow marines, the guys on my right on my left would get me.

On the hill and take care of my Friday, and that meant a lot.

On December eleventh, the last American forces reached the port of hung Na, where ships were waiting to take them home.

Company G was decimated, badly, shattered, men and men frostbitten beyond belief in the terrible cold, are put aboard planes for a safe harbor.

Carl had survived, but the battle had changed him.

It had shown him how fleeting life was, how fragile we are.

There was something else that struck him that all the men noticed.

As bad as it had been for the Americans, the Chinese soldiers had it even worse.

They had been cannon fodder.

It seemed like no one in their leadership expected them to survive.

Here's Raymond Davis again.

They didn't have our children, didn't have air.

We found whole Chinese units frozen to death, tennis shoes and rose shades.

Carl's heart went out to those enemy fighters.

Even after what he had faced, he felt sympathy and respect for them.

He saw their humanity.

Carl eventually returned to the States.

He got promoted again, and then he got the call to go to his commanding general's office.

He was going to be awarded the Medal of Honor by President Truman.

Carl and Reginald Myers, the major who had started the battle on East Hill, both received the medal at the White House.

Reporters were there to film it.

Two marine officers received from the President's hands the nation's highest award, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Major Reginald Myers is joined in the occasion by his family.

Both he and.

Major Carl Sitter were cited for their heroic conduct during the disastrous retreat from the chung Jin Reservoir a year ago in Korea.

But Carl didn't believe he did anything particularly special or hard.

I had the easy job because as commanding officer, you're worried about the troops and hoping your past training and everything will give you the knowledge to go ahead and do the right thing, and you hope the mission will be completed.

The hardest position was some private down there in a hole, and the only thing he knows is someone's coming.

Carl stayed in the Marine Corps for a total of thirty years.

He had a full life, a family, two boys and a girl, and after he retired from the survey, he and his wife, Ruth, settled in Richmond, Virginia.

Karl worked with the Department of Social Services.

He retired again, but he had spent the decades since Korea thinking about why he had been spared when so many others had died he wondered what God wanted from him, was fighting in war is really what he was put on this planet to do.

What war does is destroy people on both sides, and it takes many years to get back what we destroyed.

We don't really win anything by war, And.

So he dug into his faith.

What he found there was a core lesson.

God says we're to love everybody.

So in nineteen ninety seven, when he was seventy four years old, he decided to get a master's degree in Christian education.

He knew he was too old to be a minister.

His plan was to volunteer to help the elderly, but then his friend Bill Crawford passed away.

Crawford was a Medal of Honor recipient from Pueblo, Colorado.

Carl had grown up in Pueblo too, so Carl flew out to the funeral.

It was a cold and windy day, but Carl insisted on joining the procession to the cemetery, standing outside for the service, braving the elements, being there to honor his friend's heroism and service.

After all, he stood out in far worse weather than that.

When he got home, Carl came down with the cold the cole turned to pneumonia.

He died three weeks later at the age of seventy seven.

What I love about Carl's story is how grounded it is in faith.

Not faith in higher power necessarily, though he's certainly had that.

I'm talking about faith in the potential of others.

Carl's men had faith in him, and he had faith in them.

It was a virtuous circle, and that circle made them all stronger.

It inspired them.

That was Carl's superpower.

It's an amazing way to lead, and more than that, it's a beautiful way to live.

Medal of Honor.

Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Jess Shane.

Our editor as Ben Nadaf Hoffrey, sound design and additional music by Jake Gorsky.

Our executive producer is Constanza gayardro fact checking by Arthur Gomperts and original music by Eric Phillips.

Production support by Suzanne Gabber.

The rest of the team includes Carl Catl Greta Cone, Christina Sullivan, Sarah Nix, Nicole Optenbosch, Eric Sandler, Morgan Ratner, Jordan McMillan, Keira Posey, Owen Miller, Amy Haggerdorn, and Jake Flanagan.

Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and the Korean War Legacy Foundation.

This is our last episode of this second season, but we want to keep hearing from you, so please send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.

Email us at Medal of Honor at pushkin dot fm.

You might hear your stories on future episodes of Medal of Honor, or see them on our social channels at Pushkin Potts.

I'm your host, j R.

Martinez