War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its size,

and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history

through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. host, James Early. Hello and welcome back to Key Battles of the Korean War, our 10,000-foot survey of the

first major conflict of the Cold War.

I'm your host, James Early, as always.

And as always, I am joined by my co-host, Army Veteran and Military Historian, Evan Muxen.

Well, Evan, we've talked a lot about snowy and icy cold conditions in our series.

So far, we will continue to talk about that.

You're experiencing a little bit of that in person, aren't you?

Not nearly to the extent of these guys did, but it was been an interesting past few days.

So like your M1 Garand is not freezing up and getting jammed or your tank is not having trouble starting.

No, I think what we have to understand is that that winter, that particular winter, was one of the worst winters at that time in Korean history, period.

Yeah, it really is.

Things have been cold in our previous episodes, but they're about to get colder.

But before we jump into the new events, as I usually do, let's recap the last episode.

So in our last episode, we saw that soon after the UN's highly successful amphibious

invasion of Enchan, its capture of Seoul, and its advance to the 38th parallel,

...