A Canyon Country octogenarian is among the U.S. military’s more exclusive clubs: survivors of the so-called “Frozen Chosin,” who survived the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.

Murl E. Craven, 86, served as a cook while en route to North Korea, but he traded in his ladle for an a .50-caliber machine gun as soon as he set foot on Korean soil.

Craven was one of 8,000 Marines surrounded by what some historians estimated to be about 100,000 Chinese soldiers vying for the frozen piece of land surrounding the man-made lake in the northeast Korean peninsula.

“I wouldn’t make book on that if my life depending on it, but there was supposed to be 100,000 of them,” he said. “There wasn’t that many of us, and we were killing them like they were flies.

“It was so cold at the reservoir that while we were up there talking, all of our words froze up,” Craven said with a chuckle. “They froze solid.”

The 17-day battle in late 1950 followed an invasion of North Korea by Chinese troops who outnumbered United Nations troops by more than two to one.

Despite the numbers, UN troops inflicted crippling losses on Chinese troops before pulling out of North Korea for good.

Craven and his fellow Marines and soldiers made a three-day march through a narrow valley to leave enemy territory.

“Once we got started, we didn’t stop,” he said.

Craven recalls Air Force planes swooping from the sky to strafe the valley’s ridges with volleys of gunfire.

“You could see (the Chinese soldiers) falling off the ridges up there while they tried setting their machine guns up,” he said.

Craven joined the service at age 17 after growing up on an Iowa cattle ranch and then kicking around the West Coast looking for steady work.

“I had a hard time finding a job and making a living,” he said. “I was all over the West Coast. I’d been driving a truck in Portland, Ore., at 16, but my license said I was 18.”

After working at “anything to make enough to get a place to sleep at night,” he joined the Marines in 1943.

He traveled the South Pacific when Japan was trying to claim the region for its own.

“I went to Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa, Japan,” he said.

Craven left active duty in 1946 to serve in the Marine Reserves. He was called back to service in the summer of 1950.

Whether it be the Frozen Chosin or service members fighting current battles, the sacrifices of any veteran should be remembered, Craven said.

“There are a lot of people who put their lives on the line so everyone else could have a better country to live in,” he said. “How many millions of service members gave their lives so everybody else could live the kind of life they wanted to live?”

Following the Korea War, Craven left the service after nearly a decade in uniform.

“Our family is very proud that he would do that for his country,” said Jennifer Milhoan, one of Craven’s grandchildren. “I named my first son after him.”

Craven has 35 great-grandchildren. There will be a 36th grandchild born soon, he said.

“Pretty soon I’ll have to set them all down and start counting them again,” he joked.

Craven doesn’t dwell on his service, he said, but he’ll never forget the experience of serving his country as a Marine.

“It’s not just being a Marine — it’s part of being in an outfit where you know you’re never going to be last or left behind,” he said. “You might just about kill yourself doing something, but you’re going to do it, and that’s it.”