Frozen Chosin Marine Receives Belated Lone Star

Marine who survived Chosin fight in 1950 gets belated medal Lone Star Medal of Valor added to 2 Purple Hearts
Express News
By Sig Christenson

July 6, 2015
In his final battle, Cpl. Werner W. “Ronnie” Reininger and his fellow Marines were surrounded, taking fire from all directions as temperatures fell to 30 degrees below zero.

Photo: John Davenport, Staff / San Antonio Express-News
Texas Governor Greg Abbott (left) congratulates Sergeant Werner W. Reininger, (center) United States Marine Corps (Retired) after Reininger received the Texas State Lone Star Medal of Valor Monday July 6, 2015 at a ceremony held at the Fort Sam Houston Golf Club. Reininger received the medal for extraordinary heroism during the Korean War. On the right is Major General John F. Nichols.

Most of the men in his battalion of the 1st Marine Division were dead or too badly wounded to move.

But Reininger, hit four times by incoming mortar shells, kept returning to his light machine gun, covering columns of Marines withdrawing along a dirt ox-cart trail in the face of an offensive by 300,000 Chinese troops.

“You didn’t survive by digging in,” he said, explaining that the Chinese would bayonet sleeping troops in their foxholes. “You survived by fighting.”

Reininger, 86, of San Antonio, received no medals other than a pair of Purple Hearts for losing both legs and all 10 of his fingers over a week of fighting in the late fall of 1950 at the bloody Chosin Reservoir. An award for high valor required at least two eyewitnesses, and none was found among the few in his unit who survived.

On Monday, however, a crowd of at least 150 stood and applauded as Air Force Maj. Gen. John Nichols, head of the Texas National Guard, presented Reininger with the Lone Star Medal of Valor, the state’s highest honor for courage on the battlefield.
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