"About that time someone hollered and said, We are out of ammunition. Tell them we give up, they are going to kill us all anyway." McMorris said the Chinese soldiers were shooting into the trucks of wounded, which were silhouetted against the sky. A GI shouted to the Chinese that the group was surrendering. "Someone who spoke English without any accent said, "Do you surrender?" and someone hollered back and said, "Yes." "You could see them out there in the snow. I know what Custer felt like."

The Chinese soldiers cane in and one climbed on the tank where McMorris and Sawyer were. The tank driver chose that moment to try to break away, roaring the engine and shifting gears. "The Chinese were running along beside the tank throwing concussion grenades under the track trying to blow the track off." Incredibly, the attacking force then began directing small arms fire at the tank, as if though bullets could penetrate the armor. "They hit me five more times," McMorris remembers. "Back through the hip again, once in the left foot, twice in the right foot and once in the hand." McMorris spent the night in a culvert with other American soldiers, and the next day, crawled out on the frozen Chosin Reservoir.

He was temporarily captured by the Chinese there, and taken into their camp. Incongruously, he was given s blanket by one of the Chinese soldiers, but another took him to a small hill and shoved him down the slope. "He came down there and got my buddy's ID bracelet and bill fold and everything I had in my field jacket pocket. I had planned to send it home to his family. McMorris found a small, flat-bottomed boat that was barely long enough to lie down in. Later, another soldier who had been shot in the leg came and asked to share the boat. They stayed in the boat, unable to walk, for several days, with no food or water except for snow. McMorris' feet were frozen so he felt no pain from the bullet wounds in each foot.