You Still Here

Most people know instinctively not to build their own zipline. Most, but not all....

You still here 4 20 24 v2

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>You Still Here? Saturday, April 20, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Saturday, April 20, 2024

 Most people know instinctively not to build their own zipline. Most, but not all....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

 at Yellowstone National Park’s Bridge Bay Campground has a long road of recovery ahead of him but is expected to recover. 

He was even making jokes about it in the moments after it happened, 

the photographer who witnessed the event tells Cowboy State Daily

Carl Ison-McDaniel, 65, of Kendall, Washington, 

by a bull bison Friday. He remains hospitalized as he recovers from being thrown at least 8 feet 

[{"type":"text","text":"On Sunday, he posted a brief note on Facebook."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“Thank you everyone I am OK,” he wrote."}]

, said he’s been in contact with McDaniel’s grandson, who was with him when it occurred.

“(The family) seems to be protecting their privacy, so I don’t want to pry any more than I already have,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

He did, however, say that McDaniel was “in good spirits” immediately after his harrowing ordeal.

“He was in a lot of pain, but was conscious and joking the whole time,” he said.

McDaniel was walking past the Bridge Bay Campground with his 

 grandson around 8:30 p.m. when the incident occurred. The bull bison had been there for some time, running through the campsites and mock-charging people, tents and picnic tables.

When McDaniel and his grandson arrived, the bison was rolling in a dust wallow, and it seemed to have momentarily calmed down. The pair was unaware of how aggressively it had been behaving moments 

“They weren't even in that camping loop,” McLeod said. “They were walking along the road, quite a ways away from the bison. They stopped, got their phones out, and took some pictures, and when the bison started to get up, (McDaniel) was like, “OK, time to leave.’”

MacLeod has emphasized multiple times, during interviews with national and international news publications since the incident, that McDaniel and his grandson did nothing to provoke the bison and weren’t acting irresponsibly.

When the bison started running toward them, McDaniel ran behind a line of trees to put something between himself and the bison. He couldn’t have anticipated the bison would run into the trees, undeterred by the barrier.

“(McDaniel) made a lap around the trees, and the bison chased him through the trees,” MacLeod said. “I thought he'd lost him, but the bison kept going around and came out the other side.”

That’s when the bison hooked its horn around McDaniel’s leg and tossed him into the air. He landed hard on his right side, resulting in several broken bones.

At that point, MacLeod put his camera down and ran at the bison, "making myself as big and loud as I could," to drive it off. When several other observers followed suit, the bison ran off.

In one sense, McDaniel was lucky. He didn’t appear to have been gored by the bison’s horns, which could have made the incident fatal.

“Another gal and I did a blood sweep, but we couldn’t find any blood,” he said. “(McDaniel) was conscious and in good spirits until EMS arrived.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Community Leader"}]

McDaniel didn’t share any additional information on the incident or his condition, although his situation has improved from “critical” to “serious.”

, McDaniel is an active member of his community in northwest Washington.

He’s on multiple boards in Kendall, including Foothills Community Alliance and the Columbia Valley water and parks districts. He’s also one of the co-founders of The Foothills Communication Hub, an online publication with news and event information for Kendall and several other communities in northwest Washington.

[{"type":"text","text":"He’s not likely to forget his visit to northwest Wyoming anytime soon."}]

MacLeod said he shared his videos of the bison with McDaniel’s grandson. He wanted to review his actions to see if there was any way he might have contributed to the bison’s aggression, and MacLeod repeatedly reassured him that he didn’t do anything wrong.

“He was really worried and wanted to see the video to make sure that it wasn't his fault,” he said. “It’s not his fault. You can tell from the very beginning. That was a really, really angry bison.”

Bison man 7 13 26

<title>Washington Grandfather Recovering In Hospital After Yellowstone Bison Attack | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The man who made international headlines after being attacked by a bison in Yellowstone on Friday is in a hospital recovering with several broken bones. Carl Ison-McDaniel of Kendall, Washington, thanked well-wishers and said he was doing "OK."

Washington Grandfather Recovering In Hospital After Yellowstone Bison Attack

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Public Safety

 for a North Carolina husband and father who disappeared in Wyoming's Snake River over the Fourth of July weekend came to an end Saturday after campers spotted his body floating in the water.

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office announced that Tory J. Raether, 55, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was recovered Saturday morning in the McCoy Creek area.

Star Valley Search & Rescue Commander Matt McMurdo said campers noticed Raether's body from the shoreline around 11:30 a.m. They paddle-boarded out to him before calling authorities.

Search-and-rescue crews, who had been back on the river Saturday morning, responded quickly and recovered Raether's body.

Raether disappeared July 4 after jumping into the river without a life jacket at Jump Rock, a popular recreation area about 3½ miles east of Alpine.

Members of his group tried unsuccessfully to rescue him after he began struggling against the swift current.

Since then, Star Valley Search & Rescue had searched the river and nearby reservoir using drones, rafts, a jet boat, jet skis and, later in the week, search dogs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Bring Him Home'"}]

Earlier in the week, Lincoln County Sheriff M. Shane Johnson told Cowboy State Daily the mission had transitioned from a rescue operation to a recovery effort.

"The goal is to find their family member and return him to them, so they can have closure," Johnson said.

That goal remained constant as Raether's wife, Jean, daughters Grace and Melanie, close friends and other loved ones traveled to Wyoming to wait for answers.

Among them was Brad Johnson, Raether's best friend of 35 years, who had planned to help search alongside another lifelong friend and Raether's daughter's boyfriend, a rafting guide familiar with the river.

[{"type":"text","text":"Saturday afternoon, Johnson shared the news many had feared."}]

"With a heavy heart, I wanted to let everyone know that Tory has been found," he wrote to his friends. "Thank you to everyone who reached out with texts, calls, and messages during these difficult days. Your love and support have meant more to me and to Tory's family than we can express."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Deeply Loved "}]

During the search, friends described Raether as a devoted husband, father and mentor whose kindness left a lasting impression on nearly everyone he met.

"Tory wasn't just a friend to me — he was like a brother," Johnson told Cowboy State Daily. "He was one of those rare people who made life brighter simply by walking into a room."

Johnson said Raether built a successful career as an investment professional, volunteered through Kiwanis and Rotary, mentored others and was always looking for ways to help those around him.

"The world needs more people like Tory," he said. "He lived with joy, loved freely, and gave far more than he ever expected in return."

Julia Joy Raether, Tory's former sister-in-law, said she remained close to the family even after her marriage to his brother ended years ago.

"Tory was deeply loved by everyone who knew him," she told Cowboy State Daily. "He was kind, generous, adventurous, and had a quiet strength that drew people to him."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Closure "}]

She said the tragedy was especially personal because her youngest son was with Tory when they entered the river.

"My son made it out. Tory did not," she said. "Our family has been living through the uncertainty, hoping for a miracle while also coming to terms with the reality of how powerful that river is."

For a week, Raether's family watched search crews work the Snake River, holding onto hope while preparing for the worst.

Now, with his recovery complete, they can bring him home.

North carolina man 7 13 26

<title>Body Of North Carolina Man Recovered From Snake River After Weeklong Search | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The body of Tory Raether was found in the Snake River a week after leaping into the swift currents. Family and friends remember Raether as a devoted husband, father and mentor. "The world needs more people like Tory," close friend Brad Johnson said.

Body Of North Carolina Man Recovered From Snake River After Weeklong Search

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Friday, July 10th.  I’m Mac Watson

This newscast is brought to you by the Wyoming State Fair. Wrap up your summer at the Wyoming State Fair, August 11th through the 15th in Douglas!

Rodeo, Demolition Derby, live music, entertainment and fair food await. Learn more at W-Y State Fair dot com. See you at the fair! This ad was paid for by Converse County Tourism.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"–"}]

A tourist was seriously injured Friday evening after being thrown 8 feet into the air by a bull bison in Yellowstone National Park. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that professional photographer Mike Macleod filmed the incident and said the bison was “angry, agitated and charging anything and everything.”

“The victim did nothing wrong. The narrative that's been circulating across social media is that this was another quote-unquote Touron or idiot doing something wrong in the park, and that can and does happen. But looking at the video evidence, the victim did nothing to provoke the bison. They were a safe distance away, at least in theory. This bison had been causing trouble in the Bridge Bay campground for a while before he showed up.  The victim and his grandson tried to put something between themselves and the bison when it ran towards them, and that just wasn't enough. The bison in this case was the instigator.”

MacLeod was camping at the Bridge Bay Campground when his wife pointed out the bull bison entering the area. He grabbed his camera and started shooting from a safe distance.

Meanwhile, footage of the incident has become an international sensation with news organizations all over the U.S. and the world referencing Cowboy State Daily’s article. Reporter Andrew Rossi was the first to cover the story and to get an interview with the photographer. The video has been viewed millions of times.

A Mexican national who faces eight felonies is attempting to stay in the country after he allegedly tried to ram travelers off the road in Snake River Canyon in June of 2024. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that one victim says that 46-year-old Ramon Gabriel Chavez Cruz, “deliberately crossed the centerline and targeted our vehicle.”

“His Teton County case just concluded with what they call a split sentence. He spends 180 days in jail, tries probation for three years. If he fails probation, he goes to prison for like two and a half to four and a half years. But he already has enough time served that that initial 180-day stint is eclipsed. The trooper recounted that he was basically trying to head-on collide with multiple people. Most of that happened in Lincoln County, one of the alleged victims from Lincoln County, was flabbergasted at the 180-day sentence in Teton County, but it's just not over yet. And as for the visa, his defense attorney was describing it as if he's been the victim of a crime and is working to stay in the country in relation to that somehow.”

Chavez Cruz faces potentially much harsher consequences in Lincoln County, where County Attorney Spencer Allred has filed eight counts of aggravated assault against him – one for each person he allegedly charged with his truck. 

A Gillette woman's plans for one last summer road trip with her dying daughter have been derailed by a failed transmission in their 26-year-old SUV. But Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that London Tabor says she’s not giving up hope to take this trip with her daughter.

“Her daughter has Huntington's disease, and it's quickly sapping her life, and so they plan to go to the East Coast, plan to go rock hunting in Wyoming, and to a Huntington disease event that's in Utah, and all of that was on hold because she didn't have a vehicle. So, she's trying to rent a camper that would be able to facilitate taking her daughter, who now can't do anything except sit in a seat and watch. So she was hoping that she can get this trip accomplished, and have great memories with her this summer.”

Autumn was diagnosed with the disease in 2018 at age 12, which also is the same year that her father, Justin Fender, died from the same condition at age 36. 

Green River's Bradlee Skinner was homeless, delivering pizzas, and wondering how his life had unraveled. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that now he performs before sold-out crowds with the Savannah Bananas, baseball's wildly popular entertainment phenomenon. And it all started with a selfie.

“In 2024, Bradley Skinner, he's a high school teacher at Green River, teaches theater in English, and he took a group of theater students to Salt Lake City to see the Savannah Bananas. And while they were all getting their pictures taken with the players in the parking lot before the game, Skinner heard a DJ. He knew there was a DJ nearby, and he himself is a DJ. So he went and sought out that guy and took a picture with him. And the guy noticed, and they started up a conversation about DJing. And so fast forward a year, and that DJ reached out and said, "Hey, I think you should try out. They're doing auditions because they're growing their teams. They're adding new teams, and they need a few more DJs in their back pocket. So that's really how it all got started with a selfie.”

The job has taken him from Wyoming classrooms to iconic ballparks such as Coors Field in Denver and soon Wrigley Field in Chicago, where he rubs shoulders with performers and entertainers he once showed his students as examples of creative excellence.

I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

Cowboy State Daily News continues now….

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"–"}]

So many dead trees are piling up on Wyoming’s remote wilderness trails, some outfitters say they should be allowed to use chainsaws to clear them rather than working for days with hand tools. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that chainsaws have been banned from those areas for 62 years.

“The Forest Service kind of created a little loophole and allowed some outfitters in this spring in Idaho, in the Frank Church wilderness, and so now some people are saying, "Hey, we need to start doing this kind of all over the West, just letting a few people get in, because we just, we can't keep ahead of this timber otherwise, because under the strict rules of wilderness, you have to go in there like the old-fashioned push-pull saws or an ax or whatever, and some people are saying that with the sheer volume, what we got there, which we're never going to get ahead of it, and of course, opponents are saying no.”

Pine beetle epidemics have torn through forests across the West, leaving dead trees everywhere. They frequently fall over on trails, or blow over in huge piles.

The Forest Service and volunteer trail associations across Wyoming 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"– "}]

A trespasser trying illegally to make a copy of rare dinosaur footprints on the “Paleo Park” Zerbst Ranch near Newcastle ended up vandalizing the site. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that owner Kristen Stauffer says she was “shell-shocked.”

“Apparently, someone trespassed onto their property, poured blue silicone into one of the tracks in the attempt to make a copy of it, and then just abandoned the scene with the silicone still in the track, now they have been able to remove most of it. But setting aside the fact that there could be permanent damage from that, it's the fact that somebody violated their trust. That if this person had asked them if they could make a copy of their dinosaur footprint, they would have been all for it.”

Setting aside the enormous scientific value of the fossil, Stauffer was “heartbroken” by the blatant disregard for her family’s history. The Zerbst Trackway was found by her father, Leonard, and has enormous personal significance to her and her family.

Laramie 9-year-old elk caller Axl Anton is set to compete against teens nearly twice his age in the world elk calling championship this month. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that Axl’s already "in the top five best callers in the country, if not the best,” said a hunting industry insider.

“His dad said he took an interest in it when he was about two, called in his first bull when he was six, and he's been in several contests now. He's going to the world elk calling contest that's held at Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's headquarters in Missoula, Montana. The kid is young enough to compete in the Peewee division, but he said he doesn't want to do that, he wants to step up and compete with the big kids, so he's going to be competing with kids that are about high school age. He already is almost considered world class at the ripe old age of nine, so just kind of a cool story”

Archery elk hunters use tube-shaped calls to imitate the grunts, screams and bugles of bull elk during the rut, or mating season. The idea is to sound as much like a bull elk as possible. So, the real bulls, thinking a challenger is in their territory, will move in to investigate.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"—"}]

And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on 

 - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our 

 channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

News image 7 13 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, July 13, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Monday's headlines include:
* Tourist Injured By Bison
* Last Trip For Mom & Dying Daughter
* Mexican National Furious Canyon Rampage

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, July 13, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

Mortar rounds were once code-named “Tootsie Rolls” during the Korean War. But no one was diving for cover at the National Museum of Military Vehicles when the Tootsie Rolls started falling in Dubois alongside big, fat raindrops.

Instead, there were children clapping hands and laughing, just before a squealing sprint for a spot under the black helicopter hovering just above one of the museum’s side parking lots, letting fall what looked a bit like rain itself. 

The helicopter drop was arranged by U.S. Army veteran Gene Humphrey, who was born and raised in Burns. Humphrey worked with museum staff and a friend, helicopter owner Steve Funk, to pull it off.

Marines of a certain age were smiling in spite of themselves as the children scrambled after the candies wrapped in special red-white-and-blue paper. They remembered a time and a frozen place when those gooey caramels meant the difference between life and death.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Code Word: Tootsie Roll"}]

The year was 1950 and the location was the Chosin Reservoir, American History Project Founder and The Chosin Few President Shayne Jarosz recalled during a recent lecture series at Dubois’ National Museum of Military Vehicles. The lecture is part of ongoing activities this year that celebrate America’s 250th.

“The men were surrounded by roughly 300,000 Chinese troops,” Jarosz said. “It is minus-40 degrees. They do not have the cold-weather gear that they need, and they are being attacked in force.”

To maintain a level of secrecy about their needs, the Marines had code words for everything important. 

“If you needed something, you didn’t want to say, ‘Hey, we’re almost out of bullets, send them',” Jarosz said. “Because the Chinese were listening. So the code word for mortar rounds was Tootsie Rolls.”

One day, the radio chatter suddenly became all about Tootsie Rolls, but not all the pilots were aware of all the code words.

“We are running low on Tootsie Rolls and we need them right now,’” Jarosz said the men were screaming. “And these great pilots who are flying all these sorties have no idea what in the world is going on. But they know that these men are in a desperate fight for their life and if it’s Tootsie Rolls they want, then it’s Tootsie Rolls they’ll get.”

This version of the story has been disputed by some historians, Jarosz acknowledged. But enough veterans have told him personally about this tale that he feels comfortable repeating it.

“So, along the entire evacuation route, they dropped Tootsie Rolls, and it ended up saving the lives of these men,” Jarosz said. “They had not eaten in days.”

The sudden arrival of the candy was like manna from heaven to these men, providing something simple but vital — sugar and calories in a package small enough to slip into frozen hands and pockets. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Just Food"}]

The Tootsie Rolls did more than just feed starving Marines. 

“Their fuel tanks had been shot and would not hold any fuel,” Jarosz said. “They could chew on that Tootsie Roll and melt it. Then they could put it in a bullet hole and, at 40 degrees below zero, it would expand and seal that gas tank.”

That allowed them to fuel enough trucks to evacuate their wounded. History records 18,000 casualties during the Chosin Reservoir battle, as well as thousands more who suffered frostbite. Those numbers could have been significantly higher but for the improvised repairs the candy made possible. 

Word of the Tootsie Roll story eventually made its way back to the candy makers. Since the 1950s, the Tootsie Roll Corporation has chosen to quietly honor the Marines of Chosin, sending them more than 150 pounds of their candy to all of their annual reunions. 

“You want to see a bunch of 90-year-old men acting like they’re 5 years old,” Jarosz said with a chuckle. “It’s really wonderful. And what’s even more wonderful about this is, Tootsie Roll is a family organization, and they never forget these guys.”

The candy company still ships the treats to reunions of men sometimes called The Frozen Chosin or The Chosin Few, so named because so few survived. They are a dwindling brotherhood of men who survived a freezing gantlet.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Freak Cold Snap"}]

For the men caught up in the Chosin Reservoir Campaign, the battle quickly became less about human enemies and more a fight against the Korean winter itself.

The weather, according to veteran accounts, had been relatively mild when Americans first landed in North Korea. 

Marines and soldiers who reached the Chosin area in early November 1950 were writing family members back home, saying the weather wasn’t “too bad.”

However, a Siberian cold front swept in, precipitously changing all that. Temperatures plunged to around 40 below, with wind chills far colder. Some estimates say it was down to minus-70 — among the harshest conditions ever recorded in that part of North Korea.

The freak cold snap caught the troops without proper cold-weather gear or equipment. Many of the Marines were still dressed for the mild coastal climate they’d left behind when they received their marching orders to head to the Chosin Reservoir. 

When the Chinese launched their massive night assault at about 1 a.m., only half the Marines were on alert. The rest had their boots off, socks draped around their necks, in an attempt to dry them before the next day.

They had no time to put their boots back on. They dove into foxholes shoeless, and sometimes sockless, too.

Enemy fire came in human waves of roughly a thousand men at a time moving in V-shaped, three-man formations to help minimize casualties from machine guns and artillery. The successive waves felt relentless and endless, and were a strategy Jarosz said was aimed at trying to melt down machine gun barrels through sheer numbers. 

But there was also a psychological aspect, too. Every wave, the Chinese were crashing cymbals and blowing horns as they charged to unnerve the Marines.

“The Marines are like, ‘Oh, what in the world is going on?’ ” Jarosz said. “You talk to the veterans today about this stuff, and they said it was the biggest nightmare they ever had.”

Frostbite, meanwhile, ravaged the ranks, and many men later required amputations.

More than 8,000 Americans suffered frostbite at Chosin. 

It wasn’t just Americans suffering from the cold, Jarosz said.

The Chinese soldiers, too, had come dressed in lighter clothing than the moment required. They were wearing thin, cotton-quilted uniforms and shoes Jarosz likened to old “Chuck Taylor” Converse sneakers.

“Their feet would swell so much that their shoelaces would literally pop,” he said. “And at first the Marines didn’t know what in the world that noise was. It was the Chinese shoelaces exploding. So I mean, these guys were really, really miserable, because they had been out there much longer than the Marines had been out there.”

Among the Chinese, Jarosz said 30,000 men are estimated to have died from cold alone, while 40,000 died in combat. 

The Chinese army had been moving toward Chosin Reservoir in stealth mode, tying themselves to trees by day to sleep, and traveling at night so their movements would not be noticed.

“A man who is out during the day would be seen by any kind of spot or airplane and would be shot on sight,” Jarosz said. “So this was a very, very well-disciplined military.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Battle For Fox Hill"}]

Among the most desperate of the Chosin Reservoir fights unfolded on Fox Hill, a rocky ridgeline commanding the Toktong Pass. The narrow mountain defile controlled the way to Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri and was the 1st Marine Division’s only escape route. 

There, about 220 Marines of Fox Company were giving their all to hold the 2- to 3-mile-long mountain pass against an assault by 1,400 Chinese troops. 

In places, it was a line stretched so thin as to be more gap than men. Still, the men held their own, thanks to Marines like Hector Cafferata, who fought barefoot for three days, batting grenades back at the enemy with his rifle and shooting so many dead that the men who wrote his application for a Congressional Medal of Honor feared to list the true number, lest commanders think they had lied.

“When they wrote his citation up for his Medal of Honor, they purposely said that when the fighting had stopped on Fox Hill, they found more than 15 dead Chinese bodies around Hector’s fighting position,” Jarosz said. “There’s an annotation on that citation that says, ‘We actually counted 100 bodies that he had single-handedly killed, but we knew that nobody back at Headquarters would believe it'.”

Many of those Chinese soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand combat, Jarosz said. 

On the eastern side of the reservoir, things weren’t going quite as well. Soldiers with the Regimental Combat Team 31 — roughly 4,500 undertrained GIs — had been overwhelmed. As their column tried to withdraw under heavy attack, wounded men loaded in the backs of trucks were slaughtered when Chinese forces overran the convoy. 

Survivors, many badly wounded and half frozen, wriggled out from under wrecked vehicles. Too weak to walk, they were forced to crawl across the surface of the frozen Chosin Reservoir. 

Jeeps from the Marine base camp at Hagaru-ri, which sits at the southern tip of the Chosin Reservoir, were sent to pick up the stragglers. It was a grim, slow rescue that took place under the cover of subzero darkness.

Jarosz recalls the story of Col. Warren Wiedhahn. The young Marine machine gunner, a private at the time, was shot across the forehead in the battlefield chaos.

He was mistakenly tossed into a pile of bodies when his blood froze over his face and medics thought his skull was gone. 

Thirty minutes later, he woke up and stumbled into a warming tent, shocking everyone.

“With the limited medical care they could give him, they stitched his forehead back together,” Jarosz said. “They bandaged his forehead and gave him four aspirin. Then they said, ‘Get back on the line'.”

Years later, every time schools in his home state of Virginia would call school off for a snow day, he would call Jarosz to marvel — half joking, half bitter — that kids stayed home for a dusting of snow when he’d once been “shot in the head and had to go back to work.”

Many of the men who fought so valiantly at Chosin Reservoir did so despite knowing their families already believed them dead.

Early media reports, even in newspapers back home, were reporting that the First Marine Division had been lost. 

But the Marines did what Marines are trained to do. They started fighting back in reverse, step by bloody step, evacuating their wounded as they went.

Leaders such as Major General Oliver P. Smith, the legendary Col. Lewis “Chesty” Puller, and First Lieutenant Kurt Chew-Een Lee, the first Asian-American officer in the Marine Corps, kept pushing their men forward, doing everything they could to evacuate as many as possible.

Chew-Een Lee had been shot in November, a bullet shattering the bone in his arm. It was still in a sling at the time. But he didn’t let that stop him.

To make sure his men could see him on this fighting rescue mission despite the blinding snow, he wrapped himself in fluorescent aviation tape.   

He was a glowing silhouette on a land where everything else was white drifts and black sky. Men trudged behind him in snow up to their knees, following him toward the embattled company on the Fox Hill ridge.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Blowing The Bridge"}]

Step by step, the men fought their way off Fox Hill and back onto the narrow road that snaked south toward the sea, no longer trying to win ground. They were just trying to stay alive long enough to get out of the mountains.

The road funneled everything — wounded men, frozen trucks, tanks held together thanks to Tootsie Rolls and hope — toward Funchilin Pass. 

The Chinese had already blown up the concrete bridge that had been there, leaving a toothless chasm with no way to cross.

It was a problem others were working on, with a crazy-sounding plan like some writer would dream up for a movie. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But this was real life."}]

Air Force C-119 “Flying Boxcars” would each carry a single steel bridge section — a chunk of portable treadway about the size and weight of a small railcar and push it out the back, over the mountain.

Each section would float down under giant cargo chutes onto a flat patch of ground near the blown span at Funchilin Pass. The Marines would then bolt the pieces in place to hold them.

On paper, the plan sounded simple enough. Bridge sections would drop from the sky, Marine engineers would stretch them across the gap and bolt them into place, and then everybody would quickly get across. Once everyone was across, the span would be blown up, keeping the Chinese from following.

Two bridge sections dropped too fast and were too badly mangled to use. 

“They … were able to jerry-rig this thing to where they were able to get these men out of there,” Jarosz said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"How Legends Are Made"}]

All along that frozen gantlet — from Chosin Reservoir to Funchilin Pass — the soldiers found Tootsie Rolls that helped sustain them as well as to plug bullet holes to keep trucks fueled up and running. 

Regardless of which legend one believes, Jarosz said, there’s no disputing that the Tootsie Rolls were in the nick of time to save them all at a critical moment. 

They have become part of an enduring legend of American courage and ingenuity. 

It didn’t take long for the children to scoop up every last Tootsie Roll from the gravel at the National Museum of Military Vehicles after Jarosz’s lecture. They were excited about their sugary haul, even as they were largely unaware of the larger significance behind the moment.

But there were those in the crowd who understood. 

For them, it was enough to see Tootsie Rolls falling from the sky in honor of all the sacrifices made. This time, it was in a country that is at peace, in a Wyoming town a world away from the Frozen Chosin. 

A candy drop at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois was more than just fun for kids. It honored the "Frozen Chosin" Marines who depended on Tootsie Rolls for calories, field repairs and sheer survival on minus-40 degree days in the Korean War.

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