If it belongs to you, please email us or contact the Hospice Office at 301-994-3023, identify the camera and we’ll arrange for its return.

STRICKLAND, CHASEN, SMARTRONIX, TOP FIELD AT HOSPICE RUN.

If it belongs to you, please email us or contact the Hospice Office at 301-994-3023 and we’ll arrange for its return.

We’re always looking to improve so if you have comments about the event please email us.

Thanks for your support of the 17th Annual Run & Fun Walk and Hospice of St. Mary’s.

The Drill Hall is located on the grounds of the St. Mary’s County Governmental Center on Leonard Hall Drive, Leonardtown.

Any packets not picked up on Friday will be available for pick up on race day at the Drill Hall from 7am – 8am.

RUNNERS: We are using ChronoTrack Systems D-Tags again this year. The D-Tag is attached to your bib in the race packet so you are all set for race day.

PARKING NOTE: We’ve had a record number of registrations this year, participants are encouraged to carpool to the event if possible.

OVERFLOW PARKING: Overflow parking is available this year at St. Mary’s Hospital however note that there is no transportation from the Hospital parking lot to the event site.

If you have other questions see the FAQ page on this site.

After four days and five nights of combat in temperatures that dipped to 35 degrees below zero, Jerry McCabe’s toes were numb and black from frostbite. His right arm and leg were bleeding from shrapnel wounds inflicted by a Chinese mortar round. The 23-year-old Maryland native and self-described “wet-nosed lieutenant’’ was the fire control officer for an Army artillery unit engaged in what historians considered some of the bloodiest fighting of the Korean War: the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

By the night of Dec. 1, 1950, only 385 of the original 3,000 soldiers remained in the 31st Regimental Combat Team, known as Task Force Faith. The rest had been killed, taken prisoner, or left to freeze to death.

His fellow Chosin soldiers — poorly trained, ill-equipped, and outnumbered 8 to 1 — were cut off from a larger, battled-hardened Marine force on the west side of the reservoir near Hagaru-ri.

“There were dead Chinese lying all around us, and they were frozen in place,’’ Mr. McCabe recalled 50 years later in an interview with the Washington Post. The Americans had resisted wave upon wave of communist troops attempting to break their perimeter that included hand to hand combat. During the course of the intense fighting, some 35,000 Chinese troops had been killed. “They thought they would get into the perimeter and destroy us. For two nights, that didn’t happen,” Colonel McCabe said. “They had taken horrible casualties. We stopped them and bloodied them so badly they couldn’t circle the Marines.”

Finally, by that night, Mr. McCabe’s unit began a large-scale evacuation along a snow and ice covered road to the Marines’ lines 5 miles away.

After being struck by the mortar round earlier that day, Mr. McCabe lay unconscious in the cold for several hours until a passing soldier picked him up and put in the back of an open truck with other wounded.

But the Chinese launched an ambush on the evacuation, blowing up bridges crucial to the American escape. Waiting out the cold in their quilted uniforms and fur hats, the communists opened fire on the stranded trucks with machine guns and mortar fire.

“We were just sitting ducks for the Chinese,’’ Mr. McCabe said in 2000, noting he would “rather die before I was taken prisoner.’’

He managed to slither out of the truck and crawl into a ravine. There, he met up with another group of soldiers and together they hiked the remaining distance to the Marines on foot — despite his bleeding shrapnel wounds and severely frostbitten toes.

For the rest of his life, Mr. McCabe carried the wounds of the war with him. He had chunks of shrapnel throughout his body, varying in size from a dime to a quarter, that were visible beneath his skin. Going through airport security, he would set off metal detectors. And while his arm and leg wounds eventually healed, his toes never regained feeling.

Never one to complain, Col. McCabe felt lucky to be one of the “Chosin Few”. “So many people did so much more than I,’’ Mr. Colonel McCabe told the Post in 2000. “You come out and say, ‘Why the hell did I survive?’ ’’ Jerry went on to a long career in the military, serving a second tour in Korea and one in Vietnam before retiring as a colonel in 1973

In June 2000, Mr. McCabe and his fellow soldiers from Task Force Faith received a long-overdue citation “for extraordinary heroism and outstanding performance of duty” that finally helped correct a historical injustice and recognized the heroic sacrifice and actions of Task Force Faith, which resulted in saving the 1st Marine Division from destruction.

In retirement, he volunteered for numerous charities including the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Veterans Home in Charlotte Hall, Maryland. He was a 30-year member of St. Aloysius Catholic Church in Leonardtown, Maryland.

Jerry died of pancreatic cancer Aug. 27, 2010 at his home in California, Md., at age 84.

He is survived by his wife Peggy Duginns McCabe; one of the founders of Hospice of St. Mary’s County.

If you get a chance, stop by and visit Southern Maryland’s Premier Pub.

The event will take place from 5pm-9pm and Hospice will receive 10% of proceeds.

Please invite all of your friends to join us for a great night at Southern Maryland’s Premier Pub.

Click here for directions to The Olde Town Pub.

We hope to see you there!