The great-granddaughter of U.S. Army Gen. Matthew Ridgway recently visited South Korea to see the place where United Nations troops waged a desperate fight to finally halt a Chinese counteroffensive nearly 75 years ago.

Julie MacKnyght, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, toured Chipyong-ni, where U.S. and French troops under the United Nations Command held off waves of Chinese attacks Feb. 13-15, 1951.

Her great-grandfather, at the time commander of Eighth Army, ordered the U.S. 23rd Regimental Combat Team, along with the French, to hold the vital crossroads village and halt the Chinese army advance. U.N. troops, surrounded and outnumbered five to one, held on for three days, according to a U.S. Army account of the fight.

“It’s been amazing to be able to come here,” MacKnyght said Tuesday during a tour of the Chipyong-ni battle memorial about 40 miles east of Seoul. “I’ve been fascinated by my great-grandfather since I was a little girl. So, it’s really cool to see firsthand his impacts here in Korea.”

MacKnyght the following day in Seoul accepted the Korean-American Friendship Award from the Korea-America Association, given posthumously to her great-grandfather.

“It is because of Gen. Ridgway’s legacy that I am standing here today as an Army veteran myself, having completed just shy of 21 years active duty when I retired a few months ago,” she said at the gathering inside the Plaza Hotel. “I don’t think the idea of Army service ever would have entered my head, had I not been so fascinated with him as a child.”

Chipyong-ni marked the first time U.N. troops managed to stop the Chinese advance into South Korea since Oct. 19, 1950, when the Chinese crossed the Yalu River boundary and overwhelmed U.N. forces.

Two months after Chipyong-ni, Ridgway succeeded Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved by President Harry Truman, as commander of the U.N. forces. In the following spring of 1952, he replaced Dwight D. Eisenhower as supreme allied commander in Europe, followed by his appointment as Army chief of staff from August 1953 to June 1955. He died in July 1993 at age 98.

“He was a leader who cared about his troops — someone who led from the front,” MacKnyght said during her award speech. “May the friendship cemented between our peoples continue to grow over the next 75 years and beyond.”

MacKnyght was 11 when her great-grandfather died, and she never got to meet him, she said at the ceremony.

“One of my favorite things to do in grade school whenever I visited a library was to pull up the “R” volume of the encyclopedia and find his name,” she said. “Back then, the internet a decade or more away, research required diligence. If you were in the encyclopedia, it was a really big deal.”