Act of War

by Jack Cheevers

  The buses drove through the city and crossed a bridge over the wide Taedong River. Schumacher’s sense of disorientation was so strong that he thought he was losing touch with reality. He fought a powerful desire to sleep. He tried to think about what he’d be doing at this hour on a normal day. Aboard the Pueblo, he’d be on morning watch. Dawn at sea was his favorite time. Watching the sun climb slowly out of the water and into the sky, he felt, was like seeing God write poetry.

  The lieutenant raised his eyes long enough to glimpse ugly buildings and littered door stoops flash by. Everything seemed so dead. Maybe this was what the far side of the River Styx looked like. A hard whack to the top of his head interrupted his musings; Schumacher obediently dropped his chin to his chest.

  The buses turned off the boulevard onto a dirt road. They jounced along until they pulled into a large courtyard behind a four-story concrete building that stood black against the early-morning gray, icicles dripping from its eaves. It looked like a barracks. Schumacher saw 200 to 300 soldiers massed in the courtyard, jeering and chanting with an almost hypnotic rhythm. They made him think of a lynch mob working itself into a frenzy.

  The soldiers on the bus got out and waded into their brethren in the courtyard, shoving them back to make way for the captives but in the process creating a gauntlet. The crewmen headed into it. A soldier stepped into Steve Harris’s path and punched him in the mouth, drawing blood. Bucher got down stiffly from the bus and caught a karate kick in the back. That did it. He whipped around and went after the small, moon-faced soldier who’d kicked him, fists flying. Four other North Koreans dove on top of Bucher and all of them collapsed in a flailing, swearing pile.

  Soldiers manhandled the captain into the building, up three flights of stairs, and into a small room. They slammed him down on a crude bed, where he lay gasping for breath and scanning his new surroundings. The entire building smelled of hay and horse manure; the sailors later nicknamed it the Barn.

  Bucher’s cell measured about 12 by 17 feet. It was furnished with a wooden chair, a small table, and a steam radiator that made little headway against the cold. The sole window was covered with brown paper on the inside and canvas on the outside. From the ceiling a bare lightbulb emitted wan yellow light. The heavy wooden door had multiple cracks, through which an eye sometimes peered.

  Suddenly the door flew open. In strode a communist junior officer shrieking, “Imperialist aggressor! You’d better make sincere confession, or we shoot spying imperialist liar!” He stomped his feet and slapped his holstered pistol to drive home his point. By his side was a guard who looked no older than 15, nervously clutching a bayonet-tipped carbine. The boy eyed Bucher with a mixture of fear and revulsion. The officer railed on angrily for several minutes before earnestly asking the captain, “How you feel? Perhaps need to go to toilet, yes?”

  Bucher was led down the corridor to a foul-smelling lavatory. He limped to a urinal and voided mostly blood. The filthy basin already was streaked with other men’s blood—probably his crew’s, Bucher thought. He wheeled on the junior officer. “Where are my men?” he bellowed. “I demand to speak to them right now!” The North Korean told him to shut up.

  The officer and his jumpy adolescent sidekick escorted Bucher back down the hall. The skipper saw a dozen or more rooms, their doors closed. “Good luck, Captain!” called a distinctly American voice from behind one. Bucher couldn’t tell who it was, but his spirits soared; at least some of his guys were alive and confined on the same floor with him.

  Not long after he returned to his cell, another guard appeared with a plate of boiled turnips and a soggy piece of buttered bread. Bucher refused to eat, partly because of his determination not to cooperate with his captors in any way, partly because of nausea from the pain of his beatings and untreated wounds. The captain hadn’t told the North Koreans of his injuries out of fear he’d be sent to a hospital and separated from his men. The food-bearing guard withdrew, looking insulted.

  He soon came back to prod Bucher at bayonet point to another room for what turned out to be his first interrogation. In the room were more guards and a narrow-eyed North Korean major who was sitting at a table with some folders on it. Among them was the skipper’s personnel file, which he’d ordered destroyed during the attack. The captain knew his jacket contained only routine material—date of commissioning, various duty stations, service schools he’d attended. But if the communists had captured this, what else did they have?

  The major began asking questions obviously based on what he’d read in Bucher’s file, and the captain saw no reason to stonewall. The North Korean seemed uninterested in his years aboard submarines, but paid sharp attention to his attendance at the Navy’s Combat Information Center School, in Glenview, Illinois.

  “That proves you are a trained spy!” the major blurted triumphantly. “Counterintelligence school—part of infamous CIA!”

  Bucher didn’t bother to explain the difference between the CIA and a CIC, or combat information center, an area on a Navy ship where gunnery targets were plotted. He merely repeated his cover story about engaging only in peaceful research and again demanded the release of his men. The guards responded with a hail of kicks, punches, and karate chops that left him curled in the fetal position on the floor.

  The skipper was dumped back in his cell. His rectum and right leg burned from shrapnel wounds; his mind reeled with worry. Could he and his men hold up under beatings that probably would escalate to systematic torture? What if the North Koreans turned up the heat on quiet, unassuming Steve Harris and his CTs, their heads crammed with secrets? And what of Bucher himself? The captain had endured 16 hours of sporadic beatings that left him mottled with bruises. He hadn’t slept in 27 hours. How much more could he take? Already he felt himself disintegrating physically and mentally.

  Bucher was ordered out of his room again at about midmorning. Lined up single file in the corridor were his five officers, heads bent submissively. The Americans were marched down the hall to a large room where some desks had been arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. At the center desk sat a fat communist general, wearing an elegant olive uniform and chain-smoking. Several more field-grade officers sat at desks on either side of him. Facing the communist officers was a row of six empty wooden chairs. Sheets covered the windows, and dim ceiling lights gave the room a menacing aspect. It looked like the stage for a Stalinist show trial in the 1930s, with Bucher and his officers in the role of the doomed defendants.

  The Americans shuffled to their chairs and sat down. The general said nothing, letting the tension in the room build until it became almost unbearable. He rocked back and forth in his chair, glaring at his prisoners one by one. The tang of garlic wafted through the air.

  Finally, the general launched into an angry harangue in Korean, with Max translating as fast as he could.

  “You are guilty of heinous crimes against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” he shouted, using the communists’ preferred name for their country. “You are spies; you shall be treated as spies!”

  The tirade went on for at least 15 minutes. At the end of it the general fixed his eyes on Bucher.

  “What is your name and what is your job on the ship?”

  The captain started to answer, but Max cut him off.

  “Don’t you know to stand up when addressing a senior officer?”

  Bucher gave him a tired look and slowly got to his feet. He stated his name and rank.

  “What was your ship doing?” the general demanded.

  “My ship,” the skipper answered in a strong, clear voice, “was conducting oceanographic research in international waters. I demand that my ship and my crew . . .” Max motioned for him to stop. The general snorted contemptuously. The rest of the Pueblo officers were asked the same question in turn, and each repeated the cover story. The general muttered gutturally and signaled the men to sit down.

  “Yo
u were spying!” he exploded. “Spying against the peace-loving Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Captain, will you admit to that? Will you admit you were spying, that you violated our coastal waters?”

  So that was their game, to justify their piracy by falsely claiming an intrusion into their territorial waters. Bucher leaped to his feet, shouting that the Pueblo had never come closer than 15 miles.

  The general then demanded to know why the imperialist, warmongering United States had 50,000 troops in South Korea.

  “Because the government of South Korea found it necessary to ask our help in defending their country,” Bucher replied calmly.

  A communist colonel seated a few feet from the captain reacted to this heresy by lunging at him and throwing a wild punch that barely missed his head. The general told his livid subordinate to calm down and turned again to the Americans.

  “You have no rights under any Geneva convention rules as criminal spies and agents making provocations in time of peace against us! Do you not admit this is why you are here? Answer now!”

  One by one, the Pueblo officers denied they were spies.

  The general then leaned forward and spread his hands, palms up, as if events were now beyond his control.

  “You are espionage agents,” he said matter-of-factly. “How do you want to be shot? One at a time or all together at sundown?”

  Bucher again jumped to his feet and did something astonishingly, almost insanely brave.

  “Shoot me!” he yelled. “But let my officers and crew return to their ship and take it home.”

  “No, Captain! Because we caught you spying, ship now belongs to us.”

  “You seized us in international waters, where we had every right to be, dammit!” Bucher argued. “You’ve committed an act of war against the United States!”

  “It is you who commit act of war by spying!” the general shouted back. “You will be shot this afternoon!”

  The Americans were lined up in the hall again, heads bowed, and taken back to their cells. They had no chance to talk among themselves about the surreal, kangaroo court sentence that had just been imposed on them.

  Schumacher tried tidying up to keep his mind occupied but wound up staring dumbly at his ceiling light. Murphy was sharing a room with three enlisted sailors, and they wanted to know what was going to happen to them. He told them about the general’s interrogation but decided not to mention the promised executions, since he didn’t want to scare them any more than they already were.

  Steve Harris also was billeted with three seamen but took the opposite tack, telling them their officers were to be shot within hours. The men stared at him in shock, pinpoints of sweat emerging on their foreheads.

  A guard pushed his way into Bucher’s room bearing, of all things, a tray of milk and cookies. This time when the skipper refused to eat he was slugged. Shortly afterward, he was taken from his cell for what he thought might be an appointment with a firing squad. But it was another interrogation, conducted this time by the colonel who’d tried to punch him earlier.

  The North Korean promptly flew into a screaming diatribe, with a translator frantically trying to match his decibel level and manic pace. The effect might have been comical had the colonel’s anger not been so ferocious. Bucher’s first impulse was to cower, but he checked his fear by forcing himself to study the North Korean. For all its venom and wild energy, the colonel’s outburst had a choreographed feel to it. Bucher sensed he’d given this kind of performance before.

  The captain watched, riveted, as the communist officer pounded the table with his fist and stamped his boots. Finally, he shoved a typewritten statement at Bucher.

  “You will sign confession now!”

  The skipper’s refusal led to his worst beating yet. Guards took him back to his cell and slammed him into the walls over and over until he lay semiconscious on the floor. When he was later offered more food, the captain began to doubt that the communists intended to kill him, at least right away. And if they didn’t, was he in for even more nightmarish treatment at the hands of well-practiced torturers?

  Sometime between noon and one p.m., Bucher was again taken down the hall to the dimly lit interrogation room. Again he faced the narrow-eyed major, sitting at a table that now was piled with classified documents from the Pueblo. Stunned by the profusion, Bucher could only hope most of them were relatively routine operating manuals. He tried to conceal his alarm as he slid into his seat.

  The captain couldn’t read the titles on most of the papers from where he sat. But he did spot the Banner cruise reports he’d picked up in Honolulu. Those could be highly compromising. The Banner and the Pueblo were nearly identical vessels. Since the captured reports detailed the Banner’s surveillance of the Soviet Union and China, it was reasonable to assume its sister ship was doing the same thing off North Korea.

  “Do these belong to your ship?” the interrogator asked.

  “Yes, obviously. So what?”

  “Are they official American Navy documents?”

  “Yes, obviously. We are an official U.S. Navy ship operating on the high seas.”

  “Do you deny they prove you were spying?”

  Bucher answered that the documents demonstrated only that his ship had collected some incidental intelligence while carrying out scientific research.

  “Ah, then you will sign this confession!” the major exclaimed, producing the typewritten document that the angry colonel had earlier pressured Bucher to sign.

  The skipper scanned the statement. He was struck by its stilted phrasing and mangled grammar. Among other things, it claimed the CIA was in charge of the Pueblo’s mission and had promised Bucher that if he succeeded, “a lot of dollars would be offered to the whole crew members of my ship and particularly I myself would be honored.” The captain realized later he should’ve signed right then and there; the “confession” obviously hadn’t been written by a native English speaker. If the North Koreans tried to claim that a U.S. naval commander had signed it without coercion, they’d look ridiculous in the eyes of the world. But Bucher, determined not to yield to his captors, still refused to put his name on it.

  He steeled himself for another pounding. The major, however, only asked a few more questions and banished him to his room. More food was brought in, but the captain didn’t eat. The hall outside echoed with the sounds of doors being opened and slammed shut, followed by violent scuffling and screams. The other Americans evidently were being worked over, one by one. The skipper paced back and forth, his helplessness gnawing at him.

  “Stop beating my men, you bastards!” he shrieked at his closed door. “Stop beating my men and let us out of here!”

  Jesus God, Bucher, he thought, get hold of yourself. He couldn’t let the communists think he was cracking; that’s just what they wanted. He made himself step back from the door.

  The faint glow of daylight on his covered window gradually faded to black. The deadline for executing the American officers came and went. It had all been a bluff. But the North Koreans weren’t finished with Bucher.

  His next interrogation came at about eight p.m., in a small, dingy room on the second floor. For the second time he faced the angry colonel, now accompanied by several guards and interpreters. One interpreter held a semiautomatic handgun.

  Sitting behind a plain wooden desk, the colonel wore a well-made military greatcoat and a fur hat against the penetrating cold. He was tall, thin, and well-groomed. His jet-black hair was combed straight back, without a part, and his eyes glittered behind green-tinted glasses. Bucher began to think he was the real power in the prison. The crewmen later nicknamed him “Super C.” Although they didn’t know it at the time, the communist officer had been implicated in the deaths of 200 American POWs during the Korean War.

  Super C seemed calm at first, almost amiable. He told Bucher that North Korea wanted only peace, and fo
r peace to be preserved, the captain must admit his spying forthwith. He again presented Bucher with the typed confession he’d already spurned twice that day.

  “Sign it and you will all shortly be returned home without more unpleasantness between us,” the colonel cajoled through an interpreter.

  Bucher was strongly tempted but still refused. Super C’s affability vanished. He pounded the desk with his fist and screeched insults.

  “You have exactly two minutes to decide to sign, sonabitchi,” he yelled, “or be shot!”

  Two guards pushed Bucher to his knees facing a wall. The interpreter with the pistol cocked it close to the captain’s ear.

  Bucher figured he’d soon be lying in a puddle of his own blood. He was determined not to show the terror that gripped him. His mind raced with thoughts of what it felt like to be shot in the head. Would there be horrible pain as the bullet pierced his brain, or just a split-second explosion as the world went black? He desperately sought a way to distract himself from what was about to happen.

  “I love you, Rose,” he said quietly. Then again: “I love you, Rose.” He murmured his devotion to his wife over and over as the seconds ticked away.

  Super C again asked whether he was ready to sign. The skipper shook his head and whispered for the last time, “I love you, Rose.”

  “Kill the sonabitchi!”

  The metallic snap of the hammer made Bucher’s body jerk. But the gun didn’t go off.

  Super C acted surprised. “That was a misfire,” the interpreter said. “Very lucky! So then take another two minutes—a last chance to confess without trusting to luck again.”

  But when the triggerman jacked back the slide to reload, no ejected dud hit the floor. Through his fear and exhaustion Bucher realized the gun wasn’t loaded. He’d been played, subjected to the old interrogation trick of mock execution. That knowledge helped him get through the next two minutes. When the time ran out, he still wouldn’t put his name on the confession.