The guards began to move amongst us, removing the few cameras in our possession, but they missed my binoculars. After they had passed, we began to close up again to resume our conference but, at that moment, there was a good deal of shouting from above us and we looked up to see Henry being led down the hill between three guards. He explained, on joining us, that he had been discovered hiding under a bush, awaiting darkness. From him we got the news that the whole ridge had been invested by the Chinese in considerable strength, and that they were searching the general area for others who had had the same idea as himself. He had seen Bob, the Padre, and Brisland marched down the hill from the Regimental Aid Post and was certain that they had not been allowed to continue to care for the wounded who were still on their stretchers above us. This was bad news; we resolved to take this matter up with our captors as soon as we could find some reasonably responsible person —if necessary, by drawing pictures to explain ourselves.
Henry joined our escape conference. When we had a minute to ourselves, I asked him what Chinese casualties he had seen on the upper slopes.
He said: “Only one small group—that party which tried to rush Sergeant Clayden on your left. Otherwise, the rocks prevented me from seeing; I had my back to a boulder.”
We decided to count the dead lying on the slope immediately above us. There were many scattered groups, most of which had been killed by artillery fire during the early part of the morning. We agreed to count independently, and then to compare our figures. Henry made it two hundred and seventeen, I had counted two hundred and sixteen. If this was the toll on one hill slope in one morning, I could not estimate what casualties they must have lost throughout the battle area over the whole period.
It was obvious that many others would want to try to escape as soon as possible. We began to pass out as much information as possible concerning our exact location, and the best direction to take for the journey back to our own lines, the approximate distance they must expect to travel, and the like. Just then, the guards entered our ranks once more and took Henry out, leading him back up the hill. We protested that he should remain with us, but, though they smiled and made re-assuring signs, they continued to lead him away. Short of attempting to overpower them as a quick way of committing suicide—there was nothing more that we could do. We were learning the first lesson of captivity.
The chatter of our remaining guards seemed particularly animated and one of them began to hail. We soon saw that this was provoked by the appearance of another Chinese along the track that came from Choksong village. He was rather better dressed than the other soldiers—Iiis suit was certainly new—and his head was not cropped, like theirs. His personal armament was a small pistol in a brown leather holster. He was obviously a man of authority.
Sam wasted no time in raising the question of the wounded on the top of the hill and those by the saddle at the head of the valley, where we had been taken. The Chinese officer spoke no English and we, of course, no Chinese; so the negotiations took rather a long time. Eventually, he seemed to understand and a number of us went back up the valley to pick up all the wounded we could find. If we achieved success in this particular, however, we failed utterly in our attempts to persuade him to let us bring the wounded down from Hill 235. He would not let a single man go up the slope.
By the foot of the saddle, we found three men of Support Company lying beside the stream, and one of A Company. Carl was near them, looking leaner and paler than usual from a wound in the left shoulder—it was he I had mistakenly identified as Frank earlier. The man from A Company had a bad wound in his thigh; we had to carry him back. The remainder followed slowly, supported on either side by fit men. The guards kept us going and, when we arrived back at the point where the others were waiting below Hill 235, they joined in behind us as we continued on along the path in the direction of Choksong.
We reached the end of the ridge—the point where the northwestern slope actually joined the valley bottom—and I saw that the Chinese were bringing their dead down from above. They were apparently not bothering with those burnt by napalm; for all the dead laid out by the track were casualties from artillery or small-arms fire and must have been killed in the earlier attempts to take the hill. I did not count the bodies—they were on the other side of the track and a number of our own men screened them from me. What I could see plainly was a party of about sixty Chinese washing in the stream at the point where it left the valley and entered the great open bowl bounded on the north by Castle Hill. There was a waterfall here; stripped to the waist, the soldiers were washing their backs with tiny towels. On the bank, two or three men were undoing a pile of long, thin canvas bags—they looked almost like elongated liver sausages. All of them pointed excitedly at us, and shouted questions to the guards, who, to demonstrate their authority, gave one or two men a push to hurry them up.
The march continued for an hour. Our pace was slow because of the wounded, and we resisted the attempts of the guards to hurry us. It was quite evident that they were getting worried about another air attack. One or more of them would always be looking up at the sky, and once, when some aircraft were sighted in the far distance, they stopped us whilst they hid under the eaves of a nearby Korean hut. After we had been marching for about three-quarters of an hour, I realized that we were approaching the road that we had used between Battalion Headquarters and Castle Hill before the battle. Sure enough, five minutes later we were on it, walking back towards Battalion Headquarters’ original position by the ford.
“There’s another crowd of prisoners down there, sir,” said Sergeant Peglar. “Look, down there, on the side of the road.”
About three hundred yards away, on the eastern side of the road, we saw another large party. We began to strain our eyes to identify them. After a few paces, I could recognize Bob, the Padre, Sergeant Brisland, Baker, the Support Company Sergeant-Major, and two of the snipers. In spite of the efforts of the guards to keep us separated, we surged in amongst them, shaking hands, congratulating each other on escaping alive, and commiserating with one another on being made prisoner. In his haversack, Bob had a stale loaf of bread—part of the ration issued up on the ridge. He now shared this between nine of us as he recounted what had happened after our departure. Munching, suddenly conscious of our hunger, we sat listening by the roadside. For twenty minutes or so, there had been no sign of the Chinese. Then, with great caution, a group had come over the top of Hill 235 and, seeing the ridge deserted, had rushed forward. At this point, Bob, who had discarded his pistol, came forward with the Red Cross flag which accompanied the Regimental Aid Post. Apparently, the soldiers in the lead had either not been informed of the significance or were careless of this sign, for they opened fire on him. It was only due to their appalling lack of skill in musketry that he was still alive. Then an officer or senior non-commissioned officer came running forward and told them to stop shooting—perhaps because Bob was plainly unarmed and showed no sign of resistance. The soldiers obeyed, with one exception: one man with a burp-gun kept firing, and he stopped only after the Chinese officer had shot him. Bob felt that this was an encouraging sign. Coming forward, he showed them his Red Cross armband, surgical dressings, and other minor pieces of medical equipment. They seemed to understand that he was, at least, some sort of medical attendant. They did not harm the wounded, many of whom were unconscious and thus unaware that they were prisoners. Yet when Bob, and the Padre—who had volunteered to remain with the unmarried members of the Regimental Aid Post—attempted to organize the evacuation of the wounded from the hill, the Chinese stopped them.
Bob was prevented from giving even a drink of water to a patient; nor were any of the others allowed to attend the injured. Shortly afterwards, Bob’s party were doubled down the steep hill track to join the group of prisoners who had been caught on the eastern side of the ridge. With the latter were about four men who had been walking wounded, but whose condition had so worsened through exhaustion and lack of treatment that they had
become stretcher cases. Amongst them was Sergeant Hoper of the Machine Guns, Donald, and Fish of A Company. We felt some concern about Walker, the signaller, whose gallant charge down the hill on the 24th had brought the remnant of B Company in safely. He had a bullet through the lung, and needed constant attention. Yet, grave though his condition was, I felt somehow that it was going to take more than this to kill Walker.
After half an hour, we were marched back towards the ford and the original Headquarters and Mortar area. A series of exceptionally irritating incidents occurred, relieved, now and again, by a few which permitted us to laugh at our captors.
The whole Headquarters area had been broken into by the enemy soldiers in search of loot. Letters, handkerchiefs, articles of underclothing, photographs, and newspapers were scattered over a wide area. Medical stores, which Bob was denied at the point of the pistol, had been smashed or thrown away by the Regimental Aid Post tents and vehicles; we were not even allowed to pick up the spare stretchers that we needed for the wounded with us, but managed to steal three, in spite of our captors. We marched back and forth along the road from one point to another whilst our captors argued over where we should go. The second time we returned to the ford, my anger was abated by the sight of a little Chinese who, having eaten a tin of peaches attacked another, a tin of solid fuel! The lid prised off, he dug a spoon that he had found into the waxy contents, and then conveyed a pile of it into his mouth. For a moment, there was no reaction. Then he turned a ghastly colour and uttered a terrible croak as he dropped writhing to the ground and began to vomit. This incident kept me fairly cheerful for the rest of the day.
Finally, we were marched back past Graham’s mortar pits, round the hairpin bend, southwards through Solma-Ri, and up the side of the hill into a small re-entrant. In this location after much argument, some of us were searched. Peglar passed a compass to me that he had managed to retain, and I hid this. The search over, we were marched north again across the ford and herded into a dry stream-bed just north of C Company’s original hill.
The Chinese were now so worried about attack from the air that they hid us and themselves throughout most of the afternoon. Lying under cover, I began to appreciate to the full that I really was a captive, subject to the instructions of the enemy, controlled by his Government. I think that I only fully realized this when we reached the Headquarters area where, with all the familiar things about me, I found myself unable to come and go as I pleased. From this moment on, the consequences of captivity became real and apparent. The sensation of living in a half-dream vanished, except for my first moments of wakefulness after sleep.
Just before we moved in the late afternoon, a Chinese came into the stream bed and asked, in very broken English, for drivers to come forward to drive our vehicles for them. We decided that this was an excellent opportunity to wreck those that remained, and sent off twelve men under Ronnie to put this into effect. A few minutes later, we were ordered to our feet and began the march north. The route lay along the familiar road to Choksong village, between the hills D and A Company had held. All along the road, we met enemy reserves moving up for the night; hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers, each carrying a pine branch in his hands. As soon as an aircraft was spotted, they would halt, raise their branches like banners, and give as good an imitation of pine saplings as they knew how.
Choksong village contained pile upon pile of their dead; with these were dead mules and a few ponies. The air-strike of the day before had been terribly effective in inflicting casualties. Unfortunately, the Chinese commanders were not worried about the price they had to pay for an objective; their pockets were full enough to pay whatever was asked—and more. Along the roadside, scraped out of the banks of the rice paddy, were little holes in which hundreds more Chinese were curled up, sleeping; others were sheltering in the houses nearby. Once we were spotted by a party of soldiers wheeling bicycles past us, their trousers rolled up to their knees, their heads covered with coloured base-ball caps. The bicycles were marked, “Hercules. Made in England.”
We marched on down towards the river, turning west along the bank into a small village. Here we waited for darkness to fall. The wounded on stretchers were put into two empty houses, while the remainder of us were crowded into four ragged lines on a track that led to the river. We sat or lay upon the packed earth and stones, filthy, unshaven and tired. There was no food for anyone; there was no medical attention for the wounded, though Bob did what he could for them, in spite of the fact that two of the guards had just taken his portable medical kit from him. After forty minutes, a Chinese appeared with two tin cans, the contents of which was steaming.
“Rice!” cried a voice, and in a second almost everyone was up, looking for some form of container.
It was not rice; it was boiled water; but it was not ungratefully received. Mess tins, mugs, old tin cans, almost any article that would hold water were found. Those without discovered someone who would share and so all were served. Yet I noticed that, even though the spirit of comradeship remained strong and, outwardly, relationships remained as before, there was a difference in the way that the majority—officers and men—behaved. I studied this for quite some time before I realized what it was: they were suffering from a form of mental shock and were still living in a world that was only half real—as I had been that morning.
I had another conference with Sam and we considered our previous plan in the light of experience gained since the former discussion. He had managed to get a certain amount done for the prisoner-of-war column to date and he felt that he must stay with them to render this service as long as he was permitted to do so. If the Chinese removed him from the rest, he would be ready to escape. The same applied to Bob. There was another consideration: a new set of guards had now taken charge of our column, who were not only more vigilant, but far stronger in numbers. As I was a strong swimmer, it seemed to us that I had better try to make my escape alone whilst crossing the Imjin that night; for we had no doubt that it was the intention of the Chinese to get us back over the river as soon as possible. The others—all parties concerned—should make their attempts as opportunity afforded, until such time as it became possible to institute a system of priorities. This was agreed between us as we sat by Donald’s stretcher, ostensibly taking him the water he was sipping from the Padre’s mess tin. As we left the building to go back to the others, my mind was settled: I was definitely going to make my escape that night.
Our guards waited for full darkness. The night was cloudy, and the moon had not yet risen; I hoped that we should not be delayed in our trip to the river crossing, whichever one we were to use. Eventually, after much confusion, we were formed up on the road, and set off, carrying the stretchers with us. It was tiring work. The road itself was narrow and crowded; many of the men were too exhausted either to carry the wounded for more than a few hundred yards, or to carry them at all. Of those really fit, quite a number were helping the walking wounded. The poor visibility alone made changing the stretcher shifts difficult; obstructed by the guards, and hampered by lack of space and men, it was often a nightmare. With frequent halts, the column proceeded along the road that ran east and parallel with the river, until we reached the road junction below Choksong, where it turned north through the last cutting. Only then could I be reasonably sure that our crossing was Gloster Crossing.
As we drew near to the road junction, we became aware of a growing din. This cacophony was compounded of the shouts of mule drivers, the chant of coolies padding along, bearing ammunition on either end of a bamboo pole, the wheezing engine of an occasional ramshackle truck, and the cries of those who had become separated. There was absolutely no traffic control. Two streams of human beings, animals and vehicles, flowed along the narrow track to the river in opposite directions. Soon we were part of one stream, when I observed that the one going south was three times the size of ours. Sweating and stumbling we progressed down the rough track to the crossing, the stretchers jolting on our shoulders. It
is to the credit of the wounded that they did not cry out during this rough passage.
At last we reached the bund, and began the descent to the river through the village where Guido’s ambush party had lain. The Chinese wanted to push on, but Sam insisted that as many as were able to should remove their boots and socks, knowing that a long night march in wet footgear would bring blisters at a time when we could least afford them. This short halt provided me with my opportunity. I handed over my stretcher to the Padre but did not rejoin the forward part of the column. As we reached the river shore, I gave Crompton and Clayden a warning; to be ready. The guard with us was dodging back and forth between my stretcher and the next, watching both sides of each pair of stretchers. We entered the water together, his right arm actually touching my left side. We could feel the rising water and the pressure of the current. Now we were ankle deep—now up to our knees—now to our thighs. The guard moved off, between Clayden and Crompton at the rear of the forward stretcher and the Padre and Guy at the head of the one next to me. I gave the signal: Clayden and Crompton dropped back and closed the gap between stretchers. At this instant, I sank into the black waters of the river.
When I surfaced about thirty yards downstream, I half-expected to hear the sound of shots and the cries of the guards coming after me. There was plenty to hear but nothing of alarm or pursuit. Turning from the uproar of the crowded crossing, I went on downstream.
The water was very cold but not deep just here. Indeed, in places, I was actually crawling along the bottom of the river. For seven hours I continued in this way, sometimes swimming, sometimes crawling; and all the time the chill was extending through my body. It was impossible to leave the river during the first few hours because I could hear their sentries on the banks. Afterwards, I was fearful lest there might be sentries that I could not hear. The cold had almost made me decide to take the risk when, rounding the spit of sand that pointed, like a finger, into the river below Castle Hill, I found myself in really deep water in the middle of a strong current. Twice before, that night, I had got out of my depth completely for short periods, and had been forced to swim in to the bank. But now I was beginning to feel the fatigue of the long battle; the exhilaration of escape had faded; my limbs were stiff with cold; my clothes were saturated and my boots were filled with water. I began to sink: I realized that I was drowning.
The Edge of the Sword Page 8