The Edge of the Sword

by General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley

  Frank and Bob helped me up to Snob Hill—I had recently moved down to Bob’s room in the schoolhouse—where the pneumonia cases were put together in a little room. Bob and two of the American doctors remonstrated with the Chinese medical officer so much that he began to take the matter seriously. Hitherto, the pneumonia patients had been left unattended. We called this Chinese M.O. the “Dirty Doctor”; a suitable appellation for a man who practised with filthy hands and had a habit of spitting freely on the floor. What his training had been we never discovered. From his actions in the Camp, he seemed capable of diagnosing little more than a cold—but this may have been due to a lack of interest. His surgery, like himself, was forever grimy, but there were clean white coats, surgeon’s cap, rubber gloves, and aprons in the Camp. For one day Geoff was called over to have the hand dressed from which he had lost three fingers in a bombing raid the previous autumn—a hand that had long since healed. He found doctor, nurses, and orderlies all in white with dressings and a few instruments laid out on a covered table. The medical staff, smiling pleasantly, grouped themselves round his hand, which the doctor began to examine. A cameraman appeared, pictures were taken, and the performance ended. The medical staff put their white clothing carefully away. Geoff returned to the compound fuming, having been an unwilling accomplice in a propaganda stunt.

  Fortunately for me, the “Dirty Doctor” was not alone this time. A younger Chinese doctor, who seemed more capable and was certainly more interested in us as patients, had recently joined the medical staff. He began to visit us regularly and I saw the old man only once before I was pronounced fit to go back to my room. There was no period of convalescence and, however conscientious the young doctor was, he would not—perhaps could not—give us permission to miss the political study periods. We joined the remainder in the draughty horary to hear more passages from “The Twilight of World Capitalism” under the arrangements of Sun.

  The history of the attempts at political subversion of the United Nations captives by the Chinese and North Koreans may yet form the subject of a separate work; it certainly demands more comprehensive treatment than may be given here. Let it merely be said, then, that in April 1951 there were nine and a half hours of compulsory study each day, a year later only four hours. It began with “comrades” like DP Wong threatening the student body with severe punishment—a threat that was executed—for those who did not perceive the “truth”; and ended with “comrades” like Sun calling on us to “keep silent” when we booed an unusually crass statement; for though Sun would have liked to have given all those who actually rejected his instruction the same treatment as he gave Denis, he was prevented from doing so by his masters who were aware that the world beyond the Iron Curtain was beginning to ask what was happening in the prison camps. By Easter 1952, the whole programme had failed so manifestly and met with such opposition, that the decision was reached to drop compulsory study. In order to save face, we were informed that there would be “spring-cleaning” of the quarters and general area before the summer heat began; that this “honourable labour” would take place in study hours for the time being. The question of resuming study was left open.

  New latrines were needed; old ones had to be filled in. There were many potential breeding grounds for flies—filthy ditches and bunkers—which had remained frozen in the winter but could no longer be overlooked now that the sub-tropical summer was approaching. Fortunately, our own doctors directed our efforts. Once we had destroyed the danger-spots in and around our quarters—and as far outside the compounds as we were permitted to go—we began to slack off, spinning out the remaining, quite useless work, hoping to avoid a return to political study. Efforts were made by the Camp Headquarters to induce us to line the paths with whitewashed stones, to pick out Picasso peace-doves with stones in flower beds, and to erect “Peace” slogans. There was another camp some miles to the east of ours, a show camp occupied by ROK prisoners to which some of our number were sent to see how it should be done. On their return, they reported that not only had all these measures been carried out there but that, in many rooms, little pots of flowers had been placed under the portraits of Mao Tse Tung and Kim II Sung—standard items of furniture throughout the living quarters. They had been rewarded, the ROK prisoners said, by extra food and tobacco, and by seeing a special illustrated article about their camp in a Chinese magazine!

  One or two members of our camp were rather angry with the ROKs for co-operating in this way; but I recalled a ROK sergeant whom I met in the south at the village where I first met Kinne. One day, after a long lecture from a Chinese on the advantages of Communism, he said to me quietly:

  “The Chinese come and they say, ‘Communism looks after the people. Learn the truth and you will have much food and good houses and plenty of land for yourself.’

  “And we say. ‘Yes. Yes. Communism is very good, very nice.’ And they give us cigarettes and maybe some more food.”

  Then the sergeant had looked at me from the corner of his narrow, dark eyes to say a very rude word.

  “That’s what we think of Communism,” he said.

  I had a shrewd suspicion that his brother-ROKs were saying that up in the show camp even now.

  A Mr. Jack Gaster came out from England to China and, whilst there, was invited by the North Korean Government to visit the prisoner-of-war camps on the Yalu Fiver to see how his fellow-countrymen in captivity were faring. He was described by the Shanghai Newsas a lawyer, though this was not the description we gave him after reading a newspaper report about his visit. Expressing himself as entirely satisfied with the conditions he had seen in the camps—he had certainly not been to our camp—he was quoted as follows:

  “The food I have seen our men eating would make a British housewife’s mouth water.” It may be that he was unaware that he was seeing a specially prepared meal when he passed this comment; a meal that would not be repeated until another visitor—such as Mrs, Monica Felton—came to provide gratuitous propaganda for the Queen’s enemies that would help to conceal the true nature of our imprisonment from the outside world. It may be that the sharpness of Mr. Gaster’s skill as a lawyer in examining evidence had been temporarily blunted by his sojourn in China. I cannot say how he came to make this statement at Pyoktong, where the bodies of captives who had died of maltreatment and neglect were buried in thousands. I only know that on the morning when we read it—the 15th April 1952—Anthony and I had just finished the compound breakfast of spoiled rice and diacon soup. However bad things were in Imperialist Britain, we felt sure that no British housewife’s mouth would water over our meal—one that was repeated daily for two-thirds of every week.

  The Chinese had special plans for Easter. Every camp would have extra food; there would be a small issue of ‘saki’ (rice spirit) per man; and there would be cigarettes, pea-nuts, and a few boiled sweets. They might have added that there would be photographers, too, on a lavish scale; for our captors provided these luxuries more for their benefit than ours.

  We had had some very good entertainment in the camp on a previous occasion since my arrival, but it had been run chiefly by the Americans. Several of us amongst the British thought that we should try out our native talent and so we got up a pantomime. As one of those concerned, I took the matter up with Sulky Tien. It was not simply a matter of saying that we wanted to give an entertainment at Easter and asking for a few simple items with which to make stage properties. Before anything could be done, the script had to be censored by a process of explaining, line by line, what was meant, in case any satire on the Chinese in Korea or outside Korea, her allies in other countries, Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Stalin, was intended. Sitting in Tien’s office after he had read through the script, each page would be examined in this way.

  Tien: (turning to the next page and pointing) What is this?

  Us: That is a joke.

  Tien: What is this joke?

  Us: Well, you see, two men meet. The fat man says (pointing) “Have you seen a fat m
an about here?” Tien: Why does he say that?

  Us: It’s part of the joke. Then the second man says “No.”

  Tien: But he has seen the fat man.

  Us: Yes, of course. That’s why the fat man says, “Well, if you haven’t seen a fat man about here, I must be lost.”

  Tien: But he is not lost.

  Us: (exhausted after three hours of this) But it’s a joke, don’t you see? Not a very good joke—just a pantomime joke!

  Tien: This is some plot against the Chinese People’s Volunteers. You are trying to say that there are no fat men here because we do not feed you; you must remove it from the drama!

  The Padre went through a similar experience when submitting his proposals for Church Services. He had to explain every line of every prayer, every psalm and hymn. When he asked for a little wine to celebrate Holy Communion on Easter Sunday, Chen Chung Hwei said:

  “What is Easter? I have asked many men in the compound what is this Easter and they say they do not know. We think it is a trick you are playing to stir up other prisoners to make them discontented with their Daily Life.” There was much more in this vein, including a story that he, Chen, had visited our Colonel to ask him what Easter meant.

  “Even he did not know,” said Chen. “This is an unreasonable request. You may have your usual Sunday Service.”

  Fortunately, they were anxious that nothing should go wrong during these celebrations. They relented at the last moment and gave the Padre permission to hold the service and, at the last moment, the materials.

  The Easter festivities included an unannounced item: on Good Friday, two Australian pilots, Vance and Bruce, escaped in company with three Americans.

  Not long after Easter, the North Korean Army sent an interrogation team to the village. Each day, several men would go out, swelling the numbers that the Chinese had already under interrogation in the secret community of isolated prisoners. Joe, now the senior British Officer, was sent for after a few days and handed over to a lieutenant-colonel. He did not return to the compound that week; in fact he did not return at all. After two months, we managed to obtain a message that he was having a rough time but managing to hold out. Later still, we discovered that the North Koreans had tired of his stubbornness and had returned him to the Chinese. But the Chinese knew how great was his authority amongst his fellow-captives, as much by virtue of his splendid character as of his seniority, and they led him away to a small new community of prisoners then forming in another valley! Even here, he was too much of a thorn in their side. They trumped up a charge against him of assaulting a sentry and threw him into solitary confinement—his third spell since his capture.

  The Good Friday escape party were caught within a few days and brought back into the village where they were lodged in the old fire-station. They remained there for over a month before being brought to trial; a trial in which they were not the principal defendants.

  After the farcical proceedings which had followed the arrest of the Colonel, Denis, Colonel B and the three American Majors, we had been asked by the Chinese what our impressions had been of their confessions. We informed them plainly that we considered the whole thing a dreadful hoax, and that they had not the remotest idea how judicial proceedings should be conducted. As a result of this, their next “trial” was an attempt at court martial procedure as we understand it.

  One morning, representatives were taken from each squad to a large house in the village to witness the second public trial. They found Zee, armed to the teeth, performing the duties of usher in a court-room marked “Military Court—no talking!” Seated in the well of the court-room, they were joined shortly by Ding and two of his henchmen, who comprised the President and Members respectively; Chen Chung Hwei, was labelled “Public Prosecutor”! and sundry assistants, guards, and orderlies were in attendance. The trial began.

  There was a long list of prisoners. An American Air Force Captain was charged with offences he had not only been punished for once before but—on one indictment—twice before. This treatment was excused on the grounds that he was “not penitent”.

  Two Americans were charged with tearing down the Red Star from the schoolhouse doorway, which, in fact, Sam and I had removed—they had confessed to it!—and with moving the school bell to the latrine.

  Two others had irreverently disfigured or torn down the portraits of the Communist Party Leaders throughout the world which had graced the Library. Dave, an American pilot, was charged with inducing others to escape.

  All of them were accused of having a “hostile attitude” to the Chinese Peoples’ Volunteers: a useful charge which is easy to assert and difficult to deny.

  The defendants were charged, asked if they identified their confessions in the hands of the Public Prosecutor and, having read these, were officially found guilty. The Court adjourned to consider sentence and returned two or three minutes later to pick up from the table a detailed, typewritten list of awards which had been lying there throughout the trial!There was no defence case, no plea in mitigation. There was no defence counsel or representative. Sentences ranged from four months to ten months’ solitary confinement. The escapees, less Dave, brought in at the end together with a Puerto Rican officer who was also a minor offender, had their cases referred back to the Company Commander for punishment. He awarded them a month’s imprisonment “in accordance with the Geneva Convention”.

  Less than three months previously, DP Wong, translating for Ding, had reminded us that the penalty for escape under “International Law” was death; a penalty they would not hesitate to invoke in serious cases, and that the Geneva Convention was but an instrument of bourgeois trickery. But at that time, they had not begun their campaign of counter-accusation concerning the treatment of prisoners in the hands of the United Nations Command. At the time of the second “trial”, the Geneva Convention had come into fashion. It was constantly quoted by leading Chinese newspapers as the minimum standard by which all prisoners-of-war might expect to be treated!

  At the end of their three month sentences, two of the three majors sentenced with Denis were released and sent back to the compound. The third was given a further three months because he had exhibited an “incorrect attitude” during his punishment! It transpired subsequently that his behaviour had been no worse than either of the other two until the very last day when his sense of humour overcame his sense of propriety and, for a chance remark, he was sent back for a further three months to reflect on the inadvisability of making jokes about serious matters.

  The additions to the compound were soon balanced. Spike and an American named Bud were arrested for inciting a strike down on the shore of the reservoir, where they had been working in a labour party hauling wood to the road. Spike was knocked down by the company commander for his part in the affair and, with Bud, given a trying time on his return to the village. They were locked up together in the cell behind the North Korean Police Station; we wondered if they would be in there long enough for Spike to tell Bud every one of his many anecdotes.

  Mine apparently was one of many escape parties which had been held back by the bright prospect of success in the peace talks during the late spring and early summer. After reviewing the situation, Sam and Guy agreed that my party should escape in late July or early August. They passed the news to the Marine Colonel—the senior officer in the camp—and we made ready.

  The party was a large one—Sid, Mr. Hobbs, Mr. Day of the Marines, Sergeants-Major Gallagher, Strong, Morton, and an American Gunner-Officer named Smoky—too large to escape at one point through the heavily patrolled fences. The choice therefore lay between an escape by night via several points or an escape in daylight—which meant that we should have to employ a “confidence trick.” I chose the latter method.

  The water used inside the compound for washing and bathing was brought by hand from the stream that ran on the south side of Pyn-chong-ni. To reach it, the water-carriers had to leave the compound by the main gate and walk three hundred yards
down a path between fields of ripening maize to the nearest point suitable for dipping their buckets. The system employed to control them during this process was a simple one. First, the water-carriers had badges: red arm-bands bearing Chinese characters which the sentries recognised and accepted as a pass in and out of the gates. Secondly, one guard and one member of the compound staff took up a position overlooking the water dipping-point during the hours appointed for water-collection. To get out of the gate, Robin, one of the Rifles officers, counterfeited the arm bands issued daily to the carriers, using a red flag stolen from the Chinese. The next problem was to escape from the water-point without being observed by the two men on duty nearby. We watched them carefully for some time, and reached two conclusions. On a rainy day, the two men squatted miserably beneath a shelter, paying very little attention to the carriers. Given reasonable luck, a quick move would take the escaper into the tall maize stalks, when he would be instantly hidden from view. On a fine day, we could only hope to get away unobserved if one or more parties had been allowed out to the river to wash their blankets or bathe. These parties were checked carefully in and out, but if, having made our exit as water-carriers, we mingled with them on the river bank near the maize, we should certainly find a chance to dodge into it. Both courses possessed the advantage that, though we would be missed on evening roll-call, the Chinese would not know when we had gone, or where we had gone. The “confidence trick” in passing through the gate as water-carriers permitted us to walk out without any check at all.

  The remaining task, after I had decided on the method and briefed the remainder, was to carry out the supplies and items of escape gear which we had collected together, including a compass, the product of Carl’s genius. We each had a makeshift pack-load. Over a period of several days, we took our stuff out and hid it in the beans growing at the foot of the maize, or, in the case of foodstuffs which might attract animals, beneath heavy rocks along the river bank. Only a few items remained—the most perishable—by the morning of the 26th of July. By then we had been without rain for five days at the height of what was normally the rainiest period of the summer.