The 27th was a hot, dry day; but towards evening, dark clouds gathered and our hopes rose. On the 28th it poured all day. At four o’clock, half the water-carriers on duty assembled by the kitchen awaiting the Chinese guard to take them through the gate on their first trip and to assume his position in the shelter near the water-point. The remaining half of the carriers was made up from my party. Time passed; there was no sign of the Chinese. Eventually, the chief water-carrier went up to the Chinese company headquarters to inquire where he had got to. It appeared that it was too wet to come out—nobody wanted to wash, he said. The gates remained closed, we dispersed our perishable kit amongst various hiding places, and returned to the Library. That was that.
It was the 4th of August before we had got our kit ready to move again. By that time, several developments had taken place.
The 1st of August is a Chinese festival and they decided to let us share in the festivities by issuing, on August 3rd, a half ration of pork, some peanuts, boiled sweets, and saki. We decided that we would have a party and drink a toast in saki to our new young Queen, whose accession we had heard of comparatively recently. The British element gathered in the Library to find that all the American Naval and Marine officers in the compound were having a party too. We each took half the room and the Americans began to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”. They had barely finished when Hector, the senior South African Officer began to sing “God Save the Queen” in a strong voice, speedily joined by the remainder, including the Americans. Near me, Johnny Rotor-head, an American naval helicopter pilot, was singing splendidly, the words rolling from his tongue as well as from any member of the Commonwealth present. When it was over, Hector led the assembly out on to the square in a conga. Five minutes later, Sam was summoned to the company headquarters.
The company commander was furious. He was a nasty little man with an unpronounceable name; a man who had told us in speech shortly after his arrival, in place of More-in-Sorrow-Than-in-Anger, that “your God cannot help you now. Only the Chinese Volunteers can give you what you need.” He spoke to Sam through Chang, a new interpreter who spoke better English than anyone else on the compound staff.
Although the company commander was so angry, he was also frightened man. He had never previously seen the conga danced and believed that the entire camp was about to riot under the influence of saki. In these circumstances, knowing the great respect in which Sam was held by all, he told him to go back and prevent such an incident. As Sam well knew that there was nothing to prevent, he left without passing any further comment; and we were glad, if surprised, to see him back. Sam’s activities against the Chinese were notorious: he lived permanently on a razor’s edge.
The 4th of August was a fine, sunny day—a grand day for washing blankets down by the river—and one of tension for us, relieved by number of very amusing incidents.
Sergeant-Major Gallagher was told to walk down the school-house corridor to collect the last items of food he was to carry out. He left the Library and commenced to pass the first of the sleeping quarters. As he continued on his way, he found that many class-room doors slid quickly open to reveal a pair of hands grasping some item of provisions which was dumped into his hands. After using up all his pockets to hide these things, he arrived at the far end of the corridor bulging in the most extraordinary places, and walking with an unaccustomed limp.
Sergeant-Major Morton’s figure looked like the Gibson Girl’s before putting on his blue jacket. Mr. Hobbs had coiled round him a long piece of rope stolen from a Chinese tent, corseting his figure in the most elegant fashion. But it was done so effectively the first time that Sergeant-Major Morton was not only unable to breathe but almost cut in two. Down by the kitchen door I met Sid. I checked with him that Sergeant-Major Strong had just taken out the remainder of his kit before passing on.
“Im going over to the latrine, Sid,” I said. “You coming that way?”
“No, thanks,” he replied. “I’ve been fifteen times to-day already!”
At last the moment came. With Sergeants-Major Morton and Gallagher, I passed through the main gates on the south side of the square, wearing my red armband, swinging two buckets in my hands. These buckets were brought back under blankets by a party returning from the stream. Sergeant-Major Bates, Sergeant Wilkins of the American Air Force and a group of other sergeants with him had preceded us by half an hour especially for this task.
Down by the river, Robin and Spud were drawing water. The compound staff and guards were chatting up on the little cliff; below them, downstream, parties from two of the platoons were washing their blankets and clothes. While Sergeant-Major Morton awaited his opportunity to come downstream to join us, Sergeant-Major Gallagher and I moved towards the maize. We both entered and he began to stack a last item of the baggage beneath some stones. At that moment, I saw the maize moving; a movement that was not caused by the wind. Looking up, I saw that a sentry was standing there watching us. Behind him was one of the compound staff.
Sergeant-Major Gallagher called out to me: “Sir, they’ve spotted us! Someone is coming down from the cliff.”
We both pretended that we were making an urgent call to the latrine and, after a moment or so, sauntered back out on to the river bank as if nothing had happened. But the sentry had shown the others the package Gallagher had hidden and, subsequently, kit on the river shore beneath an old jersey. Gallagher was arrested and taken back to the compound, just after Robin had managed to convey the warning to the others inside, who were awaiting the signal to leave. Shortly after, Morton was arrested, following the discovery of a letter amongst the kit in the middle of the field of maize. I carried water back to the compound, still a relatively free man.
Sid was awaiting me in the kitchen with Tony. I told them what had happened and said that we must put everything we still had back into a hiding place and lie low for a day or two. Tony took the map and compass I had; the other kit was quickly dispersed. The stuff in the maize field was, of course, a write-off.
Nothing further was said that evening, and roll-call passed off in the usual way. It was later, at about eight o’clock, that the final consequences of the day became known.
Sam, Guy, Anthony and I were walking up and down outside a small schoolhouse we then occupied on the hillside some distance above Snob Hill. The playground there was very small and we paced only twelve steps back and forth. Our platoon interpreter—Old Yang—came towards us from the Chinese staff hut nearby, calling Sam’s name. The two of them went back into the hut and we continued our walk. Ten minutes later, one of the Chinese orderlies came to collect Sam’s kit and we knew that he was under arrest.
Geoff, Anthony, and I packed up the kit and sent it away. But it was still too hot to go to sleep in the hut and I was in no mood to rest after the failure of my plan and the arrest of my friends We had resumed our walk when the old Chinese came back again. This time, it was my name he called. I accompanied him back to his hut and was thrust through the door. Inside were the company commander and Chang. The door closed behind me.
The Company Commander smoked through a whole cigarette before addressing me through Chang. Then he said:
“You have conspired to make men escape. You have used your former rank to order men to disobey the regulations.”
I said nothing; we had already made plans for such a contingency as this and it was necessary to await further developments. The company commander poured out a torrent of angry Chinese which contained a repetition of his former accusations, more accusations, and a few threats. Finally, seeing that I did not respond, the little company commander threw his cap dramatically on to his desk and said:
“I withdraw your privileges of tobacco, liberty, and sugar.”
He obviously placed their value in that order. The final word of my arrest had been spoken. Accompanied by a guard and the orderly, I was taken out into the warm moonlit night.
Escorted to Camp Headquarters, I stood outside the main building. Chen Chung Hwe
i came out and asked me my name.
“Confess,” he said dramatically. “We know everything! What happened?”
This childish behaviour and his own misshapen little figure gave the whole scene in the moonlight an unreal quality. I felt for a moment that I was watching a puppet performing on a stage. The illusion vanished a moment later as one of the couriers in the Headquarters appeared.
“Follow this comrade,” said Chen, disappearing back into his room.
“This comrade” took me down to a cell, searched me, and locked me in for the night under the eye of one of the jail sentries. I had had a good run for my money, between cells.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN the morning came, I discovered that my cell was in the North Korean police station, the very cell which Spike and Bud had occupied immediately following their arrest. All that remained of their occupation was an inscription on the wall. With a nail, they had scratched “Spike” and “Bud” and put the date underneath: “27th July 1952”. I found a loose nail and added my own name and the date below theirs, the last entries in a long list of names and dates.
The cell was about eight feet long and four across; its walls were timbered on three sides with stout pine boards. The fourth wall had thick bars of pine, socketed in the floor and ceiling, and secured by cross-pieces. Outside the bars was a passage, running the length of the cell, with a door at either end: one to the police offices; the other to the courtyard outside. A window, covered with steel mesh,admitted a little light when the doors were closed. Everything had been removed from my pockets during my search, but a blanket and two bowls were brought to me during the early morning. One of the floor boards was broken and so I reached through to the underside, found a stone, and began to sharpen two nails to cut my way out of the cell. It was going to be a long job—not only because the walls were thick and my tools were crude, but also because the sentries were unpredictable in their attentions.
The routine for men in solitary confinement was as follows. At dawn—sometimes half an hour before dawn—the sentry on duty roused the prisoners in the cells he watched, making use of his bayonet when prisoners were tardy in rising. Officially, one was supposed to sit up, with legs crossed, for the remainder of the day; prisoners were not permitted to use the wall as a back rest. In practice, I sat as I pleased and even took the liberty of standing up, now and again. If these sentries wanted to be able to creep up on me to surprise me sitting in a non-regulation position, they had to leave the outer passage door open. This gave me a view of the green hills and the blue sky; a small view but one I treasured. If they wanted to keep me in semi-darkness, to accentuate my solitude by cutting me off completely from the outside world, they had to close the door, the opening of which gave me ample warning that they were coming in to see what I was doing. In this matter, as with almost every other, the tenor of my life depended almost entirely on the character of the sentries, who changed every three hours, and the guard commanders, who changed every six hours. There were those who spent the entire time harrassing prisoners, and those who left us entirely alone. There were guard commanders who kept us short of food—kaoliang and hot water, slightly coloured to resemble cabbage soup—and declined to take us out for the two daily visits to the latrine permitted by the regulations. There were others who made sure that we had every one of the few amenities allowed. There was no question of washing, smoking, or even talking. Except during examination for one’s offences, the requirement was the silence of a Trappist monk from dawn to dusk.
It ishardly surprising that a high proportion of the guards were unpleasant to us. Their peasant heads were filled with propaganda stories—often, fantastic or ludicrous—about the United Nations troops. One of these stories seemed a favourite, for we heard it again and again. While I was lodged in the police cell, it was told me once more in a novel form.
The guard commander, one afternoon, was a tall, young Chinese whom I called Noble: he wore, perpetually, such a noble expression. He had attended a missionary school for some time and spoke fair English. Poking his head round the door, he stared at me for several minutes. Then he said:
“You are American?”
I shook my head. “English,” I said.
He seemed unwilling to accept this and pressed me again to identify myself. We tired of this after a minute or two and the cell fell silent again. At last he stirred, to make a fresh point:
“All Americans, all English, come to Korea to eat the red apples and ravish the women.” He paused: In this sentence he had recounted the favourite propaganda. But there was more to come. It was quite obvious that another question was forming inside his head and, at last, he got it out. His head stretched forward on his long neck; his eyes bulging with curiosity, he said:
“How many Korean women you have ravished?”
He was too disappointed with my reply to believe it.
After ten days, I was moved to another cell in a block which had been built originally by the Japanese for the accommodation of the families of the police—and so all my work towards escape came to naught. I was put into an old kitchen which had a damp mud floor and crumbling mud and wattle walls. What was even more disadvantageous was the fact that the door had a spyhole for the sentry, and the exit at the other end of the cell was blocked by a pile of aluminium aircraft fuel drop-tanks which rang at the slightest touch and contained plenty of gaps through which the sentry could maintain a watch. Yet, compensating to some extent for these drawbacks, I had companionship here, and, now and again, I was able to see the outside would The room on the southern side was occupied by the Camp Quartermaster’s staff, the idlest group of soldiers I have ever seen. Most of the time they sat about, smoking, chattering, admiring one another’s snapshots or their own faces in the mirror, or in singing.
To the north of me, the building divided into two rooms. The western room—really a woodshed—was occupied by a young American Air Force Corporal named Abbot who was a credit to his service. He and two American Air Force Officers—a black-bearded captain confined in the block opposite, and a young second-lieutenant at the extreme southern end of my block—were all accused of participating in Germ Warfare. They had all been in solitary confinement since April and had no hope of release since they had all resolutely refused to confess to participation in something which they knew nothing about.
From the Spring on, we had been subjected to endless propaganda on the subject of Germ Warfare which, latterly, had included signed “confessions” from members of various aircrews. Included in or accompanying these statements were paragraphs insisting that they had been made entirely voluntarily, that the writers could no longer bear the weight of their sins in this connection on their respective consciences after the kind and generous treatment accorded them by the Chinese People’s Volunteers. At least two of these men had been in the village of Pyn-Chong-Ni, though never in our compound. Some time before their “confessions”, they had been removed to Pyoktong. Another was known to the Marine Colonel who had expressed concern for the man’s fate some time before his statement appeared. He had last seen him bound to a telegraph pole in shirt and cotton slacks on a bitter February night.
It was probably fortunate for Abbot and the other two that they were examined on Germ Warfare after statements had been obtained from airmen made captive earlier; and fortunate that none of them held ranks or appointments sufficiently important to cause the Chinese to persevere with them, as they did with more senior officers later. The story that Abbot told me in whispers through a hole in the wall confirmed opinions that we had already formed about the integrity of those “confessions” published on the use of germ weapons in Korea by the United Nations Command.
Abbot knew nothing about germ bombs; he had not even read about the Japanese bacteriological warfare laboratories in World War II. When confronted with the subject by the Chinese, they had had to explain to him what they meant! He spent about a month living in a house with DP Wong and a number of other interpreters who p
assed each day with him, taking shifts so that he was never left alone. All day, every day, they talked of nothing else but the use of germ weapons by the American Air Force generally and by his own night medium-bomber unit in particular. They mentioned to him the names of officers still serving with the unit who were implicated, of others who had been executed since capture because they refused to confess to the crime, of others again who had confessed and so caused the Chinese to spare their lives. Never at any time throughout this period was he asked directly to make a statement or to “confess”; but by inference, through this skilful method of which the Chinese are masters, they called on him to do so.
At the end of this phase, since Abbot had not responded, DP Wong and his friends began to apply more direct methods. Without warning, he was awakened one night about half an hour after he had gone to sleep and was taken back into the room in which he normally spent the day. He was stood to attention for a long period while Wong and the others accused him outright of being an accomplice as his conscience had not compelled him to confess of his own accord. When Abbot again denied all knowledge of the whole affair he was kicked and beaten—DP Wong loved nothing better than this type of thing when he had plenty of support. Abbot was kept up until dawn, when he was permitted to return to his cell
For three weeks, he had no real sleep, was tried and sentenced to death twice, and finally thrown into the dark woodshed he now occupied. Here, like the two others close by, and many more in the village, he remained in solitary confinement, deprived of washing facilities—often latrine facilities—and the opportunity to breathe fresh air and see the light of day. He had refused to give in on principle—not because he realized the appalling danger of giving way to his tormentors; he did not realize it fully even after I explained to him what had happened to the men with whom the Chinese had persevered earlier. I was glad to have that young corporal from the State of New York in the next cell.
The Edge of the Sword Page 26