by Ha Jin
If only we’d had money to pay them. In contrast to us, the North Korean army was loaded with cash; every man had bales of it, because they had seized the South Korean government’s currency plates in Seoul. Their soldiers always paid for everything they took from civilians, who were pleased but didn’t know the banknotes were losing value. I often wondered why the North Koreans wouldn’t share some of the money with us. I guessed our top generals must have been too proud to ask them such a favor.
To avoid being pursued by the enemy, we moved farther south, deeper into hostile territory. Since most fields had not been sown, we didn’t expect to have ripe crops to eat in the fall, but there were orchards and groves of chestnut trees on some hills. We all hoped that our army would launch the sixth-phase offensive soon so that we could rejoin them. We didn’t know that from now on there would be no offensives anymore—the war had reached a stalemate.
We settled in a wooded valley where a brook flowed. In the evening frogs croaked in the water. The next day we began to catch frogs, which were a delicacy to us. We would skewer about a dozen of them on a whittled branch and roast them over a fire. But within three days all the frogs had been eaten up, and no croaking rose up at night anymore. Once in a while we heard a wild animal howling, a wolf or a leopard, but we couldn’t go hunting them because we dared not fire our guns.
Time and again we sent out men to search for grain. With few exceptions they would run into the enemy, and some of them would get killed. On average every twenty pounds of rice cost one man, so we mainly ate herbs, grass, and mushrooms, waiting for the fall when the wild chestnuts would ripen. Once about two dozen men were poisoned by a whitish fungus, which looked like tree ears and was juicy and crunchy, quite tasty. Half of us ate some, myself included. Afterward we collapsed, and a few men began groaning and rolling around with cramps in their stomachs. Fortunately Dr. Wang didn’t eat any. He boiled several cauldrons of water and made us drink our fill so that we could excrete the poison. I was sweating so much that my vision was blurred. It took two days for us to mend, though nobody died this time.
To shelter ourselves from the elements, we fetched crates left by the Americans along the road and used them to prop up sheets of corrugated iron we had dislodged from a dilapidated shack abandoned by charcoal burners. We also spread pieces of cardboard on the ground so that we could sleep on them. I hated to go to the road north of the mountain, because it smelled awful there, the air rife with decomposing bodies, Chinese and Koreans and Americans, all left behind, unburied. Back in China, at the Huangpu Military Academy, we had been instructed that in a battle the dead must be buried quietly, as soon as possible, so that the troops couldn’t see them; otherwise the sight of the corpses would weaken their morale. But here, in a real war, nobody cared.
The woods were deep here, providing good cover. During the day we would move about as little as possible; most of the time I just lay in the shade resting. Some calmness settled over me. I had with me a paperback of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the English original, which I often read with the help of the dictionary. Commissar Pei regretted not having brought along a full-length book; in his bag he had only a few booklets that were mere propaganda material. He mixed well with the soldiers, who could endure anything but the silence in the mountains. Yet they knew how to enjoy themselves. They made playing cards with paperboard and chess pieces with wood chips. During the day they often played for hours on end. I knew the chess moves well but preferred to remain a kibitzer. In addition to the games, every day Pei would tell them a story. A high school graduate, he was quite knowledgeable about ancient legends, and the stories he told fascinated the men. Hao Chaolin, a small sharp-witted man, also offered them stories, mainly those from revolutionary novels. I shared with them some episodes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Some of the men were touched by the character Cassy, who poisons her baby son with laudanum to prevent him from being sold as a slave. They said that the American slave owners must have been crueler than most of the landowners in the old China, but they were amazed that even the slaves could eat pork belly, beans, biscuits, chicken. I translated the passages in which Aunt Chloe serves the slave Sam a big meal after he tells her the good news that Eliza and her son Harry have fled to the other side of the Ohio River so that the slave trader can’t catch them anymore. In the scene Sam eats so many toothsome things—chicken wings and drumsticks, ham, corn cake, turkey legs. Granted that they were leftovers from the master’s table, they seemed sumptuous to these starving men.
“What does turkey taste like?” Tiger asked me with his large eyes batting.
“I don’t know,” I confessed.
“It must be real good,” another man put in.
I told them, “Turkeys are very big, almost like a small ostrich.”
“My, a lot of meat the bird must have,” Tiger said.
“It seems to me that the American slaves ate better than most of the rich families in my home village, tut-tut-tut,” said a short fellow with a wide face.
Actually a similar notion had crossed my mind too when I read those pages for the first time. I had thought America must be a bountiful land where nutritious food was available for everybody, even slaves.
The soldiers chatted a great deal among themselves, bragging about their hometowns and their deeds in the battles they had fought in China. They also talked at length about the dishes they had tasted or heard of: Nanking cured duck, Jinhua ham, stewed lamb sold at street food stands in the Northwest, whole fried carp and roast pigs served at dinner parties in the Northeast. A man from the South even boasted how delicious fried rats were. I said he was disgusting and no matter how hungry I was, I wouldn’t touch such a thing, though I knew the dish was a delicacy in some coastal areas.
Some of us had picked up American cans left at their deserted camp-sites, and we couldn’t help but wonder what kind of food GIs ate. We were impressed by their abundant resources. Tiger often said he wished that when the war was over, he could bring home just one pile of the shell casings the Americans had discarded, so he could sell the brass—which would be enough for him to live on for the rest of his life.
Gradually I developed a kind of attachment to the commissar, who seemed more and more amiable to me. One day when we two were alone, he confessed that he’d once had his doubts about intellectuals in the army, but that I had made him think differently. To the servicemen, most of whom were illiterate, every college graduate was an intellectual. Apart from my loyalty to our comrades, Pei must have been amazed to see that I could read alone for hours without respite and immerse myself in a novel written in English, of which he had read an ornate translation long ago. He was especially pleased that at night I would do guard duty for an hour, just like the enlisted men among us. He told me that if he got killed, I should help Chaolin lead them. I said I couldn’t accept such a responsibility; I wasn’t a Party member and was unsuitable for leadership. Besides, Chaolin was very capable and might not need my help at all. But the commissar insisted, “Your deeds are your qualification. You should lead our men if worst comes to worst.”
What he implied was that I should succeed Hao Chaolin if they were both lost. In truth, although I was calm in appearance, I was apprehensive at heart. What would happen to my mother if I perished in this foreign land? I missed my fiancée terribly. At night I often dreamed of her and my mother and woke up tearful. I wondered if my comrades had heard me babble in my sleep. Could Julan and I communicate through dreams, telepathically? Or were the dreams nothing but the vagaries of my mind? One night I saw her face shine with a mysterious smile, as if she had some secret but meant to keep me in suspense. As I stretched my hand to touch her tilted eyebrows, she faded away and I woke up with a numbing ache in my chest.
When the other men laughed heartily listening to Pei, I often remained pensive. One day the commissar said to me, “Why don’t you teach us some English?”
“What for?”
“It will be useful. We’ll fight the enemy again. Teach u
s some words we can use on the battlefield.”
So I began to teach them English, just some phrases and short sentences, such as “Hands up!,” “Drop your weapon, we spare you!,” “We don’t kill prisoners,” “Don’t move!,” “Surrender, you are safe!,” “Don’t die for American imperialism!”
There was no paper to write on, so I used a stick to inscribe on the ground the written characters representing the English sounds so that the literate ones among them could have some phonetic guidance. I couldn’t possibly make them pronounce the words accurately, since half of them didn’t even speak Mandarin well. But they were eager to learn, even if they did complain about the pain inflicted by the English pronunciation on their tongues and jaws. A few claimed they had sore throats. I was amazed that in just a few days they could rap out to one another what they had learned. Most of them were smart men who would have gone far in their lives had they had the opportunity and the education. I wondered why they would concentrate so much on learning a few foreign words that they might never use at all. Heaven knew what would happen to us tomorrow; we might get captured or killed anytime. The enemy was just two miles to the north.
I suspected that to them the act of learning must represent some kind of hope. At least this meant there was still a future, on which they could fix their minds. Their limited awareness of the larger world and their inert response to the menace of death endowed them with the strength needed for survival. I was moved by the tenacity of life shown in their desire to learn.
One afternoon, as we sat near a cliff learning how to sing a folk song, a man rushed back from the bushes where we would go and relieve ourselves. He shouted at us between gasps, “Enemy! They’re coming from both sides!”
Immediately Tiger began pushing Commissar Pei toward the edge of the cliff, which wasn’t very steep, overhung with tussocky grass and jujube shrubs. “You must go down now, sir!” he urged. As Pei was hesitating, Tiger shoved his shoulder forcefully. The commissar tumbled down and disappeared; then four or five men jumped down too. Tiger raised his pistol to fire at the enemy coming out of the woods. As he was about to retreat, a bullet hit his arm. “Oh!” he yelled. Then another bullet struck his neck and he died instantly, his blood flowing down the granite rock he fell on. The rest of us were pinned down by machine guns and couldn’t move. While I was wondering what to do, a grenade landed near us. Our cook picked it up, but before he could throw it away, it went off. A burst of light opened in front of me and a wave of heat swept me up. Then everything turned black.
When I came to, I realized I was in a vehicle, probably a jeep. The cool air was brushing my face, which must have been swollen. The sky seemed quite low, with the tattered clouds jittering violently. Someone said in English, “Damn, we let some of the gooks get away.”
A breezy voice answered, “Relax, man. We got eight of them, not bad.”
“Are they Koreans or Chinese?”
“Must be Chinks.”
“How can you tell?”
“They don’t wear no uniform.”
The jeep horn tooted, then some passing vehicle beeped back. The man in the passenger seat called out, “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Swell,” someone cried back from a distance.
They caught me! This realization shot a sharp pang to my heart, which seemed to jump up and block my throat. Two other Chinese men, whose faces I couldn’t see, were also lying in the jeep. I couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive. I could still move both arms, but my legs were numb. I tried to wriggle my toes to make sure they were still there; to my horror, I couldn’t feel anything in my left foot. I touched my left thigh, which felt wooden. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t move the leg; it must have been fractured. I touched my crotch—we had been told that some Americans would castrate Chinese POWs—but everything was all right there except that my thigh was bandaged. It seemed my captors meant to keep me alive. Why didn’t they kill me? It would’ve been better that way. At least people back home would treat Mother as a Revolutionary Martyr’s parent and the government would take care of her.
Where were they taking me? To a prison? To a hospital? I was overwhelmed by fear and shame. What should I do? We had never been instructed how to act honorably if we were taken prisoner, except to kill ourselves. Only Commissar Pei had once said that if we fell into the enemy’s hands, we must never tell them the truth: always lie to them. That was all the preparation I had received for this situation. I was confused. Why hadn’t the Americans finished me off? That would have made their job much simpler.
4. DR. GREENE
I was shipped to the First Closure of the POW Collection Center in Pusan. The city, then the provisional capital of South Korea, had so many American military offices and supply stations that the bustling streets reminded me of the Chinese city Dandong on the Yalu River, though more automobiles rolled around here and ships in the foggy harbor loomed like small buildings. Besides, this was a much bigger city with an airport. The closure I was put in comprised a hospital and several large compounds, each of which held over a thousand prisoners. The Collection Center was a transit point, where wounded POWs received medical treatment. But most prisoners stayed here just a few days; after being processed—registered and interrogated—they would be sent to different camps in other places.
My left thigh was fractured. A piece of shrapnel had hit the area near my groin and shattered the femur. Because of my injury I didn’t go to registration, which I heard was a tedious process—the waiting lines were long there, though the clerks, mostly North Korean prisoners, were sympathetic to Chinese captives. Nor was I interrogated like other POWs, some of whom collapsed under the torment.
Nonetheless, I was ordered to have my fingerprints taken and to provide the information needed for registration. A stout American officer and a Chinese interpreter came to our ward, in which over seventy patients, wounded and diseased, were lying on canvas cots. The ward was in a large iron-framed tent with a plywood floor and two entrances. The air was foul in here. The officer asked me my name, rank, education, my unit’s serial number, and questioned me about my immediate superiors. I told him that my name was Feng Yan and that I was a new recruit, serving as a secretary in an infantry company in the 539th Regiment. The Americans must have known that regiment’s serial number, so I told him the truth: 3692. He showed me a bunch of snapshots of Chinese soldiers who all looked like officers, and asked me whether I knew any of them. I didn’t recognize a single one. I was still weak, having been operated on just three days before, so after a few more questions the officer and the interpreter left, saying they’d come again. Throughout the questioning, I didn’t speak English, fearful that I might reveal my true identity.
Outside the compound fenced with barbed wire, forty yards away from the gate, stood a white-stuccoed building, two stories high, with a red-tiled roof and dormer windows. Before the war it had been a schoolhouse, and now it was occupied by the Operating Section, which the patients called the Butchery. Almost every day dead bodies were carried out of it and then stacked in front of the closure’s admission center, to join those who had died en route to the hospital. I had spent four hours in that building three days before. After I was placed on a table, two doctors had talked in whispers about my leg. I couldn’t understand their words completely, because I was still delirious and unfamiliar with their medical vocabulary. They sounded unsure about the procedure to come. An anesthetist injected some drug into my lower abdomen and the small of my back, and then they tied down my arms and calves. When a nurse had spread a white sheet over my belly, one of the doctors smirked, saying, “I never thought there’d be so many patients to cut when I was drafted. This definitely beats any residency.”
“I guess I’ll be qualified for chief surgeon after the war is over,” said a tall doctor with blond eyebrows. Apparently he was in charge of the operation.
My heart shuddered as I realized they were two medical school students who probably hadn’t completed their course work yet.
I closed my eyes tight wondering if I should beg them to save my leg, but I decided not to talk and just endure it. Outside, a downpour lashed and blurred the windowpanes.
“Ow!” I yelled as one of them poked my wound.
“It hurts?” asked a concerned voice.
Before I could answer, the tall doctor said, “We should start.”
The anesthesia hadn’t taken full effect yet when they began cutting me. Bouts of pain radiated to my insides and to my neck and head. Despite gritting my teeth, I couldn’t stop groaning and twisting while their instruments explored my wound.
The room turned foggy. All the objects—the intense lights, the bottles hung on a steel stand, the bluish caps on the human heads—all seemed to be floating and bobbing around. A moment later I blacked out.
When I came to, my left thigh was dressed with a wooden board tied alongside my leg and hip. “You’re all set for the time being,” the tall doctor said to me with a grin. “You’ll keep your leg.”
“Thank you,” I sighed.
“You speak English?”
I shook my head and regretted having blurted that out.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asked again.
I didn’t respond, just stared at him. With a wave of his hand he summoned two orderlies to take me away on a stretcher.
Besides the American medical staff, there were more than three dozen orderlies working in the hospital. Most of them were Chinese who had cooperated with our captors and had been assigned to work in the building, carrying patients and cleaning. As “collaborators,” they probably wouldn’t be going back to mainland China, where they would be held accountable for their behavior here, so they treated us according to their own moods and whims. Sometimes they even beat patients. The two orderlies who carried me back to the ward made fun of me all the way, saying I was lucky the doctors hadn’t sawed off my leg.