Valleys of Death (25 page)

Many lost control of their minds and did things that they would never have done under normal circumstances. I didn't know what to say. When I heard stories or saw things where men were mistreating one another, I thought of the first night of captivity, when the Chinese dumped the rice on the ground.

What happens to men when they become prisoners?

Why do they change from helping one another and become totally engrossed in themselves, with a totally selfish outlook on life?

Understand I'm not talking about all men, but many never come to grips with losing their freedom. They feel abandoned by their country and are no longer with men they trust. In their minds, their personal survival becomes paramount and group survival no longer matters.

“You're a good man,” I told him. “I don't know many that would work in this hellhole.”

I asked him if he knew Vaillancourt and Roberts. He shook his head yes and looked down at his cigarette.

“I did. They both died a couple of weeks ago,” he said.

He flicked his cigarette and smiled weakly at me.

“Got to get back,” he said.

I sat there in silence. Roberts and Vaillancourt weren't as close to me as Walsh and Hall, but knowing they were gone still hurt. But not like before. The way the guys were dying, thirty or forty a day, another couple deaths didn't register. Plus in the morgue we were all dying.

Most days I sat outside and watched the road that ran behind the back of the building. Small groups of men would walk by to collect wood for the cookhouses. My legs were feeling a little better, and I yelled to a pair of guys to bring me back some limbs that I could fashion into crutches. The next day they threw me a couple of limbs that were V-shaped on one end. The next day, I tried to cross the road.

Steadying myself on the new crutches, I slid my left foot forward. Pain shot through my body. I paused and caught my breath. Then, slowly, I slid my right foot forward. The pain shot through my back again, but not as sharp. Left. Right. Left. The width of the road was only about fifteen feet, but it took me all day. The pain was excruciating. But the next day, I did it again. I went out and walked the width of the road every day for weeks. One day, one of the guys getting wood stopped and clapped for me.

Soon, my right leg started to straighten up. My left leg was still useless, but by then I was walking down the road toward the river. Again, it took me all day and I covered less than one hundred yards. When I got to the bottom, some English prisoners carried me back up the hill. I did this every day until I walked back up the hill alone. The weather was getting warmer and my left leg started to heal. I wanted to be ready for the summer. That is when I had the best chance to escape.

When the ice on the river finally thawed, the Chinese started letting the prisoners wash in the river. Some of the guys offered to carry me down and help me get into the water. It was freezing cold, but believe it or not it felt great. It was the first time I was able to clean myself since the night in the trench. I washed my clothes and body. It was wonderful. The bath and cleaning of my clothes really invigorated me. For days afterward, I went at walking with much more energy. Every day my legs improved, to the point where I could walk without the jerry-rigged crutches. Within two weeks, I barely used them at all.

Soon, the Chinese were back. This time, they came to tell me I was leaving the morgue. I couldn't believe it. But as it sank in, I thought about King. Of all the people there, I wished that he would heal enough to get out. I was sad that I would more than likely never know who the two guys were that saved me from drowning in the slit trench.

“King, get off your ass and get out of here,” I said as the guards escorted me out.

“Good luck, Rich,” he said.

I never thought I'd ever see King again. But four years later, I was in a jeep at Fort Dix, New Jersey, when I saw him directing traffic. He was a military police officer.

Slowly and painfully, my legs begin to straighten.
Sketch by author

“Pull over,” I told the driver and hopped out as soon as he stopped.

Walking into the intersection, I called out King's name.

“Rich?” King said.

King and I had a reunion right in the middle of the intersection as cars looked on. Both of us had actually made it.

But the better reunion was back in the prison camp. As the Chinese marched me down the hill, I had no idea where they were taking me. I was surprised when they brought me back to my old house. When the guards shoved me through the door, Doyle and Smoak couldn't believe their eyes.

“Welcome back,” Doyle said.

Since no one had ever come back from the morgue, the guys peppered me with questions about my treatment.

“What treatment?” I said and they all laughed.

I told them we never received any medicine. Got less food and the room smelled like a cesspool. I told how I'd almost drowned in the trench and that two guys from the black compound saved my life.

“It was a shitty situation,” I said, and again they all laughed.

It felt good to be back with my guys. No one came back from the morgue, so being the first one meant something. For me it was better than medicine. My morale was sky high. I had made it and now set my sights on escaping.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

TRUMAN'S RUNNING DOGS

Since I'd been in the morgue , the Chinese had started putting a lot of pressure on us. We were required to spend hours in lectures and discussion groups supervised by Chinese political officers. The program focused on what was wrong with the United States. Everything was corrupt, from our government, to our economic structure, educational system and press.

Much of their emphasis was on lower class laborers in the United States and how they were exploited by our government.

“It was not our fault we attacked North Korea, it was our corrupt government,” Doyle told me, repeating the day's lesson. “The Chinese are peace-loving people and mean us no harm.”

My God, where had I heard all of this before? It was the same crap that officer had told me during my first interrogation.

The day after I returned from the morgue, Doyle took me aside. I had a lot of catching up to do.

“Guards came at all hours to escort prisoners to the camp's headquarters,” Doyle said.

“What for?” I asked. “We don't have much intelligence value. I have no idea what is going on in the war.”

“They want to discuss what we heard in the lecture earlier,” Doyle said. “They also have us learning Chinese songs. But we've changed a few lines. One ends with ‘Who flung dung at Mao Tse Tung?'”

Doyle explained that the political officers began by breaking you down physically so you started to agree with them just to get them off your back. When this happened, they would be on you full-force pushing you to make a statement against the United States government or to make a statement as to the wonderful treatment you were receiving. Next, you'd be one of the turncoats up on stage leading a lecture. Listening to Doyle, I was determined to fight them at every turn. There was no way I was going to allow myself to be hijacked by their group thinking or be a puppet of their oppressive government.

The Chinese had also started to clean up the camp since I'd been gone, in hopes of winning us over. Any man sick or dying was taken to the “hospital” and kept out of sight. We were still dying in great numbers; it had just been removed from our sight. They also tried to improve our diet. Prisoners even started to make steam bread by taking balls of dough and placing them on a bamboo rack over a pot of steaming water.

“I will leave a hundred men to die to save one progressive,” the base commander reportedly said.

I wasn't back a day before I followed the rest of the house to my first lecture.

Before I went to the morgue they were hammering away on the theme that the United States was the aggressor and had orchestrated the attack on North Korea. Following it up by showing our imperialistic transgressions around the world. They tried to substantiate this by showing all the countries where we had United States troops stationed or naval forces controlling sea lanes around the world.

Today's lecture was directed toward tearing down our capitalistic system and showing how the captains of industry controlled the money and suppressed the masses. Supposedly in the socialistic system the masses would share equally in the state-run economy. The state would control every facet of life and provide for everyone from cradle to grave. A Utopia where everyone would share equally. In their convoluted way of thinking this would lead us to the conclusion that socialism/communism would benefit all mankind. I believe this was not really intended to produce turncoats for anything more than propaganda; however, I think they hoped that some of the returning POWs would believe enough that they would spread the seeds of doctrine when they returned to their country. This was a tough sell to the group I was in. We outwardly challenged the loss of individual freedom under their system. The Chinese became quite agitated.

The Chinese were constantly trying to develop individuals to reinforce their philosophy. They would entice them with better medical care, food and, in general, treating them as friends.

The lectures were followed by discussion groups on the content of the lecture. In our room it was a joke.

However, it was no joke to the Chinese. We were repeatedly being taken to the Chinese headquarters and questioned about the lecture and why we were not cooperating in our room discussions. I became one of their prime targets. I was taken to the headquarters on numerous occasions. It was always the same thing. Attempts to reeducate me, which always broke down, then threats and promises that things would get better once I cooperated.

“Why do you not cooperate? Other men do,” the political officer would ask.

The Chinese had a small group of American and British prisoners who helped with lectures, wrote propaganda and even taped anti-American broadcasts. In return, they were being fed better than the rest of the prisoners. One or two were seen coming and going outside the camp without guards. I learned early on not to accuse someone of being an informer or collaborator based on rumors. The Chinese were smart and made it look as though an individual was cooperating, hoping that rejection by the other prisoners would force him to seek comfort.

When I was called to a session with an interrogator, I always made myself believe I had one or two of my roommates with me. If I said anything, I first thought what would Doyle think if he could hear me. Most times I just kept silent. I'd learned that outwitting the interrogator was impossible. The less I said, the better. I just looked at them with a blank stare. I was getting very good at detaching myself from the conversation. I knew that they would like to kill me, but they needed to be careful not to destroy their so-called lenient policy without a damned good explanation or lie.

We all tried to resist, even if it only meant not paying attention. One night the Chinese had been going at a large group of us and it was getting close to morning. Lectures followed by discussion all designed to keep us up—they hoped our sleep-deprived minds would give in to their demands.

Finally, one of the men in the group stood up and started singing “God Bless America.” Before the Chinese realized what was happening, we were all on our feet singing. The Chinese let us finish, but we knew a punishment was coming.

A few days later, the guards surrounded our buildings. They formed us up in a column of threes and moved us to the road that ran down the valley to the river. The first platoon of which I was a part consisted of about sixty prisoners. With the two other platoons, we totaled about 150 men. The rest of the men in the camp lined up along the road. An English-speaking Chinese officer announced over the loudspeaker that we were being moved to a work camp.

“Truman's running dogs and Wall Street warmongers are disrupting your peaceful chances for education,” the officer said, his thickly accented English booming from the speakers.

We were all scared. This had never happened before. But we walked down the road with our heads held high and smiling. As they marched us onto two barges at the dock, the Chinese guards also told the other prisoners that we were to be worked to death and they would never see us again. The Chinese were in such a hurry to get rid of us that one of the barges we were loaded on tore down an electric wire as it pulled away from the dock.

The farther we got from shore, the more nervous I got. Standing at the rail and looking into the dark, cold, swirling water, I worried that these bastards were going to get us in the deep water and pull the plug and sink the barges. We were in no condition to swim very far.