Valleys of Death (27 page)

“If something happened to one man, two of us could possibly help take him along,” I said.

“Right, but if one of us can't continue, the others should go on,” Smoak said.

He looked at my leg. “You think you can do it with those legs?”

“I'll be fine,” I said. “I can make it. My legs feel better. Stronger every day.”

“So who is our third guy?” Smoak asked.

I suggested Gonzalez. He was a smart, tough Latino. He and I had talked many times on detail getting firewood or carrying timber down from the mountain. From Texas, he had broad shoulders and a thick head of black hair. Of average build, he was strong and always did more than his share of the work. More than once, we talked about escaping. No details or plans. We were too careful for that. But his desire to get out matched ours. Smoak wanted to take a couple of days to see what he could find out about Gonzalez.

A few days later, the team was set. Gonzalez had passed muster, and Smoak and I set out to test the logs. Just after midnight, we walked to the latrine and stripped. Bundling our clothes in a ball, we snuck down to the bank and slid the logs from their hiding place in a clump of bushes and into the water. The river was cold and sent a shiver through my body as we waded deep into the water, our clothes balanced in the center of the raft. Clinging to the logs on either side, we paddled and kicked our way across the river to the far bank and then doubled back to the camp. The logs worked perfectly, and three hours later we were back in our building. No one knew. The next morning, over our breakfast of maize, we told Gonzalez how easy it had been to get the logs into the water. This was going to work.

“Now all we need is warmer weather,” I said. “I froze my ass off.”

Gonzalez laughed, but Smoak just grunted.

“I don't feel well,” he said. “My stomach is killing me.”

Soon, Smoak was doubled over. Doyle tried to get the Chinese to do something, but they ignored his pleas. Soon Smoak couldn't talk. He just lay in bed and moaned. When the pain got really bad, he screamed. Finally, he passed out. His face was locked in a tortured grimace and his skin had turned ashen. At noon, the medic that was helping him turned to us and shook his head.

“He's dead.”

The words landed on us like mortar rounds. I just stood there staring at his face in shock. Dead? How could this have happened in such a short time? Only seven months ago men were dying all around us. It was normal. Since we'd moved, prisoners didn't die anymore. We were the survivors. This wasn't supposed to happen anymore. The shock quickly boiled up into a rage. There was talk of marching against the Chinese headquarters and making demands. For what, I wasn't sure.

“Rich, we need to show the Chinese in the strongest way we can that we demand medical care when someone is sick,” Doyle said.

I followed the group out of the room and up the hill to the headquarters. We were screaming at the top of our lungs, demanding that the officers come out and talk with us. Guards blocked our way. Prisoners in other buildings stood outside and watched. They had astonished looks on their faces. We were out of our minds with rage. We were standing on a mound just high enough that we were looking down at the guards. The Chinese were nervous. The camp commander and three or four of the political officers approached us slowly.

“Get back to your building,” one of the English-speaking political officers said.

We shouted him down.

“Get back,” the commander said, “and I will talk to your leaders. But only if you go back to your building.”

We went back to the building and for a while thought we'd shocked the Chinese into changing things. But nothing changed. We never saw any doctors or medicine. We all fell into a funk. I could still hear Smoak's humming and infectious laugh. Gonzalez and I were stuck looking at the river, knowing we knew how to get out. But we no longer had a third man.

The river still ended up being our way out. About a month later, the Chinese marched our building out of the camp and onto a barge moored at the pier. We had no idea why the guards were moving us, but it was pretty clear that our protest hadn't helped things. The Chinese felt it was better to move the troublemakers.

The new camp was built near a village. It was surrounded on three sides by open fields. As we walked through the village, a large double gate loomed before us. The security at the camp was the best we'd seen. The gate was flanked by two guard posts. A tall barbed wire fence with guard towers at fifty-yard intervals ringed the camp.

Inside the wire, the guards marched us to mud huts. There were only ten to twelve small buildings in the camp. One was a cookhouse. The first thing I did was volunteer for a detail to find firewood. It allowed me to get out of the camp and check out the area. Along the way, I saw a small schoolhouse with a map on the wall. On our way back to camp the Chinese guards were in their normal lackadaisical mode. Positioned at the front and back of the column, they were too far away to see all of us. I moved up to the front, and when we got adjacent to the school building I dropped my wood bundle and shot into the building. I ripped the map off the wall and stuffed it into my shirt. I dashed out, picked up my bundle of wood and kept walking. My heart was in my throat.

“What the hell are you doing, Rich?” one of the guys asked.

“I just wanted to see what was in the building,” I said.

“What the hell did you expect to find in there? A good-looking Korean teacher.”

“You never know,” I answered. I could feel the thick paper of the map under my shirt.

I could hardly wait to show Gonzalez the map. Later that night, I got him to the side and told him about it.

“Jesus Christ, Rich, are you crazy? They would have ripped you a new ass if they had caught you,” he said.

“But they didn't catch me,” I said.

We spread the map out, but it was a little disappointing. Not much detail. However, it showed the coast and the river. It was more than we'd ever had before. I told Gonzalez I was working in the cookhouse and would start stashing food. My job was to carry water from the well outside the gate to the cookhouse. Every day, I balanced two five-gallon cans of water on the ends of a chogie stick. A guard came with me as I shuffled along like the Koreans. The guards didn't follow me all the way to the well. Instead, they hung by the road, just keeping me and the well in sight.

Unlike at past camps, civilians still lived in the village. When the guards weren't looking, I would bow and wave to them. They looked Japanese, probably leftovers from the long and brutal occupation during World War II, and they seemed intimidated by the Chinese. One day, I interrupted a young girl getting water at the well. She and her family lived at a nearby house. When she'd seen me before, the girl had run off and watched me from inside the house.

This day, I filled my two five-gallon containers and noticed an empty jug sitting nearby. I dropped the bucket into the well, pulled it up and filled her jug. After a few days of watching me get water, the girl wasn't afraid. I filled her bucket and smiled. My hope was to build enough rapport that when Gonzalez and I made our dash, the civilians would help. Worst case, they wouldn't tell.

One day, a middle-aged Korean man was standing near the well. He was small, with thick black hair and dark eyes. When he saw me looking at him, he bowed and pointed to his wrist like he wanted a wristwatch.

I nodded my head yes and he turned and walked away. That night, I told Gonzalez about the Korean.

“I am sure he wants a watch,” I said. “Maybe if we get him one, he'll help us escape.”

Neither one of us knew of anyone offhand who still had a watch. But we hoped that we could get one. If we could get the Korean to take us part of the distance, it would make our chances that much better. The one thing that kept nagging in the back of my mind was that the Korean could be setting us up. Once we got out, he could have us killed or, after he got what he wanted, turn us in to the North Korean Police.

“See how far you can take him,” Gonzalez said.

Our plan had changed since we moved. Since I got the map, we'd decided to skip the river. Instead, our plan was to move to the west coast, look for a boat and take our chances on being picked up by our Navy. We figured it was seventy miles as the crow flies to the coast.

We needed to time our escape so that it was dark. We had the moon cycle and guard posts diagrammed on the reverse side of the map and waited for a dark night to run. We didn't see any real problem getting through the fences. It was easy to wiggle through the gaps in the wire. Now all we had to do was get the Korean on our side and wait for the moon cycle.

The Korean wasn't there the next day, but he showed up again at the well the following day. I made sure the guard wasn't looking and pointed to my wrist. He nodded his head yes. Then I pointed at myself and him and mimed us walking away with my fingers. He kept shaking his head yes. I did it again just to make sure he understood. All of a sudden the guard started shouting and waving at me to hurry up. I waved to the man and hurried back to the road.

When I got back to the camp, I found out that the Chinese guards had taken Gonzalez to headquarters for questioning. This wasn't unusual, and I figured he'd be back later that night. These sessions usually took thirty minutes, or until they got tired of hearing themselves talk. After about an hour, the kitchen crew and I watched as guards marched Gonzalez to a hole near the center of the camp. After a slight shove, Gonzalez climbed inside and the guard stood near the entrance.

This looked serious. Had someone told the Chinese about our escape plan? I was the one who'd stolen the map. I was the one trying to make a deal with the Korean. It made no sense that the Chinese had Gonzalez in the hole. He must have said something to someone. That night I moved the map from the hole near my house to another hole a little farther away.

The next day, Gonzalez was still in his hole. But the guards came by the cookhouse to get him some food. I took a bowl and stuck in it a note I'd scrawled on some loose paper in the kitchen: “Hang in there.”

After I did it, I thought that was not too smart. If the Chinese found it, it would cause Gonzalez more trouble and the whole kitchen crew would be in trouble. The Chinese never discovered it, and I hoped that it gave Gonzalez a boost down at the bottom of the hole.

In the middle of all of this, my Korean villager disappeared. A day or two later someone was telling a story about the Chinese taking a Korean away with his hands tied behind his back. I had no way of knowing if it was my man, but I never saw him again.

With Gonzalez in the hole and no help from the outside, my escape plan was temporarily destroyed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE LAST YEAR

“Get up! Get up!”

The Chinese guards burst into our huts shouting and pulling us onto our feet.

“Bring your belongings and get outside!”

Half-asleep, I collected up my padded jacket, blanket and towel and staggered with the rest outside. Old American Army trucks were lined up by the gate. Their engines rumbled as the guards shoved us toward the open tailgates. As we walked, I could feel the map scraping my legs. I'd stuffed it into my pants when the guards weren't looking.

We'd only been at this camp for eighteen days. Now we were on the move again. Just before the guards threw open the gate, we saw Gonzalez. They had taken him out of the hole to his room to gather his belongings. The guards were marching him to the back of our truck. I was happy to see him.

“I'm fine, guys. Just fine,” he said as we helped him aboard.

“Why did they put you in the hole?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said, settling into a seat next to me. “They kept asking me general questions about everyone.”

I wanted to ask him if they knew about the escape. Did they know we had a map? But I couldn't in front of the others. We headed east for hours. The only thing that stood out was we passed what I thought were a couple of mines, one small steel mill and a train engine repair shop, all located within a mile of one another. In the excitement of the move, at first it didn't cross my mind that we were traveling in broad daylight.

Doyle noticed my nervousness.

“What's up?”

“Christ, do you realize that we are moving in the daylight?”

Doyle just looked at me and grimaced. We never mentioned it again.

We were on a straight stretch of road heading east, when a truck going west passed us. In the back of the truck there were two Catholic nuns and one civilian Caucasian male. They were standing and waving to us, and in a second they were gone. We had heard rumors of Catholic nuns being held by the Chinese. We all thought that the male might have been Frank Knowles, the photographer who was being held in the officers' camp. It was amazing the uplifting feeling it gave all of us just seeing the three of them. They dominated the conversation for many miles. Who were they? Where were they going? If this was Knowles, where was he coming from? Twenty questions, none of which could be answered.

The trucks finally rolled to a stop in front of a schoolhouse. A tall fence surrounded it. Each truck unloaded and we were corralled into the fenced yard. Guards patrolled outside the wire. Doyle figured we were close to Mampo, a large city with a railhead.

Inside the yard, they split us into groups by rooms. They made us strip and searched us two at a time. While the first pair got dressed, the next pair stripped. I still had the map. The bucket that we got our food in was sitting by my leg. I looked straight at one of the guys that had finished dressing. It was O'Keefe. I looked at him and then down at the bucket. At the same time, I palmed the map and slipped it out of my pants. Holding it against my leg, I dropped it into the bucket. O'Keefe stepped over and picked the bucket up. I turned and started to take my clothes off just as the Chinese turned to me. O'Keefe walked out of the yard. My heart was beating so hard I could hardly breathe.