Valleys of Death (28 page)

After the search, they loaded us on the trucks and moved us across a bridge over a large stream. O'Keefe handed me the map and I put it back into my pants.

“That was close,” I said to O'Keefe. “Thanks for the help.”

We pulled up to a gate, with seven or more buildings spread out in the fenced-in area. We were put in an old school building. A hall ran down the middle of the building. Four rooms that I guess at one time had been classrooms became our bedrooms. Sixty of us were put into two rooms. The rooms had wooden sleeping platforms running around the perimeter, two feet off the floor. The best thing was the presence of a potbellied stove. We could look forward to a little heat during the winter.

There was an outside latrine at one end of the building. It soon began to stink, since more than one hundred people used it on a daily basis. The odor was awful. For me, it was like old times in the morgue.

As usual, I wandered around the camp talking to some of the others. There were British, Turkish and some American prisoners in the compound right next to where we were. I started looking for guys from Philadelphia or close by in Pennsylvania. I soon found Charles Wray and three others from Pennsylvania.

We were all together one day shooting the bull when Wray fished out a picture.

“Hey, I have a picture of my girlfriend.”

Of course everybody wanted to see it, so he passed it around. It got to me and I noticed that this was only half of a picture. I looked at it closely and then started to laugh.

“Do you know who is on the other part of the photo?” They all looked at me. “I know who's on the other part. Me.”

“Bullshit, Rich, who are you shitting?” Wray said.

“I'm telling you, it's me. That girl is Claire, my father's girlfriend's daughter,” I said. Wray's eyes had grown wide and his mouth hung open, stunned. “We took that picture in June of 1950 when I visited her home with my father.”

That blew everybody's mind. Unbelievable. I stared at the picture for a while longer. I could still remember the exact moment. For the first time in a while, I thought of home and my family. I hoped that my father was happy. Did they know I was alive? I never received any mail and didn't know if anyone had received the two Mother's Day cards that I had made and was able to send. I hoped they knew I was alive.

The Chinese left us alone for a couple of weeks, and we all settled into a routine of cleaning, cooking and sleeping. Then all of a sudden the Chinese started giving us lectures on germ warfare. This was part of the great re-education system. The majority of the population was uneducated, so for the most part they did not have to be re-educated, they only had to be educated through the words of their great leader Mao Tse-tung. This type of education required constant reinforcement. They pounded away with the same garbage, over and over again.

Our planes dropped chafe, thousands of small pieces of aluminum foil that blocked out enemy radar. The Communists had convinced their soldiers and the North Korean civilians that this was a form of germ warfare. They had everyone wearing masks and carrying jars with tweezers or chopsticks so that they could pick up the small pieces of foil. There was no better example of Communist control of the masses.

The winter of 1952-53 was livable compared to the past two winters. We were allowed to select our own leaders and organize committees to work on different facets of our daily life. A sanitation committee, athletic committee, a daily action committee—all brought some semblance of order to our lives. Food had improved too. We got steamed bread, vegetables and rice; once in a while some fish and meat, but it was usually just a scrap. The change in diet was enough to let us gain some weight.

We were also receiving English newspapers from Communist countries, including the New York
Daily Worker
. Printed by the Communist Party of the United States, it was a propaganda rag, but it had a small entertainment and sports section that we looked forward to reading. I got ahold of a copy of
The Last Frontier
by Howard Fast. The book tells the story of the Cheyenne Indians in the 1870s and their bitter struggle to flee Oklahoma. I also read
Spartacus
, about the leader of a Roman slave revolt.

Fast was branded a Communist in 1947, which is why the Chinese gave us the books. But I didn't care, for me it was an escape. The stories not only took me away from the prison camp, but showed that suffering is part of the human experience and it can be overcome. A good lesson and one that I'd learned through experience.

In the spring, all types of athletic equipment began to arrive as well. We formed teams and started to have soccer, football, volleyball and basketball tournaments. We should have known that the sudden interest by the Chinese in athletics and competition was more than just concern for our well-being. It was all in preparation for their great “Peace Olympics” to be held in Pyoktong.

The Olympics were part of the Chinese propaganda machine showing how wonderfully they treated U.N. prisoners. It was fifty years before I realized how the men who participated were exploited. When my mother died, my sister found an unopened envelope from London containing a large magazine full of stories from the camps. It included a large section on the “Peace Olympics” held at Pyoktong. The entire magazine was enough to make me sick.

The track and field events were highlights for me. To the surprise of everyone, I won the preliminary hundred- and two-hundred-meter runs. My legs had gained that much strength.

“You know, Rich,” Doyle said. “You win and you'll go to the Olympics.”

I was on my way to the makeshift track to race in the final heat. I didn't want to be part of their Olympics.

“So I guess I am going to lose.”

I got to the starting line and waited for the signal to go. I'd never thrown a race or game, and I was having trouble doing it. I knew I had to lose, but I shot out of the starting blocks. My mind knew I had to slow down, but my legs didn't want to lose. Lucky for me, a guy from another company was faster. I came in second place.

 

 

 

I had thought about escape every day, but now escape crossed my mind less and less. Life had become more bearable. We read about peace talks, and in March, the Chinese finally accepted a U.N. proposal to exchange sick and wounded prisoners.

Five months after the exchange, the war was over. The war had begun three years before with a North Korean invasion of South Korea. It ended July 27, 1953, with neither side winning a decisive military victory.

The Chinese had us all in a formation when they announced that a peace agreement had been reached. We stood silently, looking at one another. No one said anything. This news had been a long time coming.

I just stood there, a smile plastered across my face. I looked down at my rail-thin frame. Like a map, it showed my journey. Scars on my back from shrapnel. A missing tooth from the corn. Night blindness from a lack of vitamins, which luckily only lasted for a couple of weeks. I was one of the fortunate ones. I'd survived.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

FREEDOM

The day I left the prison camp, my fifth, I thought about a recurring dream I had. I was on a train going to see Rose. She was on a passing train going in the opposite direction. Somehow we never knew we were passing each other.

But in the dream I knew. It always left me sad. I had the dream on my last night at the prison camp, but it was impossible to feel anything but hope that morning. To this day, when I think of our movement south, I get butterflies in my stomach.

We all climbed into the back of old U.S. Army trucks. There was a great deal of nervous talk. God only knew what freedom would hold for each of us. What would our world be like that we were returning to? How were our families? Did they know we were coming home? Did they know we were alive? What was their situation?

They were moving us to the railhead at Mampo. The Chinese gave one of the prisoners a lock and told him to close the gates after the trucks pulled out. After we passed, he snapped the lock shut, closing some of the darkest chapters in my life.

At Mampo we were loaded in railcars that had recently carried cattle. The residue deposited by the cattle still remained on the floor. It didn't bother me. I looked at it as the sweet smell of freedom on the way. A couple of guys started mooing, and almost instantly everyone was mooing and laughing like hell.

Looking through the wooden slats as we moved, I saw the aftermath of our bombing campaign. Railroads, rail stations, bridges all had been totally destroyed and repaired over and over again. We stopped at a railroad station outside of Pyongyang that was completely destroyed. Only the concrete platforms were left.

Our final destination was a tent city near Panmunjom on the 38th parallel. Every afternoon, we sat impatiently waiting for a motorcycle rider to deliver the list of men to be moved that evening. Day after day this took place. Finally Doyle's name was called, and before he left he handed me his little red book that was filled with his poems and quotations. I spent many hours and days reading the poems over and over. I found one about the men he'd lived with. I studied the lines. A few stuck out:

He was the wise one. He'd kept us together and helped me survive. But now I'd become extremely anxious, and thoughts of getting across on my own ran rampant through my brain. I fought the urge. I'd come too far now to risk escaping. The camp had thinned down to only a couple hundred men when the Chinese finally called my name.

We moved by truck to a holding area consisting of five or six buildings with a pagoda in the center of the square. We were fed a good meal of rice and I think egg drop soup; this was great compared to what we had been receiving. After we finished eating, they separated me and another guy and put us in a building by ourselves with a guard outside the door.

What the hell was going on?

I questioned the other guy. We were so distraught that we never learned each other's name.

“What the hell did you do? Have you been in trouble?”

“Yeah, I was accused of trying to escape and disrupting their lectures,” he replied. “I guess being a general pain in their ass. What about you?”

“Pretty much the same,” I said. “Did they threaten you with being held back?”

He didn't look up and just nodded his head yes. This was going to be a long night.

The next morning, they had all the other men in formation. I could see a white jeep with four men in blue helmets through a large crack in the door. One started reading names off a clipboard. Adrenaline shot through my body as I slammed into the door, knocking it open and hitting the guard.

“Sergeant Richardson, 13250752, turn my name in,” I shouted.

The guard pushed me back into the room. My blood pressure must have gone through the roof. I had a pounding headache and I slumped down onto the floor. My friend sat with me and we both looked at each other and never said a word. I could hear the trucks driving away. These little bastards had finally beaten me.

Another group of prisoners arrived that night. The next morning, after they got in formation, a Chinese officer came and took the two of us out of the room and placed us in the formation. He then had a discussion with a member of the International Commission. The names were called. Mine was the last. We boarded the trucks and proceeded to cross Freedom Bridge to Freedom Village.

When we arrived, I didn't wait for them to drop the tailgate, I jumped right out onto the ground. There were two American escorts for each of us. They grabbed me and I thought, holy shit, these guys were big and muscular. I quickly realized they were average guys. I was just a little skinny.

Our first stop was a tent city in a thousand-yard neutral circle in the rice paddies of Panmunjom. We stripped, showered and de-loused. Having put on slippers and pajamas, we were checked by good-looking nurses. We stayed less than an hour before moving to another building to get uniforms and our first meal.

After our meal, we were flown by helicopter to a replacement depot in Inchon. It was my first helicopter flight, and I sat near the door and watched Korea pass in a blur below me. I felt like screaming, singing and dancing, but instead I remained subdued, quiet and happy inside. At Inchon, we got a couple of thousand dollars in back pay. I was shocked to see where they had deducted my laundry from April 1950 in Austria.

 

 

 

Fifty-seven years have passed and I can still remember how great it felt. Like being born again.

Before we boarded the USNT
Brewster
, we got to call home for the first time. I reached my dad. I could hear the excitement in his voice. He bombarded me with questions.

“Are you all right? When are you coming home?”

I told him I was in good shape. My father told me he and Cathy had gotten married. He was finally happy, and everyone in both families was fine. Then I detected a change in his voice. After a pause, he told me that Rose was married. I could hear in his voice that he was worried about my reaction.

“Don't worry about me, I'll be okay,” I said.

There was some kind of calmness inside of me that was difficult to describe. I'd been through so much that just being free and headed home was enough. I cared about Rose, but I understood that she wasn't going to wait. After worrying about living day in and day out, I wondered if anything would bother me in the future.