CHAPTER X

Return of the Prisoners of War

_Operation_ BIG SWITCH--_Circumstances of Capture--The Communist POW Camps--CCF “Lenient Policy” and Indoctrination Attempts--The Germ Warfare Issue--Problems and Performance of Marine POWs--Marine Escape Attempts--Evaluation and Aftermath_

_Operation_ BIG SWITCH[538]

[538] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: _PacFlt EvalRpt_ No. 6, Chaps. 9, 10; 1stMarDiv ComdDs, Jul-Sep 53; 1stMarDiv G-3 Jnls, Jul-Aug 53; 1st MAW ComdD, Jul 53; 11thMar, MAG-33 ComdDs, Jul 53; HRS Subject File VE23.2.S8 “CMC Statements on Korean POWs”; HRS Subject File #1 “Prisoners of War--Korea--General”; HRS Subject Files “Prisoners of War--Korea--News Clippings, folders #1, #2, #3”; Korea War casualty cards from Statistical Unit, Casualty Section, Personal Affairs Br, Code DNA, HQMC; MacDonald, _POW_; Berger, _Korea Knot_; Clark, _Danube to Yalu_; T. R. Fehrenbach, _This Kind of War--A Study in Unpreparedness_ (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1963), hereafter Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, quoted with permission of the publisher; Field, _NavOps, Korea_; Hermes, _Truce Tent_; Leckie, _Conflict_; Rees, _Korea_; USMA, _Korea_; MSgt Roy E. Heinecke, “Big Switch,” _Leatherneck_, v. 36, no. 11 (Nov 53), hereafter Heinecke, “Big Switch”; _Life_ Magazine, Jul-Aug 53 issues; _New York Times_, 5 Aug-6 Sep 53; _Washington Post_, 5 Aug-6 Sep 53.

Between August 1950, the month that the first Marine was taken prisoner and July 1953, when 18 Marine infantrymen were captured in final rushes by the CCF, a total of 221 U.S. Marines became POWs.[539] The majority of them--nearly 90 percent--ultimately returned. After the conclusion of hostilities, Marine POWs were among the UNC fighting men returned in Operation BIG SWITCH.

[539] Marine Corps prisoners, including their unit designations and date of release (or death), are listed in MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 249–273.

The new mission of the 1st Marine Division, with the cease-fire, called for organization of the Post Armistice Battle Positions and establishment of a No-Pass Line approximately 200 yards south of the Demilitarized Zone boundary. In addition to maintaining a defensive readiness posture for full-scale operations if hostilities resumed, the Marine division was charged with control of the Munsan-ni area and assisting in repatriation of prisoners of war. Obviously, since the Panmunjom release point for receiving the POWs was located in the Marine zone of action, the division--as in the earlier LITTLE SWITCH prisoner exchange--would play a major part in the final repatriation.

With the armistice and ending of the war expected almost daily, the Munsan-ni Provisional Command was activated and reorganized in June. Once again, the 1st Marine Division was responsible for the United Nations Personnel and Medical Processing Unit, organized along lines similar to those used during the preliminary exchange. The division inspector, Colonel Albert F. Metze, was designated Processing Unit Commander. Sections under his direction were staffed by Marine and naval personnel. The normal command structure was reinforced by special engineer, medical, interpreter, food service, chaplain, security, signal, supply, and motor transport teams. Planning for the project, like all military operations, was thorough and continuous.

As in April, the Munsan-ni Provisional Command assumed responsibility for handling the UN repatriation at Panmunjom as well as supervision of the receiving and processing of ROKA personnel. Brigadier General Ralph M. Osborne, USA, was placed in charge of the command, with headquarters at the United Nations Base Camp. The RCT landing exercise for the 1st Marines, scheduled in July, was cancelled because of shipping commitments for Operation BIG SWITCH, as the Navy Amphibious Force readied itself for the repatriation of prisoners. By the end of July, the 1st Marine Division was supporting “approximately 42,400 troops with Class I [rations] and 48,600 with Class III [petroleum products] due to the influx of units and personnel participating in Operation BIG SWITCH.”[540]

[540] _PacFlt EvalRpt_ No. 6, Chap. 9, p. 9-134.

Several days before the exchange, however, it became evident that the old site of the Gate to Freedom used in the April exchange would have to be abandoned. It was found inadequate to handle the larger number of returning prisoners--approximately 400 daily--to be processed in the new month-long operation. The new site, Freedom Village, near Munsan-ni contained an old Army warehouse which was renovated by the 1st Division engineers and transformed into the 11th Evacuation Hospital where the UN Medical and Processing Unit was located. Members of the division Military Police Company provided security for the exchange area. Marines from practically every unit of the division were assigned duties at the United Nations Processing Center. As General Clark, UNC Commander later recalled:

Preparations for Big Switch were necessarily elaborate. At Munsan we had a huge warehouse stocked high with clothing, blankets, medical equipment and other supplies for the returning POWs. At Freedom Village nearby we had a complete hospital unit ready. It was one of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) which had done such magnificent work close to the front through most of the war.[541]

[541] Clarke, _Danube to Yalu_, pp. 298–299.

On 5 August, the first day of BIG SWITCH, Colonel Metze took a final look around the processing center. Readiness of this camp was his responsibility. If anyone had real understanding of a prisoner’s relieved and yet shaken reaction to new freedom it was this Marine Colonel. Chosen by the United Nations Command to build and direct the enlarged Freedom Village, Colonel Metze himself had been a prisoner of war in World War II. He knew from personal experience how men should be treated and what should be done for them early in their new freedom. For many, this was after nearly three long years in Communist prison camps. That morning, as described by an observer:

Members of his [Colonel Metze’s] command stood by their cubicles, awaiting the first signal. The 129 enlisted Marines, corpsmen, doctors and other UN personnel had held a dress rehearsal only the day before. Everything was ready.[542]

[542] Heinecke, “Big Switch,” p. 44.

Fifteen miles northwest another group of Marines assigned to the Provisional Command Receipt and Control section waited almost in the shadow of the famous “peace pagoda” at Panmunjom. UNC receiving teams, each headed by a Marine Corps major, “watched the road to the north for the first sign of a dust cloud which would herald the approach of the Communist convoy.”[543] The United Nations POWs had been assembled at Kaesong and held there in several groups, preparatory to the return. The exchange agreement had specified that the repatriation would begin at 0900. Precisely at 0855 the Communist convoy, led by three Russian-made jeeps, each carrying one CCF and two _NKPA_ officers, moved out from the Communist side of the peace corridor. Trucks and ambulances followed the jeeps.

[543] _Ibid._

As they approached the exchange site, “a Marine officer bellowed the familiar naval command, ‘Marines, man your stations!’”[544] Rosters of the UNC prisoners in the trucks and ambulances were then presented to the Marine team captains who checked the lists. As they called the names, “thin, wan, but smiling men shuffled from the trucks to the medical tents.”[545]

[544] _Ibid._, p. 45.

[545] _Ibid._

Official receipt of the POWs at Panmunjom was by the Munsan-ni Provisional Command Receipt and Control Officer, assisted by 35 officers and enlisted men from the 1st Marine Division. After their screening by medical officers, UN returnees not in need of immediate medical aid were transferred by ambulance to Freedom Village at Munsan-ni for further processing. Helicopter priority went to litter patients too weak to travel by ambulance. POWs requiring prompt treatment were loaded aboard the HMR-161 carriers and flown to the 11th Evacuation Hospital at Freedom Village.

Seriously injured men were transferred directly to the Inchon hospital ships for embarkation to the United States, or were air-evacuated to Japan. South Korean repatriates were processed and went their way to freedom through nearby Liberty Village, the ROK counterpart of Freedom Village. A huge map was used to check progress of the POW convoys en route from Panmunjom to Freedom Village. The departure of ambulances and helicopters from Panmunjom was radioed ahead to Freedom Village, where medical personnel and vehicles lined the landing mat.

At Munsan-ni, the newly-freed men received a more thorough physical exam and the rest of their processing. Here they were again screened by medical officers to determine their physical condition. Able-bodied POWs were escorted to the personnel data section where necessary administrative details were recorded and their military records brought up to date. Those medically cleared were available for press interviews. New clothing issue, individually tailored, probably as much as anything emphasized to a prisoner that his particular Korean War was over. And nearly all of them found news[546] awaiting them in letters from home. When all basic details were completed, returnees went into the recreation and refreshment section. Commonplace iced tea, coffee, ice cream (the favorite), milk, sandwiches, cigarettes, and the latest periodicals were luxuries. In their weakened condition, the POWs could be served only light fare; the big steaks would come later.

[546] For at least two Marines their return home was news in itself. Captain Paul L. Martelli, VMF-323, had been reported KIA. First Lieutenant Robert J. O’Shea, of division headquarters, the son of Marine Brigadier General George J. O’Shea (Ret), had also been thought dead by his family. He had been reported missing in July 1951 and had not been carried on the official POW list released the following December.

The first Marine and fifth man in the processing line on the initial day, 5 August, was Private First Class Alfred P. Graham, Jr., of H/3/5. Although too weak to enter the press room, the 21-year-old repatriate told newsmen later in Tokyo of being fed a diet of cracked corn during his prison camp stay and of being forced to carry firewood 11 miles each day. The second Marine returned that day, and the 34th man to enter Freedom Village, was Sergeant Robert J. Coffee, of the 1st Signal Battalion. Captured in November 1950, he had been wounded just before being taken prisoner and had received little medical treatment. Like other returnees, Coffee stated that the treatment had been very poor while he was in the hands of the North Koreans but that it had improved somewhat after he was turned over to the Chinese.

Third and last Marine to come through the line was Private First Class Pedron E. Aviles, previously with the Reconnaissance Company of Headquarters Battalion. Knocked unconscious with a rifle butt while battling the enemy on a patrol on 7 December 1952, he regained consciousness to find himself a prisoner of the CCF.

On the second day, three more USMC infantrymen traveled that final road to freedom. They were Private First Class Francis E. Kohus, Jr., of A/1/7; Corporal Gethern Kennedy, Jr., I/3/1; and Private First Class Bernard R. Hollinger, H/3/5. Like the preceding three, their stories bore a similar pattern: usually they had been captured only after having been wounded or clubbed unconscious. As with other UNC prisoners being released daily, they told of the physical cruelty of their North Korean captors and the mental strain under the Chinese. Observers noted that many of the men released this second day were in much poorer physical condition than the initial returnees. In fact, one ROK prisoner was found to have died in an ambulance while en route to Liberty Village.

Mostly the repatriates asked questions about their old outfits: “Do you know if any of the other guys on the outpost got back off the hill?” and “Did we finally take the damn thing?” “Where’s the 24th Division now?”[547]

[547] HRB Subject File: “#1, ‘Prisoners Of War--Korea--General,’” HQMC Div Info release, n.d., n.t.

Technical Sergeant Richard E. Arnold was one of the two Marine combat correspondents at Freedom Village during BIG SWITCH. He described his impressions of the returning men--in some cases, coming home after 30 months’ confinement in North Korean POW camps, and others, as little as 30 days:

All are relieved and some a little afraid ... It’s their first hour of freedom, and most tell you that they can still hardly believe it’s true. Some are visibly shaken, some are confused--and all are overwhelmed at the thought of being free men once again.[548]

[548] _Ibid._

As in prison life everywhere, the POWs told of the hated stool pigeons, the so-called “progressives.” These were the captives who accepted (or appeared to accept) the Communist teachings and who, in turn, were treated better than the “reactionary” prisoners who resisted the enemy “forced feeding” indoctrination. Continued the Marine correspondent:

They don’t talk much. When they do, it’s ... mainly of progressives and reactionaries--the two social groups of prisoner life under the rule of Communism, the poor chow and medical care, and of the desire to fight Communism again.

When you ask, they tell you of atrocities committed during the early years of the war with a bitterness of men who have helplessly watched their friends and buddies die. Of forced marches, the bitter cold, and the endless political lectures they were forced to attend.[549]

[549] _Ibid._

One of the last--possibly _the last_--Marine captured by the Chinese was Private First Class Richard D. Johnson, of G/3/1. The 20-year-old machine gunner had been in the final battle of the war, the Boulder City defense, and was taken 25 July, just two days before the signing of the truce. Private First Class Johnson was returned the 19th day of the exchange. Another Marine seized in that same action was Private First Class Leonard E. Steege, H/3/7. As he entered the gate, he momentarily shook up Corporal James E. Maddell, a military policeman on duty at Freedom Village. Maddell said the last time he saw Steege was during the fighting for the outpost. “He was a dead Marine then,” Maddel said, “but I guess it was just a case of mistaken identity.”[550]

[550] Heinecke, “Big Switch,” p. 48.

Captain Jesse V. Booker of Headquarters Squadron 1, the first Marine POW of the war, who had been captured on 7 August 1950, was also one of the earliest MAW personnel released. Booker and First Lieutenant Richard Bell, VMF-311, were returned to UNC jurisdiction on 27 August, the first Marine aviators to be sent back.

In addition to the regular issue of Marine utilities, gold naval aviator’s wings, donated by 1st MAW fliers, were pinned on the chests of returning pilots by Wing General Megee and Division General Pate. Also welcoming Marine returnees at Freedom Village were Brigadier General Verne J. McCaul, the new Assistant Wing Commander; General Burger, ADC; and Colonel Metze, who also “found time during the busy days to greet and talk with every Marine and Navy Corpsman who passed through.”[551] Among those dignitaries[552] present for the occasion were General Taylor, EUSAK CG; General Clarke, I Corps Commander; Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens; and various U.S. senators.

[551] 1stMarDiv ComdD, Aug 53, App. VI, p. 12.

[552] As the exchange got underway, General Mark Clark was on a trip to the U.S. Unable to greet the returning prisoners, as he had at LITTLE SWITCH, the UNC Commander had a welcoming letter waiting for each repatriate. A booklet especially prepared for returning POWs which contained a quick fill-in on world news and sports events they may have missed as prisoners was also given each returnee. _Washington Post_, dtd 5 Aug 53, p. 3.

During August enlisted POWs were recovered in large numbers. Officers, generally, did not arrive at Kaesong--the first step to Panmunjom--until about 21 August. After that date they were gradually returned to friendly control.

Even as late as 26 August there was considerable concern over the fate of hundreds of Allied officers not yet repatriated. Some early returning officers told of colonels, majors and captains who had been sentenced up to ten years for forming “reactionary groups” in camp. One field grade officer had been sentenced to a long prison term on the eve of the armistice.[553] A similar thing nearly happened to Captain John P. Flynn, VMF(N)-513, long a thorn in the side of his Communist captors. Like a number of UNC airmen falsely charged with waging germ warfare, he vigorously denounced these allegations. “Even as late as the end of August the Marine was threatened with nonrepatriation, and his experience formed the basis for an episode in the novel _A Ride to Panmunjom_.”[554]

[553] HRS Subject File: “#1. “PRISONERS OF WAR--Korea--General,” _Washington News_ article, dtd 26 Aug 53 from Panmunjom, “Officers’ Fate Worries Army,” by Jim G. Lucas.

[554] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 225.

Between 5 August-6 September, 3,597 U.S. servicemen were returned during Operation BIG SWITCH, including 129 ground and 28 air Marines. This 157 figure represents a total of 42 officers and 115 enlisted repatriated during this second and final POW exchange. Of the 27 Naval personnel freed, at least 6 were hospital corpsmen serving with the 1st Marine Division when they were taken. Counting the 157 Marines released in Operation BIG SWITCH and the 15 wounded POWs sent back in April, a total of 172 division and wing Marines were returned in the two POW exchanges.

Although the switch took place over a five-week period, 38 Marines, or 24 percent, were not released until late in the proceedings, in September. As one author noted, “It was Communist policy to hold the ‘reactionaries’ ... to the last.”[555]

[555] Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, p. 651.

Two of the best-known Marine “reactionaries” who had openly defied their Communist jailers during their entire period of captivity, were then-Lieutenant Colonel William G. Thrash, a VMA-121 pilot, and then-Major John N. McLaughlin, taken POW in November 1950. McLaughlin was released on 1 September and Thrash on 5 September in a group of 275 Americans returned, the largest number for any single day’s transfer since the exchange began. The most famous U.S. prisoner held by the Communists was Major General William F. Dean. Formerly commander of the U.S. Army 24th Division, he had been captured in August 1950 after the fall of Taejon.

Ever since Operation BIG SWITCH got under way, every returnee had been asked if he had seen or heard of General Dean. None had. Many UN officers felt--uneasily--that he would probably be the last officer to be sent back. In fact, he emerged from imprisonment on 4 September “to be greeted with cheers at Freedom Village.”[556] Major Walter R. Harris and the most senior Marine captured during the war, Colonel Frank H. Schwable, later to be the central figure in a Court of Inquiry, were among the last nine Marines returned on 6 September, the final day of the switch. And so, one by one, the last 160 American POWs passed through Panmunjom. All were men marked by the enemy as “war criminals.”

[556] _Life_ Magazine, v. 35, no. 11 (15 Sep 53), p. 42.

One Army sergeant, who freely admitted he could “never adequately describe how he felt when he knew he was going home”[557] recalled those final moments as a newly-freed prisoner:

[557] Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, p. 651.

At 1100 his truck pulled up at Panmunjom, the last convoy of American POWs to be exchanged. A huge, moustached Marine master sergeant walked up beside the truck, called out: “I will call out your last name. You will answer with your first name, middle initial, and Army serial number ...”

“Schlichter!”

Schlichter [Charles B., Sgt.], barked out his response, and stepped down.

“Sergeant,” the big Marine said gravely, “glad to have you home.”

“Fella, you don’t know how glad _I_ am,” Schlichter said.[558]

[558] _Ibid._

In the preliminary prisoner exchange, the week-long “LITTLE SWITCH” in April 1953, all of the returned Marine personnel were men who had been wounded at the time of their capture. They were recently-captured POWs, deliberately segregated by the enemy from early captives. All of these home-coming Marines had been captured since May 1952. Generally speaking, they had all been fairly well-treated.

During Operation BIG SWITCH, by contrast, 41 Marines were repatriated who had spent nearly three years as Communist prisoners of war. The majority of USMC returnees in this second exchange, however--a total of 91--had been captured relatively recently, in 1952 and 1953, and 25 had been held since 1951.

Throughout Operation BIG SWITCH, the Allied Command transferred a total of 75,799 prisoners (70,159 NKPA and 5,640 CCF) seeking repatriation. The Communist returned 12,757 POWs. In addition to the 3,597 Americans, this total represented 1,312 other UNC troops (including 947 Britons, 228 Turks, and small numbers of Filipinos, Australians, and Canadians) and 7,848 South Koreans.

The BIG SWITCH exchange went relatively smoothly, marred for a while only by the unruly behavior of some Communist diehard POWs. In a manner reminiscent of their earlier camp riots, the Communist POWs put on a blatant propaganda show for the benefit of world newsreel cameras. As the train carrying CCF and North Korean prisoners moved into the Panmunjom exchange point, enemy POWs noisily shouted Communist slogans, defiantly waved Communist flags, and hurled insults at UN forces. Some POWs stripped off their [U.S. provided] uniforms, “tossing them contemptuously to the ground.”[559] Others spat in the faces of U.S. supervising officers, threw their shoes at jeep windshields, and sang in Korean and Chinese “We will return in the Fall.”[560]

[559] _Life_ Magazine, v. 35, no. 7 (17 Aug 53), p. 22.

[560] _Metzger comments._

Marine division and wing elements were designated responsible for the security of nonrepatriated enemy POWs. By terms of the armistice agreement, these were held by UNC custodial forces from India. In commenting on the airlift operations, performed largely by HMR-161, the UNC Commander noted:

We had to go to great lengths to live up to our pledge to Syngman Rhee that no Indian troops would set foot on South Korean soil. Therefore, we set up an airlift operation which carried more than six thousand Indians from the decks of our carriers off Inchon by helicopter to the Demilitarized Zone. It was a major undertaking which just about wore out our helicopter fleet in Korea.[561]

[561] Clark, _Danube to Yalu_, p. 299.

One of the recommendations made by military officials after the April LITTLE SWITCH exchange was that all interrogation of returning POWs be done either in America or on board ship en route home, rather than in Tokyo. This system was followed and worked out well. The POWs boarded ships at Inchon, following their clearance at Freedom Village. Interrogation teams, in most cases, completed this major part of their repatriation processing before docking at San Francisco. Two weeks of recuperation, good food and rest aboard ship enabled many POWs to arrive home in far better shape for reunion with their families than they had been in when received initially at Panmunjom.

As in LITTLE SWITCH, Marine and Navy personnel were processed by members of the Intelligence Department of Commander, Naval Forces Far East, augmented by officers from other Marine staffs. Marine officers who conducted the shipboard interrogations again included Lieutenant Colonel Fisher, ComNavFE liaison officer, as well as Lieutenant Colonel William A. Wood, Major Stewart C. Barber, and First Lieutenant Robert A. Whalen. All returning POWs were queried in depth by counterintelligence personnel about enemy treatment and atrocities, questionable acts committed by that small proportion of our own men whose conduct was reprehensible, and routine military matters. A security dossier was prepared on each prisoner, and all data about him went into his file case. The LITTLE SWITCH reports had indicated earlier--and this was subsequently confirmed--that some U.S. servicemen were definitely marked for further detailed questioning and scrutiny.

_Circumstances of Capture_[562]

[562] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: HRS Subject File: VE 23.2.S8 “CMC Statements on Korean POWs”; HRS Subject File: “Korea--Korean War--General”; MacDonald, _POW_; Montross, Kuokka, and Hicks, _USMC Ops Korea--East-Central Front_, v. IV; Matthew B. Ridgway, _The Korean War_ (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1967), hereafter Ridgway, _Korean War_; Heinecke, “Big Switch.”

As the Commandant, General Shepherd, was to testify later during an investigation, “the prisoner of war question had never been a major problem [in the Marine Corps] due to the extremely limited number of Marines taken prisoner.”[563] As one returnee at BIG SWITCH bluntly put it: “You fought until they reached you with a bullet or a rifle butt--that was the end.”[564]

[563] HRS Subject File: “VE 23.2.S8--CMC Statements on Korean POWs,” CMC Statement dtd 14 Apr 54, p. 2.

[564] Heinecke, “Big Switch,” p. 58.

Of the 221 U.S. Marines captured during the Korean War, more than half--121--were seized after 20 September 1951. For the Marine Corps this date marked the time when “warfare of position replaced a warfare of movement throughout the remaining 22 months of the conflict in Korea.”[565] Both in the X Corps sector in eastern Korea where the 1st Marine Division was located at that time, as well as later on the Korean western front, the Marine Corps was denied its traditional aggressive fighting role. The Marines (along with the rest of the UNC forces) ceased offensive operations, were reduced to making limited attacks, and were under order from higher echelons to “firm up the existing line and to patrol vigorously forward of it.”[566]

[565] Montross, Kuokka, and Hicks, _USMC Ops Korea_, v. IV, p. 201.

[566] _Ibid._

The mission of the Marine division thereby evolved into “an aggressive defense of their sector of responsibility” as records duly phrased it. On a larger scale, the nature of the Korean War, from about November 1951 on, reverted to that of July and August,[567] characterized primarily by minor patrol clashes and small unit struggles for key outpost positions. This became the pattern for the remainder of the war. It changed only when the decreed mission of an “active defense of its sector” by a UNC unit became this in fact. Normal defense then escalated into sharp, vigorous fighting to retain friendly key ground positions being attacked by the enemy. One American writer, in a discussion of the British defense in depth concept (adopted by the Marine Corps late in the war), went so far as to blame heavy Marine casualties in Korea on EUSAK’s outpost system.[568]

[567] In July 1951, fighting had quieted down all along the UNC front, as a result of truce talks initiated by the Communists. This conveniently provided the enemy, at that time hard-pressed, a much-needed breathing spell. The lull in ground fighting continued until late August when the truce negotiations were suspended.

[568] HRS Subject file “Korea--Korean War--General,” article _Washington Times-Herald_, dtd 20 Aug 53, by Walter Simmons, p. 27.

Approximately half of the 100 Marines taken prisoner by September 1951--43--had fallen into enemy hands during the last two days of November 1950. They had been part of the ill-fated Task Force Drysdale,[569] a composite Royal Marine-USMC-Army convoy that was ambushed by the Chinese en route to the Chosin Reservoir. These facts are relevant to a better understanding of the Commandant’s statement that, traditionally, few Marines become prisoners of war.

[569] For further details of this action, see MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 33–43; Montross and Canzona, _USMC Ops Korea--Chosin_, v. III, pp. 140–141, 225–235; and Reese, _Korea_, p. 162.

Overall, the survival rate for Marines taken captive during the Korean War was 87.8 percent. Even for the worst year, 1950, when NKPA treatment was more ruthless and brutal than the CCF (and in any event, for those men longest-held), the Marine survival rate was 75 percent. Marine Corps statistics show that of 221 Marines captured, 194 (43 officers, 151 enlisted) returned, and 27 or 12.2 percent died.[570] Only a few Marines were afflicted with “give-up-itis,” the malady that struck countless POWs and took a heavy toll of lives. Included among these 194 returnees were the 172 men from the two POW exchanges, as previously noted; plus a group of 18 Marines captured in 1950 who escaped and rejoined USMC units in May 1951; two enlisted men who escaped less than a week after being taken; and two others released by the enemy after less than a month’s captivity.

[570] Records indicate that 3 officers and 18 enlisted died while in captivity. Three officers and 3 enlisted POWs were also presumed to have died. MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 257–259.

In a pure statistical oddity, the survival percentage for both Marine officers and enlisted (as well as the overall return rate) turned out to be the same: 87 percent.

Without going into an analysis here of the possible relevant factors, it is interesting to note that 62 percent of all U.S. captured military personnel returned after the Korean War and that roughly 38 percent died while imprisoned.[571] During World War II, the death rate for U.S. prisoners held by the Axis powers was approximately 11 percent.

[571] The number of American servicemen returned was approximately 4,428 of 7,190 captured during the war. _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 1966 edition, “Prisoners of War--Korean War,” p. 519B. Earlier DOD “Tentative Final Report of U.S. Battle Casualties in the Korean War,” cited by MacDonald, _POW_, p. 230, indicated 7,140 Americans were captured, 4,418 recovered, and 2,701 died. Either way, the percentages remain the same.

Circumstances accounting for the capture of Marines during the Korean War were, as in every war, an occupational hazard. In most cases, prisoners were taken in one of two situations. One occurred when overwhelming numbers of hostile forces suddenly surrounded and overran a small outpost, and either killed or captured a high proportion of its defenders. The second resulted from the well-known increasing accuracy of CCF antiaircraft fire. Halfway through the war it began to take its toll of 1st MAW pilots with similarly predictable results: either death or capture. Simple mischance and the human error of confused directions caused at least two ground Marines to blunder into enemy territory.[572]

[572] A similar mishap had dire consequences for Major General Dean of the Army. Cut off from his unit, he was attempting to return to the U.S. line. Lacking a compass he walked to the southwest--and thereby into NKPA hands--instead of the southeast where U.S. troops were then heavily engaged in the fierce battle of the Pusan Perimeter.

A brief review of the Korean War, chronologically, illustrates how some of the men of the 1st Marine Division wound up as prisoners. In the first week of August 1950, leading elements of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade and the 1st MAW air squadrons arrived in Korea. Soon thereafter the Marine Corps was in the thick of these early-moving offensives: at the Pusan Perimeter; the September Inchon-Seoul amphibious landings; Fox Hill at Toktong Pass, Yudam-ni, the Task Force Drysdale operation, all in November; and the October-December Chosin Reservoir campaign, including the two-day movement from Hagaru to Koto-ri in early December. Marine infantry, military police, tankers, motor transport personnel, and artillerymen were listed MIA in these operations.

Altogether, 79 Marines were captured during the first year. November 1950, when 58 Marines were lost to the enemy, would rank as the most costly month of the entire war in terms of Marines seized in combat. The first air POW, Captain Booker, was shot down 7 August while flying a reconnaissance mission from the USS _Valley Forge_. (This was the same date that infantrymen of the Marine Provisional Brigade saw their initial heavy fighting in what was then considered only a “police action.”) Captain Booker was to remain the only Marine pilot in enemy hands until April 1951.

One ground Marine captured during the hectic days of August 1950 escaped before ever becoming listed as a casualty. Although Private First Class Richard E. Barnett thus does not technically qualify as a POW statistic, he still holds the distinction of being both one of the first Marine captives and one of the few to escape.[573]

[573] A radio-jeep driver, Private First Class Barnett, was returning to his unit when he made a wrong turn and, instead, came upon a group of North Koreans. The enemy fired and halted the vehicle, quickly taking Barnett prisoner. Beaten, searched, and interrogated, the Marine was placed in a heavily-guarded cellar. For several days he was given only a few crackers to eat. On the third night, unaccountably, the Koreans took him along on an attack. As they neared the objective, Barnett noticed that all but one of his NKPA guards had gotten ahead of him. He deliberately fell, throwing a rock in the face of the nearby guard, and raced for safety. Successfully eluding his captors, Private First Class Barnett later rejoined his own forces. MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 8–10.

Few Marines were taken during 1951. Of the 31 seized throughout the entire year, 13 were from the division and 18 from the wing. The Marines were engaged in antiguerrilla activities until late February when a general advance was ordered by U.S. IX and X Corps to deny positions to the enemy. The 1st Marine Division was committed near Wonju, as part of the IX Corps. A second offensive, Operation RIPPER, was launched in March, and for the next six weeks small inroads were made against CCF forces. Relieved in the Hongchon area the next month by elements of the U.S. 2d and 7th Divisions, the Marines continued to operate as part of the IX Corps. Their mission was to secure objectives north of the 38th Parallel. On 21 April the 1st Marine Division launched its attack, on IX Corps order, encountering moderate to heavy resistance. Throughout the first half of 1951, only five Marine infantrymen were captured.

Truce negotiations, as earlier noted, began at Kaesong on 10 July 1951 and ground fighting slowed. When the Communists broke off the truce sessions in late August General Van Fleet, then EUSAK commander, ordered an offensive by the X Corps to seize the entire Punchbowl. Along with other X Corps divisions, the Marines attacked on 31 August. They secured initial objectives, and then moved north to the Soyang River to seize additional designated objectives. Following the bitter action in the Punchbowl area, the Marines were involved in consolidating and improving their defenses.

As the battle lines became comparatively stabilized in 1951, the enemy began to develop his AA defenses to peak efficiency. Marine pilots engaged in CAS, observation, interdiction, and armed reconnaissance missions began to encounter accurate and intense ground fire.[574] Aircraft losses increased, and with them, the number of USMC aviators who fell into enemy hands. More than half of the Marine POWs taken during the year--18 of 31--were on 1st MAW station lists. Captive airmen represented VMF-323, VMF(N)-513, Hedron MAG-33 (Headquarters Squadron 33), VMO-6, VMF-312, VMF-311, and VMA-121.

[574] One Marine who had conducted volunteer AAA reconnaissance missions over North Korea was Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. May, CO of the 1st 90mm AAAGunBn. In December 1951 he was lost in such a mission--the same flight in which Lieutenant Colonel Thrash, of VMA-121, was captured. MajGen A. F. Binney ltr to Hd, HistBr, G-3 Div, HQMC, dtd 14 Sep 66.

The year 1952, like 1950, saw a large number of Marines taken into hostile custody--a total of 70. As the year began, CCF and UNC ground forces had settled down to a bunker warfare system often compared to the trench warfare of World War I. Air activity remained much as it had the preceding year. Air losses decreased, however, with only 11 pilots becoming POWs, in contrast to the 59 infantry Marines captured. In March, the 1st Marine Division moved from the X Corps zone of action on the east-central front to the I Corps western coastal flank. Here the Marines encountered “steadily increasing aggressiveness as the enemy launched larger and more frequent attacks against outpost positions.”[575] Probes, patrol actions, and aggressive defense of the MLR and its outposts took their toll.

[575] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 139.

Enemy pressure reached its height in October, when 41 Marine infantrymen were seized, the second highest number taken in any month during the war. In the COPs Detroit and Frisco defense of 6–7 October, the 7th Marines listed 22 MIA, of whom 13 became POWs, practically all of them being wounded prior to capture. On 26 October, the Communists lunged at 7th Marines COPs Ronson and Warsaw, adjacent to the main battle position, the Hook. In the ensuing action, 27 Marines were “marched, carried, or dragged off the hill and taken into the Chinese lines.”[576] Surprisingly, all 27 were recovered alive in the prisoner exchanges the following year.

[576] _Ibid._, p. 149.

Of the 11 Marine airmen who became statistics on a POW list in 1952, 4 were shot down in an ill-fated 10-day period beginning 6 May. Again, all-too-accurate hostile AA fire was the villain. In similar incidents during the year, two Marines engaged in “good Samaritan” aerial activities became POWs for their efforts. In February, First Lieutenant Kenneth W. Henry, an AO assigned to the Marine detachment aboard the light cruiser USS _Manchester_, and Lieutenant Edwin C. Moore, USN, whirled off in the cruiser’s HO3S to attempt rescue of a downed Navy fighter pilot, Ensign Marvin Broomhead. In the bright early afternoon, as Henry was maneuvering the helicopter sling, their ship suddenly crashed--apparently from enemy machine gun fire intended for a combat air patrol operating in the vicinity. Two of the three men--Broomhead and Henry--were injured, but managed to drag themselves to a hidden position and waited to be rescued. Instead, they were discovered shortly before midnight by a Chinese patrol.

A similar mishap occurred on 16 May to First Lieutenant Duke Williams, Jr., of VMF-212. Searching for a crashed pilot, his plane was struck by AA and he managed to jump. His parachute blossomed down into the midst of 15 waiting Koreans who had gathered to take him prisoner.

During the last seven months of hostilities in Korea, from January-July 1953, 41 Marines were captured. These included a VMO-6 pilot and air observer in the little OE-1 spotting planes shot down in two separate incidents, plus 39 ground Marines trapped in the vicious outpost struggles of March and July. Except for two Marines who died, the rest were freed a few months after their capture during Operation BIG SWITCH.

Summarizing it another way, of the 221 Marines captured during the three-year conflict:

-- 49 were officers and 172 enlisted; -- 190 were ground personnel and 31 aviators; -- of the 190 ground troops, 19 were officers and 171 enlisted; -- of the 31 aviators, 30 were officer pilots and 1 was enlisted.

The 7th Marines, which was the unit on line at the time of several major CCF attacks, had the highest number of POWs in the division. A total of 70 men, or 59.3 percent[577] of the 118 infantry Marines taken, were from the 7th. The record during this 1950–1953 period for the others is as follows: 1st Marines, 15 POWs; 5th Marines, 33; and the division artillery regiment, the 11th Marines, 14. Six pilots from Marine Fighter Squadron 312 found themselves unwilling guests in North Korea. Four other units--VMO-6, VMF-323, VMF-311, and VMF(N)-513--each had five members who served out the rest of the war as POWs.

[577] Recapitulation of facts from MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 260–269 and _passim_.

_The Communist POW Camps_[578]

[578] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: MacDonald, _POW_; Montross, Kuokka, and Hicks, _USMC Ops Korea--East-Central Front_, v. IV; Barclay, _Commonwealth_; Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_; Leckie, _Conflict_; Rees, _Korea_.

The Communist POW camp system, under Chinese direction, began in late December 1950. Marines captured in November and December, along with U.S. Army troops, British Commandos, and other Allied personnel, were forced-marched north to Kanggye, not far from the Manchurian border.[579] In the bitter cold, while winter howled through North Korea, the column of prisoners limped its way to its final destination, arriving the day after Christmas. Several of the group, including Marines, perished during the four-day march--victims of malnutrition, untreated combat wounds, pneumonia, the stinging, freezing wind, and subzero temperatures. Usually, “the Communists moved them [the prisoners] by night, because they feared the United Nations air power which ... ranged over the whole of North Korea.”[580]

[579] Although some American prisoners were taken in the summer of 1950, it was not until the late autumn that large numbers of men taken in several major engagements created a need for a permanent prison-camp system. Rees, _Korea_, p. 330.

[580] Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, pp. 423–424.

During the first three months of 1951, a network of POW camps was developed along the southern shores of the Yalu River. Occupants of the forlorn villages were evacuated, and newly captured UNC prisoners moved in. The main camp operation at this time was in the Kanggye area. This was a temporary indoctrination center established in October 1950 before the development of regular POW camps. (For various CCF camp locations, see Map 34.) Ultimately a group of a half dozen or so permanent camps were developed northeast of Sinuiju, along a 75-mile stretch of the Yalu.

By early 1951, Major McLaughlin, a captured Marine staff officer previously attached to X Corps, was senior officer among the Kanggye prisoners which included a heterogeneous collection of U.S. 7th Division soldiers, U.S. Marines, 18 Royal Marine Commandos, and Navy hospitalmen. UN personnel were scattered throughout several farmhouses, with no attempt made to segregate the enlisted and officers. The Chinese designated prisoner squads of 8–12 men, depending on the size of the room to which they were assigned. CCF-appointed squad leaders were those prisoners who appeared more cooperative.

In direct opposition to orders, Major McLaughlin set about establishing communication between the small scattered POW groups, despite ever-present surveillance. He tried to achieve effective control of the POWs so that a united front of resistance against the enemy could be maintained. At mass indoctrination meetings, held regularly every few days, the Marine officer issued instructions to enlisted personnel through five Marine noncommissioned officers. As one ex-prisoner recalled, the “cold, smoke-filled barn was the locale for wide-spread exchange of information between the many little groups.”[581] Daily routine at Kanggye stressed study and political indoctrination. Squad leaders were responsible for lectures and discussions on assigned topics in Marxian dialectical materialism. The curriculum was more intense than most college courses. On the other hand, physical treatment of inmates--except for chronic malnutrition and grossly inadequate medical care--at Kanggye was less brutal than at most of the other prisoner compounds.

[581] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 63.

Interrogations went hand-in-hand with indoctrination. Prisoners were grilled regularly on order of battle, close air support, naval gunfire methods, UN aircraft, weapons, unit locations, and other tactical information. The Chinese were even more interested in the life histories and biographical data of their captives. POWs were required to answer “economic questionnaires” and at frequent intervals compelled to write elaborate self-criticisms of their political attitudes and class backgrounds. The CCF were satisfied only when prisoners--whose original truthful answers had been rejected--revised their own family status and income statistics downward. POWs, being interrogated, often found the Chinese arguing with them over such far-away matters as the prisoner’s parents or his own family annual income and social level.

In March 1951, after an indoctrination period of about eight weeks, the Kanggye POWs were transferred, and the camp itself was later abandoned. The officers were relocated at Camp 5, Pyoktong, while the majority continued the march westward to the newly opened Camp 1, at Chongsong.

Despite its numerical designation as Camp 5, the Pyoktong compound had been organized two months earlier and was the first of the permanent CCF centers. It became the headquarters of the entire prison-camp system. Approximately 2,000 UNC prisoners were interned here by the early part of the year. They were housed in native huts. New inmates arrived regularly from temporary collection centers in the south, where they had been held for months. Sometimes they were marched to the Yalu during the Korean winter while still wearing their summer fatigues. Pyoktong offered little chance for escape. The compound, situated on a barren peninsula that jutted out into the Yalu Reservoir, was so secure that the Communists did not even surround it with barbed wire or employ searchlights. It was hemmed in on three sides by fast water currents, while the one exit from the peninsula was closely guarded.

Conditions were far more severe here than at Kanggye. A starvation diet and complete lack of medical care quickly had their inevitable effect. Pneumonia, dysentery, and malnutrition were rampant. The basic diet of boiled corn or millet resulted in associated deficiency diseases, such as beriberi and pellagra. Between 20 and 30 prisoners died daily. Many experts, nonetheless, felt that “if the Chinese during the winter of 1950–51 killed their prisoners by deliberate neglect, the North Koreans who had handled the captives before they became primarily a Chinese responsibility killed them by calculated brutality.”[582]

[582] Rees, _Korea_, p. 330.

Although now junior to some Army and Air Force officers, Major McLaughlin was elected by his fellow officer-prisoners to represent them. Recognized by the Chinese as a staunch non-cooperative and dedicated trouble-maker, the enemy concentrated their pressure on the Marine officer--and he was subjected to intimidation, maltreatment, and threats of death.

As they had at Kanggye, the CCF attempted to organize progressive groups to write peace appeals, propaganda leaflets, and articles condemning the United States for the war. Typically, progressive POWs (usually weaker, less resilient members) who went along with the Communist propaganda conditioning, received better rations and treatment. Rugged resisters, on the other hand, could dependably expect to stand a considerable amount of solitary confinement, usually in an unspeakably foul, vermin-infested “hole.” Here a POW was forced to remain in a debilitating, crouched position usually 56 hours or more. Throughout the war a good many Marines were to know this particular enemy treatment. One Marine artilleryman, Second Lieutenant Roland L. McDaniel, tied to a Korean POW in the hole for 10 days, emerged with pneumonia and tuberculosis.

In addition to the POW compounds at Pyoktong and Chongsong, other sites where Marines were held were Camp 3, at Changsong (nearby and with a nearly identical name to Camp 1), primarily for enlisted personnel, and at “The Valley.” This was a temporary medical processing center in the Kanggye area. Marine inmates here were often confined to a pig pen. Largely because of the filthy conditions of this camp, the death rate quickly earned the Valley the opprobrious name of Death Valley.

Another cluster of POW camps was located further south. These were primarily run by the North Koreans, and were transit camps where prisoners were collected and interrogated before being moved north by truck or on foot to the permanent establishments. Among them were collection centers at Kung Dong and Chorwon, and Camp 10, south of the North Korean Capital Pyongyang. The latter was also known variously as the Mining Camp, the Gold Mine, or Bean Camp--this due to its prevailing diet. At this southernmost Communist camp, POWs were required to dig coal in the nearby mine shafts. Loads of coal were then hauled in small hand carts over icy roads to the camp, a task made more difficult by the prisoners’ skimpy mealtime fare.

The most notorious of all the camps, however, was Pak’s Palace,[583] the interrogation center near Pyongyang. POWs also called it Pak’s Death Palace for its chief interrogator, a sadistic North Korean officer, Major Pak. Captain Martelli, a F4U fighter pilot from VMF-323 shot down in April 1951, was the first Marine processed through Pak’s, where POWs were continuously threatened and beaten with little or no provocation. Another Marine aviator, Captain Gerald Fink, VMF-312, upon being asked during interrogation here why he had come to Korea won a sentence of several days solitary confinement in the hole for his forthright answer: “to kill Communists.” Second Lieutenant Carl R. Lindquist, also of VMF-312, was the only one of 18 Marine officers captured in 1951 not processed through Pak’s before being sent north.

[583] The Secretary of Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War later adjudged Pak’s to have been “the worst camp endured by American POWs in Korea.” MacDonald, _POW_, p. 104.

Gradually the Chinese developed the policy of segregating officer and enlisted personnel. Commenting on this procedure, one British observer offered the following:

By this means the lower ranks were deprived of their leaders and for a short time this had a depressing, and generally bad, effect. It was not long, however, before the natural leaders among the rank and file asserted themselves. The standard of leadership naturally varied in different compounds; but in all there was some organization and in some it was highly efficient. It was ... the policy of the Chinese ... to discourage the emergence of thrustful leaders.... Consequently, clandestine rather than open leadership was usual.[584]

[584] Barclay, _Commonwealth_, p. 190.

By midyear, noncommissioned officers were also separated from the enlisted men, in an attempt to better control prisoners. In October of 1951 another one of the Yalu River Camps was set up. This was Camp 2, at Pi-chong-ni, which thereafter served as the main officers camp. The next month a POW column of nearly 50 men, including 6 Marines, left Kung Dong for these northern camps on a death march that covered 225 miles in two weeks. During the excruciating march, prisoners had been forced to strip naked and wade across the Chongsong River, a procedure which caused several deaths and cases of frostbite. One British participant, however, recalled that the “Marines banded together during the terrible march, and the Royal Marines were drawn close to the U.S. Marines.”[585]

[585] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 127.

In December 1951 the Communist and UNC forces exchanged lists of captured personnel. The list of 3,198 American POWs (total UNC: 11,559) revealed that 61 Marines were in enemy hands. Nine others, captured late in the year, were still in temporary collection points and thus not listed. Although Marines represented only a small portion of the total POWs, they were present in most of the nearly dozen regular camps or collection points then in existence. In any event the 1951 POW list[586] gave a picture of the growing Communist camp system.

[586] Negotiations broke down at this point. No other list was offered by Communist officials until the first exchange of wounded POWs, 17 months later, in the April 1953 LITTLE SWITCH operation. Montross, Kuokka, and Hicks, _USMC Ops Korea_, v. IV, p. 223.

As 1951 was drawing to an end, the Camp 2 commandant, a fanatical Communist named Ding, ordered UNC prisoners to prepare and send a New Year’s greeting to the commander of the CCF, General Peng Teh-huai. Senior UN officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Brown, USAF, was determined that the prisoners would not sign the spurious holiday message. Major McLaughlin voluntarily organized Marine resistance, and senior officers of other nationality groups followed suit. No greetings were sent. As usually happened, an informer reported the organized resistance and furnished names of the reactionary leaders. The following month, the six ranking officers were sentenced to solitary confinement, ranging from three to six months, for their “subversive activities.”

The episode marked the first really organized resistance to the Chinese. “Although the principals were subjected to months of solitary confinement, coercion, torture, and very limited rations during the bitterly cold months of early 1952, their joint effort laid the foundation for comparatively effective resistance within Camp 2 during the remainder of the war.”[587]

[587] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 138.

In January 1952, Major McLaughlin and the other five officers were removed to begin their long tours of solitary confinement. Although the remaining Marine officers at Pi-chong-ni had “formed a tightly knit group and consulted among themselves on every major issue,”[588] the atmosphere within the camp itself became highly charged and strained. Suspicion of informers and opportunists was rampant. The officers at Camp 2 were generally agreed that Marine Lieutenant Colonel Thrash, who arrived in June, was largely responsible for restoring discipline. He issued an all-inclusive order about camp behavior for all personnel which read, in part:

[588] _Ibid._, p. 164.

Study of Communist propaganda would not be countenanced. If study was forced on them, POWs were to offer passive resistance and no arguments.

If prisoners were subject to trial or punishment they were to involve no one but themselves.

There would be no letters written using any titles or return address which might prove beneficial to the Communists for propaganda value.[589]

[589] _Ibid._, pp. 165–166.

Expectedly, it was not long before Lieutenant Colonel Thrash’s efforts to influence and organize his fellow officers outraged CCF officials. In September he was removed from the compound, charged with “Criminal Acts and Hostile Attitude against the Chinese People’s Volunteers.” The Marine airman spent the next eight months in solitary. Here he was subjected to constant interrogation, harassment, and duress. On one occasion he was bound, severely beaten, and thrown outside half naked in sub-zero weather. Shock of the severe temperature rendered him unconscious, and he nearly died. Throughout his eight-month ordeal there were demands that he cooperate with the “lenient” Chinese upon his return to the compound.

During 1952, the Communists developed the system of keeping newly-captured Marines (and other UNC troops) apart from those taken prior to January 1952 who had suffered more brutal treatment. Beginning in August, noncommissioned officers were also segregated. They were removed from Chongsong (Camp 1) and taken further north along the Yalu to the “Sergeants Camp” (Camp 4) at Wiwon. Although a few Marines had been interned at the Camp 2 Annex, at Obul, from late 1951 on, they were not sent there in any sizable number until mid-1952.

Adjacent to a steeply-walled valley, the Obul camp was also known as “No Name Valley.” Although the inmates of the annex were aware of other POWs in the main compound and throughout the valley, they were under heavy guard to prevent contact between the groups. An Air Force officer, the senior member, and Major Harris, the ranking Marine, went about organizing the prisoners in a military manner. In order to exchange information, notes were hidden under rocks at common bathing points or latrines. Messages were baked in bread by POWs on kitchen detail, and songs were loudly sung to convey information. Hospitalized POWs, meanwhile, were held at the Pyoktong (Camp 5) hospital or, in the southern sector, at a second hospital a few miles north of Pyongyang. Other locations where prisoners were confined in 1952 were “Pike’s Peak,” also in the same general southern area, and the Manpo Camp on the Yalu.

For POWs incarcerated behind the bamboo curtain, 1952 marked several other developments. It was the year that American airmen began to receive special grilling and threats from their Communist captors. This was in connection with the germ warfare hoax, to be discussed later. It was also the year that Marine POWs at Pi-chong-ni (Camp 2) observed their own traditional 10 November Marine Corps birthday ceremony. Eggs, sugar, and flour were stolen for a cake surreptitiously baked and suitably decorated with the Marine Corps globe and anchor. Another group accomplished the task of bootlegging rice wine. When the special date arrived, the Marine officers toasted the President, Commandant, and Marine Corps and spiritedly sang the National Anthem and Marine Corps hymn. One of the invited guests, Quartermaster Sergeant James Day of the Royal Marines, later recalled the reaction of other prisoners:

Firstly some were apprehensive in case of trouble with the Chinese, and its always consequent rash of gaol [jail] victims. Some thought it a little childish, and not worth the trouble of interrupting the daily routine of the place. And I feel that quite a lot were rather envious that the small band of USMC should be able to get together and do this sort of thing quite seriously, quite sincerely, and with no thought of any consequence.[590]

[590] _Ibid._, p. 190.

This same month the Chinese staged a “Prisoner of War Command Olympics” at Pyoktong. Although most Marines opposed the idea of participation in the event, because of its inevitable propaganda exploitation by the CCF, the decision rendered by the senior UN officer was that POW athletes would be represented. Much improved quality food was served for the occasion, Communist photographers were everywhere, and a CCF propaganda brochure (with articles written by POW turncoats) was later distributed in Geneva purportedly to show the healthy recreational activities available to UNC prisoners. An Air force pilot, in describing the performance of Major McLaughlin, noted that “his skill as an athlete helped restore the prestige of the officers torn down by the enemy’s propaganda.”[591]

[591] _Ibid._, p. 195.

More important, he defied the guards by deliberately circulating among the enlisted men (often younger, impressionable, less mature individuals) to point out lies in enemy propaganda tactics designed to slander the U.S. government and its leaders. The Marine officer also collected names of American POWs held in isolated places who it was suspected the enemy might attempt to hold as hostages at the end of the war--possibly as a bargaining tool for the granting of a seat to Red China in the UN.

During the last year of the war although a number of prisoners were still being captured in some of the most savage attacks unleashed by the enemy, the lot of the average POW had improved. More attention was being paid to the former pitiful medical care. The men were more warmly clad, even though still huddled into filthy, crowded huts. And the monotonous poor chow had improved. Most POWs, although carefully kept from learning developments of the outside world, naturally suspected that some reason lay behind the changes. And so there was: the Communists had no desire to repatriate skeletonized prisoners.

_CCF “Lenient Policy” and Indoctrination Attempts_[592]

[592] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: MacDonald, _POW_; Barclay, _Commonwealth_; Clark, _Danube to Yalu_; Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_; Leckie, _Conflict_; Rees, _Korea_.

As early in the war as July 1951, the CCF was seeking propaganda benefits out of its so-called “lenient” policy toward captured United Nations personnel. Basically, this could be described as “calculated leniency in return for cooperation, harassment in return for neutrality, and brutality in return for resistance.”[593] Others have characterized the CCF psychological techniques of indoctrination as monotonous and single-minded “repetition, harassment and humiliation.”[594]

[593] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 61. One former Marine POW commented: “The ‘lenient policy’ applied to the ‘liberated soldiers,’ who had supposedly been ‘liberated’ from the American capitalists by the Chinese People’s Volunteers. Unless a prisoner accepted this absurd concept, he was a ‘war criminal’ and subject to being treated as such. The North Vietnamese use this same characterization (‘war criminal’) in reference to U.S. POWs when queried by U.S. representatives at the Paris talks.” MajGen John N. McLaughlin ltr to Dir, MCHist, HQMC, dtd 17 Jul 70.

[594] Rees, _Korea_, p. 337.

In some respects, it is true that the Chinese treatment of prisoners appeared to be more humane than that of the North Koreans. The latter freely used physical cruelty and torture, to the point of being barbaric.[595] Sometimes it appeared that Allied POWs did not receive any harsher treatment from the CCF than did local civilian prisoners.

[595] There were, for example, instances when POW columns were being marched north and the NKPA treatment was so rough that “Chinese guards intervened to protect the prisoners from the North Koreans.” MacDonald, _POW_, p. 43.

Whereas the NKPA regularly resorted to physical brutality, the Chinese “introduced a more insidious form of cruelty.”[596] Although they used physical violence less often, it was usually more purposeful and combined with deliberate mental pressure. CCF officials announced that treatment of captives would be “fair and lenient,” but that wrongdoers would be publicly punished. Usually this CCF punishment took the form of less drastic methods--solitary confinement, prolonged interrogation, and a reduced diet. Even under this decreed lenient policy, however, no relief parcels were delivered to POWs, nor were any neutral observers ever allowed to inspect the prison camps.

[596] _Ibid._, p. 60.

In any event, the Chinese were considerably more effective than the NKPA in their intelligence activities. Often their skilled interrogators were officers who spoke excellent English. Occasionally, they had even attended such U.S. schools as the University of Chicago and had considerable insight into American psychology, customs, and values--even slang. Interrogation sessions usually employed recording devices and sometimes were further equipped with one-way mirrors. One Marine, subjected to frequent interrogation, was kept awake by the Chinese who slapped his face and blew smoke in his eyes.

From early 1951 to the end of the war UNC prisoners were subjected to a systematic attempt at mass conversion to Communism. This intensive indoctrination effort--like the riots of Communist prisoners in Allied POW camps and the CCF germ warfare fabrications--was designed to gain a propaganda advantage. From highest-ranking officer to lowly private, no one was immune to this thought-reform process. General Dean, prize Communist captive, who was subject to three years of intense Marxist-Leninist indoctrination, upon his release commented wryly, “I’m an authority now on the history of the Communist Party and much of its doctrine.”[597]

[597] Rees, _Korea_, p. 334.

English-speaking POWs, both American and British, particularly became the target for Communist thought-control conditioning. Many experts have discussed glowingly the superb example and iron discipline--both on the battlefield and in POW camp--displayed by the Turkish soldiers. This is true, and their outstanding performance is to their credit as a national group. The fact remains, however, that the Turks were long-term professional soldiers. Usually they were left alone by the Communists who neither spoke their language nor needed them for propaganda purposes. As a rule all non-American troops of the United Nations received better treatment than American and British personnel.

The basic tenet of the Communist party line was that this aggressive war against the peace-loving people of Korea had been caused by American imperialists seeking additional foreign markets. All UNC soldiers were, therefore, by simple definition war criminals who deserved no better treatment than death. But as most UN soldiers were misguided and misled by their capitalist rulers they would “not be shot if they admitted their mistakes and showed themselves to be progressive”[598] by becoming properly indoctrinated.

[598] _Ibid._, p. 335.

Often, the thought-reform processing started long before prisoners reached their permanent camps, while they were under initial interrogation in the transit collection center. Captain Samuel J. Davies, Anglican Chaplain of the British Gloucestershire Regiment,[599] noted that lecture subjects presented to his officer group at one North Korean temporary collection center included:

Corruption of the UN by the American warmongers; The Chinese Peoples’ right to Formosa; The Stockholm Peace Appeal; Progress in Peoples’ China; Churchill, tool of the Truman-MacArthur-Dulles Fascist clique; The Soviet Union heads the World Peace Camp.[600]

[599] Davies was the only one of the four captured UNC chaplains who survived the war. During his imprisonment, he visited hospitalized POWs at the makeshift hospital near Camp 2 and held weekly community services. Another well-remembered chaplain was Captain Emil J. Kapaun, Chaplains Corps, USA. The Catholic priest stole food and sneaked into the enlisted compounds at Camp 5 to distribute it. His heroic behavior and selfless interest in his fellow-men were an inspiration to fellow POWs. MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 77, 136.

[600] Rees, _Korea_, p. 336.

Systematically the enemy ground away at theory and practice of Communism, with its superiority to American democracy. From emphasis on the Korean War as imperialist aggression, the programmed thinking then dealt with shortcomings of western countries (particularly Southern lynchings, poor treatment of Negroes, and colonialism) to the idyllic socialism in people’s democracies where “everyone is equal.” “Together with the emotional pressures involved, this dramatic presentation of Marxism-Leninism to prisoners who often not only failed to comprehend why they had fought in Korea, but even the rudiments of democracy itself, was bound to have some sort of effect.”[601]

[601] _Ibid._, p. 337.

Compulsory lectures and discussions often went on until 2200. Together with the unceasing indoctrination efforts, the CCF attempted to maintain complete control over every aspect of POW life. Each camp was divided into POW companies (ranging from 60 to 300 men), platoons, and squads. Squad leaders, appointed by the Chinese, reported regularly to authorities the opinions of men in their group. “Converted” progressives were responsible for much of the internal policing. Every prisoner with reactionary tendencies was isolated. The varied pressures of hunger, fear, constant threats of torture, coercion, nonrepatriation, anxiety, and guilt[602] were used to break him down.

[602] Some analysts have pointed out that the Lenient Policy with its “emphasis on confession and repentance, and its propaganda exploitation” closely resembled POW indoctrination tactics developed by the Russians with their German prisoners in World War II. Rees, _Korea_, p. 338.

In an attempt to convert the Marines and other prisoners to their own beliefs, the Communists prohibited the use of the term “prisoner of war.” Instead they used the phrase “newly liberated friends” and insisted the POWs do likewise. They also denounced religion as a superstition and device for controlling people’s minds. Curiously, POWs were often permitted to retain whatever religious articles they had on them when captured, so that Bibles, rosaries, etc., were available for squad groups that sought to hold informal religious discussions and readings. Such religious expression was, of course, strictly forbidden. It might be noted here that Marines, as a group, did not appear to be any more or less interested in religious services than other POWs.

By mid-1952 the compulsory lectures were considered a failure, and the emphasis shifted to “voluntary” study groups led by progressives. More insidious methods of indoctrination were being used--books, papers, and articles written by camp progressives. Personal interrogation and indoctrination had proved it could have a more powerful effect than attempts at mass conversion. Then, too, the Chinese had by this time perfected another propaganda tool that admirably suited their purposes. It was to have even still more effective, far reaching results.

_The Germ Warfare Issue_[603]

[603] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: MacDonald, _POW_; Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_; Leckie, _Conflict_; Rees, _Korea_.

Besides their routine interrogations and indoctrinations, by 1952 the Communists had found a new angle to exploit. This was to have strong repercussions on the treatment of some captured personnel. And, ultimately, it was to affect American public reaction to the entire Korean War and to shake the nation’s confidence in some of its fighting men who became POWs.

The germ warfare issue developed from an incident in January 1952 when the Communists shot down a U.S. Air Force B-26 bomber. Several months later, in May, the enemy propaganda campaign moved into high gear when the navigator and pilot both purportedly confessed that they took part in a raid in which germ bombs were dropped on North Korean towns. After the CCF successfully extracted false confessions from the two USAF officers, the enemy exposed both prisoners to a select group of Oriental medical specialists and newspapermen. The two Americans apparently performed according to plan, and a relentless flood of Communist propaganda was unleashed on the world.

While the allegation of bacteriological warfare was not new in the Korean War, it was not until 1952 that the Chinese successfully exploited it. After suffering their first reverses in Korea in September 1950, the Communists charged that Americans were waging germ warfare. Even after they regained the tactical initiative in late 1950 they continued their campaign of vilification. In early 1951, while the UNC battled epidemics of smallpox, typhus, and amoebic dysentery prevalent among the civil population and within the POW camps, the CCF branded medical efforts to curb the diseases as experiments in germ warfare. A formal complaint was made by the CCF to the United Nations in May 1951; thereafter, the germ warfare charges lay dormant for the rest of the year.

The effect of the two airmen’s “confessions” in 1952 was far-reaching. From that time until the end of hostilities “captured aviators of all services were subjected to a degree of pressure and coercion previously unknown by prisoners of war. Prior to the turn of the year aviation and ground personnel received relatively the same treatment in Communists’ hands. After January 1952, aviators were singled out for a special brand of treatment designed to wring bacteriological warfare confessions from them.”[604] North Korean officials joined the CCF spokesmen in loudly denouncing American bacteriological attacks. As the campaign gained momentum, an elaborate, cleverly-concocted “War Crimes Exhibit” was set up in Peiping in May. Similar displays were later on view at the UNC officers’ camp at Pi-chong-ni, including hand-written and sound-recorded confessions by the two American pilots, as well as a convincing array of photos depicting the lethal “bomb containers.”

[604] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 175.

All the while air personnel were being put under acute stress to confess alleged war crimes. Captured Marine aviation personnel encountered this new subject in their interrogations. Lieutenant Henry, captured in February, was asked about germ warfare. Major Judson C. Richardson, of VMF(N)-513, during interrogations at Pak’s was told he would never leave Korea when he denied that the U.S. was waging bacteriological warfare. Master Sergeant John T. Cain, VMO-6, a well-known Marine enlisted pilot whose plane was shot down in July 1952, was questioned, confined to the hole, and taken before a firing squad when he refused to acknowledge American participation. Captain Flynn was also subjected to intensive and brutal interrogation by North Korean and Chinese Communist Air Force personnel who sought a confession. Others were to meet similar pressure and be questioned until their nerves shrieked.

On 8 July 1952, the first of a chain of events occurred that was to link the Marine Corps with the spurious bacteriological warfare propaganda. Colonel Frank H. Schwable, 1st MAW Chief of Staff and Major Roy H. Bley, wing ordnance officer, were struck by Communist ground fire while making a reconnaissance flight. The enemy had little difficulty in compiling Colonel Schwable’s biography. Although he repeatedly maintained he had just arrived in Korea and had not yet received an assignment, he was in uniform with insignia and full personal identification. A Department of Defense press release issued two days later gave considerable data, correctly identifying him as the Marine Wing Chief of Staff. The Chinese knew they had a prize.

Two weeks after his capture, the colonel was taken to an interrogation center where he remained in solitary confinement until December. He quickly became aware of CCF intentions to utilize him for their propaganda mill. He was interrogated relentlessly, badgered, accused of being a war criminal, fed a near-starvation diet, denied proper latrine privileges, refused medical and dental attention, and subjected to extremes of temperature. Ultimately the discomfort, almost constant diarrhea, extreme pain from being forced to sit in unnatural positions, fatigue, and naked threats wore him down. At the same time he was also convinced that had he continued to resist Communist demands for a confession the enemy would have affixed his forged signature to a document to achieve their ends. He later commented:

In making my most difficult decision to seek the only way out, my primary consideration was that I would be of greater value to my country in exposing this hideous means of slanderous propaganda than I would be by sacrificing my life through non-submission or remaining a prisoner of the Chinese Communists for life, a matter over which they left me no doubt.[605]

[605] _Ibid._, p. 180.

General Dean, held in solitary confinement for much of his three years’ captivity, stated the greatest problem facing a prisoner of war is “maintaining his judgment--he has no one on whom he can try out his ideas before turning them into decisions.”[606] Possibly this was also Colonel Schwable’s problem. Many drafts of his confession were made before the Chinese were satisfied that specific details reinforced the information earlier obtained in other prisoners’ false statements. The confession that finally evolved in December cleverly combined factual order of battle data and technical terminology to create a most convincing lie. It was more sophisticated than efforts of earlier captives and was, unquestionably, damaging.

[606] _Ibid._, p. 182.

_Problems and Performance of Marine POWs_[607]

[607] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: _PacFlt EvalRpt_ No. 6, Chap. 10; MacDonald, _POW_; Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_.

Problems faced by Marine and other UNC prisoners ranged from the fundamentals of sheer survival to more abstract questions involving honor and duty that have less sharply defined interpretations. Was it, for instance, a prisoner’s duty to overtly resist the enemy at all costs and on all possible occasions? Or was an attitude of passive resistance that created less hostility and attention better in the long run? Were such passive techniques liable to render a POW unable to continue making fine distinctions in his conduct and behavior so that he unwittingly went over the line to become a collaborator with the enemy? What about a ranking POW’s responsibility of leadership?

In a practical, day-in, day-out way, every prisoner had to decide for himself as to how actively or passively he would resist the enemy. In a number of cases Marine (and other Allied) POWs gave deliberately false or misleading information in response to threats, coercion, or maltreatment. Three Marines at Pak’s regularly held counsel “to determine their courses of action and to coordinate their false stories.”[608] Captain Fink’s list of ships, all sunk in World Wars I and II, was similar to the story told by an Air Force officer of the new B-108 bomber (three B-36s).

[608] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 121.

Not infrequently a POW faced threats of death, reduced rations, still worse medical care, solitary, or physical beatings and torture if he failed to make some response to questions. Major Richardson finally wrote untruthful answers to five questions about the Navy, although his NKPA interrogators told him his lies were detected. Master Sergeant Cain authored a fanciful report about the Fleet Logistic Wing, an organization about which he knew nothing, not too surprisingly since it did not exist. He later admitted, however, that he felt he’d “made a mistake at that time [his first interrogation] by lying about inconsequential things.”[609]

[609] _Ibid._, p. 185.

Expressed in simplistic terms, a spirit of cohesion and of group identity seemed to be the key factor in--to use a bromide that is particularly apt here--separating the men from the boys. Even when avowed reactionary leaders were removed to serve one of their many solitary tours, there seems little doubt that their example served to instill a spirit of resistance (either open or underground) in fellow POWs. This was particularly true when the leadership gap was filled by the next senior man and the chain of command remained unbroken.

Prisoners who were able to rise above their own personal situation (_i.e._, to adjust, without giving in) and to assist others seemed, unquestionably, to have gained greater resiliency and determination. Whether this is a cause-or-effect reaction, however, might be a grey area difficult to pinpoint precisely. In any event, glimpses of Marines from behind the barbed wire indicated that steadfastness under pressure, ingenuity, and outstanding leadership earned them the respect of fellow prisoners as well as a place in Marine Corps history.

Even in a situation as inhospitable and hazardous as a POW camp, it is not surprising that characteristic behavior and certain distinctive personality traits tend to show through, no matter what. Captain Fink, captured early in the war, endured unspeakable humiliations at the hands of the North Koreans. Although he felt his morale was at its lowest point at this time, and was not sure he could go on, he was later responsible for providing a high degree of civility for POWs confined to Camp 2. His most notable artistic and mechanical achievement was probably the construction of an artificial leg[610] for USAF Major Thomas D. Harrison. This prosthetic was so expertly fashioned that its owner could play volley ball using his new limb! Fink also built stethoscopes for POW doctors, using resonant wood and tubing stolen from Chinese trucks. After a discussion with other POWs on the need for a religious symbol in camp, the resourceful Marine made a 22-inch crucifix, christened “Christ in Barbed Wire.”[611] His efforts on behalf of religion earned him a 10-day sentence in the hole.

[610] A hollowed-out compartment of the leg was used to hide written records on deaths, atrocities, and other administrative data. Ultimately, the records were brought back to the U.S. The Air Force officer was a cousin, interestingly enough, of the chief Allied truce negotiator, General Harrison. MacDonald, _POW_, p. 227, and _Washington Post_, dtd 5 Aug 53, p. 1.

[611] The crucifix was brought back to freedom by Camp 2 POWs and later placed in the Father Kapaun High School, in Wichita, Kansas. MacDonald, _POW_, p. 172.

Captain Arthur Wagner, VMF(N)-513, spent an unusually long six-month tour at Pak’s during 1951. For new captives headed in that direction, the word via USMC grapevine was that he “could be trusted.”[612] Captain Wagner counselled other prisoners at Pak’s, helped chop wood, draw water, cook, ease the burden of sick POWs, and resisted the Communists at every turn.

[612] _Ibid._, p. 121.

Another member of the same squadron, Captain Flynn, had completed 59 combat missions against the enemy in North Korea before being shot down in May 1952.[613] While captive, the veteran Marine fighter pilot withstood intense interrogation, influenced others to suppress CCF-inspired talks made by progressives, and strengthened morale by planning a group escape. He was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by a mock court. Throughout it all, according to Master Sergeant Cain, the POWs “owed much to Flynn who kept them amused.”[614] First Lieutenant Robert J. Gillette’s “reactionary” attitude resulted in his being placed in the hole on several occasions. Once, at No Name Valley, he managed to scribble a novel on toilet paper which subsequently provided some light moments for fellow prisoners. And First Lieutenant Felix L. Ferranto, 1st. Signal Battalion, spent more than two years of his 33 months’ imprisonment in solitary confinement or isolated with small units of “non-cooperative” POWs. The CCF pronounced him a “hopeless capitalist, an organizer with an ‘unsincere attitude.’”[615]

[613] Parachuting from his burning plane after it was struck by hostile AA fire, Captain Flynn duplicated an earlier action from World War II. In July 1945 he had bailed out of an aircraft similarly hit by fire while on a combat patrol over Japan. Biog File, HRS, HistBr, G-3 Div, HQMC.

[614] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 185.

[615] _Ibid._, p. 122.

The type of amiable accommodation that could sometimes be made, without compromising one’s standards, was once successfully demonstrated by Captain Jack E. Perry, VMF-311 briefing officer. On a bombing run his F9F fuel tank was hit, and he parachuted down. Seized almost immediately by the Chinese, his captors “showed him bomb holes from numerous strikes in the area, and they pointed out several wounded soldiers. Then, as he describes it, ‘They laughed like hell.’ Although Captain Perry failed to see anything funny, he laughed along with them.’”[616]

[616] _Ibid._, p. 109.

Three Marines captured during the Korean War had suffered a similar fate in World War II. Ironically, Staff Sergeant Charles L. Harrison, of the Military Police Company; Warrant Officer Felix J. McCool, of 1st Service Battalion; and Master Sergeant Frederick J. Stumpges, Headquarters Company, were all captured in the same 29 November 1950 action. Comparisons of treatment by the Communists and Japanese were inevitable. A survivor of the Bataan Death March, Stumpges felt that although the Japanese confinement was more difficult physically, imprisonment in North Korea was a far worse mental ordeal. “They [the Communists] were around all the time and you could never speak your mind.”[617]

[617] _New York Times_, dtd 30 Aug 53, p. 2.

The other two Marines similarly thought that the Japanese were more brutal but had more character. Harrison, captured at Wake Island, said he admired them because “they really believed in their cause and were loyal to it.”[618] The Chinese, on the other hand, he characterized as employing “false friendship and deceit.”[619] McCool, who had spent 70 hours in a slimy, lice-infested hole for refusing to confess to a phony charge of rape and pillage, knew that he “hated the Chinese Communists far more than he had hated the Japanese.”[620]

[618] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 79.

[619] _Ibid._

[620] _Ibid._, p. 167.

Master Sergeant Cain had distinguished himself by flying little OE reconnaissance planes 184 hours and had 76 combat missions in one month. Just before his capture, Cain had paid for six months’ education for nine Korean youngsters who lived near his air base. Because of his graying hair and lack of rank insignia, Sergeant Cain was mistaken for a senior officer. In fact, the Chinese insisted that he was Lieutenant Colonel Cain, CO of VMF-121. His equal amount of insistence that he was not a Marine officer, plus his refusal to reveal any significant information, made him a particular nuisance to the CCF. He was subjected to intensive interrogation sessions, confined to the hole, and stood at attention for periods of five to eight hours. Describing the occasion on which he thought it was all over, Sergeant Cain related that he:

... was taken to a hillside, blindfolded, and placed in front of a firing squad. He heard rifle bolts click. The commander of the firing squad asked if he was ready to tell all.[621]

[621] _Ibid._, p. 186.

When the Marine sergeant replied that he was not going to talk, the Chinese returned him to solitary confinement. Eventually, after questioning him for 84 days, the CCF gave up trying to indoctrinate him in the ways of Communism. Major Harris, senior officer of the Obul complex, freely acknowledged that Sergeant Cain “assumed more than his share of duties and responsibilities and set an example for all to follow.”[622]

[622] _Ibid._, pp. 186–187.

_Marine Escape Attempts_[623]

[623] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: MacDonald, _POW_; Korean War casualty cards from Statistical Unit, Casualty Section, HQMC.

As the Korean War came to a close, assessments were being made of America’s role in it. Operation BIG SWITCH swung into high gear and national attention focused on the returning POWs and their experiences in Communist camps. The widely-accepted statement was that no prisoners had escaped. Even more discrediting was the prevailing belief that, “worse, not a single American attempted to escape from captivity.”[624] These reported facts are not borne out by the actual record.

[624] Leckie, _Conflict_, p. 389.

In May 1951, a group of 18 Marines and a U.S. Army interpreter found their way back to American control through a combination of fortuitous events and quick thinking. All of the Marines had been captured several months earlier, in the 28 November-11 December period, the majority on the night of 29–30 November. There were peculiar circumstances connected with their escape. In early April, a group of nearly 60 UNC prisoners had been brought south by the enemy from the Majon-ni area. Presumably they were to perform working details in the rear of Communist front lines.

While a larger number of prisoners, both Army and Marine, were marched westward to Pyoktong, First Lieutenant Frank E. Cold and a group of 17 enlisted were sent further south to the general Chorwon area, not far from the 38th Parallel. In the meantime the Chinese launched their spring counteroffensive on 22 April. It appears that, subsequently, the Marines and Army interpreter, Corporal Saburo “Sam” Shimamura, who had been attached to the 1st Marine Division, were told they would be taken to the area in which the Marine division was operating and released there.

The group was then trucked southeast to Chunchon, just below the Parallel, under guard, and marched toward the vicinity of the front lines. On 24 May, while in proximity to the main battle area, an artillery preparation suddenly registered nearby. The CCF guards fled, while the prisoners ran in the opposite direction, heading for high ground where they successfully eluded the guards. For the rest of that day and night the escapees quietly watched Communist troops retreat past them. The next day, 25 May, the Marines fashioned make-shift air panels from wallpaper they stripped from a ruined Korean house in the area. They spelled out “POWS--19 RESCUE.” Their signal attracted the attention of an Army observation pilot who radioed their position to an Army reconnaissance unit.

Three Army tanks were dispatched and escorted the ex-prisoners to safety. They entered friendly lines in the vicinity of Chunchon, “the first and only group of prisoners to experience Communist indoctrination and to reach freedom after a prolonged period of internment.”[625] Two members of the unit[626] were of special interest. One man was 56-year-old Master Sergeant Gust H. Dunis, who had barely survived the brutal, frozen death march to Kanggye in late December. The other was Staff Sergeant Charles L. Harrison, previously introduced as a unique two-time prisoner of war.

[625] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 84, reporting news stories in _The Washington Post_, dtd 27 Aug 53, p. 7, and _Saturday Evening Post_, 25 Aug 51, p. 109.

[626] Roster of this May 1951 escape group: 1stLt Cold, H&S/3/7; MSgt Dunis, Military Police Co; SSgt Harrison, MPCo; SSgt James B. Nash, MPCo; Sgt Charles W. Dickerson, 1stTkBn; Sgt Morris L. Estess, 1stSigBn; Sgt Paul M. Manor, A/7 MT Bn; Cpl Clifford R. Hawkins, 1stTkBn; Cpl Ernest E. Hayton, 1stTkBn; Cpl Frederick G. Halcomb, 11thMar; Cpl Leonard J. Maffioli, 1stTkBn; Cpl Theodore R. Wheeler, 1stServBn; Cpl Calvin W. Williams, Hq, 1stDiv; PFC John A. Haring, 7thMar; PFC Theron L. Hilburn, 1stTkBn; PFC Charles M. Kaylor, W/2/7; PFC Paul J. Phillips, A/7 MTBn; and PFC Charles E. Quiring, 5thMar. MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 260–263.

_Ice-Breaker at Work--Amphibian tractor of 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion destroys thick-crusted ice to prevent its backing up against Spoonbill Bridge. Below, the 1st Engineer Battalion maintenance shop in operation at Ascom City._

_Captured Enemy Weapons--Various types of mortar and artillery shells, machine guns, rifles, and a 60mm mortar are displayed at 1st Marine Division CP. Below, F9F Pantherjet fighter taxies down runway for takeoff._

_Outpost Defense--Inside view of one of the many sleeping caves, which shelter two to four men, on Marine outpost Carson. Below, COP Dagmar under artillery bombardment preceding enemy diversionary ground attack on 26 March 1953._

_POW Exchange--Frontline Marines watch Army convoy bringing first UN prisoners to Freedom Village in Operation_ LITTLE SWITCH. _Below, NKPA and CCF delegation upon adjournment of first day’s truce talks, April 1953._

_Freedom Village--Marines of 1st Engineer Battalion raise welcoming sign at entrance to camp. Rear Admiral John C. Daniel, USN, senior delegate at truce talks, reports progress at press conference. Below, KSC workers and Marine reroll barbed wire for use at the front._

_Ready to Strike--Ground crew loads rockets on “Devilcat” Corsair in preparation for day’s mission. Below, protective screen of M-46 dozer of 1st Tank Battalion is designed to explode 3.5-inch rockets before they hit armored vehicle. The wire fence turns with the turret._

_Evacuation from MLR--Improvised trolley rigged up by 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, safely transfers Marine casualty. Below, front view of first aid bunker, built on reverse slope, by 1st Engineer Battalion personnel._

_Marine Relief--Advance party of the Turkish 3d Battalion arrives at 3/7 CP to reconnoiter its new sector preparatory to relief of 1st Marine Division, May 1953. Below, mine damage absorbed by thermo boot. Its sturdy construction saved limb of wounded Marine. Navy corpsman displays armored jacket worn by infantryman who survived blast of 5 lbs. of TNT accidentally exploded at close range._

_Street Signs--Markers for the new Marine division CP at Camp Casey await completion of road work. Casey is command post of 1st MarDiv while in I Corps reserve. Marine tank fires in support of Turkish Brigade during May attack. Below, 5th Marines slog through flooded area on way back from day’s training._

_Defense of Boulder City--Men of 1st and 7th Marines receive supplies during CCF assaults in July 1953 against Boulder City. Below, aerial view of pock-marked terrain in front of Boulder City as seen from HMR-161 helicopter._

_Cease-fire--1st Marines move off MLR on 28 July, following cease-fire order. How Company marches to Camp Lee from position at the front. Below, contemplative Marine surveys trench line being filled in in accordance with armistice agreement._

_Operation_ BIG SWITCH_--Road map of route taken by repatriated UN prisoners of war as convoy reaches radio check points. Progress of convoy is immediately relayed to Freedom Village and entered on map._

_UN Custodial Forces--Indian troops board Marine helicopter on deck of USS Point Cruz. They are then flown to the buffer zone to guard CCF and NKPA nonrepatriated POWs. Below, LtCol William G. Thrash receives naval aviator wings upon his release at Freedom Village from MajGen Vernon E. Megee, CG, 1st MAW._

_Dismantling the MLR--KSCs, under Marine supervision, load and carry lumber from torn-down bunkers to new sector. Below, guard shack at entrance to 1/1 CP show results of flood waters, August 1952. Road approach to Spoonbill Bridge completely submerged by annual summer rains, in July 1953._

_Shore-to-Ship Operation--F3D is hauled aboard ship after being ferried by four DUKWs, as 1st MAW redeploys from Korea to Japan in June 1956. Below, 1st Marine Division in Korea functions as security force. Marine DMZ policemen inspect enemy positions, February 1955._

_Mission Completed--1st Marine Division equipment and records at dockside prior to loading for division’s return to the States. Below, 1st Marines march across Freedom Gate Bridge on their way to Ascom City and thence home to U.S., March 1955._

An additional four enlisted Marines returned to military control after a brief period of capture. Corporal William S. Blair, B/1/7, and PFC Bernard W. Insco, D/2/11, were taken prisoner on 24 April 1951 while the 1st Marine Division was operating as a component of IX Corps. Although originally sent north to a POW camp, both were released on 12 May by the enemy after less than a month’s captivity. Another pair of lucky Marines were PFC Richard R. Grindle and Corporal Harold J. Kidd, both of B/1/7. Seized on 11 May in patrol actions, they were the only Marines captured in ground fighting that month, and escaped to return to the division four days later.

At least six escape attempts are known to have been made by Marine POWs, and another elaborate plan late in the war was foiled before it got under way. The incidents follow:

#1. In the early winter months of 1951, Sergeant Donald M. Griffith, F/2/5, became increasingly upset by the filth, steady attrition of POWs, and semi-starvation diet at The Valley. He vowed to escape. Late one night he pretended to go to the latrine and finding the guard asleep, instead hurried down the path leading out of the valley. He walked until dawn, then found a hut where he hid among a pile of rice bags for some much-needed sleep. Later, he knocked at a hut, asking for food. While he ate, however, his genial host’s son was out contacting a military patrol which even then was on Griffith’s trail.

A group of Communist soldiers closed in to recapture him. As early punishment, Griffith’s shoe pacs were taken from him and he was forced to walk back to the Valley in his threadbare ski socks. Returned to the camp, the Marine sergeant was beaten across the face. He was also directed to walk up a nearby hill and for three successive times a rifle bullet tearing by his head barely missed him. Later he learned that plans of his escape were leaked to the CCF by an informer, thus triggering an early search.

#2. In May 1951, Captain Bryon H. Beswick, VMF-323, was a member of a large POW column being marched north. Although still suffering severe burns on his face, hands, and leg incurred while bailing out of his plane that had caught fire, Beswick and four others attempted to outwit their guards while on the march. All the would-be escapees were placed in solitary confinement.

#3. Shortly after his capture in July 1951, PFC Alfred P. Graham, Jr., H/3/5, was interned temporarily at what appeared to be a divisional headquarters. One afternoon when the guards seemed slack, Graham and another Marine sneaked off. Ultimately they approached a farmhouse to get food and there stumbled into a half dozen Koreans who took them into custody. The two Marines were beaten with a submachine gun and their hands were bound behind their back with communications wire. On their forced reappearance at the original site of escape, a Korean officer beat and interrogated them for three days.

#4. A short-lived escape attempt at Pak’s Palace, not long after his capture in October 1951, had earned Lieutenant Gillette a solitary confinement tour. Arriving at Officers’ camp in Pi-chong-ni the following spring, the former VMF(N)-513 squadron member and a South African air force pilot laid plans for a mutual escape. Gillette deliberately set himself on a course of reduced rations to prepare himself for the coming feat. When the two men made their break, they were shot at but managed to safely clear the camp.

The first night out the other pilot so badly injured himself in a fall that Gillette had to leave him and go on alone. Although the apparent escape route lay to the west, nearer the coast, the Marine chose to go east across rugged mountains that offered little in the way of cover, concealment, or food. His unorthodox planning nearly paid off. “Whereas most escapees were recaptured within hours, or at best within days, Lieutenant Gillette was free for several weeks before the Communists found him halfway across Korea.”[627] One Royal Marine described the attempt as “the finest and most determined one he knew of.”[628]

[627] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 169.

[628] _Ibid._

#5. In July 1952, three Marine officers were involved in an abortive escape attempt at Camp 2. They were Lieutenant Colonel Thrash, Major McLaughlin, and Second Lieutenant Richard L. Sill, 1st 90mm AAA Gun Battalion. When detected outside of camp they were able to get back inside the compound, but the Chinese did identify Lieutenant Still. His escape attempt earned him a three-month sentence in the hole from which he later “emerged unbothered and steeled against the Communists.”[629]

[629] _Ibid._, p. 170.

#6. Captain Martelli escaped from the Camp 2 compound in September 1952. Retaken 10 days later, he was put in the same hole for two months. On release from the confinement, he was visibly upset by the experience, but quickly recovered. As a matter of interest, Martelli, like the other men whose exploits are recounted here, returned home in Operation BIG SWITCH.

#7. In the spring of 1953 a group of 30 officers, including two British Marines, at Camp 2 organized classes in mathematics, physics, and survival lectures. Conferences on escape and evasion techniques were held and the men formed escape groups. The teams drew straws to pick priorities for escape, and each one presented its plan to a senior body for approval. On 1 July, with support of the other teams, the first group went over the fence surrounding their house. Their freedom was brief, however, and the camp guard doubled. When rumors of armistice began circulating, further escape plans were cancelled. Clandestine prisoner escape committees--although unsuccessful in terms of actual results achieved--had existed at various camps. Second Lieutenant Rowland M. Murphy had been a member of such an organization at Obul. Major McLaughlin had assumed similar responsibilities at Camp 5, in 1951, and later at Camp 2 served on the secret all-UNC prisoners escape committee and senior officers’ organization within Camp 2. In early 1953 Major Harris became senior officer at the Camp 2 Annex. He organized Spanish classes as a facade for having a regular meeting place to announce policy and issue orders. Maps of North Korea were prepared for use in escape attempts and counter-Chinese political indoctrination was disseminated.

The Camp 2 officers performed another useful service. As rumor leaked out of the impending truce, they drafted a policy guide on POW behavior that was secretly circulated to other camps. UNC prisoners were directed to refrain from any appearance of fraternizing with the enemy, or acts of exuberance or violence. Specifically, they were reminded not to show any great enthusiasm upon their release, to prevent the Communist cameras on the scene from recording this as another propaganda victory.

_Evaluation and Aftermath_[630]

[630] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: HRS Subject File: VE23.2.S8 “CMC Statements on Korean POWs”; Biog File, HRB, HistDiv, HQMC; MacDonald, _POW_; Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_; Elliot Harris, _The “UnAmerican” Weapon--Psychological Warfare_ (New York: M. W. Lads Publishing Co., 1967); Leckie, _Conflict_; Rees, _Korea_.

With but a few exceptions, circumstances indicated that capture of most Marines was unavoidable. Theoretically, it can be argued that several seized in bunkers might have avoided captivity had they been occupying fighting-holes instead. On the other hand, they might just as readily have become statistics on a KIA list, instead, by falling victim to preparatory fire that preceded the enemy’s main assault.

As Marine historian, then-Major, MacDonald has noted:

A shadow fell over American POWs in the aftermath of the Korean War. Courts-martial and other official inquiries revealed that a small segment of the Americans captured by the Communists had been guilty of behavior ranging from questionable to treasonable.[631]

[631] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 3.

Both the Secretary of Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War and the United States Congress, which investigated the entire POW issue, returned favorable verdicts for Marine POW conduct. The U.S. Senate report summarized its findings:

The United States Marine Corps, the Turkish troops, and the Colombians as groups, did not succumb to the pressures exerted upon them by the Communists and did not cooperate or collaborate with the enemy. For this they deserve greatest admiration and credit.[632]

[632] _Ibid._, p. 237.

In commenting on prisoner attitudes and activities that seemed to account for those men who became “survival types”, an Army psychiatrist, Major William F. Mayer, observed:

The Marines were a statistically significant group from the standpoint of size, something over two hundred; the only thing I can say about them is that more of them survived than we. I think this is a function of discipline and morale and esprit; and the attitude in the Marine Corps I expressed a little while ago, that if something happens to me, these jokers will take care of me.[633]

[633] _Ibid._, pp. 236–237, address to U.S. Army Chaplain School, 1957.

In the nature of self-judgment, Sergeant Griffith referred to “that certain ‘something’ that seems to weld men together prevailed more among the Marine POWs than it did with the other captured UN Troops.”[634] The Marine with probably more experience as a POW than anyone else, Sergeant Harrison, noted that “without USMC training I would never have lived through several tight spots. I am not talking strictly about physical training as I am mental conditioning. It is something that causes you to think ... about what the other guy will think or how it [your action] might affect or endanger them.”[635]

[634] _Ibid._, p. 88.

[635] _Ibid._, p. 238.

A senior Air Force officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Brown, who headed POW units at Camp 2 and 5 between his tours of solitary confinement, declared:

I was extremely proud of the conduct of U.S. Marine Corps personnel with whom I came in contact during my period of confinement. Their esprit de corps was perhaps the highest of any branch of the Armed Forces of the United States during this period.[636]

[636] _Ibid._, p. 220.

And Navy Chief Duane Thorin, a former inmate of the Camp 2 annex, who later inspired the character of the helicopter pilot in James A. Michener’s _The Bridges of Toko-ri_, pointed out:

The Navy and Marine Corps POWs were generally excellent. The Marines who left something to be desired were more than compensated for by the majority of them.[637]

[637] _Ibid._, p. 223.

Another view was offered by a prominent neurologist and consultant to the Secretary of Defense Advisory Committee, Dr. Harold G. Wolff. After investigating the performance of American POWs in Korea, Dr. Wolff concluded they had not “behaved much differently from other men in other armies and places” but that Americans had been made to appear much worse “by the enemy’s propaganda devices and our own initial ineptitude in countering the Communist propaganda.”[638]

[638] _Ibid._, p. 237.

As a postscript to the POW story, five Marines received awards, on 11 January 1954, for their exceptionally meritorious conduct while serving as prisoners of the Communists in Korea. They were:

Lieutenant Colonel Thrash--awarded a Gold Star in lieu of a second Legion of Merit;

Major McLaughlin--awarded the Legion of Merit;

Major Harris--also awarded the Legion of Merit;

Captain Flynn--awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal; and

Master Sergeant Cain--awarded a Letter of Commendation with Ribbon.

On the negative side, one enlisted Marine was disciplined for his cooperation with the enemy in writing a pro-Communist magazine article. A Court of Inquiry, convened in March 1954, did not recommend a court-martial for the 45-year-old pilot, Colonel Schwable. After a month-long review of circumstances involved in the case, the court opined that he had resisted Communist pressure and torture “to the limit of his ability before giving in.”[639] Its final judgment was that Schwable--a Naval Academy graduate, veteran of 20 years’ military service, and distinguished WW II night-fighter pilot and squadron CO--not be subjected to disciplinary action. At the same time the court held that his future usefulness as a Marine officer was “seriously impaired” by his conduct as a war prisoner.

[639] _Ibid._, p. 233.

On a larger scale, 192 Americans were found guilty of misconduct against fellow prisoners or various degrees of collaboration with the enemy. None of these was a Marine. In comparison with some 22,000 Communists who refused repatriation, 21 U.S. and 1 British prisoner succumbed to CCF brainwashing tactics. Twelve of the Americans have since returned to the U.S., apparently disenchanted with the Communist version of “people’s democracy” after getting a closer look at it.

Investigations later showed that “only a handful of the POWs in Korea were able to maintain absolute silence under military interrogation. Nearly all of the American prisoners went beyond the [Geneva Convention] ‘absolute’, name, rank, serial number, and date of birth restriction.”[640] Although giving false or misleading information was a common occurrence in POW camps, such testimony was usually quickly detected. American military authorities, drawing up a revised Code of Conduct (1955) subsequently recommended against making untruthful statements. Further, even though several Marines seemed to have suffered none the worse for giving false information, in at least one case a prisoner’s own situation was weakened by enemy detection of his lie and increasing pressure was brought against him.

[640] _Ibid._, p. 230.

It was found too, that in every group of prisoners there were always gradations of those more cooperative with the enemy (“progressives”) and those who offered open or passive resistance (“reactionaries”). One Korean War analyst, in seeking the final explanation of what POW tactics succeeded best against a dedicated enemy, cited the Turkish “chain of command that was never broken” and which helped to mold them together. He noted the “permissive” culture and background of Americans where freedom of choice and individual decisions are basic tenets. Despite the effect of military indoctrination and discipline, this concept of individualism and freedom appeared to be so strongly engrained that unless there was a corresponding emphasis on responsibility and strong beliefs it tended to weaken a man when his action and values were put to a prolonged test--as in the POW compound. The analyst concluded:

Only an extremely cohesive group, with tight leadership and great spiritual strengths, coupled with inner toughness and concern for one another, could have survived the shocks visited upon their minds and bodies.... They [the Turks] remained united against the enemy, and they survived.[641]

[641] Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, pp. 541–542.

This judgement, to a large degree, tells the Marine POW story.