The Korean War (57 page)

The Eighth Army soldier [wrote an American officer in 1953] cannot but accept the destruction of that ‘doctrine’ [of air power] through demonstrations, costly to him, staged by his enemies the armies of Red North Korea and Communist China. For their troops and supplies moved, despite harassment from our air, consistently and in quantities sufficient to meet their needs . . . Notwithstanding the all-out efforts of the Air Force in Korea, there was never a day when the trains did not run and the trucks did not roll behind the enemy lines in North Korea, from the forward enemy areas . . . The Air Force in Korea did not fail to apply all the power of which it was capable. But it is plain that it could not, or at least did not, accomplish the mission Air Force theorists had repeatedly told the Army and the American people was sure to be accomplished, under conditions of such overwhelmingly one-sided aerial strength.
¹⁹

No one could seriously dispute that to be bombed was a deeply distressing experience, and UN strategic bombing added greatly to the communists’ difficulties in sustaining the war. But of all the governments upon earth, those in Peking and Pyongyang were among the least likely to be deterred from continuing a commitment to the conflict, merely because of the distress it caused to their peoples. Given time and labour to introduce countermeasures, above all putting key installations underground, the air-dropped conventional bomb proved as limited a weapon in the second half of the twentieth century as in the first. It is not surprising that the airmen’s limitless faith in what they could achieve remained undiminished after Korea, as it had after World War II. If they admitted some of the bitter truths revealed by those wars, a critical part of the air force’s rationale for its own independent operations would cease to exist. But it remains astonishing that ten years later, in Vietnam, they were allowed to mount a campaign under almost identical circumstances to those of Korea, with identical promises of potential and delusions of achievement, and with exactly repeated lack of success.

15 » THE PRISONERS

One day in the summer of 1951, a British lieutenant named Brian Hawkins found a tin in no-man’s-land, containing a message from the Chinese. ‘Officers and men of the 1st Division of the United Kingdom,’ it proclaimed,

in the April battle 701 officers and men of the British 29th Brigade were captured by one of our units. We had sent them to the safe rear for learning. They receive the best treatment from us. They play ball and amuse themselves after studying every day. So, don’t worry about them please. We write the name of the officers here, expecting you to tell their parents and wives that they are safe and will go home in the future. Life is invaluable. You should keep your safety for a good turn. You may hide yourselves while you are ordered to fight. When you see China volunteers or Korean People’s Army men, lay down your weapons and come over to us. We absolutely guarantee no harm, no abuse, and plenty of food for you. Otherwise, ‘Death’ is the only way before you,

The Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces
¹

In a curious sense, the Chinese in the forward areas of Korea were sincere in the pursuit of their ‘lenient policy’ towards prisoners. There were repeated examples, throughout the war, of Chinese – although never North Koreans – not killing UN soldiers even when they had the opportunity to do so, even releasing them and sending them back to the UN lines for propaganda purposes. Yet the clumsy efforts to display humanity that sometimes took place at the front masked a terrible reality in the rear. ‘We do not
know about Geneva Convention,’ a contemptuous communist officer told Padre Sam Davies when he was captured on the Imjin, and then pointed to his interrogator: ‘You must obey his orders.’
²
No aspect of the Korean conflict caused greater bitterness – bordering upon hysteria in the United States – than the post-war revelation of the treatment of United Nations prisoners by their communist captors. The bald figures speak more eloquently than any narrative. Of 7,140 American prisoners to fall into enemy hands, 2,701 died in captivity. Some fifty of the 1,188 Commonwealth officers and other ranks posted as missing or prisoners died in enemy hands. The West was appalled to hear of the discovery in a railway tunnel, during the 1950 advance into North Korea, of the bodies of a hundred American prisoners massacred by the retreating communists. From the outbreak of war, Kim Il Sung’s army made it plain that it killed American prisoners whenever it suited its convenience to do so.

‘Would the Right Honourable Gentleman bear in mind,’ Major Harry Legge-Bourke MP told a British minister in the House of Commons in January 1951, ‘that those of our men who were prisoners in Japanese hands during the last war all say that, of all the guards they most feared, none were worse than the Koreans? Therefore, will he make quite clear to the North Koreans that they must abide by the [Geneva] Convention?’
³

The minister replied that ‘the Foreign Secretary is doing his utmost through his representative, the British Chargé d’Affaires at Peking’. But all concerned were aware of the futility of such gestures. The North Koreans were a law unto themselves. The only mitigating factor in judging their behaviour towards their prisoners is the parallel attitude of many UN soldiers towards communist captives. Many American officers and men interviewed for this book admitted knowledge of, or participation in, the shooting of communist prisoners when it was inconvenient to keep them alive. It is fair to suggest that many UN soldiers did not regard North Korean soldiers as fellow-combatants, entitled to humane treatment, but as near-animals, to be treated as such. As usual in
most wars, when the atmosphere at the front was relaxed, communist prisoners were perfectly properly used, and sent to the camps in the rear. But at periods of special stress or fear, especially in the first six months of the war, many UN soldiers shot down enemy prisoners – or even Korean civilians – with barely a moment’s scruple. ‘I couldn’t get over how cruel we were to the prisoners we captured,’ said Private Mario Scarselleta of the 35th Infantry. ‘We’d strip them and tie them on the hood of a jeep and drive them around. A group would be taken back for interrogation and shot. My outfit didn’t take too many prisoners.’
⁴
Scarselleta’s outfit was not untypical. Private Warren Avery of the 29th Infantry said flatly: ‘We took no prisoners. Our interpreter, Lieutenant Moon, was always asking for a prisoner, but we never gave him one. Geneva Convention, my ass. I shot an old woman carrying an A-frame. We killed an awful lot of civilians over there. You just couldn’t trust them. After you’d seen them kill a tank crew, you didn’t take chances again. Anybody you saw wearing mustard-coloured sneakers, you shot.’
⁵
It remains important and valid to make some distinction between the random acts of individual UN troops, and the systematic brutality of the North Koreans. But in Korea as later in Vietnam, it seems essential, more than thirty years later, to set the behaviour of the West’s forces in context, when judging that of the communists.

Beyond anything that took place on the battlefield, Korea became notorious as the first major modern conflict in which a combatant made a systematic attempt to convert prisoners to his own ideology. The Chinese success in this may be partly measured by the statistics: twenty-one Americans and one Briton refused repatriation at the end of hostilities. By 1959, the Americans claimed to have identified seventy-five former prisoners in Korea as communist agents. The most serious case was that of George Blake, former British vice-consul in Seoul, who was seized and interned in June 1950, and remained in communist hands until 1953. A decade later, Blake was unmasked as a key Soviet agent inside the British Foreign Office. The deep fear that similar traitors
still lurked undiscovered within the bureaucracies and bodies politic of the West persisted for a generation, and spawned such books and films as
Time Limit, The Rack
and
The Manchurian Candidate
. As the experiences of UN prisoners were revealed after the Panmunjom armistice, Americans were even more dismayed by the number of their own men who were found to have collaborated with the enemy, in greater or lesser measure, while behind the wire. Had the communists indeed, by their ‘brainwashing’ techniques in the cluster of camps along the Yalu, discovered a psychological formula for changing the loyalties of soldiers fighting for freedom? If this was indeed so, the implications for the future struggle against communism were disturbing indeed.

In any war against any enemy, the first minutes of captivity are most frightening, because it is then that the risk is greatest of being shot out of hand, in the hot blood of battle. When Captain James Majury was among a cluster of Ulster Riflemen overrun by the Chinese in January 1951, they were made to kneel in the courtyard of a Korean house. A Chinese officer told them: ‘You have come here to murder the peace-loving people of Korea. But we shall treat you as students of the truth.’ Corporal Massey of the machine-gun platoon, the battalion welterweight boxer, responded in the inimitable accent of the Belfast shipyards: ‘Listen, mister: will you go f— yourself.’
⁶
From the beginning to the end of captivity, it was remarkable how many men there were, from all the United Nations contingents, with such foolhardy courage.

Most UN captives received some sort of introductory harangue in their first hours in communist hands. Padre Sam Davies recorded the speech of a senior Chinese officer to the captured Gloucesters after the Imjin battle, a characteristic performance:

Officers and soldiers of the British Army, you are now prisoners of the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces in Korea. You have been duped by the American imperialists. You are tools of the reactionary warmongers, fighting against the righteous cause of the Korean people, supported by their brothers the Chinese people. You are hirelings of the barbarous Rhee puppet-government, but you will be given the chance to learn the truth through study, and correct your mistakes. Do not be afraid – we shall not harm you. At home, your loved ones await you. Obey our rules and regulations, and then you will not be shot.
⁷

When Marine Andrew Condron was captured in Hellfire Valley on 30 November 1950 along with some fifty Americans, during the Chosin reservoir campaign, a Chinese officer harangued the group in English, considerably to their bewilderment, about their bond with their captors, as fellow-members of the proletariat. ‘Proletarians like us?’ demanded a bewildered GI. ‘I thought they were f***ing communists.’ The Chinese shook hands with them all, and handed over some captured cigarettes and canned food before shutting them up in a nearby hut. Their first conflict with their captors came, wholly unexpectedly, when a guard brought in a steaming gourd of hot water. Somebody had some soap. To the delight of the prisoners, they were able to wash off the filth of days. Then the guard returned, and gazed on the scene with sheer horror. He fixed his bayonet, and for a tense moment the prisoners were convinced that he intended to use it. They were herded against the wall while the guard screamed and shouted at them. Then he vanished.

When his officer returned, they were rebuked in English. The guard had taken the risk and trouble of lighting a fire to heat water for them. By using it to wash in, rather than to drink, the prisoners had insulted him. ‘It really was East meets West,’ said Condron. ‘We simply didn’t know.’
⁸
Belatedly, they were searched. Knives, watches, lighters were taken away. So too were the wounded. To the best of Condron’s knowledge, none survived. In justice to the Chinese, with their primitive medical facilities, few of their own casualties were likely to fare better. One night, all the
unwounded prisoners were ordered to start marching. They continued to do so for almost a month.

Hundreds of men, above all the wounded, died on these marches from the battlefield, before they ever reached a camp. ‘The signal for death was the oxcart following the column,’ said James Majury. ‘If you had to be placed upon that, you would freeze to death.’ Pneumonia and dysentery took an early toll. Throughout the march towards the camps, every prisoner retained a keen sense of imminent death. One morning when a call came ‘All British outside! All British outside!’ the two dozen or so Royal Marines in Andrew Condron’s party were convinced that they were about to be executed. The Chinese looked excited and nervous. For two hours, a Chinese officer delivered a political harangue. He seemed convinced there was an officer among their group, which there was not: ‘I no believe you! Which one is officer?’ In a long single rank, the British prisoners were marched along a railway line. Condron became maudlin, as he thought of breakfast at home in West Lothian – black pudding, sausage and eggs. Why had he not joined the air force, like most of his friends? His sense of self-pity was deepened by the sight of a cluster of Korean children, laughing and giggling at them from a ridge above. Around a corner, they reached a huge hole, a bomb crater. Condron was convinced it was to be their grave. Then the guards motioned them onwards, into a house. They sagged with compulsive relief. Another Marine, Dick Richards, muttered to Condron: ‘Red, were you thinking what I was thinking?’ After that moment, they began to feel a flicker of confidence that they might live.