The afterglow of Super C’s satisfaction with the international press conference warmed Bucher and his men well into September. More attention was paid to their medical needs; the quantity and quality of food improved. The sailors found their plates heaped with fresh fish, canned ham, bread and butter, apples. Some even began to gain back some of the weight they’d lost over the previous eight months.
A few nourishing meals weren’t enough to reverse the cumulative effects of long-term malnutrition, however. About 15 crewmen, afflicted by nerve problems in their legs, still had trouble walking, and sailors still suffered from infections, chills, and fevers.
Bucher was beset by severe diarrhea, fever, a brief bout of hepatitis, and numbness in his battered right leg. One day a guard found him collapsed again—this time in the hall—and called for Charlie Law. The half-blind quartermaster scooped up his unconscious boss in his powerful arms. Weighing only 115 pounds, the skipper felt like “a bundle of feathers.” Law maneuvered his way into Bucher’s room and gently deposited him on his bed.
Despite their poor health, the Americans’ morale was at an all-time high. CT Earl Kisler composed a tongue-in-cheek poem that reflected their heightened sense of solidarity:
Out of Japan on the fifth of Jan.
The Pueblo came a-steamin’
Round Kyushu’s toe, past Sasebo,
You could hear the Captain a-screamin’
“XO!” he said,
“Full speed ahead! We’ve got us some spyin’ to do!”
“Timmy, be sharp!” Then with Charlie Law’s charts,
Away like a turtle we flew.
The poem went on to describe the crew’s seemingly endless incarceration before concluding:
But if we get back,
No coins will we lack,
So beware all ye banks, bars, and brothels!
If some night you’re pub-crawlin’,
And into gutters you’re fallin’,
And in that gutter are 82 gaffers;
It’s only the crew of AGER-2,
Otherwise known as “BUCHER’S BASTARDS.”
When the North Koreans decreed that yet another round of “confessions” be written, the seamen took even more liberties than usual. Steve Harris revealed that he’d been tutored as a spy by Maxwell Smart, the hilariously clumsy, secret-agent antihero of the Get Smart TV series. Bucher wrote of receiving orders to “spy out” North Korea from a cartoonish cast of characters that included the villainous “Fleet General Barney Google” and CIA master spy “Sol Loxfinger,” a name the captain cribbed from a Playboy magazine spoof of James Bond novels.
Super C also wanted the crew to submit another “petition for leniency” to his government. The captain chose Schumacher, Steve Harris, and three enlisted men to help him write it, and together they produced a small masterpiece of satirical counterpropaganda. Their statement expressed the usual contrition over violating North Korean waters, but the Americans also planted a number of linguistic booby traps the communists failed to detect.
The sailors admitted to being “super-spies” obsessed with “adding goodies to our spy bag.” They were guilty, they said, of “crimes so horrible [that] they have seldom been exceeded in the history of the world.” But the best line was about their ostensible intrusions into communist waters: “We, as conscientious human beings who were cast upon the rocks and shoals of immorality by the tidal wave of Washington’s naughty policies, know that neither the frequency nor the distances of these transgressions into the territorial waters of this peace-loving nation matter because, in the final analysis, penetration however slight is sufficient to complete the act.” The last several words of that sentence were calculated to put a smile on the face of any current or former U.S. serviceman who remembered from boot-camp lectures that “penetration however slight” was the definition of rape under military law. When Bucher read the petition aloud during a mass meeting, some of his men nearly gagged from the strain of holding in laughter. But their gullible captors accepted the statement at face value; it was broadcast on North Korean radio and printed verbatim in the English-language Pyongyang Times newspaper.
Super C had mysteriously disappeared from the Country Club after the international press conference. By October he was back, striding about with renewed vigor and palpable pride. Bucher soon figured out why: The four small stars on his shoulder boards that marked him as a senior colonel had been replaced by two large silver stars signifying his promotion to lieutenant general. The Americans duly upgraded his nickname to “Glorious General,” or G.G. He didn’t say where he’d been, but he seemed to have new plans for the crew. When he summoned Bucher for an all-night interrogation, he was in an almost convivial mood, allowing the captain to chain-smoke along with him. Bucher congratulated him on his advancement and the hard-shelled North Korean beamed with pleasure. Then he said something that made the skipper’s heart leap:
“You have said you expect to be home before Christmas. Well, I say you will not be home before then, nor before your Thanksgiving, but before this month is out.”
Bucher desperately wanted to believe him. But there was no way to know whether G.G. was telling the truth or not, and the captain didn’t want to raise his men’s hopes only to have them crushed. He decided to keep the general’s prediction to himself.
Before they let their prize prisoners go—if indeed they intended to do that—the North Koreans were determined to give them a booster shot of communist culture. On October 1, the Americans were bused to Pyongyang to see a sort of propaganda opera titled How Glorious Is Our Fatherland. Posed in his jeep like a conquering hero, Glorious General led the way into the capital. At one point the convoy was forced to stop by a peasant farmer staggering drunkenly down the road. Honking horns and angry shouts had no effect on him. Finally, a North Korean officer got out, marched up to the farmer, and briskly slapped him in the face.
The chastened peasant stumbled off the road and the buses rolled on into the city, stopping outside a large theater with curled-up, Buddhist-style eaves. Inside it was modern and comfortable, with nearly all of the 2,000 seats occupied by North Korean army personnel. The Americans were taken to the balcony, and interpreters sat down next to every fourth man. Then the curtain rose on a large troupe of performers who energetically sang and danced their way through a musical pageant of North Korea’s recent history, as scripted by the communists. With every song and scene, the interpreters leaned toward the sailors, exclaiming, “Very beautiful!” and, “Very great!”
Kim Il Sung’s heroic struggle against the Japanese was acted out, along with a more contemporary tale in which actors in white U.S. Navy caps portrayed the vanquished officers of the Pueblo. It was all very colorful and well performed, and the crewmen thoroughly enjoyed themselves. If nothing else, it was a reprieve from the tension and tedium of their cells.
Four nights later, the Americans were taken back to Pyongyang to see a circus, complete with trapeze artists, clowns, and tightrope walkers. This show was considerably less polished. A skinny, toothless lion staged a sit-down strike, drawing an angry kick from its tamer. Then an old black bear—also lacking teeth—lumbered into the ring. When the trainer stuck his head in the animal’s harmless maw, the sailors burst into wild laughter.
Even the circus had been turned into a kind of animated billboard for state ideology. One of the clowns, dressed as President Park of South Korea, loudly beat a drum marked with a U.S. dollar sign. When “Park” started to collapse, another clown costumed as an American army general jumped into the ring and reinflated him with a tire pump. The political symbolism was ham-handed but funny nonetheless. The following night, the crewmen were again bused into Pyongyang for a superb performance by the North Korean Army Chorus.
By now Bucher was convinced the seamen were going home. He made his hunch known to his officers and certain enlisted men, but some of the others had drawn their own optimistic inferences from the communist charm offensive. Why would the North Koreans spend so much time and effort entertaining them if they weren’t going to be freed?
That view was reinforced when their captors made a bumbling attempt to recruit the sailors as moles for Pyongyang.
The effort began when four important-looking communists drove into the compound one day and disappeared into the building where the multinational press conference had been held. Not long afterward Doc Baldridge was summoned there. The medic was gone about three hours; the rest of the crew had no idea what was happening to him. Baldridge finally reappeared, drunk, in the mess hall at dinnertime. He had to be led to his usual seat at the head of the table, where he promptly dumped his meal on the floor, grousing that he couldn’t stomach such garbage anymore. The others tried to find out what had gone on with the visiting bigwigs, but Baldridge was too blasted to explain. He lurched out of the mess hall, brusquely telling a guard at the door, “Get the hell out of my way, you dumb shit.” Taken aback, the North Korean stepped aside.
Over the next week more sailors were called into what Bucher dubbed “the Gypsy Tea Room.” Upon entering they found what in America might pass for a cocktail lounge combined with an all-you-can-eat buffet. Four cushioned chairs were arranged in a square; nearby tables held cold cuts, cookies, cigarettes, beer, wine, and ginseng liquor. The Americans were invited to eat and drink to their heart’s content, and they didn’t have to be told twice. Stu Russell polished off six beers; several others got sloshed, too.
Murphy found himself in the Tea Room with three North Koreans. One was an army captain who’d interrogated Murphy early in his captivity. The other two, in civilian clothes, appeared to be political officers. They made small talk as two sweater-clad girls brought in trays of apples, sausage, candies, and—perhaps in deference to the executive officer’s teetotaling—soft drinks. One girl wore a green sweater and matching skirt; the other wore all red. Murphy thought of them as “Merry” and “Christmas.”
The Koreans talked with creepily detailed knowledge of Murphy’s two children and schools he’d attended. They asked whether he’d like to return to their country someday. Trying to sound as “sincere” as possible, the XO said he would, but only after spending time with his family in the States. Was Murphy willing to receive a North Korean “visitor” at his home in America? Oh, yes, the lieutenant said archly; he promised to give anyone from North Korea a welcome “he would long remember.”
The communists probed for receptiveness among other sailors, too. Some men gave compliant answers to their questions; others blatantly insulted their hosts. Asked whether he’d open his home to someone from North Korea, Baldridge replied, “Are you kidding? Why the hell should I, anyway?” Friar Tuck said the only way he wanted to see North Korea again was through a bombsight. Russell, happily soused, agreed not only to take a visitor into his Southern California home, but to escort him to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, maybe even Tijuana.
The Gypsy Tea Room apparently yielded little, if anything, of value to the North Koreans, and they decided to give the crew one last propaganda immersion. On October 10, the sailors were told to pack toothpaste, soap, and other personal items for a short trip. Buses took them back to Pyongyang, where they boarded a train for a place they’d never heard of: Sinchon.
Located about 40 miles southwest of Pyongyang, Sinchon was a sort of national historic site dedicated to hatred of Americans. North Korea claimed that during the Korean War, rampaging U.S. troops turned the Sinchon area into a vast slaughterhouse, massacring more than 35,000 civilians. To memorialize the alleged butchery, Kim Il Sung erected his own version of a Holocaust museum in Sinchon; it was there the sailors were to be taken.
Glorious General had first mentioned the museum when the crewmen were at the Barn. “Someday I hope you may visit Sinchon,” he said. “Then you will really understand why we Koreans hate you Americans.” Throngs of North Koreans, including many schoolchildren, made pilgrimages to Sinchon each year. Some of the guards had mentioned with pride that they’d lost relatives in the Sinchon “genocide.”*
The crewmen arrived in Sinchon on the morning of October 11. Buses took them to the museum, a boxy, two-story structure of light-colored stone that was once the local Communist Party headquarters. There they were met by a guide, a thin young woman with stringy black hair, and, as always when a propaganda photo op presented itself, a TV crew.
The museum was a hive of small exhibit rooms, each containing “artifacts” of the horror American soldiers supposedly wreaked on the local populace in late 1950. The displays were far from convincing. The first was a glass case that held only a lock of hair, which the guide said belonged to “a patriotic hero of the war who was murdered by the U.S. imperialist aggressors.” The hair, of course, could have come from anyone, living or dead. The sailors moved on to another exhibit featuring an old, rusty knife that had been used to “chop off the head of a patriotic Korean soldier.” Another glass case contained the shoes of people purportedly drowned in a river by homicidal U.S. troops. A framed photograph of the river hung above the case, but there were no bodies in the water.
Many of the claimed atrocities were attributed to a “Lieutenant Harrison,” first name unknown. He’d supposedly been captured during the war and confessed to hundreds of crimes. Among other things, he was said to have dragged 30 innocent women and children to their deaths behind a U.S. military vehicle; one of the display cases bore a length of rope Harrison allegedly used in this deed. A large painting depicted him and other American military men sitting around a conference table, plotting villainous acts. When Murphy asked which one was Lieutenant Harrison, the guide pointed without hesitation to a soldier with corporal’s stripes on his uniform. Throughout the tour the TV crew filmed the Americans’ reaction to their tragic national shrine; some of the crewmen, though trying to act contrite, couldn’t resist flipping off the camera.
It was all a bit much for Bucher, who could barely keep from laughing out loud at the hokey displays. “How ghastly!” he declared in mock abhorrence as he stared at a rusty nail that the evil Harrison was said to have pounded into the heads of Korean women.
The crewmen were led downstairs to a dungeonlike chamber where, the guide insisted, 900 Koreans had been burned to death. Since the room was hardly big enough to hold 82 sailors, the claim was inherently suspicious. The captain asked whether all the victims were incinerated at the same time. Yes, replied the guide. “Unbelievable!” Bucher burst out. She pointed at the ceiling, saying carbonized skin was still visible there. To the sailors the dark spots looked like mold. Feeling himself on the verge of an uncontrollable guffaw, Bucher suffered another of his “lockjaw” attacks. “I can’t take any more,” he rasped through gritted teeth, as some of his men nearly went into convulsions at his antics. Silver Lips was so pleased with the skipper’s apparent distress at the evidence of U.S. atrocities that he told the camera crew to move in for a close-up. Bucher mugged obligingly, jaws firmly clamped.
Some of the Americans had hoped the trip to Sinchon was to be the first leg of a freedom ride to Panmunjom. But that wasn’t the case. When the museum tour ended, they were shipped back to the Country Club. Not long afterward, the North Koreans’ recent benevolence evaporated. All talk of repatriation stopped. Robot and other room daddies began demanding to know more about the Hawaiian good-luck sign. Bucher was confined to his cell for long periods. His orderly was taken away, cutting off his communication with the crew. Bucher worried whether the abrupt change in attitude was his fault, whether he’d gone too far with his lockjaw routine and other shenanigans. Had he crossed some fatal line with the communists?
He couldn’t find out from Glorious General; the prison commandant had again vanished. When he returned a few weeks later, he displayed nothing but icy disdain toward the Americans.
G.G. ended all special privileges. No more Ping-Pong and card games. Watery turnip soup again became the dietary staple. The number of guards on each floor multiplied from two to 12; the seamen were again forced to bow their heads in their captors’ presence.
There were other ominous signs. The Bear had disappeared for a while, too, but now he was back, and he and other guards became rougher. One day the Bear pulled a sailor out of his room and smashed him into a wall for no apparent reason. Law and two men from his cell were brutally worked over. A squat, shaved-headed North Korean colonel in charge of day-to-day discipline—called Odd Job for his resemblance to the brutish, bowler-hurling foe of James Bond—strutted up and down the halls with a knowing smirk on his face.
The escalating violence revived talk of escape. By mid-November snow had started to fall again and some crewmen doubted they’d survive another marrow-chilling winter in this abominable sinkhole. A spiking fever left seaman Ramon Rosales unable to move on his bed. When Bucher demanded medical attention for Rosales, G.G. just laughed.
The latest escape discussions made it imperative to finish the illicit radio. No one wanted to risk his neck trying to break out if the Panmunjom talks were close to bearing fruit. And the only way to find out was to tune in to U.S. Armed Forces Radio or a South Korean news station. Strano had almost completed the crystal set. He finally succeeded in assembling a crude battery and discovered an antenna attached to the wall just outside his cell window, solving another technical problem. The device lacked only an earphone, and Hayes thought he could build one from parts pilfered from the prison movie projector.
One evening G.G. summoned the Pueblo officers. He seemed on the verge of exploding in rage. “Do you play us for the fool?” he screamed. On a table before him lay a copy of the Far East edition of Time magazine. It was open to a photo of the eight unsmiling occupants of Law’s cell, three of whom had their middle digits outstretched. In dead silence Bucher and his officers read the caption:
The North Koreans are having a hard time proving to the world that the captive crewmen of the USS Pueblo are a contrite and cooperative lot. Last week Pyongyang’s flacks tried again—and lost to the U.S. Navy. In this class-reunion picture, three of the crewmen have managed to use the medium for a message, furtively getting off the U.S. hand signal of obscene derisiveness and contempt.
Ironically, the photo had made it into Time because of Law. The Tacoma uncle to whom he’d sent a copy turned it over to his local newspaper. From there the picture was picked up by the Associated Press and distributed to hundreds of news organizations around the United States. Not all editors understood it. The Detroit News, for instance, asked some of its press operators, who were deaf and read sign language, to interpret the finger gestures; the pressmen concluded that the sailors were signing the word “help.” Both The New York Times and the Washington Post printed the picture on their front pages and let the extended digits speak for themselves. But Time spelled out their meaning, and now the crewmen were facing the consequences.
Murphy stared at the magazine, mesmerized. He knew the North Koreans had lost face before the entire world. He imagined the Soviets and Chinese chuckling and shaking their heads at their dim-bulb allies. The North Koreans knew they’d been had, too; they were sifting through all of the film footage and still photographs they’d shot of the crew, looking for telltale finger salutes. Bucher felt triumphant, tremendously proud that his men had succeeded in conveying to the world their refusal to knuckle under to communist coercion.
On the other hand, he knew they were in for some serious payback.
Glorious General began bombarding the Americans with shrill accusations, some wildly off the mark. He claimed the crossword puzzles they’d exchanged were coded messages. He charged them with handing “pages of secrets” back and forth; in reality, the pages were part of an amateur porno novel written by one of the enlisted guys. But some of the general’s accusations were on target. Many of the sailors had indeed lied during interrogations and penned “insincere” letters home. At the end of his tirade G.G. dismissed everyone except Bucher. The communist harangued him for several more hours, saying he was now certain to face trial and swift execution.
Bucher trudged back to his room convinced he didn’t have much time to live. He passed word to his men to ditch the radio and all other contraband.
“The shit’s hit the fan,” he said. “We’re heading into rough waters.”
—
Frigid winds raked the prison during the first week of December; patches of ice glittered in the rice paddies beyond.
The Bear beat up several men on December 7. Chief Engineman Monroe Goldman caught the worst of it. The communists’ dislike of the wiry Californian, who’d served on a ship that planted mines in Wonsan harbor during the Korean War, seemed to run unusually deep. Bucher was shocked when he encountered Goldman later. The chief’s eyes were swollen shut, his face was covered with bruises, his mouth was badly cut, and he was nearly unable to walk. Goldman had buckled during the ferocious beating, confirming the true meaning of the Hawaiian good-luck sign.
“Captain, I’m sorry, but they know about [it],” he whispered. “Just couldn’t hold out any longer.”
“I understand that, Chief,” Bucher answered. He put out the word that the crewmen were to tell the truth if questioned about the gesture; no one else should suffer trying to protect the blown secret.
G.G. called an all-hands meeting on December 10. He was furious. The Americans, he said, would now pay for their insincerity. First they must confess all the crimes they’d committed in captivity, plus those of their shipmates. This was their last chance to be truthful. Tables were set up and the men immediately began writing a new round of confessions. Back in his cell, Tim Harris could see Bucher in his room across the corridor, staring dejectedly at a wall.
The next morning the Americans heard the foreboding sounds of furniture being rearranged. Guards were clearing out certain rooms to open up more space for interrogations. Sailors not actively writing confessions were forced to sit in chairs, heads deeply bowed, hands clenched on thighs. No moving, talking, or sleeping allowed. The heat was turned off. Lights stayed on day and night, with guards posted in every cell to keep them on. If a sailor wanted to stand, get a drink of water, or go to the head, he had to ask permission.
The long waking nightmare the men would call “Hell Week” was beginning.
Tim Harris heard a racket in the hall and looked up just as Odd Job and Silver Lips barged into Bucher’s room. The captain was at his desk, writing. He started to get up, looking surprised, when Odd Job slugged him in the mouth. Bucher stayed on his feet, but Silver Lips belted him, too, knocking the captain onto his desk. The translator pulled Bucher to his feet and punched him again. The sight horrified Harris. Odd Job kept hitting Bucher as Silver Lips yelled, “You CIA man!” The captain finally admitted instigating the Hawaiian good-luck sign. Silver Lips shoved him back into his chair and the two Koreans strode out of the room. Half-conscious, the skipper slid to the floor.
Similar mayhem erupted throughout the prison. Law was taken to a newly emptied cell where Odd Job and a translator sat behind a desk. Although the North Koreans had pegged him as a key rabble-rouser, the quartermaster had escaped serious harm during past purges. He thought he could bluff his way through this one, too: maybe absorb a few kicks and punches and soon be back in his room.
Odd Job began firing questions as soon as he sat down. The communist demanded to know which member of the crew was the CIA agent. Law chose to indict himself. “There’s no point in going through this,” he said, throwing up his hands in evident defeat. “I am.” Odd Job acted as if he hadn’t heard Law’s admission. Bucher was the agent, wasn’t he? No, replied Law, again shouldering responsibility.
“Why you afraid of Bucher?” Odd Job asked.
Law decided to play along and see where this line of inquiry went. “I’m afraid of him because he can make it real rough for me,” said the quartermaster.
“Why you afraid of Schumacher?”
“He went to college and uses big words.”
Getting angrier and angrier, Odd Job kept demanding the real identity of the CIA operative aboard the Pueblo. After he’d spent more than an hour on the hot seat, Law’s back began to ache. He flexed his arms to relieve the tension, but that set off the North Korean colonel. His fist slammed the desk. “You son of a bitch!” he screamed. He stalked out of the room but returned a short time later with the Bear and another guard.
Law was ordered to his knees. The Bear punched him hard below his right ear, but the burly sailor only swayed. The Bear grabbed him by the hair and slugged him three or four more times, then kicked him in the stomach. Law grunted and doubled over. The thuggish guard then picked up a five-foot-long rod of weathered wood and began bashing Law across the back and shoulders. The pain was almost as bad as being bullwhipped. Law fell forward onto the floor.
“Shit on you!” he blurted.
That only caused the Bear to flog him harder. He clubbed the prostrate sailor over and over and over. The force of the blows broke the rod in two, one piece of it flying across the room. Law was close to losing consciousness. The Bear stabbed him in the ear with the jagged piece of stick he still held; tears flushed Law’s eyes. For the first time in prison he feared for his life. The North Koreans seemed out of control, like they didn’t give a damn whether he lived or died. The Bear beat Law with the shortened rod until it broke and then hit him with the remaining piece until that snapped, too. Temporarily exhausted, the guard paused and then kicked the downed sailor in the belly again.
Law lay on his side, sobbing and struggling to breathe.
Odd Job told him to get back into the chair and asked whether he was ready to be sincere. Though the quartermaster feared being beaten to death, he shouted, “Every goddamned thing I told you was a lie, you bastard!” With his fist the Bear clouted Law on the side of the head, dumping him out of the chair. Another guard entered the room carrying a wooden board that looked like a four-by-four. “God, you can’t hit me with that!” Law wailed. The guard whacked him across the back, knocking him onto his face.
Law lay sprawled on the floor, his body pulsing with pain. He choked back the urge to vomit. Odd Job ordered him to his feet. The sailor staggered upright and was led next door to Bucher’s cell.
The skipper was kneeling in the center of the room, his scrawny frame shaking. Standing over him was Silver Lips. The interpreter looked like a crazy man, his hair and uniform disheveled.
“Aren’t you a paid spy?” Silver Lips screeched.
“Yes, yes!” the frightened captain replied.
“Aren’t you going to tell us the instructions you passed to Law?”
“Yes, yes!”
Silver Lips then demanded of Law, “What instructions he give you?”
Still stupefied, Law replied, “Pardon me?”
The interpreter belted him in the jaw. “Pardon me!” he shouted sarcastically. “Pardon me!” Two guards started pummeling the quartermaster as if they were working out on a speed bag. Trying to ward off the blows, Law crossed his arms in front of him. A guard kneed him in the groin, flooding his belly with nausea and pain.
Law was forced back to his interrogation room. Silver Lips told him to reveal his escape plans. When the American mumbled that he didn’t have any, Silver Lips made him get down on his knees. A guard slugged him several times in the head, trying to topple him over. But the sailor remained upright, so the guard kicked him in the stomach. Law slumped to the floor in the fetal position. The guard kicked him in the back and rump, and then hauled him back into the chair.
“Escape plans!” Silver Lips demanded again.
His head spinning, Law blurted a fictitious tale of how he, Bucher, and several others planned to steal a truck and drive to Panmunjom. The scheme was preposterous, but Silver Lips listened intently, as if it made perfect sense.
“You using crossword puzzles to pass messages?” Silver Lips asked.
“I don’t know about that,” Law replied. A guard whacked him on the head. “Yes!” the sailor corrected himself, instantly conforming to his captors’ preconceptions. “We were passing the puzzles back and forth. They were messages on the plan.”
At that point Law had been alternately walloped and questioned for five hours. Pain fogged his mind. Told to write a confession, he scrawled anything that came into his head—he’d thumbed his nose at duty officers behind their backs; he’d peed out his cell window. He printed in big block letters to fill more space, covering fifty pages with his crimes. About ten p.m. Odd Job came in, glanced at the confession, and said he already knew about the petty offenses; he wanted the serious stuff. Law scribbled wearily through the night. If he paused, a guard hit him. At six a.m. on December 13, he was given soup and a slice of bread, his first food in almost 20 hours, and he gobbled it hungrily. His confession was taken away. He sat throbbing in the interrogation room until ten a.m., when Odd Job came back.
“You are starting,” the North Korean said approvingly, “to become sincere.”
—
Over the next several days Bucher was beaten twice during daylight hours and at least once each night. Soon, he wrote later, “my ribs felt cracked, my guts ruptured, my testicles ready to burst, and my face a pulp with all my front teeth loosened and almost falling out.” Lying gingerly on his bunk between thrashings, the captain could hear the groans and screams of his men getting worked over. It was as if they’d somehow time-traveled back to the pitiless days of January. Again Bucher was urinating blood in a latrine spattered with the blood and vomit of his mauled sailors. Again he was agonizing over not being able to shield his men, even as he whispered encouragement to them:
“At least we’ve rattled these bastards by making them look stupid to the outside world. That’s something we can all be proud of!”
His pain was so bad and the situation so dire that he contemplated another suicide attempt. He wasn’t the only one. After a vicious assault by the Bear, Howard Bland, the young fireman, tried to dive out a second-floor window, only to be snagged by guards. Law’s low point came when he was made to scoop feces out of a clogged toilet with his bare hands.
Despite his efforts to keep his head down, Harry Iredale found himself in the North Koreans’ crosshairs like everybody else. In an interrogation room one morning he found himself facing Possum, his room daddy, plus three other officers and a guard. “Who is the CIA agent?” Possum demanded. “Who made you try to fool us?” When Iredale said he didn’t understand the question, the officers rapidly filed out of the room and the guard set to beating him. Possum and his retinue came back later and asked the same question. Iredale again said he didn’t understand. Enraged, an officer punched him in the mouth. Fear flashed through Iredale’s belly. No officer had ever hit him before; the communists seemed to be panicking. Iredale was told to write a confession identifying the CIA man and all his shipmates’ plots.
The oceanographer wrote for the rest of that day and all through the night. Scared as he was, he was fed up with being bullied. Back in January, an interrogator had chided him for being “weak” and caving in too fast, and the remark still stung. Not this time, Iredale resolved. This time he’d give the Koreans nothing.
“I’m English,” he explained many years later. “I got stubborn.”
By the time he finished, his “confession” was little more than a rehash of past statements. He didn’t finger anyone as the CIA agent and revealed nothing about the crew’s resistance activities. In the morning someone came by to pick up his work. A few hours later, the guard who’d worked him over the previous day returned. Iredale was punched and kicked so vigorously that he flew out the door into the corridor.
That afternoon he was brought to a bigger room where the Bear and three other guards waited. They made him kneel and jammed a thick wooden pole behind his knees. Two guards jumped up and down on the ends of the pole several times while the Bear screamed threats at the top of his lungs. The communist bruiser then produced a wooden hammer handle and began whacking Iredale around the crown of his head. The oceanographer shrieked as loudly as he could, trying to convince the Bear he was inflicting too much pain.
Iredale soon looked as if he’d just lost a one-sided prizefight. His lower lip had swollen to three times its normal size; angry red welts were rising all over his battered scalp. His left eye was swollen shut and a bloodred halo encircled his right pupil. His ribs, hips, and knees ached. But he hadn’t caved.
He was told to draft yet another confession, and this time he added the tidbit that he’d once sailed on the Banner. At dusk an officer came in and ordered Iredale to wash his own blood off the floor and walls with a rag. The oceanographer had to stand on a chair to reach the highest spatters.
Around four a.m. the next day—after 39 hours of beatings and grilling, with no food, water, or sleep—he was sent back to his cell. His cellmates groggily asked whether he was okay. He mumbled something about still being alive and collapsed on his bed.
With his history of unbending defiance, Bob Hammond figured he’d be singled out for special abuse, and that made him “damn scared.” The Marine sergeant wasn’t sure he could take much more. As guards wreaked havoc on his shipmates, Hammond thought of ways to kill himself. He’d hurl himself out a window or attack a North Korean and get himself shot.
But, with a wife and two small children, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He decided instead to bluff the North Koreans with a fake suicide try. Even though they were beating the daylights out of the Americans, the communists evidently wanted to keep them alive, and Hammond hoped to turn that desire to his advantage.
One night he broke a mirror and tried to cut his wrists. He sawed vigorously with a shard of glass but drew hardly any blood. Then he tried another method. Getting into bed, he placed the sliver against his stomach and rolled over hard on it, opening a wound so big he worried that he’d gone too far. But the bleeding stopped after a while and Hammond fell asleep.
The next morning he stayed in his rack, smeared with dried blood, until guards came around. Shocked, they took him to a duty officer, who asked why he cut himself. Yelling like a maniac, Hammond demanded that the officer shoot him and called him “chicken” for not doing so. A communist colonel later gave the Marine a fatherly lecture, ticking off all the reasons for him to stay alive. But Hammond’s gambit apparently worked; the North Koreans didn’t touch him again.
Hell Week abruptly ended on the morning of December 19. The beatings stopped and Glorious General’s enforcers withdrew. The halls grew quiet, and a feeling of uncertain reprieve settled over the battered, worn-out Americans.