IT was difficult to realize that we were captives. For a few minutes we stood about on the narrow valley path, held there by weapons and men at least two hundred yards away. I still had some tobacco and, removing my pouch from a pocket sweat-soaked after my recent exertions, I filled and lit my pipe. Hardly a word was said between any one of us; the position was now clear to all as we awaited the next move—a move that lay with the enemy. Perhaps one man asked another for a match to light his cigarette; perhaps another whispered a question to a comrade—but there was nothing more than this. The whole valley had fallen silent; and so had we.
We did not have to wait very long. Sam had just strolled down to join me when we heard a shout from the main valley. Running towards us were three men; three Chinese soldiers. These were the men who were to put the seal on our capture. As they drew closer, we examined them with curiosity; for this was our first chance to look at the enemy dispassionately—except for the prisoners that we had taken earlier in the year. Now we were the prisoners; and they were the very soldiers against whom we had just been fighting. They approached us, obviously very excited and very pleased with themselves.
They were all short men by our standards, but two of them were stocky, and of these two, one had an exceptionally pock-marked face. They wore the ragged yellow-khaki cotton uniforms we were accustomed to seeing them in—though the pock-marked man had apparently tried to patch his, with material of a different colour. They all carried burp-guns and kept their spare magazines in cheap web and leather belts strapped round their waists. None had a badge of any sort, but I noticed that the leader—one of the stocky pair—had a mark in the centre of his cap above the peak, which had quite obviously been made by a badge. The cloth of his cap had faded a good deal except where this badge had been, but at that point showed clearly the outline of a five-pointed star.
They were not unfriendly; that is to say, they did not maltreat us, though they would not let us carry those of the walking wounded who were too exhausted to go farther. It never occurred to us, of course, that they would maltreat us—much less, kill us. After all, this was the mid-twentieth century, and we had every right to expect to be treated as human beings by troops of a nation constantly proclaiming its humanitarianism. They were really quite incapable of controlling us; they certainly had not the first idea how to organize us; and there were many arguments between themselves as to whether we should be allowed to drink from the mountain stream, whether we should be permitted to smoke or not, and so on. Had it not been for the fact that those infernal machine-guns still covered us, we would have disarmed them and sent them on their way—if only because they so exasperated us with their manifest indecision as to what to do. Eventually, by sign-language, Sam determined that they had decided to move us back down the valley. So back down the valley we went. We were certainly not going to spend the rest of the day sitting under the machine-guns in that dark little ravine.
The main valley was filled with sunlight. But for our circumstances, it would have been rather pleasant to stroll along the track, chatting. As it was, exhausted, hungry, captive, it merely eased our situation that the weather was so fine! We drew near to the foot of the slope, which we had descended originally in our withdrawal from the ridge, and found another group of prisoners awaiting us, under a very much stronger guard. Guy was there— beginning his second spell in captivity—the Drum-Major, Sergeant Peglar—as many as fifty others; so many of us had been caught, it seemed. We could only hope that the others had all got away. We stayed there for some time, and I decided to re-open with Sam the topic which I had broached at the point of capture: escape! The night would surely bring a good opportunity, and we must be ready for it. Originally, before I realized that Sam was only just ahead of us, I had discussed the prospect with Crompton, the Intelligence Sergeant, and Lucas. They were game to come with me if we could only keep together; and I now told Sam that I felt confident that the four of us could make it together. We began to discuss ways and means, while Peglar discreetly assembled one or two items of gear that we should find useful.
The guards began to move amongst us, removing the few cameras in our possession, but they missed my binoculars. After they had passed, we began to close up again to resume our conference but, at that moment, there was a good deal of shouting from above us and we looked up to see Henry being led down the hill between three guards. He explained, on joining us, that he had been discovered hiding under a bush, awaiting darkness. From him we got the news that the whole ridge had been invested by the Chinese in considerable strength, and that they were searching the general area for others who had had the same idea as himself. He had seen Bob, the Padre, and Brisland marched down the hill from the Regimental Aid Post and was certain that they had not been allowed to continue to care for the wounded who were still on their stretchers above us. This was bad news; we resolved to take this matter up with our captors as soon as we could find some reasonably responsible person —if necessary, by drawing pictures to explain ourselves.
Henry joined our escape conference. When we had a minute to ourselves, I asked him what Chinese casualties he had seen on the upper slopes.
He said: “Only one small group—that party which tried to rush Sergeant Clayden on your left. Otherwise, the rocks prevented me from seeing; I had my back to a boulder.”
We decided to count the dead lying on the slope immediately above us. There were many scattered groups, most of which had been killed by artillery fire during the early part of the morning. We agreed to count independently, and then to compare our figures. Henry made it two hundred and seventeen, I had counted two hundred and sixteen. If this was the toll on one hill slope in one morning, I could not estimate what casualties they must have lost throughout the battle area over the whole period.
It was obvious that many others would want to try to escape as soon as possible. We began to pass out as much information as possible concerning our exact location, and the best direction to take for the journey back to our own lines, the approximate distance they must expect to travel, and the like. Just then, the guards entered our ranks once more and took Henry out, leading him back up the hill. We protested that he should remain with us, but, though they smiled and made re-assuring signs, they continued to lead him away. Short of attempting to overpower them as a quick way of committing suicide—there was nothing more that we could do. We were learning the first lesson of captivity.
The chatter of our remaining guards seemed particularly animated and one of them began to hail. We soon saw that this was provoked by the appearance of another Chinese along the track that came from Choksong village. He was rather better dressed than the other soldiers—Iiis suit was certainly new—and his head was not cropped, like theirs. His personal armament was a small pistol in a brown leather holster. He was obviously a man of authority.
Sam wasted no time in raising the question of the wounded on the top of the hill and those by the saddle at the head of the valley, where we had been taken. The Chinese officer spoke no English and we, of course, no Chinese; so the negotiations took rather a long time. Eventually, he seemed to understand and a number of us went back up the valley to pick up all the wounded we could find. If we achieved success in this particular, however, we failed utterly in our attempts to persuade him to let us bring the wounded down from Hill 235. He would not let a single man go up the slope.
By the foot of the saddle, we found three men of Support Company lying beside the stream, and one of A Company. Carl was near them, looking leaner and paler than usual from a wound in the left shoulder—it was he I had mistakenly identified as Frank earlier. The man from A Company had a bad wound in his thigh; we had to carry him back. The remainder followed slowly, supported on either side by fit men. The guards kept us going and, when we arrived back at the point where the others were waiting below Hill 235, they joined in behind us as we continued on along the path in the direction of Choksong.
We reached the end of the ridge—the point where the northwestern slope actually joined the valley bottom—and I saw that the Chinese were bringing their dead down from above. They were apparently not bothering with those burnt by napalm; for all the dead laid out by the track were casualties from artillery or small-arms fire and must have been killed in the earlier attempts to take the hill. I did not count the bodies—they were on the other side of the track and a number of our own men screened them from me. What I could see plainly was a party of about sixty Chinese washing in the stream at the point where it left the valley and entered the great open bowl bounded on the north by Castle Hill. There was a waterfall here; stripped to the waist, the soldiers were washing their backs with tiny towels. On the bank, two or three men were undoing a pile of long, thin canvas bags—they looked almost like elongated liver sausages. All of them pointed excitedly at us, and shouted questions to the guards, who, to demonstrate their authority, gave one or two men a push to hurry them up.
The march continued for an hour. Our pace was slow because of the wounded, and we resisted the attempts of the guards to hurry us. It was quite evident that they were getting worried about another air attack. One or more of them would always be looking up at the sky, and once, when some aircraft were sighted in the far distance, they stopped us whilst they hid under the eaves of a nearby Korean hut. After we had been marching for about three-quarters of an hour, I realized that we were approaching the road that we had used between Battalion Headquarters and Castle Hill before the battle. Sure enough, five minutes later we were on it, walking back towards Battalion Headquarters’ original position by the ford.
“There’s another crowd of prisoners down there, sir,” said Sergeant Peglar. “Look, down there, on the side of the road.”
About three hundred yards away, on the eastern side of the road, we saw another large party. We began to strain our eyes to identify them. After a few paces, I could recognize Bob, the Padre, Sergeant Brisland, Baker, the Support Company Sergeant-Major, and two of the snipers. In spite of the efforts of the guards to keep us separated, we surged in amongst them, shaking hands, congratulating each other on escaping alive, and commiserating with one another on being made prisoner. In his haversack, Bob had a stale loaf of bread—part of the ration issued up on the ridge. He now shared this between nine of us as he recounted what had happened after our departure. Munching, suddenly conscious of our hunger, we sat listening by the roadside. For twenty minutes or so, there had been no sign of the Chinese. Then, with great caution, a group had come over the top of Hill 235 and, seeing the ridge deserted, had rushed forward. At this point, Bob, who had discarded his pistol, came forward with the Red Cross flag which accompanied the Regimental Aid Post. Apparently, the soldiers in the lead had either not been informed of the significance or were careless of this sign, for they opened fire on him. It was only due to their appalling lack of skill in musketry that he was still alive. Then an officer or senior non-commissioned officer came running forward and told them to stop shooting—perhaps because Bob was plainly unarmed and showed no sign of resistance. The soldiers obeyed, with one exception: one man with a burp-gun kept firing, and he stopped only after the Chinese officer had shot him. Bob felt that this was an encouraging sign. Coming forward, he showed them his Red Cross armband, surgical dressings, and other minor pieces of medical equipment. They seemed to understand that he was, at least, some sort of medical attendant. They did not harm the wounded, many of whom were unconscious and thus unaware that they were prisoners. Yet when Bob, and the Padre—who had volunteered to remain with the unmarried members of the Regimental Aid Post—attempted to organize the evacuation of the wounded from the hill, the Chinese stopped them.
Bob was prevented from giving even a drink of water to a patient; nor were any of the others allowed to attend the injured. Shortly afterwards, Bob’s party were doubled down the steep hill track to join the group of prisoners who had been caught on the eastern side of the ridge. With the latter were about four men who had been walking wounded, but whose condition had so worsened through exhaustion and lack of treatment that they had become stretcher cases. Amongst them was Sergeant Hoper of the Machine Guns, Donald, and Fish of A Company. We felt some concern about Walker, the signaller, whose gallant charge down the hill on the 24th had brought the remnant of B Company in safely. He had a bullet through the lung, and needed constant attention. Yet, grave though his condition was, I felt somehow that it was going to take more than this to kill Walker.
After half an hour, we were marched back towards the ford and the original Headquarters and Mortar area. A series of exceptionally irritating incidents occurred, relieved, now and again, by a few which permitted us to laugh at our captors.
The whole Headquarters area had been broken into by the enemy soldiers in search of loot. Letters, handkerchiefs, articles of underclothing, photographs, and newspapers were scattered over a wide area. Medical stores, which Bob was denied at the point of the pistol, had been smashed or thrown away by the Regimental Aid Post tents and vehicles; we were not even allowed to pick up the spare stretchers that we needed for the wounded with us, but managed to steal three, in spite of our captors. We marched back and forth along the road from one point to another whilst our captors argued over where we should go. The second time we returned to the ford, my anger was abated by the sight of a little Chinese who, having eaten a tin of peaches attacked another, a tin of solid fuel! The lid prised off, he dug a spoon that he had found into the waxy contents, and then conveyed a pile of it into his mouth. For a moment, there was no reaction. Then he turned a ghastly colour and uttered a terrible croak as he dropped writhing to the ground and began to vomit. This incident kept me fairly cheerful for the rest of the day.
Finally, we were marched back past Graham’s mortar pits, round the hairpin bend, southwards through Solma-Ri, and up the side of the hill into a small re-entrant. In this location after much argument, some of us were searched. Peglar passed a compass to me that he had managed to retain, and I hid this. The search over, we were marched north again across the ford and herded into a dry stream-bed just north of C Company’s original hill.
The Chinese were now so worried about attack from the air that they hid us and themselves throughout most of the afternoon. Lying under cover, I began to appreciate to the full that I really was a captive, subject to the instructions of the enemy, controlled by his Government. I think that I only fully realized this when we reached the Headquarters area where, with all the familiar things about me, I found myself unable to come and go as I pleased. From this moment on, the consequences of captivity became real and apparent. The sensation of living in a half-dream vanished, except for my first moments of wakefulness after sleep.
Just before we moved in the late afternoon, a Chinese came into the stream bed and asked, in very broken English, for drivers to come forward to drive our vehicles for them. We decided that this was an excellent opportunity to wreck those that remained, and sent off twelve men under Ronnie to put this into effect. A few minutes later, we were ordered to our feet and began the march north. The route lay along the familiar road to Choksong village, between the hills D and A Company had held. All along the road, we met enemy reserves moving up for the night; hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers, each carrying a pine branch in his hands. As soon as an aircraft was spotted, they would halt, raise their branches like banners, and give as good an imitation of pine saplings as they knew how.
Choksong village contained pile upon pile of their dead; with these were dead mules and a few ponies. The air-strike of the day before had been terribly effective in inflicting casualties. Unfortunately, the Chinese commanders were not worried about the price they had to pay for an objective; their pockets were full enough to pay whatever was asked—and more. Along the roadside, scraped out of the banks of the rice paddy, were little holes in which hundreds more Chinese were curled up, sleeping; others were sheltering in the houses nearby. Once we were spotted by a party of soldiers wheeling bicycles past us, their trousers rolled up to their knees, their heads covered with coloured base-ball caps. The bicycles were marked, “Hercules. Made in England.”
We marched on down towards the river, turning west along the bank into a small village. Here we waited for darkness to fall. The wounded on stretchers were put into two empty houses, while the remainder of us were crowded into four ragged lines on a track that led to the river. We sat or lay upon the packed earth and stones, filthy, unshaven and tired. There was no food for anyone; there was no medical attention for the wounded, though Bob did what he could for them, in spite of the fact that two of the guards had just taken his portable medical kit from him. After forty minutes, a Chinese appeared with two tin cans, the contents of which was steaming.
“Rice!” cried a voice, and in a second almost everyone was up, looking for some form of container.
It was not rice; it was boiled water; but it was not ungratefully received. Mess tins, mugs, old tin cans, almost any article that would hold water were found. Those without discovered someone who would share and so all were served. Yet I noticed that, even though the spirit of comradeship remained strong and, outwardly, relationships remained as before, there was a difference in the way that the majority—officers and men—behaved. I studied this for quite some time before I realized what it was: they were suffering from a form of mental shock and were still living in a world that was only half real—as I had been that morning.
I had another conference with Sam and we considered our previous plan in the light of experience gained since the former discussion. He had managed to get a certain amount done for the prisoner-of-war column to date and he felt that he must stay with them to render this service as long as he was permitted to do so. If the Chinese removed him from the rest, he would be ready to escape. The same applied to Bob. There was another consideration: a new set of guards had now taken charge of our column, who were not only more vigilant, but far stronger in numbers. As I was a strong swimmer, it seemed to us that I had better try to make my escape alone whilst crossing the Imjin that night; for we had no doubt that it was the intention of the Chinese to get us back over the river as soon as possible. The others—all parties concerned—should make their attempts as opportunity afforded, until such time as it became possible to institute a system of priorities. This was agreed between us as we sat by Donald’s stretcher, ostensibly taking him the water he was sipping from the Padre’s mess tin. As we left the building to go back to the others, my mind was settled: I was definitely going to make my escape that night.
Our guards waited for full darkness. The night was cloudy, and the moon had not yet risen; I hoped that we should not be delayed in our trip to the river crossing, whichever one we were to use. Eventually, after much confusion, we were formed up on the road, and set off, carrying the stretchers with us. It was tiring work. The road itself was narrow and crowded; many of the men were too exhausted either to carry the wounded for more than a few hundred yards, or to carry them at all. Of those really fit, quite a number were helping the walking wounded. The poor visibility alone made changing the stretcher shifts difficult; obstructed by the guards, and hampered by lack of space and men, it was often a nightmare. With frequent halts, the column proceeded along the road that ran east and parallel with the river, until we reached the road junction below Choksong, where it turned north through the last cutting. Only then could I be reasonably sure that our crossing was Gloster Crossing.
As we drew near to the road junction, we became aware of a growing din. This cacophony was compounded of the shouts of mule drivers, the chant of coolies padding along, bearing ammunition on either end of a bamboo pole, the wheezing engine of an occasional ramshackle truck, and the cries of those who had become separated. There was absolutely no traffic control. Two streams of human beings, animals and vehicles, flowed along the narrow track to the river in opposite directions. Soon we were part of one stream, when I observed that the one going south was three times the size of ours. Sweating and stumbling we progressed down the rough track to the crossing, the stretchers jolting on our shoulders. It is to the credit of the wounded that they did not cry out during this rough passage.
At last we reached the bund, and began the descent to the river through the village where Guido’s ambush party had lain. The Chinese wanted to push on, but Sam insisted that as many as were able to should remove their boots and socks, knowing that a long night march in wet footgear would bring blisters at a time when we could least afford them. This short halt provided me with my opportunity. I handed over my stretcher to the Padre but did not rejoin the forward part of the column. As we reached the river shore, I gave Crompton and Clayden a warning; to be ready. The guard with us was dodging back and forth between my stretcher and the next, watching both sides of each pair of stretchers. We entered the water together, his right arm actually touching my left side. We could feel the rising water and the pressure of the current. Now we were ankle deep—now up to our knees—now to our thighs. The guard moved off, between Clayden and Crompton at the rear of the forward stretcher and the Padre and Guy at the head of the one next to me. I gave the signal: Clayden and Crompton dropped back and closed the gap between stretchers. At this instant, I sank into the black waters of the river.
When I surfaced about thirty yards downstream, I half-expected to hear the sound of shots and the cries of the guards coming after me. There was plenty to hear but nothing of alarm or pursuit. Turning from the uproar of the crowded crossing, I went on downstream.
The water was very cold but not deep just here. Indeed, in places, I was actually crawling along the bottom of the river. For seven hours I continued in this way, sometimes swimming, sometimes crawling; and all the time the chill was extending through my body. It was impossible to leave the river during the first few hours because I could hear their sentries on the banks. Afterwards, I was fearful lest there might be sentries that I could not hear. The cold had almost made me decide to take the risk when, rounding the spit of sand that pointed, like a finger, into the river below Castle Hill, I found myself in really deep water in the middle of a strong current. Twice before, that night, I had got out of my depth completely for short periods, and had been forced to swim in to the bank. But now I was beginning to feel the fatigue of the long battle; the exhilaration of escape had faded; my limbs were stiff with cold; my clothes were saturated and my boots were filled with water. I began to sink: I realized that I was drowning.
I was filled with panic. Being a strong swimmer from childhood, I had never before experienced such terrors. As I came to the surface for a moment, I looked up to see a single bright star shining from the cloudy sky. For some reason, this brought me to my senses. 1 drew off my beret which was filled with water, tore the binoculars from their hiding place beneath my arm and, free of these extra weights, turned over on to my back, pushing my head almost under water. Clumsily, with much splashing at first, but heedless of discovery in this moment of crisis, I began to swim towards the south bank where I knew I should find shallow water.
It was a difficult task. The current tended to keep me in midstream so that my course towards the shore was oblique. It was too dark to distinguish progress; I could not be absolutely certain that I was making any progress at all. My arms and legs protesting more and more over the work to which I was putting them, I struggled on, pausing every two hundred strokes to put a foot down to see if I had reached a standing point. On my fourth attempt, when my legs were almost too stiff to move, I felt sand under my boots. Slowly, like a very old man, I began to wade to dry land.
The beach was deserted; there were no footprints in the sand that I could see. I walked on up to the river bank, my teeth chattering with the cold, looking for somewhere to rest and recover my strength. After a while, I was able to increase my pace, and was just ridding myself of the numbness caused by the cold, when I stumbled against a dead mule. I sank to the ground, and listened carefully before going on. There was no sound of voices or movement; so I decided to explore.
The mule was at the edge of a hollow; into this I descended. There were other mules there—and men, too—the remains of an artillery troop which had received attention from our air force during the battle. They were all very dead. I saw nothing worth taking except an old mule blanket, which was a most valuable find. Clutching this like a conspirator, I crept away into the night, found a hole in the river bank and, wrapped in my newly acquired covering, dropped into a sound sleep.
I did not wake up until twenty minutes past eight on the following morning. I should not have awakened then, but for the fact that I heard footsteps coming towards me; and I think the events of the past few days had sharpened the alarm system in my brain. The footsteps grew louder. The hole that gave me shelter was in the river bank itself and, here, the bank was broad enough to permit a cart to move along it. I lay back in my shelter, hoping that whoever was passing that way would do so on the far side, and so miss me.
The next moment, two pairs of feet came into view, marching in single file. Looking a little higher I saw the faces of two Chinese soldiers. They carried rifles.
They did not see me instantly: I lay still and looked as dead as I could. Then the rear man stopped, said something to the other, and pointed to me. The front man stopped also, and turned his head. I did not move; I had stopped breathing; my jaw hung open, conveying, I hoped, that rigor mortis had set in! Whatever they thought, they could not have considered me dangerous. After a few moments, the leading man grunted, and went along the bank; a second or so later his companion followed. It was only after they had completely disappeared from view that I breathed again.
Emerging from the hole in the bank, I made a swift reconnaissance. There was no one in sight. I should have to take a chance on that particular part of the river bank being under observation. What I could not risk was the return of a party of Chinese, after the two passers-by had reported my presence—dead or alive. I looked round for a place to conceal myself. The whole area of the south bank was open; there was absolutely no cover, apart from hollows and re-entrants, which might well be used by the Chinese themselves for reinforcements or stores. The north bank rose steeply across the river, but was split, here and there, by re-entrants in which scrub and pine abounded. There was only one course open to me: I must cross the river before nightfall.
I hurried down to the beach, and began to look for the most suitable crossing place. I needed, first, a point where I could enter the water without leaving footprints. Secondly, in view of the current, I wanted to be sure that there was a re-entrant into the northern cliffs at a suitable distance—certainly one that I should not overshoot. I found a patch of shingle that would take me to the water’s edge and, about four hundred yards down-stream, a small V-shaped re-entrant that looked ideal. Reluctantly, I waded into the chill water and began to swim across.
It did not take me very long; I swam strongly after my night’s rest, and I was spurred, too, by fear of discovery. My clothing soaked again, I climbed up the re-entrant from the water, selected a hiding place, and stripped off my outer garments. There was a cold wind that morning, but my hiding place sheltered me from this. Whenever the sun appeared from behind the clouds, its warmth came through a hole in the cover above me and helped to keep my spirits up, in addition to drying my clothes. In this way, I spent the hours of daylight, resting, and preparing for the journey back to our own lines.
Looking at my damp maps, I saw that I had about seventeen thousand yards to go to the nearest suitable point on the new defence line. My quickest route lay back over the western spur of Castle Hill, up the valley in which I had been captured, and over the saddle which we had hoped to climb. The alternative was to float down the Imjin River to the confluence of the Han and Imjin rivers and thence across to the Kimpo peninsula and safety. Frankly, with the memory of the previous night’s experience in the water, I was not anxious to take this course. It was not merely that I feared the possibility of drowning through cramp or fatigue in a river that would grow ever deeper as I neared the sea—though I was afraid of that. What dissuaded me most was my knowledge of the powerful tidal races at the mouth of the two rivers and the extreme unlikelihood of my having the strength to overcome these single-handed, even if I had a boat. In spite of these difficulties, I could see that the river-route offered a speedy way out if luck went with me. I decided to chance it if I could find a boat or, better, some buoyant object on which I could ride down on the current, and yet remain concealed. During the afternoon I began to look about and, after an hour’s fruitless search, I remembered that, several weeks before, I had noticed a large, empty, fifty-gallon fuel drum on the sand spit in the river. If it was still there, I might be able to roll it into the water and climb on to the rear-end, using my legs as a rudder. In the shadow of the pines along the clifftops, I walked up-stream towards the sand spit. Once round the last bend I found it easily; it was lying just as I had remembered it, no more than thirty yards from the water. I sat down to wait for dusk, when I planned to cross back to the south bank.
Watching the river as it came round the sand-spit, I was struck by the way in which the waters began to tumble at a certain point between the two banks. Examining the banks themselves, I saw a mass of footprints on either side, though it was too far for me to see in which direction they led. What became perfectly plain, however, was that there must be a second under-water bridge here, the one, almost certainly, by which the Chinese had crossed to attack Castle Hill on the night of the 22nd. Such a bridge would save me a second swim and thus permit me to make my journey in dry boots, should I decide finally on the land route back. In the twilight, I made my way down a steep path to the northern shore and stripped, making a bundle of my clothing inside my smock. I now followed the foot and hoof-prints to the edge of the water, and began to cross.
The water was up to my waist before I was half-way across, but, knowing myself to be taller than the average Chinese, I persevered. Holding my clothes bundle high above my head, I went slowly on. To my relief, after rising an inch or two more, the water stayed at a constant level until, as I neared the wide sand beach on the south side, it began to recede again. Two minutes later I was dressing myself under the cover of the river bank.
About half-past eleven that night, I reached the western spur of Castle Hill, with the river behind me. The fifty-gallon drum had proved to have a huge hole in its side, and I lacked confidence in my ability to survive another eight- or ten-hour river trip without it—even if only partly clothed. I had chosen the land route.
The clouds had dispersed and the whole heaven was bright with stars. I had made my way with great caution for the first part of my journey since, while I was still on the river bank, I had heard once more the distant clamour from Gloster Crossing. I felt sure that there were units still quartered in the Choksong area.
The approach to Castle Hill had taken me across an old stream-bed, in which I had found what I took to be the remainder of the battery whose annihilated troop had supplied me with a blanket for my night’s rest. They, too, had been destroyed by an air strike. Now, as I moved across the western spur, I found more bodies on all sides—bodies that had lain there since Castle Hill had fallen, part of the huge losses inflicted on the enemy by A Company. I was glad to descend into the broad valley on the far side.
It took me four hours to reach the point of my capture. There were vehicles on the roads I had to cross, and the hillsides in the valley were still burning from the napalm, illuminating the whole area. At last, however, I began to climb the saddle which I had failed to reach two mornings before and, finally, I stood on top of it, the first phase of my journey over. There was no path down the other side but I could see that a passage had been forced through the underbrush and trees in a dozen places—probably by our own men less than forty-eight hours earlier. I selected one of those openings near me and began the downward climb.
When God made the world, he invented, for some excellent reason unknown to me, a bush which puts out long, thin tendrils, covered with tiny thorns. The sole purpose of this bush seems to be to impede and exasperate such passers-by as are unwary enough to come within range of it. I swear that the other side of that saddle was covered with those bushes. No sooner had I released myself from one set of thorns than another bush had me in its grasp, and I descended, cursing, sweating, and growing progressively angrier, as my clothing, flesh, and hair became entangled. To add to my difficulties, a part of the slope was covered with loose shale, and my attempts to move silently were thwarted at almost every step. By good fortune, however, there were no sentries at the bottom of the saddle and I broke out on to a path without entering an ambush.
I knew from the map that the course of the re-entrant, at the head of which I now stood, led directly along my route. I decided to follow the path down this into the valley, as dawn would break in less than an hour and before full daylight I must be in the hills on the far side. Apart from a few turns, here and there, round a rock-face, the path was reasonably straight. I made good progress, moving in bounds of about forty yards, pausing at the end of each to listen as I crouched by the side of the path. This policy served me well. I had been travelling for less than half an hour and was expecting to see the valley at any moment when, listening at the end of a bound, I heard voices quite close by. They seemed to come from the end of the re-entrant—perhaps at the very point where it opened into the valley. I moved on very slowly.
A hundred yards further on, rice paddy began, and the path swung to the right to run along the base of the hill. Looking down, I could just see the end of the re-entrant and the valley beyond. Between this and my position, a large body of the enemy were digging weapon pits in the paddy banks and on the hill slopes on either side as far as I could see.
I had to make up my mind quickly. Either I must pass through the line of troops ahead of me, or I would have to make a detour round their flanks. If I took the former course, I had to chance finding others in the valley and on the hills beyond it. The alternative risk was that their flanks might extend for several miles in either direction—might even be unbroken as far as the Uijong-bu road to the east, or the Munsan-ni road on the west. I decided that my original intention to cross the valley before daylight must be adhered to if I was not to lose valuable time: I began to move down the re-entrant.
I discovered that the diggers were Chinese. They were laughing and joking a great deal amongst themselves in between spells of work, and seemed very confident that they were secure; I saw only two sentries. Wriggling along on my stomach, crawling on hands and knees, sometimes running for short distances under cover of a bank higher than the others, I moved obliquely across the floor of the re-entrant, wending my way between them. Once, I thought I had been seen by a soldier who threw down his pick and came towards me, looking directly at me. He was only drawing aside to urinate, however, and I moved on with a thudding heart as soon as he had gone back to work. The darkness was already waning when I reached the far side of the re-entrant a short way from the valley. There was no cover through which I could move—the rice paddy continued into the valley. I began to climb the hill on my left, crawling through the scrub.
At the top of the hill I came across open ground; in the centre was a set of large stone burial tablets. After listening carefully, I ran across this towards a group of young pines. Standing there, I could see the valley below me in the first light of dawn. It was going to be a race against the daylight. I ran on down the hill.
The whole valley was given over to rice cultivation. I kept running across the tiny, flat fields, jumping the few irrigation ditches that lay across my path. Suddenly the ground sloped away, and I recalled that a stream flowed along the valley’s length. This was it. It seemed fairly deep, but I felt sure that somewhere near there would be a crossing point for the villagers. I turned right, deciding to search no more than a couple of hundred yards before fording. I walked along the river path, peering down at the water for a line of stepping stones. After about two minutes I found what I was looking for—and more.
Overlooking the crossing was a sentry with a burp-gun.
Other than surrender on the spot, there was only one thing I could do. I descended the bank a few yards away from him and put my foot on the first stepping stone. He called something to me that sounded less like a challenge than a remark. I mumbled something back—as incomprehensible to me as it must have been to him—hawked and spat in the way of the Orient for the sake of effect, and crossed the stream, taking my time. I expected a burst from the burp-gun at any moment—but nothing happened. I did not dare speed up until I was well over the top of the other bank.
As soon as possible, I left the path and began to ascend the hill ahead of me; a high hill that was heavily wooded on the upper slopes. Pausing for a moment to check my bearings, I heard the jingling of harness; and a few seconds later, voices came from a small pinewood a short distance away. I hurried away to the east, and struck a track leading up to the top of the hill. I was about to cross it when a voice challenged me; the opening and closing of a rifle bolt followed almost immediately. I gave a complaining mumble—the sort of mumble that I hoped would say, “Good Heavens, one can’t move an inch on this hill without being challenged!”—and followed it with another spitting sequence. This time it only half-worked. The sentry did not fire but he did ask another question, which I felt would not be satisfied by more mumbling. Taking a chance, I dodged round a bush on to the path and ran as fast as I could go. Soon I was nearing the hilltop—and none too soon: it was daybreak. I could see the valley clearly now through the trees and, not more than two hundred feet below, a team of mules pulling a mountain gun into position. Here was the explanation for the jingling I had heard. Although there were no signs of pursuit, I felt very exposed in spite of the cover of the trees, and climbed on to the top of the hill.
The huge feature which I had ascended was roughly triangular in shape, and bore three peaks, the highest of which now lay beyond me to the south-west. Like the others, it was well wooded and contained much closer cover in the form of evergreen bushes. It lay sufficiently near to my route to form an ideal observation post from which I could study the ground and the dispositions of the enemy. I left my own hill-top and crossed the saddle towards it. Bight in the centre, half-sitting in a slit trench was a dead Chinese, still wearing his steel helmet, his rifle smashed by fire. He had not been dead for more than a day or so—I hoped that he had been killed only yesterday, as this could mean that many of our men had reached the safety of our own lines in this very area. But his position on the saddle was right in the open—it must have been dug during a night attack—and I could not risk a closer examination in what was now full daylight. I hurried on.
As I had expected, the next hill-top gave me a splendid view of the country for several miles along the valleys on either side, and upwards of ten miles across the hills. There was all the cover I needed in which to rest after my night’s journey; only the weather seemed against me. The clear night had given way to a cloudy dawn. It began to drizzle; the drizzle turned to a steady, light rain. Unable to sleep, I sat up to watch for the enemy, hoping to get some clear idea of the direction and extent of his line in this area; the battle line had undoubtedly changed considerably since our last information forty-eight hours ago.
My route back now lay almost due south. The feature on which I sat extended in that direction, as did the valley I overlooked. The former was trackless in the direction I wished to follow; the latter was cultivated up to and including the lower hill slopes, with one quite large village in the centre, and a few scattered hamlets along the hillside, as well as on a road running south beside a small river. There were Chinese in the village. Careless of their movement, now that the low clouds hid them from aircraft, they ran about from house to house, and even cooked in an open-fronted barn. I saw nothing in the hamlets but Korean peasants, who did not move beyond their garden fences or borders throughout the morning. The only people on the roads were a few bent old men, their clothing protected from the rain by rice sacks. As the rain continued to keep the enemy indoors, a fresh plan—perhaps provoked by my successful bluff at dawn—came into my mind; a plan which became more and more attractive, as I saw the clouds descend lower and lower until they threatened to obscure my view of the valley completely. At a quarter to one in the afternoon, I made up my mind.
I left my cover and began the journey downhill through a pine-wood. By one o’clock, I had reached the edge of the cultivated area on the hillside about a mile south of the big village. Here, in a hollow, I had seen a sort of lean-to shelter, made of rice sacks set on a wooden frame. Running out of the woods, I took the biggest rice sack I could find, doubling back into my cover immediately afterwards. Under the pine trees, I cut open one side of the sack, threw it over my shoulders and continued my walk parallel with the cultivated ground, until I reached the spot where the road rose temporarily from the valley into a cutting on the hillside. With great reluctance, I removed my smock and hid it here; concealed my watch, pen, pipes, cigarette lighter and handkerchief about my clothing; darkened my face with earth—and stepped out on to the road, the sack about my shoulders.
All was quiet. I did not hasten, trying to give the impression of age. Leaving the head of the valley, and coming into strange country through a cutting, I found part of a thin branch of a tree which I picked up to use as a walking stick. As I took it from the roadside, I spotted a telephone cable running along the ditch. It looked exactly like the line used by the Americans and I thought that it might have been left by the 1st ROK Division. I decided to keep my eye on it. Watching the cable that disappeared occasionally into the trees beside the cutting, I eventually came to a sign in white on a black background. It said:
“3783”, and an arrow pointed straight on.
Now, the use of figures to denote units is general amongst British forces: it is a means of maintaining security. I tried to remember if the ROKs had the same custom, but could not recall whether they did or not. One thing I could not believe was that the Chinese would employ such a symbol; the figures were Arabic and I felt sure that they had figure characters of their own. I began to wonder if I was in No Man’s Land; if I had just come through the Chinese front line; if the Chinese in the village behind were merely troops who formed the extension of that line; if. … I almost convinced myself that I was through their lines. Only two points prevented me from hurrying on: first, I had seen a mountain gun right amongst what I was calling their most forward positions; second, why were they not in occupation of that dominant feature? I realized that I had been indulging in wishful thinking: the cable and sign were left-overs from the withdrawal a day or so before. The speed with which our troops had fallen back accounted for their overlooking the signs, and being unable to wind in their telephone line. All this went through my mind as I plodded on down the Korean country road.
I passed through a deserted village where the road forked: still no sign of the enemy. Taking the right fork, I shuffled into the front room of a house where I checked my position on my map. It was now only eighteen hundred yards from the new defence line which we reportedly planned to hold at all costs, and I was over two thousand yards south of the outpost line held at the time of our capture. Squatting in the corner of that room, my back against the mud and wattle wall, I decided that I could not risk delay at this point. At any time the village or the hills round might be occupied in strength by the Chinese; I must go on. Pulling my sack up on my shoulders I set out on what I hoped was the last stage of my journey.
Every yard seemed a mile; I felt that the whole area was filled with observers. The road wound between low, tree-covered hills, partly shrouded in mist. The only sounds were the sound of my own boots on the road and the light pattering of the rain. Otherwise there was a complete, unnatural silence. The village vanished behind a bend in the road; a few rice fields ran up a tiny re-entrant to my right. I tried not to hurry my steps.
“Hi!”
Someone had called me from the hill to my right: I felt like saying:
A figure came running down from the trees, the bushes rustling loudly as he passed through them. I saw that it was a Chinese; in his hand he carried a long-barrelled pistol that looked like a Mauser. It was pointing in my direction. I decided that the time had come to try the biggest hoax of all; for above me I saw two yellow faces looking down along the barrel of a light machine-gun.
He ran up to me, motioning me to raise my hands. I did so. Satisfied that I had no weapons in them he ran his hands over me, turned me round and raised the rice sack over my shoulders. I had screwed up my eyes in an effort to distort their roundness and now, in a shaking voice that was not entirely feigned, I pointed up the road and said almost the only words I knew in Korean:
“Comupsom-nida”—which is, “Thank you.”
I could not tell whether he was impressed or not. He circled round me twice, evidently not sure what to make of me. Then, to my amazement, he seemed satisfied and waved me on. I did not look back, but kept going until I had turned the next bend in the road, where I paused, ostensibly to wipe the rain from my face. It was, in fact, sweat.
I could not believe my good fortune at first. When I was able to realize that I had got past, I felt that I was experiencing a tremendous run of luck. Relating this incident to my journey as a whole, it seemed to me that at last I really had passed through the Chinese forward lines. This theory was supported by the position of their mountain-gun. The other area was obviously a reserve defence-line which, though dug, was unmanned on such a day as this, the troops remaining in shelter below. I had now much less than a thousand yards to go to our defence-line, and so must be in No Man’s Land quite certainly. Yet, in spite of my growing conviction that I really was through the enemy lines, I maintained my gait, and held on to my rice sack as before; a patrol might be following me.
The distance to my destination decreased steadily: eight hundred yards—seven hundred—six hundred—the road ran now up a slight incline towards yet another small cutting. In the centre of this, a pit had been dug in the road—presumably to cover our withdrawal. I skirted it and walked out through the far side of the cutting. Facing me at a distance of about fifteen feet, as I came round the bend, was a beetle-browed young man in a navy blue serge uniform which I knew, at once, to belong to the North Korean Army. He was in the process of unwrapping an automatic pistol from a piece of red silk, as I appeared, and, before I could excuse myself, he was pointing it at my chest. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was recaptured!