WHEN the morning came, I discovered that my cell was in the North Korean police station, the very cell which Spike and Bud had occupied immediately following their arrest. All that remained of their occupation was an inscription on the wall. With a nail, they had scratched “Spike” and “Bud” and put the date underneath: “27th July 1952”. I found a loose nail and added my own name and the date below theirs, the last entries in a long list of names and dates.
The cell was about eight feet long and four across; its walls were timbered on three sides with stout pine boards. The fourth wall had thick bars of pine, socketed in the floor and ceiling, and secured by cross-pieces. Outside the bars was a passage, running the length of the cell, with a door at either end: one to the police offices; the other to the courtyard outside. A window, covered with steel mesh,admitted a little light when the doors were closed. Everything had been removed from my pockets during my search, but a blanket and two bowls were brought to me during the early morning. One of the floor boards was broken and so I reached through to the underside, found a stone, and began to sharpen two nails to cut my way out of the cell. It was going to be a long job—not only because the walls were thick and my tools were crude, but also because the sentries were unpredictable in their attentions.
The routine for men in solitary confinement was as follows. At dawn—sometimes half an hour before dawn—the sentry on duty roused the prisoners in the cells he watched, making use of his bayonet when prisoners were tardy in rising. Officially, one was supposed to sit up, with legs crossed, for the remainder of the day; prisoners were not permitted to use the wall as a back rest. In practice, I sat as I pleased and even took the liberty of standing up, now and again. If these sentries wanted to be able to creep up on me to surprise me sitting in a non-regulation position, they had to leave the outer passage door open. This gave me a view of the green hills and the blue sky; a small view but one I treasured. If they wanted to keep me in semi-darkness, to accentuate my solitude by cutting me off completely from the outside world, they had to close the door, the opening of which gave me ample warning that they were coming in to see what I was doing. In this matter, as with almost every other, the tenor of my life depended almost entirely on the character of the sentries, who changed every three hours, and the guard commanders, who changed every six hours. There were those who spent the entire time harrassing prisoners, and those who left us entirely alone. There were guard commanders who kept us short of food—kaoliang and hot water, slightly coloured to resemble cabbage soup—and declined to take us out for the two daily visits to the latrine permitted by the regulations. There were others who made sure that we had every one of the few amenities allowed. There was no question of washing, smoking, or even talking. Except during examination for one’s offences, the requirement was the silence of a Trappist monk from dawn to dusk.
It ishardly surprising that a high proportion of the guards were unpleasant to us. Their peasant heads were filled with propaganda stories—often, fantastic or ludicrous—about the United Nations troops. One of these stories seemed a favourite, for we heard it again and again. While I was lodged in the police cell, it was told me once more in a novel form.
The guard commander, one afternoon, was a tall, young Chinese whom I called Noble: he wore, perpetually, such a noble expression. He had attended a missionary school for some time and spoke fair English. Poking his head round the door, he stared at me for several minutes. Then he said:
“You are American?”
I shook my head. “English,” I said.
He seemed unwilling to accept this and pressed me again to identify myself. We tired of this after a minute or two and the cell fell silent again. At last he stirred, to make a fresh point:
“All Americans, all English, come to Korea to eat the red apples and ravish the women.” He paused: In this sentence he had recounted the favourite propaganda. But there was more to come. It was quite obvious that another question was forming inside his head and, at last, he got it out. His head stretched forward on his long neck; his eyes bulging with curiosity, he said:
“How many Korean women you have ravished?”
He was too disappointed with my reply to believe it.
After ten days, I was moved to another cell in a block which had been built originally by the Japanese for the accommodation of the families of the police—and so all my work towards escape came to naught. I was put into an old kitchen which had a damp mud floor and crumbling mud and wattle walls. What was even more disadvantageous was the fact that the door had a spyhole for the sentry, and the exit at the other end of the cell was blocked by a pile of aluminium aircraft fuel drop-tanks which rang at the slightest touch and contained plenty of gaps through which the sentry could maintain a watch. Yet, compensating to some extent for these drawbacks, I had companionship here, and, now and again, I was able to see the outside would The room on the southern side was occupied by the Camp Quartermaster’s staff, the idlest group of soldiers I have ever seen. Most of the time they sat about, smoking, chattering, admiring one another’s snapshots or their own faces in the mirror, or in singing.
To the north of me, the building divided into two rooms. The western room—really a woodshed—was occupied by a young American Air Force Corporal named Abbot who was a credit to his service. He and two American Air Force Officers—a black-bearded captain confined in the block opposite, and a young second-lieutenant at the extreme southern end of my block—were all accused of participating in Germ Warfare. They had all been in solitary confinement since April and had no hope of release since they had all resolutely refused to confess to participation in something which they knew nothing about.
From the Spring on, we had been subjected to endless propaganda on the subject of Germ Warfare which, latterly, had included signed “confessions” from members of various aircrews. Included in or accompanying these statements were paragraphs insisting that they had been made entirely voluntarily, that the writers could no longer bear the weight of their sins in this connection on their respective consciences after the kind and generous treatment accorded them by the Chinese People’s Volunteers. At least two of these men had been in the village of Pyn-Chong-Ni, though never in our compound. Some time before their “confessions”, they had been removed to Pyoktong. Another was known to the Marine Colonel who had expressed concern for the man’s fate some time before his statement appeared. He had last seen him bound to a telegraph pole in shirt and cotton slacks on a bitter February night.
It was probably fortunate for Abbot and the other two that they were examined on Germ Warfare after statements had been obtained from airmen made captive earlier; and fortunate that none of them held ranks or appointments sufficiently important to cause the Chinese to persevere with them, as they did with more senior officers later. The story that Abbot told me in whispers through a hole in the wall confirmed opinions that we had already formed about the integrity of those “confessions” published on the use of germ weapons in Korea by the United Nations Command.
Abbot knew nothing about germ bombs; he had not even read about the Japanese bacteriological warfare laboratories in World War II. When confronted with the subject by the Chinese, they had had to explain to him what they meant! He spent about a month living in a house with DP Wong and a number of other interpreters who passed each day with him, taking shifts so that he was never left alone. All day, every day, they talked of nothing else but the use of germ weapons by the American Air Force generally and by his own night medium-bomber unit in particular. They mentioned to him the names of officers still serving with the unit who were implicated, of others who had been executed since capture because they refused to confess to the crime, of others again who had confessed and so caused the Chinese to spare their lives. Never at any time throughout this period was he asked directly to make a statement or to “confess”; but by inference, through this skilful method of which the Chinese are masters, they called on him to do so.
At the end of this phase, since Abbot had not responded, DP Wong and his friends began to apply more direct methods. Without warning, he was awakened one night about half an hour after he had gone to sleep and was taken back into the room in which he normally spent the day. He was stood to attention for a long period while Wong and the others accused him outright of being an accomplice as his conscience had not compelled him to confess of his own accord. When Abbot again denied all knowledge of the whole affair he was kicked and beaten—DP Wong loved nothing better than this type of thing when he had plenty of support. Abbot was kept up until dawn, when he was permitted to return to his cell
For three weeks, he had no real sleep, was tried and sentenced to death twice, and finally thrown into the dark woodshed he now occupied. Here, like the two others close by, and many more in the village, he remained in solitary confinement, deprived of washing facilities—often latrine facilities—and the opportunity to breathe fresh air and see the light of day. He had refused to give in on principle—not because he realized the appalling danger of giving way to his tormentors; he did not realize it fully even after I explained to him what had happened to the men with whom the Chinese had persevered earlier. I was glad to have that young corporal from the State of New York in the next cell.
I have said that Abbot occupied the western cell of the two which joined the northern wall of my damp kitchen. To my surprise, shortly after entering my new cell, I heard the Padre’s voice coming from the other one. He had been arrested some time after me: this was his second or third day in jail.
The floor of my cell was much lower than his and, without having to move from the position in which the guard commander had placed me, I could talk to the Padre by turning my head to speak through a small gap in the wall. He began to tell me what had happened; but of course, his troubles went back much further than this recent event.
I know of only two priests being captured in Korea. One was an American Roman Catholic chaplain, a splendid man who had died at Pyoktong of dysentery that was never treated because the Chinese did not want him to live. The other was our own Padre. In both cases, their presence was an embarrassment to our captors. They consistently reiterated that they permitted absolute freedom of religion, but they had not expected to be called upon to prove their words with deeds. The other camps, having no chaplain, were permitted to hold short services at Easter and Christmas and, later, in a very few camps, every Sunday. But the Padre felt strongly that he must continue his ministry and, consequently, made greater demands. He wanted to hold confirmation classes for those who desired it; to give instruction in theology; to hold services on special weekdays in the Christian year. To a lesser extent, the Roman Catholics wished to do the same tiling under the leadership of the American officer that the Roman Catholic chaplain had instructed prior to his death. I know of no occasion when any religious activity of ours, in prospect or event, was directed against the authority of our captors: yet, at every turn, in every way, they frustrated our religious activities. “Religion,” said Chen Chung Hwei, “shall be centralized on Sundays. There is no need for you to worship on any other day.” In the early days, they sought to dissuade us from attending church services; but, seeing that this merely hardened us all the more against them, they turned to other means to thwart the Padre. Material was not available to make hymn or psalm sheets, a cross or candlesticks. We had to improvise for everything. All religious meetings—theological classes, confirmation groups—were absolutely forbidden. Permission for each Sunday service had to be obtained and the exact words to be used in prayers, psalms, hymns, as well as addresses, had to be submitted five or six days in advance, when the Padre would be subjected to a rigorous cross-examination as to the meaning of each phrase. If it was possible to impose a labour detail on the compound at service times, this was done. On other occasions, the loud-speaker system would broadcast gramophone records at the times appointed for service. At the end of each month, the Padre had to submit a report headed “Religious Activities for the month of. …”
These reports were used to harass him. The Chinese would fabricate evidence of clandestine meetings and then ask him why he had not reported the details of the meetings in his monthly report. Naturally he had no reply, and they would exploit their position to scorn and mock his Faith.
It hurt the Padre to hear words and phrases that were sacred to him discussed and sneered at by Chen, Tien, and others of the compound staff. They knew this, and hurt him in this way as often as possible. What they had failed to appreciate was that no effort of theirs would discourage him from performing his duty.
For many weeks, the choir had met regularly to practise in the Library for the service on the following Sunday; an event the Chinese had known of and permitted. In the second week in August, they suddenly pretended that it was a clandestine activity, a subtle plot against them organized by the Padre. They arrested him after giving him the opportunity to sign a “confession” to this effect, which they promised would save him from imprisonment—and, as he declined their offer, brought him over to the jail. When he was searched, Tien threw his Bible and devotional book to the floor and kicked them into a heap of filth in the corner. They were too stupid to realize that this merely strengthened the Padre’s determination to resist them.
His companionship was a source of great comfort to me; at night, and in the daytime when the sentry was not paying us too much attention, we had whispered conversations through the wall. On the Sunday after his arrest, and the Sunday that followed, we were delighted to hear the distant sound of hymns being sung in the Library.
They released the Padre after about three weeks, having failed completely in their purpose: the church service continued under lay leadership and there was much hard feeling about his arrest. The attempt to obtain a “confession” concerning a plot with the choir was dropped; Tien saved face by getting the Padre to agree that he would hold choir practices on Sunday mornings only, before the service. I missed him a great deal when he left; but soon had another companion in Alan, formerly Spike’s second-in-command, who had quarrelled with one of the Chinese administering his platoon.
Sometimes the days passed swiftly in meditation; sometimes they dragged intolerably. I would follow the sun’s arc, its traverse of the sky, and its setting, by watching the movement of the few thin shafts of sunlight on the walls. I scratched off the days one after another on my calendar: August passed, then September. Another winter was coming and I had wasted a whole escape season.
In September I was informed by Chen that, in addition to the charges arising from organizing and attempting an escape, there were others. He produced an indifferent forgery of Spike’s handwriting, accusing me of persuading him to stay in bed late in the mornings! Later, another obvious forgery was produced, ostensibly made by a British officer who had been in jail for a very long time and who, I was told, had decided to confess all his faults! At last, circumstances permitted me to tell the deception story we had planned. By good fortune, I managed to communicate secretly with Gallagher and Morton, so that we were ready to tell our story simultaneously. The Chinese released us to the compound within a few days of one another, which left Sam as the only one out of the original four still in prison. They had tried very hard to get us to incriminate Sam, against whom they had absolutely no evidence.About this time they must have begun to suspect, rightly, that they had one of the most resolute officers in the British Army in their jail.