Valleys of Death

The day I left the prison camp, my fifth, I thought about a recurring dream I had. I was on a train going to see Rose. She was on a passing train going in the opposite direction. Somehow we never knew we were passing each other.

But in the dream I knew. It always left me sad. I had the dream on my last night at the prison camp, but it was impossible to feel anything but hope that morning. To this day, when I think of our movement south, I get butterflies in my stomach.

We all climbed into the back of old U.S. Army trucks. There was a great deal of nervous talk. God only knew what freedom would hold for each of us. What would our world be like that we were returning to? How were our families? Did they know we were coming home? Did they know we were alive? What was their situation?

They were moving us to the railhead at Mampo. The Chinese gave one of the prisoners a lock and told him to close the gates after the trucks pulled out. After we passed, he snapped the lock shut, closing some of the darkest chapters in my life.

At Mampo we were loaded in railcars that had recently carried cattle. The residue deposited by the cattle still remained on the floor. It didn’t bother me. I looked at it as the sweet smell of freedom on the way. A couple of guys started mooing, and almost instantly everyone was mooing and laughing like hell.

Looking through the wooden slats as we moved, I saw the aftermath of our bombing campaign. Railroads, rail stations, bridges all had been totally destroyed and repaired over and over again. We stopped at a railroad station outside of Pyongyang that was completely destroyed. Only the concrete platforms were left.

Our final destination was a tent city near Panmunjom on the 38th parallel. Every afternoon, we sat impatiently waiting for a motorcycle rider to deliver the list of men to be moved that evening. Day after day this took place. Finally Doyle’s name was called, and before he left he handed me his little red book that was filled with his poems and quotations. I spent many hours and days reading the poems over and over. I found one about the men he’d lived with. I studied the lines. A few stuck out:

They can identify all the whiskeys by the way they treat the throat.

They’ve been to all places worth the seeing no matter how remote.

They know the distance to the stars measured in light years.

They can answer physics problems that would reduce Einstein to tears.

I pity these sagacious fools in their self estimated fame, for there is ONE wise one here and that one bears MY name.

He was the wise one. He’d kept us together and helped me survive. But now I’d become extremely anxious, and thoughts of getting across on my own ran rampant through my brain. I fought the urge. I’d come too far now to risk escaping. The camp had thinned down to only a couple hundred men when the Chinese finally called my name.

We moved by truck to a holding area consisting of five or six buildings with a pagoda in the center of the square. We were fed a good meal of rice and I think egg drop soup; this was great compared to what we had been receiving. After we finished eating, they separated me and another guy and put us in a building by ourselves with a guard outside the door.

The next morning, they had all the other men in formation. I could see a white jeep with four men in blue helmets through a large crack in the door. One started reading names off a clipboard. Adrenaline shot through my body as I slammed into the door, knocking it open and hitting the guard.

The guard pushed me back into the room. My blood pressure must have gone through the roof. I had a pounding headache and I slumped down onto the floor. My friend sat with me and we both looked at each other and never said a word. I could hear the trucks driving away. These little bastards had finally beaten me.

Another group of prisoners arrived that night. The next morning, after they got in formation, a Chinese officer came and took the two of us out of the room and placed us in the formation. He then had a discussion with a member of the International Commission. The names were called. Mine was the last. We boarded the trucks and proceeded to cross Freedom Bridge to Freedom Village.

When we arrived, I didn’t wait for them to drop the tailgate, I jumped right out onto the ground. There were two American escorts for each of us. They grabbed me and I thought, holy shit, these guys were big and muscular. I quickly realized they were average guys. I was just a little skinny.

Our first stop was a tent city in a thousand-yard neutral circle in the rice paddies of Panmunjom. We stripped, showered and de-loused. Having put on slippers and pajamas, we were checked by good-looking nurses. We stayed less than an hour before moving to another building to get uniforms and our first meal.

After our meal, we were flown by helicopter to a replacement depot in Inchon. It was my first helicopter flight, and I sat near the door and watched Korea pass in a blur below me. I felt like screaming, singing and dancing, but instead I remained subdued, quiet and happy inside. At Inchon, we got a couple of thousand dollars in back pay. I was shocked to see where they had deducted my laundry from April 1950 in Austria.

I told him I was in good shape. My father told me he and Cathy had gotten married. He was finally happy, and everyone in both families was fine. Then I detected a change in his voice. After a pause, he told me that Rose was married. I could hear in his voice that he was worried about my reaction.

There was some kind of calmness inside of me that was difficult to describe. I’d been through so much that just being free and headed home was enough. I cared about Rose, but I understood that she wasn’t going to wait. After worrying about living day in and day out, I wondered if anything would bother me in the future.

The voyage back to California on the Brewster was great. They served three meals a day. The small things mattered more now than before. We were subjected to daily debriefings, which were more like interrogations, by intelligence officers. Some of the men couldn’t believe they were being put through interrogations like they had done something wrong. Personally, it didn’t bother me. I was free, being fed well and sleeping like a baby. I was a survivor and had nothing to hide.

“Fire away,” I said. For once, in thirty-four months, I had nothing to hide. I don’t remember everything we talked about. I was careful about what I said about the others, but otherwise I told Richardson everything he wanted to know.

At one point, he asked me if I’d seen anything unusual on my way south. I told him that I’d seen three pilots at a train station. We were stopped and I slowly made my way toward them. I don’t know why, but the whole scene seemed strange. They acknowledged me with their heads and eyes. The naval officer actually waved at me. He pointed north like the Chinese were taking them that way. They were guarded by two armed Chinese officers. One of them waved me off. I didn’t advance any farther, I just stood still until one of the Chinese hollered at me and waved me away. The naval officer smiled at me as I turned and walked back to the train.

I found out later that they were trying to get the pilots to confess that the U.N. used chemical weapons. At the end of the session, I watched the lieutenant write a comment on my file: “He was very open and cooperative.”

For the rest of the voyage, I stayed on the deck. I sucked in the fresh sea air and basked in the warm breeze. Everything I could hear, smell and see was so full of life. As I looked over the rail of the ship, I remembered three years ago looking down at the sea and praying that I would have the strength to lead my men in combat. Now I was returning by myself. I had been born again, a chance to live for tomorrow, to make the most of every day and never look back. I had survived the greatest laboratory of human behavior, one that no education could ever equal.

Weeks later the Golden Gate Bridge jutted out of the fog as the ship pulled into port. A small band played for a crowd as we docked. They bused us from the ship to a USO building where plane tickets were waiting. We were asked not to leave the building, but I didn’t want to be cooped up.

We had a few hours before our flight, so I left and walked around the post. My path took me to the post cemetery. It was very quiet and my thoughts were on all of the men and friends that were no longer with me.

I could feel them standing above me. I hoped they were smiling and happy for me because it was my men, my section, that had kept me motivated and alive. I owed my freedom and survival to them. Shortly after my return to the USO building, we were bused to the San Francisco Airfield. A group of us had a few beers and made final toasts to our freedom.

A number of us flew to Chicago, where we changed planes. When the plane left Chicago, I was the only returning prisoner of war aboard. Although there was a plane full of people, I felt very lonely. I was free and on my way home with mixed emotions. I realized that I had just left men that I had lived with twenty-four hours a day for thirty-four months. It was sad that with all the freedom surrounding me there was an empty feeling. There were also the thoughts of the ones who would never return, the ones whose lives had been lost almost before they began.

When we landed in Philadelphia, the stewardess asked us if we would remain seated for just a minute while a special passenger exited the plane. To my surprise that special passenger was me. I walked down the stairs and onto the tarmac. Waiting there were my mother and father. They hugged and kissed me. This time, unlike on the street before the war, I realized that the act of affection between father and son was a wonderful thing. I will never forget the emotion on my father’s face as tears welled up in his eyes.

We went to my mother’s house, where some of my old boyhood friends were waiting, as well as some of the neighbors who came by to wish me well. To my great surprise, Bill Heaggley walked into the house. He’d survived the stomach wound and gotten out of the Army.

We looked at each other and hugged, and I realized that the emotions I had been hiding were about to erupt. I quickly took him upstairs. I didn’t want anyone to see me crying. I was sure it surprised Heaggley; he only knew me as a very stoic individual. We talked about Walsh and all the men lost at Unsan. For so long, I thought I was the only one left from our group at Fort Devens. Seeing him filled a void that I hadn’t even known was there.

It dawned on me that the public reaction had drastically changed. When we were going to war in 1950, people cheered us at each railroad station. I remember the way it made us feel to be soldiers, proud to be part of a force going off to defend freedom against Communist aggression. Now on our return there were no crowds cheering, only family and close friends.

Because I was so happy to be given a second chance at life, it took me a while to realize the change. The only thing that bothered me was that all but their loved ones and very close friends forgot the men and women who’d made the ultimate sacrifice.

A few weeks after I got home, I went to visit Graves’s mother. I’d gotten letters from families looking for information about their loved ones. I’d tried to nurse Graves, the nineteen-year-old from Philadelphia who’d died of pneumonia that first winter.

He introduced us to Mrs. Graves, a small, thin woman who looked older than her years. I could see a deep sadness in her eyes. Over coffee, she asked me about her son. The atmosphere was tense and the questions were probing.

The visit was difficult and I was happy to finally leave. But no matter how hard it was for me, I hoped that it brought some closure to the family. A week later, Graves’s mother called screaming at me that I didn’t deserve to be alive.

I was shocked, and my hand shook as I hung up the phone. I am sorry to say that the majority of the cases where I visited the family or answered a letter wound up this way. No one who hadn’t been there was ever going to understand the horror I’d witnessed.

While I was absorbing the sounds and sights of freedom, I was beginning to think about my future. I had been given a second chance and I was determined that I was not going to blow it. Claire and I became inseparable and I was falling in love with her. My only fear was that the feeling might not be mutual.

We had a wonderful Christmas holiday and both realized that we were definitely meant to be together. During a New Year’s party, I gave Claire an engagement ring. She said yes. We announced to everyone that we were getting married. There were happy people, sad people and mad people. To tell the story behind this statement would take another book. But five children and fifty-six years later, we’re still happily married.

Murphy, an engineer sergeant, called me. He was being ordered to appear before a board of inquiry to defend himself against statements that he had collaborated with the Chinese. Murphy was a good guy, but to some he was a loudmouth from New York. There were a number of guys who were not used to this big city type and it aggravated the hell out of them. Yes, he had been called to the Chinese headquarters a number of times, but no more than the average guy. He wasn’t a collaborator.

But Murphy didn’t know. The Army wouldn’t release the names of his accusers. It was hard to defend yourself against statements made by unknown individuals. At that time I was a first sergeant of G Company, 364th Infantry Regiment, Fort Dix, New Jersey. I got orders to report to Governors Island, New York, for the hearing.

I was taken to the barracks and met up with four or five other men there to testify on Murphy’s behalf. We didn’t say much and kept to ourselves. I think we all felt uncomfortable about why we’d been called to the base.

That afternoon a captain from the staff judge advocate’s office came to talk to us. He was going to represent Murphy. We all sat down on a couple of footlockers and the captain went over what was going to happen at the hearing.

I couldn’t place him, so we went on talking about Murphy’s situation. All of a sudden he asked me what unit I was with in Korea and then immediately asked if I knew Vaillancourt.

Then it came back to me. Last time I saw this captain, he was a lieutenant and my section dug him out of a culvert in the Pusan perimeter. We stood hugging; a captain and a first sergeant. The other men didn’t know what to think. He told me how one of the magazines I’d given him saved his life. He was in the culvert when he ran into a pair of North Korean soldiers. They fired just as he did. One of the North Korean bullets glanced off the magazine and hit his forehead, where he had been wounded during World War II. He spent almost a year in the hospital and then went to law school.

We talked a little about Vaillancourt and the battle at Unsan. I knew Vaillancourt was dead, but he was still listed as missing in action. That night I didn’t sleep very well. Instead, I relived Pusan and Unsan. I thought about the captain, Vaillancourt and Murphy.

After all we’d been through, Murphy now had to defend himself against accusations made by unknown men. For all he or I knew the men who’d made the accusations had been the guilty ones. I hated this; it was not right. A man should be allowed to face his accusers. I knew one thing: Wherever my future took me, I would do my best to make sure men were treated justly. The way these proceedings were being handled made me feel very sad.

The next morning I was taken to the board of inquiry. It was held upstairs in a two-story wooden building near the barracks. When they called my name, I went up the stairs and entered the spartan room.

Inside the room were seven colonels sitting behind a long wooden table. Papers and pads covered up most of the fine wood. The presiding officer, his hair cut short and flecked with gray, returned my salute. Murphy and the captain sat nearby. I tried to catch Murphy’s eye, but he avoided me. He looked tired and beaten.

The presiding officer started the questions. At first the questions dealt with me and how I knew Murphy. I remember the main question was hypothetical. If Murphy were taking a patrol into enemy territory, would I go with him?

“Murphy is a good soldier. He received the Silver Star before he was captured,” I said. “However, he was an engineer and I was an infantryman. If I was taking out the patrol, I would not hesitate a minute to take Murphy with me.”

A look of complete shock came over the members of the board. I don’t remember what prompted me to ask the board members that question. Maybe it was out of frustration. These men knew nothing about what it took to survive three years in a prison camp. Starvation, lice and beatings. They hadn’t watched their brothers die on a snowy road while sadistic guards tried to march the life out of them. They hadn’t been left for dead in the morgue.

Everyone held his breath waiting for the colonel’s reaction. He looked to the right and the three officers shook their heads no. He turned to the left and got the same reaction. Finally, the colonel looked at me.

As I walked out, I knew that nothing was ever going to intimidate me again. I’d already survived hell. I think from that day forward whenever I was faced with a tough situation I would think or in some cases say, What were they going to do, take me out in the morning and shoot me?