Cold Days in Hell: American POWs in Korea

5. Home by Christmas

5 Home by Christmas If you have a son overseas, write to him. If you have a son in the nd Division, pray for him. Walter Winchell, November  Shortly after dusk on November , Capt. Clarence Anderson surrendered what was left of the rd Battalion, th Cavalry Regiment, at Unsan. Well acquainted with enemy atrocities committed in earlier battles, Anderson and his fellow prisoners anticipated brutal treatment. They soon discovered that Chinese treatment varied dramatically from that of their North Korean allies . During the vicious battles for the Pusan perimeter, the North Koreans had often tortured and killed captured Americans. Air Force researcher Albert D. Biderman later calculated that the North Koreans had conducted approximately one thousand such executions. In other cases, the North Korean soldiers stole watches, rings, and boots from their prisoners and subjected them to petty cruelties. Lieutenant Armando Arias, a platoon leader captured at Unsan, later reported that he and a large group of prisoners were marched north by the Chinese but were briefly placed under the guard of North Korean troops. During this four-hour interlude, the North Koreans “stripped the prisoners of most of their personal belongings.” The Lenient Policy Chinese soldiers, on the other hand, frequently treated captured opponents with remarkable humanity during the first weeks of combat. On several occasions , the Chinese forces either sent back captured Americans or left severely wounded prisoners for the advancing UN forces to recover. During the th Cavalry’s battle for the roadblock south of Unsan, for example, Capt. Norm Allen recovered several dozen wounded Americans. According to Allen , these men reported “being carried by the Chinese to the road on stretchers marked ‘Donated by the American Red Cross.’” home by christmas 81 In other cases, however, Chinese troops showed no hesitation in killing severely injured prisoners and harshly punished those who broke the rules. Lieutenant Mike Dowe of the th Infantry Division reported several examples of Chinese brutality while he and his fellow prisoners marched north. In one case, the Americans were forced to spend several hours in an open hole, where they contracted frostbite. More often, though, the Chinese troops greeted their surprised captives with stunning hospitality. Corporal Claude Batchelor of the th Cavalry Regiment described his captors offering him food and cigarettes. Lieutenant Bill Funchess, who was captured with Dowe near Anju, describes a similar experience : A Chinese officer “walked within inches of me, stopped, reached up, and pulled my right arm down and started shaking my hand. Then he spoke in perfect English. ‘We are not mad at you. We are mad at Wall Street.’” Dowe and Funchess soon learned that not all Chinese troops were so amiable, however. The night of their capture, a Chinese doctor refused to treat Funchess or the other wounded Americans in his group, and Chinese troops later stole the prisoners’ personal items, including Funchess’s field jacket. Many American prisoners also remember Chinese efforts to reorient their political views. An officer, often speaking perfect English, would brief the prisoners on the “lenient policy” of the Chinese. The policy promised food, shelter, and medical treatment, along with an opportunity for the prisoners to learn the errors of capitalism. Once they had completed their reeducation , promised the officer, they would be safely repatriated. Marching North The surprising success of the initial Chinese attacks, later dubbed the “first phase offensive,” produced an unanticipated problem—hundreds of South Korean and American prisoners of war. Just as the North Koreans had established no permanent holding areas for the prisoners they had captured in the first months of the war, so the Chinese now had to improvise makeshift holding areas for their captives. Their first step was to evacuate prisoners to the north. At Unsan, Captain Anderson and the wounded men in his care spent their first night of captivity in a barn near the village, then marched north a few miles to a collection point, where they were fed and hastily interrogated. The following evening, Anderson’s group made a longer march—sixteen to twenty miles— 82 chapter 5 before stopping in a small village. Here, they were interrogated a second time, then crowded into huts. Most of the prisoners came from Unsan, but over the next week, they were joined by Americans captured near Anju, and their number grew to about . The Chinese allowed Anderson and the few medics in the group...