Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [113]
On the 10th of September we received word that we would soon be moving; some of the ROK prisoners had already been sent north. Around noon on the fifteenth, a group of one-hundred ten GI’s, British, and Turk POW’s moved out on foot, on a march that lasted thirty days—and covered two-hundred and twenty miles. Being without shoes, I reminded a North Korean officer that he had promised to find me a pair of shoes for the march. He furnished me with a pair of thongs that had a coarse rope, which formed the upper part of the shoe. The rope rubbed against the side of my feet as I walked, grinding into my feet like sandpaper.
The first day out we marched most of the night—over rocky mountain trails—to avoid being spotted by U.S. Planes. My feet had become a bloody, blistered mess. Finally, I just kicked off the thongs and continued barefooted. I thought to myself, “What a way to start a long march.”
The next morning I went to the officer and showed him my feet. He told me not to worry that he would get me a good pair of shoes. Shortly afterwards, they carried a dead GI out of a room, and I noticed that he too was barefooted. A short time later, the officer brought me a pair of high-top tennis shoes.
Two dozen or more Americans died on the march due to their wounds, dysentery, malnutrition, and just plain fatigue. Some even predicted their own deaths; others got a death stare, which everyone recognized. When one got the stare, he would be dead by morning.
Approximately two weeks into the march we stopped at another Japanese built prison camp, which the Koreans called “Camp DeSoto.” It had log walls and enclosed buildings that resembled an old American fort. During our week stay there, seven more GI’s died. We placed their bodies in rice sacks and buried them on a hill outside the compound.
Leaving Camp DeSoto, we marched for another seven days, reaching the Suiho Dam on the Yalu River. Once again a small group of sick and wounded prisoners, including myself, were separated from the main group. We were told we would travel by boat to a hospital at POW Camp #3, which was run by the Chinese. It was here that the North Korean Army turned us back over to the Chinese; we waited for three days for the boat to arrive. On our last day there, a North Korean guard murdered a British prisoner. Finally, the boat arrived and we took a one day boat ride to Camp #3. Here we stayed for nearly two years—it was October 15, 1951 when we arrived.
In late November we were released from the hospital and joined the company, which was housed in an old schoolhouse, in a Korean village a few miles from the hospital.
In December 1951, an agreement was reached with the Communists at Panmunjom to exchange a list of the POW’s held by each side. The list of Americans being held was rushed to the U.S. where each name, and home town, was announced on the radio. This is how many mothers, fathers, wives, sisters, and brothers found out for the first time their loved ones were alive. Some of those captured early in the war were listed as MIA (missing-in-action) for as long as a eighteen months before their families learned they were alive.
In the spring of 1952, the companies at Camp #3 were reorganized and moved. Black soldiers, Brits and Turks, and all ranks above corporal were sent to other camps. Second Company moved around an inlet, in the Yalu River, to a different location about four road miles away. At the new location we were joined by a company of POW’s known as “Tiger Survivors,” so named because a North Korean officer in charge executed several of their group, and ordered his guards to shoot stragglers on their march north. This group of soldiers from the 24th Infantry Division, and some civilians, were captured in July of 1950.