Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [73]
Allied planes had wrecked havoc on Chinese supplies, so now our food ration consisted of course, brown flour that we mixed with water to make a mush which provided no nourishment and was almost inedible. Due to supplies being low we formed a work detail and twice a week traveling at night, walked roughly twenty-five miles to obtain food.
Being forced to carry fifty pound sacks of grain back to camp on our shoulders caused some to fake illness; thereby, placing a bigger burden on the rest of us. Each time we stopped at these temporary camps for more than three days, about ten-to-fifteen of us were singled out for these food runs.
In August of 1951, our temporary camp was a North Korean farm about one-hundred miles south of Kanggye. The farm was occupied by a family of four, the husband, wife, son and daughter-in-law. Their house was an average Korean home that had three rooms. Our Chinese guards took two of them, one for the officers, and the other for the seriously ill prisoners and our two officers. The rest of us slept outside, on the ground, in the cattle stalls, which in itself wasn’t bad—away from the bugs, lice, and smell.
One day the husband killed a deer and he skinned and quartered it as we watched. As he quartered it, he would cut off pieces and throw them to his small dog; the rest he put away. As the family gathered in their room that evening with the door opened, some of us fantasized about how that deer would taste. The husband walked to the door looking around outside; he then returned and resumed eating his deer. Several times he would cut off a piece and throw it at us. It’s hard to believe how low we had come in order to survive.
During September 1951, as we were being marched north, we saw hundreds of Chinese soldiers moving to the rear, but only a handful of North Korean soldiers. Finally, after marching for several days, we stopped in a large valley that we named AWOL Valley. It was here that nine of us attempted to escape, only to be recaptured, beaten, and bound for long periods of time. This place was infested with fleas.
While at AWOL Valley, we were joined by several American prisoners who had been captured during late spring, or early summer. We also saw fellow prisoners being mistreated, some with their hands tied behind their backs, others had their wrist tied and hung from poles or anything else available. It was still September and our group was again marched north to the city of P’Yongyang—one of the most miserable, and unforgettable prisoner of war camps in all of North Korea.
The city was a complete wreck when we arrived. Allied aircraft had reduced their industry to rubble. And the smell of death hung in the air as it clung to your skin—as though something was crawling on you. Graves lined the hillside by the hundreds; graves that were so shallow, arms and legs protruded from the earth. Men were so sick they couldn’t care for the dead, and dying. Bodies remained where they had died, inside and outside their cells with nothing to cover them. The filth is indescribable. The smell inside the huts, and cells was unbelievable. Everywhere one looked he saw horrible things.
We left this place around the 12th of October, and I was never so glad to leave a place in all my life; again we marched north. As we traveled during the night, the roads were congested with Chinese soldiers, trucks, and pack animals headed south—to the front lines.
As we journeyed on, one of our English speaking Chinese captors—Wong—wore a black arm-band on his sleeve, so we called him the “Black Arm Bandit.” Wong pushed several prisoners off the trail during our march. He was the one who did the punishing at our next camp.
Now malnutrition was beginning to take its toll on us. We were now down to one meal a day, which was mainly a very small portion of millet. All of us were suffering from very painful muscle deterioration;