Chapter X: Return of the Prisoners of War (1)

_Operation_ BIG SWITCH--_Circumstances of Capture--The Communist POW Camps--CCF “Lenient Policy” and Indoctrination Attempts--The Germ Warfare Issue--Problems and Performance of Marine POWs--Marine Escape Attempts--Evaluation and Aftermath_

_Operation_ BIG SWITCH[538]

[538] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section
is derived from: _PacFlt EvalRpt_ No. 6, Chaps. 9,
10; 1stMarDiv ComdDs, Jul-Sep 53; 1stMarDiv G-3
Jnls, Jul-Aug 53; 1st MAW ComdD, Jul 53; 11thMar,
MAG-33 ComdDs, Jul 53; HRS Subject File VE23.2.S8
“CMC Statements on Korean POWs”; HRS Subject File #1
“Prisoners of War--Korea--General”; HRS Subject Files
“Prisoners of War--Korea--News Clippings, folders #1,
#2, #3”; Korea War casualty cards from Statistical
Unit, Casualty Section, Personal Affairs Br, Code DNA,
HQMC; MacDonald, _POW_; Berger, _Korea Knot_; Clark,
_Danube to Yalu_; T. R. Fehrenbach, _This Kind of War--A
Study in Unpreparedness_ (New York: The Macmillan Co.,
1963), hereafter Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, quoted with
permission of the publisher; Field, _NavOps, Korea_;
Hermes, _Truce Tent_; Leckie, _Conflict_; Rees, _Korea_;
USMA, _Korea_; MSgt Roy E. Heinecke, “Big Switch,”
_Leatherneck_, v. 36, no. 11 (Nov 53), hereafter
Heinecke, “Big Switch”; _Life_ Magazine, Jul-Aug 53
issues; _New York Times_, 5 Aug-6 Sep 53; _Washington
Post_, 5 Aug-6 Sep 53.

Between August 1950, the month that the first Marine was taken prisoner and July 1953, when 18 Marine infantrymen were captured in final rushes by the CCF, a total of 221 U.S. Marines became POWs.[539] The majority of them--nearly 90 percent--ultimately returned. After the conclusion of hostilities, Marine POWs were among the UNC fighting men returned in Operation BIG SWITCH.

[539] Marine Corps prisoners, including their unit designations
and date of release (or death), are listed in MacDonald,
_POW_, pp. 249–273.

The new mission of the 1st Marine Division, with the cease-fire, called for organization of the Post Armistice Battle Positions and establishment of a No-Pass Line approximately 200 yards south of the Demilitarized Zone boundary. In addition to maintaining a defensive readiness posture for full-scale operations if hostilities resumed, the Marine division was charged with control of the Munsan-ni area and assisting in repatriation of prisoners of war. Obviously, since the Panmunjom release point for receiving the POWs was located in the Marine zone of action, the division--as in the earlier LITTLE SWITCH prisoner exchange--would play a major part in the final repatriation.

With the armistice and ending of the war expected almost daily, the Munsan-ni Provisional Command was activated and reorganized in June. Once again, the 1st Marine Division was responsible for the United Nations Personnel and Medical Processing Unit, organized along lines similar to those used during the preliminary exchange. The division inspector, Colonel Albert F. Metze, was designated Processing Unit Commander. Sections under his direction were staffed by Marine and naval personnel. The normal command structure was reinforced by special engineer, medical, interpreter, food service, chaplain, security, signal, supply, and motor transport teams. Planning for the project, like all military operations, was thorough and continuous.

As in April, the Munsan-ni Provisional Command assumed responsibility for handling the UN repatriation at Panmunjom as well as supervision of the receiving and processing of ROKA personnel. Brigadier General Ralph M. Osborne, USA, was placed in charge of the command, with headquarters at the United Nations Base Camp. The RCT landing exercise for the 1st Marines, scheduled in July, was cancelled because of shipping commitments for Operation BIG SWITCH, as the Navy Amphibious Force readied itself for the repatriation of prisoners. By the end of July, the 1st Marine Division was supporting “approximately 42,400 troops with Class I [rations] and 48,600 with Class III [petroleum products] due to the influx of units and personnel participating in Operation BIG SWITCH.”[540]

[540] _PacFlt EvalRpt_ No. 6, Chap. 9, p. 9-134.

Several days before the exchange, however, it became evident that the old site of the Gate to Freedom used in the April exchange would have to be abandoned. It was found inadequate to handle the larger number of returning prisoners--approximately 400 daily--to be processed in the new month-long operation. The new site, Freedom Village, near Munsan-ni contained an old Army warehouse which was renovated by the 1st Division engineers and transformed into the 11th Evacuation Hospital where the UN Medical and Processing Unit was located. Members of the division Military Police Company provided security for the exchange area. Marines from practically every unit of the division were assigned duties at the United Nations Processing Center. As General Clark, UNC Commander later recalled:

Preparations for Big Switch were necessarily elaborate. At Munsan
we had a huge warehouse stocked high with clothing, blankets,
medical equipment and other supplies for the returning POWs. At
Freedom Village nearby we had a complete hospital unit ready. It
was one of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) which had
done such magnificent work close to the front through most of the
war.[541]

[541] Clarke, _Danube to Yalu_, pp. 298–299.

On 5 August, the first day of BIG SWITCH, Colonel Metze took a final look around the processing center. Readiness of this camp was his responsibility. If anyone had real understanding of a prisoner’s relieved and yet shaken reaction to new freedom it was this Marine Colonel. Chosen by the United Nations Command to build and direct the enlarged Freedom Village, Colonel Metze himself had been a prisoner of war in World War II. He knew from personal experience how men should be treated and what should be done for them early in their new freedom. For many, this was after nearly three long years in Communist prison camps. That morning, as described by an observer:

Members of his [Colonel Metze’s] command stood by their cubicles,
awaiting the first signal. The 129 enlisted Marines, corpsmen,
doctors and other UN personnel had held a dress rehearsal only
the day before. Everything was ready.[542]

[542] Heinecke, “Big Switch,” p. 44.

Fifteen miles northwest another group of Marines assigned to the Provisional Command Receipt and Control section waited almost in the shadow of the famous “peace pagoda” at Panmunjom. UNC receiving teams, each headed by a Marine Corps major, “watched the road to the north for the first sign of a dust cloud which would herald the approach of the Communist convoy.”[543] The United Nations POWs had been assembled at Kaesong and held there in several groups, preparatory to the return. The exchange agreement had specified that the repatriation would begin at 0900. Precisely at 0855 the Communist convoy, led by three Russian-made jeeps, each carrying one CCF and two _NKPA_ officers, moved out from the Communist side of the peace corridor. Trucks and ambulances followed the jeeps.

[543] _Ibid._

As they approached the exchange site, “a Marine officer bellowed the familiar naval command, ‘Marines, man your stations!’”[544] Rosters of the UNC prisoners in the trucks and ambulances were then presented to the Marine team captains who checked the lists. As they called the names, “thin, wan, but smiling men shuffled from the trucks to the medical tents.”[545]

[544] _Ibid._, p. 45.

[545] _Ibid._

Official receipt of the POWs at Panmunjom was by the Munsan-ni Provisional Command Receipt and Control Officer, assisted by 35 officers and enlisted men from the 1st Marine Division. After their screening by medical officers, UN returnees not in need of immediate medical aid were transferred by ambulance to Freedom Village at Munsan-ni for further processing. Helicopter priority went to litter patients too weak to travel by ambulance. POWs requiring prompt treatment were loaded aboard the HMR-161 carriers and flown to the 11th Evacuation Hospital at Freedom Village.

Seriously injured men were transferred directly to the Inchon hospital ships for embarkation to the United States, or were air-evacuated to Japan. South Korean repatriates were processed and went their way to freedom through nearby Liberty Village, the ROK counterpart of Freedom Village. A huge map was used to check progress of the POW convoys en route from Panmunjom to Freedom Village. The departure of ambulances and helicopters from Panmunjom was radioed ahead to Freedom Village, where medical personnel and vehicles lined the landing mat.

At Munsan-ni, the newly-freed men received a more thorough physical exam and the rest of their processing. Here they were again screened by medical officers to determine their physical condition. Able-bodied POWs were escorted to the personnel data section where necessary administrative details were recorded and their military records brought up to date. Those medically cleared were available for press interviews. New clothing issue, individually tailored, probably as much as anything emphasized to a prisoner that his particular Korean War was over. And nearly all of them found news[546] awaiting them in letters from home. When all basic details were completed, returnees went into the recreation and refreshment section. Commonplace iced tea, coffee, ice cream (the favorite), milk, sandwiches, cigarettes, and the latest periodicals were luxuries. In their weakened condition, the POWs could be served only light fare; the big steaks would come later.

[546] For at least two Marines their return home was news in
itself. Captain Paul L. Martelli, VMF-323, had been
reported KIA. First Lieutenant Robert J. O’Shea, of
division headquarters, the son of Marine Brigadier
General George J. O’Shea (Ret), had also been thought
dead by his family. He had been reported missing in July
1951 and had not been carried on the official POW list
released the following December.

The first Marine and fifth man in the processing line on the initial day, 5 August, was Private First Class Alfred P. Graham, Jr., of H/3/5. Although too weak to enter the press room, the 21-year-old repatriate told newsmen later in Tokyo of being fed a diet of cracked corn during his prison camp stay and of being forced to carry firewood 11 miles each day. The second Marine returned that day, and the 34th man to enter Freedom Village, was Sergeant Robert J. Coffee, of the 1st Signal Battalion. Captured in November 1950, he had been wounded just before being taken prisoner and had received little medical treatment. Like other returnees, Coffee stated that the treatment had been very poor while he was in the hands of the North Koreans but that it had improved somewhat after he was turned over to the Chinese.

Third and last Marine to come through the line was Private First Class Pedron E. Aviles, previously with the Reconnaissance Company of Headquarters Battalion. Knocked unconscious with a rifle butt while battling the enemy on a patrol on 7 December 1952, he regained consciousness to find himself a prisoner of the CCF.

On the second day, three more USMC infantrymen traveled that final road to freedom. They were Private First Class Francis E. Kohus, Jr., of A/1/7; Corporal Gethern Kennedy, Jr., I/3/1; and Private First Class Bernard R. Hollinger, H/3/5. Like the preceding three, their stories bore a similar pattern: usually they had been captured only after having been wounded or clubbed unconscious. As with other UNC prisoners being released daily, they told of the physical cruelty of their North Korean captors and the mental strain under the Chinese. Observers noted that many of the men released this second day were in much poorer physical condition than the initial returnees. In fact, one ROK prisoner was found to have died in an ambulance while en route to Liberty Village.

Mostly the repatriates asked questions about their old outfits: “Do you know if any of the other guys on the outpost got back off the hill?” and “Did we finally take the damn thing?” “Where’s the 24th Division now?”[547]

[547] HRB Subject File: “#1, ‘Prisoners Of War--Korea--General,’”
HQMC Div Info release, n.d., n.t.

Technical Sergeant Richard E. Arnold was one of the two Marine combat correspondents at Freedom Village during BIG SWITCH. He described his impressions of the returning men--in some cases, coming home after 30 months’ confinement in North Korean POW camps, and others, as little as 30 days:

All are relieved and some a little afraid ... It’s their
first hour of freedom, and most tell you that they can still
hardly believe it’s true. Some are visibly shaken, some are
confused--and all are overwhelmed at the thought of being free
men once again.[548]

[548] _Ibid._

As in prison life everywhere, the POWs told of the hated stool pigeons, the so-called “progressives.” These were the captives who accepted (or appeared to accept) the Communist teachings and who, in turn, were treated better than the “reactionary” prisoners who resisted the enemy “forced feeding” indoctrination. Continued the Marine correspondent:

They don’t talk much. When they do, it’s ... mainly of
progressives and reactionaries--the two social groups of prisoner
life under the rule of Communism, the poor chow and medical care,
and of the desire to fight Communism again.

When you ask, they tell you of atrocities committed during
the early years of the war with a bitterness of men who have
helplessly watched their friends and buddies die. Of forced
marches, the bitter cold, and the endless political lectures they
were forced to attend.[549]

[549] _Ibid._

One of the last--possibly _the last_--Marine captured by the Chinese was Private First Class Richard D. Johnson, of G/3/1. The 20-year-old machine gunner had been in the final battle of the war, the Boulder City defense, and was taken 25 July, just two days before the signing of the truce. Private First Class Johnson was returned the 19th day of the exchange. Another Marine seized in that same action was Private First Class Leonard E. Steege, H/3/7. As he entered the gate, he momentarily shook up Corporal James E. Maddell, a military policeman on duty at Freedom Village. Maddell said the last time he saw Steege was during the fighting for the outpost. “He was a dead Marine then,” Maddel said, “but I guess it was just a case of mistaken identity.”[550]

[550] Heinecke, “Big Switch,” p. 48.

Captain Jesse V. Booker of Headquarters Squadron 1, the first Marine POW of the war, who had been captured on 7 August 1950, was also one of the earliest MAW personnel released. Booker and First Lieutenant Richard Bell, VMF-311, were returned to UNC jurisdiction on 27 August, the first Marine aviators to be sent back.

In addition to the regular issue of Marine utilities, gold naval aviator’s wings, donated by 1st MAW fliers, were pinned on the chests of returning pilots by Wing General Megee and Division General Pate. Also welcoming Marine returnees at Freedom Village were Brigadier General Verne J. McCaul, the new Assistant Wing Commander; General Burger, ADC; and Colonel Metze, who also “found time during the busy days to greet and talk with every Marine and Navy Corpsman who passed through.”[551] Among those dignitaries[552] present for the occasion were General Taylor, EUSAK CG; General Clarke, I Corps Commander; Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens; and various U.S. senators.

[551] 1stMarDiv ComdD, Aug 53, App. VI, p. 12.

[552] As the exchange got underway, General Mark Clark was on a
trip to the U.S. Unable to greet the returning prisoners,
as he had at LITTLE SWITCH, the UNC Commander had a
welcoming letter waiting for each repatriate. A booklet
especially prepared for returning POWs which contained a
quick fill-in on world news and sports events they may
have missed as prisoners was also given each returnee.
_Washington Post_, dtd 5 Aug 53, p. 3.

During August enlisted POWs were recovered in large numbers. Officers, generally, did not arrive at Kaesong--the first step to Panmunjom--until about 21 August. After that date they were gradually returned to friendly control.

Even as late as 26 August there was considerable concern over the fate of hundreds of Allied officers not yet repatriated. Some early returning officers told of colonels, majors and captains who had been sentenced up to ten years for forming “reactionary groups” in camp. One field grade officer had been sentenced to a long prison term on the eve of the armistice.[553] A similar thing nearly happened to Captain John P. Flynn, VMF(N)-513, long a thorn in the side of his Communist captors. Like a number of UNC airmen falsely charged with waging germ warfare, he vigorously denounced these allegations. “Even as late as the end of August the Marine was threatened with nonrepatriation, and his experience formed the basis for an episode in the novel _A Ride to Panmunjom_.”[554]

[553] HRS Subject File: “#1. “PRISONERS OF
WAR--Korea--General,” _Washington News_ article, dtd 26
Aug 53 from Panmunjom, “Officers’ Fate Worries Army,” by
Jim G. Lucas.

[554] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 225.

Between 5 August-6 September, 3,597 U.S. servicemen were returned during Operation BIG SWITCH, including 129 ground and 28 air Marines. This 157 figure represents a total of 42 officers and 115 enlisted repatriated during this second and final POW exchange. Of the 27 Naval personnel freed, at least 6 were hospital corpsmen serving with the 1st Marine Division when they were taken. Counting the 157 Marines released in Operation BIG SWITCH and the 15 wounded POWs sent back in April, a total of 172 division and wing Marines were returned in the two POW exchanges.

Although the switch took place over a five-week period, 38 Marines, or 24 percent, were not released until late in the proceedings, in September. As one author noted, “It was Communist policy to hold the ‘reactionaries’ ... to the last.”[555]

[555] Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, p. 651.

Two of the best-known Marine “reactionaries” who had openly defied their Communist jailers during their entire period of captivity, were then-Lieutenant Colonel William G. Thrash, a VMA-121 pilot, and then-Major John N. McLaughlin, taken POW in November 1950. McLaughlin was released on 1 September and Thrash on 5 September in a group of 275 Americans returned, the largest number for any single day’s transfer since the exchange began. The most famous U.S. prisoner held by the Communists was Major General William F. Dean. Formerly commander of the U.S. Army 24th Division, he had been captured in August 1950 after the fall of Taejon.

Ever since Operation BIG SWITCH got under way, every returnee had been asked if he had seen or heard of General Dean. None had. Many UN officers felt--uneasily--that he would probably be the last officer to be sent back. In fact, he emerged from imprisonment on 4 September “to be greeted with cheers at Freedom Village.”[556] Major Walter R. Harris and the most senior Marine captured during the war, Colonel Frank H. Schwable, later to be the central figure in a Court of Inquiry, were among the last nine Marines returned on 6 September, the final day of the switch. And so, one by one, the last 160 American POWs passed through Panmunjom. All were men marked by the enemy as “war criminals.”

[556] _Life_ Magazine, v. 35, no. 11 (15 Sep 53), p. 42.

One Army sergeant, who freely admitted he could “never adequately describe how he felt when he knew he was going home”[557] recalled those final moments as a newly-freed prisoner:

[557] Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, p. 651.

At 1100 his truck pulled up at Panmunjom, the last convoy of
American POWs to be exchanged. A huge, moustached Marine master
sergeant walked up beside the truck, called out: “I will call
out your last name. You will answer with your first name, middle
initial, and Army serial number ...”

“Schlichter!”

Schlichter [Charles B., Sgt.], barked out his response, and
stepped down.

“Sergeant,” the big Marine said gravely, “glad to have you home.”

“Fella, you don’t know how glad _I_ am,” Schlichter said.[558]

[558] _Ibid._

In the preliminary prisoner exchange, the week-long “LITTLE SWITCH” in April 1953, all of the returned Marine personnel were men who had been wounded at the time of their capture. They were recently-captured POWs, deliberately segregated by the enemy from early captives. All of these home-coming Marines had been captured since May 1952. Generally speaking, they had all been fairly well-treated.

During Operation BIG SWITCH, by contrast, 41 Marines were repatriated who had spent nearly three years as Communist prisoners of war. The majority of USMC returnees in this second exchange, however--a total of 91--had been captured relatively recently, in 1952 and 1953, and 25 had been held since 1951.

Throughout Operation BIG SWITCH, the Allied Command transferred a total of 75,799 prisoners (70,159 NKPA and 5,640 CCF) seeking repatriation. The Communist returned 12,757 POWs. In addition to the 3,597 Americans, this total represented 1,312 other UNC troops (including 947 Britons, 228 Turks, and small numbers of Filipinos, Australians, and Canadians) and 7,848 South Koreans.

The BIG SWITCH exchange went relatively smoothly, marred for a while only by the unruly behavior of some Communist diehard POWs. In a manner reminiscent of their earlier camp riots, the Communist POWs put on a blatant propaganda show for the benefit of world newsreel cameras. As the train carrying CCF and North Korean prisoners moved into the Panmunjom exchange point, enemy POWs noisily shouted Communist slogans, defiantly waved Communist flags, and hurled insults at UN forces. Some POWs stripped off their [U.S. provided] uniforms, “tossing them contemptuously to the ground.”[559] Others spat in the faces of U.S. supervising officers, threw their shoes at jeep windshields, and sang in Korean and Chinese “We will return in the Fall.”[560]

[559] _Life_ Magazine, v. 35, no. 7 (17 Aug 53), p. 22.

[560] _Metzger comments._

Marine division and wing elements were designated responsible for the security of nonrepatriated enemy POWs. By terms of the armistice agreement, these were held by UNC custodial forces from India. In commenting on the airlift operations, performed largely by HMR-161, the UNC Commander noted:

We had to go to great lengths to live up to our pledge to Syngman
Rhee that no Indian troops would set foot on South Korean soil.
Therefore, we set up an airlift operation which carried more than
six thousand Indians from the decks of our carriers off Inchon by
helicopter to the Demilitarized Zone. It was a major undertaking
which just about wore out our helicopter fleet in Korea.[561]

[561] Clark, _Danube to Yalu_, p. 299.

One of the recommendations made by military officials after the April LITTLE SWITCH exchange was that all interrogation of returning POWs be done either in America or on board ship en route home, rather than in Tokyo. This system was followed and worked out well. The POWs boarded ships at Inchon, following their clearance at Freedom Village. Interrogation teams, in most cases, completed this major part of their repatriation processing before docking at San Francisco. Two weeks of recuperation, good food and rest aboard ship enabled many POWs to arrive home in far better shape for reunion with their families than they had been in when received initially at Panmunjom.

As in LITTLE SWITCH, Marine and Navy personnel were processed by members of the Intelligence Department of Commander, Naval Forces Far East, augmented by officers from other Marine staffs. Marine officers who conducted the shipboard interrogations again included Lieutenant Colonel Fisher, ComNavFE liaison officer, as well as Lieutenant Colonel William A. Wood, Major Stewart C. Barber, and First Lieutenant Robert A. Whalen. All returning POWs were queried in depth by counterintelligence personnel about enemy treatment and atrocities, questionable acts committed by that small proportion of our own men whose conduct was reprehensible, and routine military matters. A security dossier was prepared on each prisoner, and all data about him went into his file case. The LITTLE SWITCH reports had indicated earlier--and this was subsequently confirmed--that some U.S. servicemen were definitely marked for further detailed questioning and scrutiny.

_Circumstances of Capture_[562]

[562] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section
is derived from: HRS Subject File: VE 23.2.S8 “CMC
Statements on Korean POWs”; HRS Subject File:
“Korea--Korean War--General”; MacDonald, _POW_; Montross,
Kuokka, and Hicks, _USMC Ops Korea--East-Central Front_,
v. IV; Matthew B. Ridgway, _The Korean War_ (Garden City:
Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1967), hereafter Ridgway, _Korean
War_; Heinecke, “Big Switch.”

As the Commandant, General Shepherd, was to testify later during an investigation, “the prisoner of war question had never been a major problem [in the Marine Corps] due to the extremely limited number of Marines taken prisoner.”[563] As one returnee at BIG SWITCH bluntly put it: “You fought until they reached you with a bullet or a rifle butt--that was the end.”[564]

[563] HRS Subject File: “VE 23.2.S8--CMC Statements on Korean
POWs,” CMC Statement dtd 14 Apr 54, p. 2.

[564] Heinecke, “Big Switch,” p. 58.

Of the 221 U.S. Marines captured during the Korean War, more than half--121--were seized after 20 September 1951. For the Marine Corps this date marked the time when “warfare of position replaced a warfare of movement throughout the remaining 22 months of the conflict in Korea.”[565] Both in the X Corps sector in eastern Korea where the 1st Marine Division was located at that time, as well as later on the Korean western front, the Marine Corps was denied its traditional aggressive fighting role. The Marines (along with the rest of the UNC forces) ceased offensive operations, were reduced to making limited attacks, and were under order from higher echelons to “firm up the existing line and to patrol vigorously forward of it.”[566]

[565] Montross, Kuokka, and Hicks, _USMC Ops Korea_, v. IV, p.
201.

[566] _Ibid._

The mission of the Marine division thereby evolved into “an aggressive defense of their sector of responsibility” as records duly phrased it. On a larger scale, the nature of the Korean War, from about November 1951 on, reverted to that of July and August,[567] characterized primarily by minor patrol clashes and small unit struggles for key outpost positions. This became the pattern for the remainder of the war. It changed only when the decreed mission of an “active defense of its sector” by a UNC unit became this in fact. Normal defense then escalated into sharp, vigorous fighting to retain friendly key ground positions being attacked by the enemy. One American writer, in a discussion of the British defense in depth concept (adopted by the Marine Corps late in the war), went so far as to blame heavy Marine casualties in Korea on EUSAK’s outpost system.[568]

[567] In July 1951, fighting had quieted down all along the
UNC front, as a result of truce talks initiated by the
Communists. This conveniently provided the enemy, at that
time hard-pressed, a much-needed breathing spell. The
lull in ground fighting continued until late August when
the truce negotiations were suspended.

[568] HRS Subject file “Korea--Korean War--General,” article
_Washington Times-Herald_, dtd 20 Aug 53, by Walter
Simmons, p. 27.

Approximately half of the 100 Marines taken prisoner by September 1951--43--had fallen into enemy hands during the last two days of November 1950. They had been part of the ill-fated Task Force Drysdale,[569] a composite Royal Marine-USMC-Army convoy that was ambushed by the Chinese en route to the Chosin Reservoir. These facts are relevant to a better understanding of the Commandant’s statement that, traditionally, few Marines become prisoners of war.

[569] For further details of this action, see MacDonald,
_POW_, pp. 33–43; Montross and Canzona, _USMC Ops
Korea--Chosin_, v. III, pp. 140–141, 225–235; and Reese,
_Korea_, p. 162.

Overall, the survival rate for Marines taken captive during the Korean War was 87.8 percent. Even for the worst year, 1950, when NKPA treatment was more ruthless and brutal than the CCF (and in any event, for those men longest-held), the Marine survival rate was 75 percent. Marine Corps statistics show that of 221 Marines captured, 194 (43 officers, 151 enlisted) returned, and 27 or 12.2 percent died.[570] Only a few Marines were afflicted with “give-up-itis,” the malady that struck countless POWs and took a heavy toll of lives. Included among these 194 returnees were the 172 men from the two POW exchanges, as previously noted; plus a group of 18 Marines captured in 1950 who escaped and rejoined USMC units in May 1951; two enlisted men who escaped less than a week after being taken; and two others released by the enemy after less than a month’s captivity.

[570] Records indicate that 3 officers and 18 enlisted died
while in captivity. Three officers and 3 enlisted POWs
were also presumed to have died. MacDonald, _POW_, pp.
257–259.

In a pure statistical oddity, the survival percentage for both Marine officers and enlisted (as well as the overall return rate) turned out to be the same: 87 percent.

Without going into an analysis here of the possible relevant factors, it is interesting to note that 62 percent of all U.S. captured military personnel returned after the Korean War and that roughly 38 percent died while imprisoned.[571] During World War II, the death rate for U.S. prisoners held by the Axis powers was approximately 11 percent.

[571] The number of American servicemen returned was
approximately 4,428 of 7,190 captured during the war.
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 1966 edition, “Prisoners
of War--Korean War,” p. 519B. Earlier DOD “Tentative
Final Report of U.S. Battle Casualties in the Korean
War,” cited by MacDonald, _POW_, p. 230, indicated 7,140
Americans were captured, 4,418 recovered, and 2,701 died.
Either way, the percentages remain the same.

Circumstances accounting for the capture of Marines during the Korean War were, as in every war, an occupational hazard. In most cases, prisoners were taken in one of two situations. One occurred when overwhelming numbers of hostile forces suddenly surrounded and overran a small outpost, and either killed or captured a high proportion of its defenders. The second resulted from the well-known increasing accuracy of CCF antiaircraft fire. Halfway through the war it began to take its toll of 1st MAW pilots with similarly predictable results: either death or capture. Simple mischance and the human error of confused directions caused at least two ground Marines to blunder into enemy territory.[572]

[572] A similar mishap had dire consequences for Major
General Dean of the Army. Cut off from his unit, he
was attempting to return to the U.S. line. Lacking a
compass he walked to the southwest--and thereby into NKPA
hands--instead of the southeast where U.S. troops were
then heavily engaged in the fierce battle of the Pusan
Perimeter.

A brief review of the Korean War, chronologically, illustrates how some of the men of the 1st Marine Division wound up as prisoners. In the first week of August 1950, leading elements of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade and the 1st MAW air squadrons arrived in Korea. Soon thereafter the Marine Corps was in the thick of these early-moving offensives: at the Pusan Perimeter; the September Inchon-Seoul amphibious landings; Fox Hill at Toktong Pass, Yudam-ni, the Task Force Drysdale operation, all in November; and the October-December Chosin Reservoir campaign, including the two-day movement from Hagaru to Koto-ri in early December. Marine infantry, military police, tankers, motor transport personnel, and artillerymen were listed MIA in these operations.

Altogether, 79 Marines were captured during the first year. November 1950, when 58 Marines were lost to the enemy, would rank as the most costly month of the entire war in terms of Marines seized in combat. The first air POW, Captain Booker, was shot down 7 August while flying a reconnaissance mission from the USS _Valley Forge_. (This was the same date that infantrymen of the Marine Provisional Brigade saw their initial heavy fighting in what was then considered only a “police action.”) Captain Booker was to remain the only Marine pilot in enemy hands until April 1951.

One ground Marine captured during the hectic days of August 1950 escaped before ever becoming listed as a casualty. Although Private First Class Richard E. Barnett thus does not technically qualify as a POW statistic, he still holds the distinction of being both one of the first Marine captives and one of the few to escape.[573]

[573] A radio-jeep driver, Private First Class Barnett, was
returning to his unit when he made a wrong turn and,
instead, came upon a group of North Koreans. The enemy
fired and halted the vehicle, quickly taking Barnett
prisoner. Beaten, searched, and interrogated, the Marine
was placed in a heavily-guarded cellar. For several days
he was given only a few crackers to eat. On the third
night, unaccountably, the Koreans took him along on an
attack. As they neared the objective, Barnett noticed
that all but one of his NKPA guards had gotten ahead of
him. He deliberately fell, throwing a rock in the face
of the nearby guard, and raced for safety. Successfully
eluding his captors, Private First Class Barnett later
rejoined his own forces. MacDonald, _POW_, pp. 8–10.

Few Marines were taken during 1951. Of the 31 seized throughout the entire year, 13 were from the division and 18 from the wing. The Marines were engaged in antiguerrilla activities until late February when a general advance was ordered by U.S. IX and X Corps to deny positions to the enemy. The 1st Marine Division was committed near Wonju, as part of the IX Corps. A second offensive, Operation RIPPER, was launched in March, and for the next six weeks small inroads were made against CCF forces. Relieved in the Hongchon area the next month by elements of the U.S. 2d and 7th Divisions, the Marines continued to operate as part of the IX Corps. Their mission was to secure objectives north of the 38th Parallel. On 21 April the 1st Marine Division launched its attack, on IX Corps order, encountering moderate to heavy resistance. Throughout the first half of 1951, only five Marine infantrymen were captured.

Truce negotiations, as earlier noted, began at Kaesong on 10 July 1951 and ground fighting slowed. When the Communists broke off the truce sessions in late August General Van Fleet, then EUSAK commander, ordered an offensive by the X Corps to seize the entire Punchbowl. Along with other X Corps divisions, the Marines attacked on 31 August. They secured initial objectives, and then moved north to the Soyang River to seize additional designated objectives. Following the bitter action in the Punchbowl area, the Marines were involved in consolidating and improving their defenses.

As the battle lines became comparatively stabilized in 1951, the enemy began to develop his AA defenses to peak efficiency. Marine pilots engaged in CAS, observation, interdiction, and armed reconnaissance missions began to encounter accurate and intense ground fire.[574] Aircraft losses increased, and with them, the number of USMC aviators who fell into enemy hands. More than half of the Marine POWs taken during the year--18 of 31--were on 1st MAW station lists. Captive airmen represented VMF-323, VMF(N)-513, Hedron MAG-33 (Headquarters Squadron 33), VMO-6, VMF-312, VMF-311, and VMA-121.

[574] One Marine who had conducted volunteer AAA reconnaissance
missions over North Korea was Lieutenant Colonel Charles
W. May, CO of the 1st 90mm AAAGunBn. In December 1951
he was lost in such a mission--the same flight in which
Lieutenant Colonel Thrash, of VMA-121, was captured.
MajGen A. F. Binney ltr to Hd, HistBr, G-3 Div, HQMC, dtd
14 Sep 66.

The year 1952, like 1950, saw a large number of Marines taken into hostile custody--a total of 70. As the year began, CCF and UNC ground forces had settled down to a bunker warfare system often compared to the trench warfare of World War I. Air activity remained much as it had the preceding year. Air losses decreased, however, with only 11 pilots becoming POWs, in contrast to the 59 infantry Marines captured. In March, the 1st Marine Division moved from the X Corps zone of action on the east-central front to the I Corps western coastal flank. Here the Marines encountered “steadily increasing aggressiveness as the enemy launched larger and more frequent attacks against outpost positions.”[575] Probes, patrol actions, and aggressive defense of the MLR and its outposts took their toll.

[575] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 139.

Enemy pressure reached its height in October, when 41 Marine infantrymen were seized, the second highest number taken in any month during the war. In the COPs Detroit and Frisco defense of 6–7 October, the 7th Marines listed 22 MIA, of whom 13 became POWs, practically all of them being wounded prior to capture. On 26 October, the Communists lunged at 7th Marines COPs Ronson and Warsaw, adjacent to the main battle position, the Hook. In the ensuing action, 27 Marines were “marched, carried, or dragged off the hill and taken into the Chinese lines.”[576] Surprisingly, all 27 were recovered alive in the prisoner exchanges the following year.

[576] _Ibid._, p. 149.

Of the 11 Marine airmen who became statistics on a POW list in 1952, 4 were shot down in an ill-fated 10-day period beginning 6 May. Again, all-too-accurate hostile AA fire was the villain. In similar incidents during the year, two Marines engaged in “good Samaritan” aerial activities became POWs for their efforts. In February, First Lieutenant Kenneth W. Henry, an AO assigned to the Marine detachment aboard the light cruiser USS _Manchester_, and Lieutenant Edwin C. Moore, USN, whirled off in the cruiser’s HO3S to attempt rescue of a downed Navy fighter pilot, Ensign Marvin Broomhead. In the bright early afternoon, as Henry was maneuvering the helicopter sling, their ship suddenly crashed--apparently from enemy machine gun fire intended for a combat air patrol operating in the vicinity. Two of the three men--Broomhead and Henry--were injured, but managed to drag themselves to a hidden position and waited to be rescued. Instead, they were discovered shortly before midnight by a Chinese patrol.

A similar mishap occurred on 16 May to First Lieutenant Duke Williams, Jr., of VMF-212. Searching for a crashed pilot, his plane was struck by AA and he managed to jump. His parachute blossomed down into the midst of 15 waiting Koreans who had gathered to take him prisoner.

During the last seven months of hostilities in Korea, from January-July 1953, 41 Marines were captured. These included a VMO-6 pilot and air observer in the little OE-1 spotting planes shot down in two separate incidents, plus 39 ground Marines trapped in the vicious outpost struggles of March and July. Except for two Marines who died, the rest were freed a few months after their capture during Operation BIG SWITCH.

Summarizing it another way, of the 221 Marines captured during the three-year conflict:

-- 49 were officers and 172 enlisted;
-- 190 were ground personnel and 31 aviators;
-- of the 190 ground troops, 19 were officers and 171 enlisted;
-- of the 31 aviators, 30 were officer pilots and 1 was enlisted.

The 7th Marines, which was the unit on line at the time of several major CCF attacks, had the highest number of POWs in the division. A total of 70 men, or 59.3 percent[577] of the 118 infantry Marines taken, were from the 7th. The record during this 1950–1953 period for the others is as follows: 1st Marines, 15 POWs; 5th Marines, 33; and the division artillery regiment, the 11th Marines, 14. Six pilots from Marine Fighter Squadron 312 found themselves unwilling guests in North Korea. Four other units--VMO-6, VMF-323, VMF-311, and VMF(N)-513--each had five members who served out the rest of the war as POWs.

[577] Recapitulation of facts from MacDonald, _POW_, pp.
260–269 and _passim_.

_The Communist POW Camps_[578]

[578] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section
is derived from: MacDonald, _POW_; Montross, Kuokka,
and Hicks, _USMC Ops Korea--East-Central Front_, v. IV;
Barclay, _Commonwealth_; Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_;
Leckie, _Conflict_; Rees, _Korea_.

The Communist POW camp system, under Chinese direction, began in late December 1950. Marines captured in November and December, along with U.S. Army troops, British Commandos, and other Allied personnel, were forced-marched north to Kanggye, not far from the Manchurian border.[579] In the bitter cold, while winter howled through North Korea, the column of prisoners limped its way to its final destination, arriving the day after Christmas. Several of the group, including Marines, perished during the four-day march--victims of malnutrition, untreated combat wounds, pneumonia, the stinging, freezing wind, and subzero temperatures. Usually, “the Communists moved them [the prisoners] by night, because they feared the United Nations air power which ... ranged over the whole of North Korea.”[580]

[579] Although some American prisoners were taken in the summer
of 1950, it was not until the late autumn that large
numbers of men taken in several major engagements created
a need for a permanent prison-camp system. Rees, _Korea_,
p. 330.

[580] Fehrenbach, _Kind of War_, pp. 423–424.

During the first three months of 1951, a network of POW camps was developed along the southern shores of the Yalu River. Occupants of the forlorn villages were evacuated, and newly captured UNC prisoners moved in. The main camp operation at this time was in the Kanggye area. This was a temporary indoctrination center established in October 1950 before the development of regular POW camps. (For various CCF camp locations, see Map 34.) Ultimately a group of a half dozen or so permanent camps were developed northeast of Sinuiju, along a 75-mile stretch of the Yalu.

By early 1951, Major McLaughlin, a captured Marine staff officer previously attached to X Corps, was senior officer among the Kanggye prisoners which included a heterogeneous collection of U.S. 7th Division soldiers, U.S. Marines, 18 Royal Marine Commandos, and Navy hospitalmen. UN personnel were scattered throughout several farmhouses, with no attempt made to segregate the enlisted and officers. The Chinese designated prisoner squads of 8–12 men, depending on the size of the room to which they were assigned. CCF-appointed squad leaders were those prisoners who appeared more cooperative.

In direct opposition to orders, Major McLaughlin set about establishing communication between the small scattered POW groups, despite ever-present surveillance. He tried to achieve effective control of the POWs so that a united front of resistance against the enemy could be maintained. At mass indoctrination meetings, held regularly every few days, the Marine officer issued instructions to enlisted personnel through five Marine noncommissioned officers. As one ex-prisoner recalled, the “cold, smoke-filled barn was the locale for wide-spread exchange of information between the many little groups.”[581] Daily routine at Kanggye stressed study and political indoctrination. Squad leaders were responsible for lectures and discussions on assigned topics in Marxian dialectical materialism. The curriculum was more intense than most college courses. On the other hand, physical treatment of inmates--except for chronic malnutrition and grossly inadequate medical care--at Kanggye was less brutal than at most of the other prisoner compounds.

[581] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 63.

MAP 34 K. White

POW CAMPS IN WHICH MARINES WERE HELD]

Interrogations went hand-in-hand with indoctrination. Prisoners were grilled regularly on order of battle, close air support, naval gunfire methods, UN aircraft, weapons, unit locations, and other tactical information. The Chinese were even more interested in the life histories and biographical data of their captives. POWs were required to answer “economic questionnaires” and at frequent intervals compelled to write elaborate self-criticisms of their political attitudes and class backgrounds. The CCF were satisfied only when prisoners--whose original truthful answers had been rejected--revised their own family status and income statistics downward. POWs, being interrogated, often found the Chinese arguing with them over such far-away matters as the prisoner’s parents or his own family annual income and social level.

In March 1951, after an indoctrination period of about eight weeks, the Kanggye POWs were transferred, and the camp itself was later abandoned. The officers were relocated at Camp 5, Pyoktong, while the majority continued the march westward to the newly opened Camp 1, at Chongsong.

Despite its numerical designation as Camp 5, the Pyoktong compound had been organized two months earlier and was the first of the permanent CCF centers. It became the headquarters of the entire prison-camp system. Approximately 2,000 UNC prisoners were interned here by the early part of the year. They were housed in native huts. New inmates arrived regularly from temporary collection centers in the south, where they had been held for months. Sometimes they were marched to the Yalu during the Korean winter while still wearing their summer fatigues. Pyoktong offered little chance for escape. The compound, situated on a barren peninsula that jutted out into the Yalu Reservoir, was so secure that the Communists did not even surround it with barbed wire or employ searchlights. It was hemmed in on three sides by fast water currents, while the one exit from the peninsula was closely guarded.

Conditions were far more severe here than at Kanggye. A starvation diet and complete lack of medical care quickly had their inevitable effect. Pneumonia, dysentery, and malnutrition were rampant. The basic diet of boiled corn or millet resulted in associated deficiency diseases, such as beriberi and pellagra. Between 20 and 30 prisoners died daily. Many experts, nonetheless, felt that “if the Chinese during the winter of 1950–51 killed their prisoners by deliberate neglect, the North Koreans who had handled the captives before they became primarily a Chinese responsibility killed them by calculated brutality.”[582]

[582] Rees, _Korea_, p. 330.

Although now junior to some Army and Air Force officers, Major McLaughlin was elected by his fellow officer-prisoners to represent them. Recognized by the Chinese as a staunch non-cooperative and dedicated trouble-maker, the enemy concentrated their pressure on the Marine officer--and he was subjected to intimidation, maltreatment, and threats of death.

As they had at Kanggye, the CCF attempted to organize progressive groups to write peace appeals, propaganda leaflets, and articles condemning the United States for the war. Typically, progressive POWs (usually weaker, less resilient members) who went along with the Communist propaganda conditioning, received better rations and treatment. Rugged resisters, on the other hand, could dependably expect to stand a considerable amount of solitary confinement, usually in an unspeakably foul, vermin-infested “hole.” Here a POW was forced to remain in a debilitating, crouched position usually 56 hours or more. Throughout the war a good many Marines were to know this particular enemy treatment. One Marine artilleryman, Second Lieutenant Roland L. McDaniel, tied to a Korean POW in the hole for 10 days, emerged with pneumonia and tuberculosis.

In addition to the POW compounds at Pyoktong and Chongsong, other sites where Marines were held were Camp 3, at Changsong (nearby and with a nearly identical name to Camp 1), primarily for enlisted personnel, and at “The Valley.” This was a temporary medical processing center in the Kanggye area. Marine inmates here were often confined to a pig pen. Largely because of the filthy conditions of this camp, the death rate quickly earned the Valley the opprobrious name of Death Valley.

Another cluster of POW camps was located further south. These were primarily run by the North Koreans, and were transit camps where prisoners were collected and interrogated before being moved north by truck or on foot to the permanent establishments. Among them were collection centers at Kung Dong and Chorwon, and Camp 10, south of the North Korean Capital Pyongyang. The latter was also known variously as the Mining Camp, the Gold Mine, or Bean Camp--this due to its prevailing diet. At this southernmost Communist camp, POWs were required to dig coal in the nearby mine shafts. Loads of coal were then hauled in small hand carts over icy roads to the camp, a task made more difficult by the prisoners’ skimpy mealtime fare.

The most notorious of all the camps, however, was Pak’s Palace,[583] the interrogation center near Pyongyang. POWs also called it Pak’s Death Palace for its chief interrogator, a sadistic North Korean officer, Major Pak. Captain Martelli, a F4U fighter pilot from VMF-323 shot down in April 1951, was the first Marine processed through Pak’s, where POWs were continuously threatened and beaten with little or no provocation. Another Marine aviator, Captain Gerald Fink, VMF-312, upon being asked during interrogation here why he had come to Korea won a sentence of several days solitary confinement in the hole for his forthright answer: “to kill Communists.” Second Lieutenant Carl R. Lindquist, also of VMF-312, was the only one of 18 Marine officers captured in 1951 not processed through Pak’s before being sent north.

[583] The Secretary of Defense Advisory Committee on Prisoners
of War later adjudged Pak’s to have been “the worst camp
endured by American POWs in Korea.” MacDonald, _POW_, p.
104.

Gradually the Chinese developed the policy of segregating officer and enlisted personnel. Commenting on this procedure, one British observer offered the following:

By this means the lower ranks were deprived of their leaders
and for a short time this had a depressing, and generally bad,
effect. It was not long, however, before the natural leaders
among the rank and file asserted themselves. The standard of
leadership naturally varied in different compounds; but in all
there was some organization and in some it was highly efficient.
It was ... the policy of the Chinese ... to discourage the
emergence of thrustful leaders.... Consequently, clandestine
rather than open leadership was usual.[584]

[584] Barclay, _Commonwealth_, p. 190.

By midyear, noncommissioned officers were also separated from the enlisted men, in an attempt to better control prisoners. In October of 1951 another one of the Yalu River Camps was set up. This was Camp 2, at Pi-chong-ni, which thereafter served as the main officers camp. The next month a POW column of nearly 50 men, including 6 Marines, left Kung Dong for these northern camps on a death march that covered 225 miles in two weeks. During the excruciating march, prisoners had been forced to strip naked and wade across the Chongsong River, a procedure which caused several deaths and cases of frostbite. One British participant, however, recalled that the “Marines banded together during the terrible march, and the Royal Marines were drawn close to the U.S. Marines.”[585]

[585] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 127.

In December 1951 the Communist and UNC forces exchanged lists of captured personnel. The list of 3,198 American POWs (total UNC: 11,559) revealed that 61 Marines were in enemy hands. Nine others, captured late in the year, were still in temporary collection points and thus not listed. Although Marines represented only a small portion of the total POWs, they were present in most of the nearly dozen regular camps or collection points then in existence. In any event the 1951 POW list[586] gave a picture of the growing Communist camp system.

[586] Negotiations broke down at this point. No other list was
offered by Communist officials until the first exchange
of wounded POWs, 17 months later, in the April 1953
LITTLE SWITCH operation. Montross, Kuokka, and Hicks,
_USMC Ops Korea_, v. IV, p. 223.

As 1951 was drawing to an end, the Camp 2 commandant, a fanatical Communist named Ding, ordered UNC prisoners to prepare and send a New Year’s greeting to the commander of the CCF, General Peng Teh-huai. Senior UN officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Brown, USAF, was determined that the prisoners would not sign the spurious holiday message. Major McLaughlin voluntarily organized Marine resistance, and senior officers of other nationality groups followed suit. No greetings were sent. As usually happened, an informer reported the organized resistance and furnished names of the reactionary leaders. The following month, the six ranking officers were sentenced to solitary confinement, ranging from three to six months, for their “subversive activities.”

The episode marked the first really organized resistance to the Chinese. “Although the principals were subjected to months of solitary confinement, coercion, torture, and very limited rations during the bitterly cold months of early 1952, their joint effort laid the foundation for comparatively effective resistance within Camp 2 during the remainder of the war.”[587]

[587] MacDonald, _POW_, p. 138.

In January 1952, Major McLaughlin and the other five officers were removed to begin their long tours of solitary confinement. Although the remaining Marine officers at Pi-chong-ni had “formed a tightly knit group and consulted among themselves on every major issue,”[588] the atmosphere within the camp itself became highly charged and strained. Suspicion of informers and opportunists was rampant. The officers at Camp 2 were generally agreed that Marine Lieutenant Colonel Thrash, who arrived in June, was largely responsible for restoring discipline. He issued an all-inclusive order about camp behavior for all personnel which read, in part:

[588] _Ibid._, p. 164.

Study of Communist propaganda would not be countenanced. If study
was forced on them, POWs were to offer passive resistance and no
arguments.

If prisoners were subject to trial or punishment they were to
involve no one but themselves.

There would be no letters written using any titles or return
address which might prove beneficial to the Communists for
propaganda value.[589]

[589] _Ibid._, pp. 165–166.

Expectedly, it was not long before Lieutenant Colonel Thrash’s efforts to influence and organize his fellow officers outraged CCF officials. In September he was removed from the compound, charged with “Criminal Acts and Hostile Attitude against the Chinese People’s Volunteers.” The Marine airman spent the next eight months in solitary. Here he was subjected to constant interrogation, harassment, and duress. On one occasion he was bound, severely beaten, and thrown outside half naked in sub-zero weather. Shock of the severe temperature rendered him unconscious, and he nearly died. Throughout his eight-month ordeal there were demands that he cooperate with the “lenient” Chinese upon his return to the compound.

During 1952, the Communists developed the system of keeping newly-captured Marines (and other UNC troops) apart from those taken prior to January 1952 who had suffered more brutal treatment. Beginning in August, noncommissioned officers were also segregated. They were removed from Chongsong (Camp 1) and taken further north along the Yalu to the “Sergeants Camp” (Camp 4) at Wiwon. Although a few Marines had been interned at the Camp 2 Annex, at Obul, from late 1951 on, they were not sent there in any sizable number until mid-1952.