JONES INTRO A

            TAPE RECORDINGS MADE JUNE 1953
(Following Is Background And Only Basic Material.  Not In Narrative Form.)

I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, August 23, 1928.  (ACTUAL DATE TWO YEARS LATER).  I lived in Omaha until 1935 when we moved to Minneapolis.
            I have mother, father, one sister.  She is six years younger than I.  (Watch two-year differential). 
I went to John Burroughs grade school on 50th:  then we moved to Holmes Avenue, near Lake and Hennepin, I went to Calhoun School, Jefferson Junior High.  Finished there and to West High for two months, then down to Texas to Dallas for one year's schooling.
            I was an independent, bullheaded kid.  My father was making an effort to prepare me for the U.S. Naval Academy.  My father went to the Naval Academy.  He figured I might go.  He didn't graduate, flunked out in navigation mathematics.
            I came back after a year and went to Breck school in St. Paul, from which I graduated.  It's a military school.
            Military school routine, to a young fellow, is alien.  At the time, a lot of it seemed foolish to me, and I got tired of it.  But I got to like military life and routine very much.
            In 1947, Capt. Glenn Stanley, professor of military science, gave a small talk at Breck and said that, in the course of our lifetime, almost everybody in the auditorium would see military service.  I laughed at him then and said "you'll never catch me in the army."
I went to work, after school, down to Texas and worked up a wheat harvest up into North Dakota.  My mother's been sick for a long time, which made difficulties at home.  She was in the hospital a lot of the time…with two growing children needing care.  Trying to get help during war and all that.
            In 1948 I was out of Breck.  I went to work for Barry Ashwell, Inc. interior decorators in Minneapolis.  I started driving a truck, tried to learn the business.  My father is in the floor covering business---Armstrong Cork Company.  I was interested in it.
            About that time I got some yearnings to get back with some military life,

JONES INTRO B
and went into service at the end of '48, in December.
            I enlisted in the army December 7, 1948---just happened, that date.  I started filling out and processing on the 5th of December.
            Went in as a recruit.  To Fort Riley, Kansas, basic, applied for Officer Candidate.  In February 1949 went to NCO training school at Riley…been promoted to sergeant and was assigned as combat-small unit tactics instructor at the school.  In May, I went to OCS at Fort Riley.  Commissioned November 23, 1949.
            To Knox Kentucky, having been commissioned armored cavalry.  Stayed at Knox completing officer basic course there in April 1950, and went overseas.
            Arrived in Japan assigned 8th Cavalry regiment, stationed Camp King just outside Tokyo where I stayed until war broke out that June.
It was the same as any other Sunday, the 25th, didn't know war had broken out until next morning.  Copies of Pacific editions of Stars and Stripes were flying in every direction.  We all knew something was happening.  Much sentiments about would we be in the war or not and what about our unit.
            We embarked on a training and organizing routine that same week---the 29th.  We started a ten mile daily road march, then were given orders to pack equipment for combat into a duffel bag.  We had a 30-minutes-be-ready-to-move order.
            The First Cavalry division was in good shape.  My regiment was in best shape in the division.  I had 30 men directly under me at that time.
We continued training until about July 2nd.  We loaded vehicles and moved out to a camp on Tokyo bay for amphibious training.  We did the ten mile hike mornings, and clambered up and down cargo nets afternoons.
            We had five days of that training.  Then back to a camp outside Yokahama.  Stayed there until the 10th.  Loaded LST's in Yokahama harbor, our battalion plus field artillery on five LST's.
            We sailed on night of 10th.  Morning of the 18th we pulled into Pohang harbor.  We didn't know if we'd have Pohang in our hands or not.  If North Koreans had taken it, we were to take it back from them.  As it happened, it was still in our hands.  Quiet landing.
            We stayed there two days until morning of the 20th.  Loaded on a train south of Taejon which was being attacked that night.

JONES INTRO C
            NOTE:  From then on Jones tells how his unit relieved elements of the 24th Infantry division.
            He has 40 men…rifle platoon leader, 3rd platoon of Baker Company.
            They received their first taste of combat as enemy tanks rode into their positions.
            From there they were in and out of combat.
            Felt growth of reinforcements.
            The feeling that, just before the Chinese entered the war in November, 1950, that all was over.
            In fact, they had gone back to garrison status.
            The story was quite usual until, with a quarter-of-a-million man Chinese Army in the war…Jones' real story begins:

The Chinese had been in the Korean war about two days.  They had crossed the Yalu and were sweeping south.
            We were re-grouping south of Unsan.  On my level, we didn't know what was in the wind---but something definitely was.  There had been an ammunition redistribution order.  Late, at night, we received an alert for movement order.  At dawn on the morning of October 28th, we moved out…destination Unsan.
            I had gone into battalion headquarters that morning and had read that there were two corps, of three divisions each, of the Chinese in Korea.  I began to get the shape-up of what was to come---and it wasn't good.
            We moved north that morning, just to the outskirts of Unsan.  The ROK first division was already in the area and engaged with the Chinese Army.  It was a relatively limited engagement at that moment.  The Chinese didn't seem to be too active.
            We went into position behind the Koreans.  That lasted one day when we received orders to move up and relieve them about eight o'clock in the morning.  We moved up, marched right through Unsan, just got north.  The ROK forward echelon people met us, said they had been attacked by the Chinese during the night and had lost about 2,000 yards.
            "We're organizing a counterattack," they told me.  "But you can relieve us as soon as we're set and in the positions on your plan.  It'll be later today."
            My company commander's orders were to be in those positions at eight o'clock in the morning.
"The hell with 'em", he said.  "We're going into those positions.  If the Chinese are there, we'll run 'em out."
            So we went.  We had a platoon of tanks with us, my company, platoon of machine guns, some other equipment.  The old man said "Move Out" and we did.
            We moved almost into the positions we were to occupy.  The funny thing is the company commander and the first sergeant had actually gone out and walked through the positions.  Had his rank insignia on, kept walking, never saw a Chinese.  He told us we could go in there.
            Twenty minutes later, when we started to move into the positions, they were swarming with Chinese.
            We engaged them right on the spot.  We had some dead right away.  Couldn't get anyone to pick up the bodies.  Then the ROK attack began to materialize.  The M-46 tanks, the only big ones we had in Korea, the new and---at that time---the accepted standard tank in the medium-fighting class, came up.  We had had only M-24's, that work against infantry and that's about all.
            The Chinese soon withdrew under the ROK attack.  The original positions were reoccupied late in the afternoon.  We got orders to sit out the night about 1,000 yards to the ROK rear and occupy the positions the following day.  But we seesawed around for a couple of days until, on the 30th, we got orders to go up and relieve them.  The ROKs were to withdraw at four in the afternoon that day.
            Then the Chinese started that attack.  They began by firing multiple rockets at us, from vehicular rocket mounts.  They were accurate, but relatively ineffective.  We had no casualties from the rockets, although we were under fire steadily for about an hour.  We were well dug in.
            The frontal attack began.  The Chinese had green troops.  They came to within 500 yards of us.  About all you can say about them---they were well camouflaged.  They were on the banks of the river, on flat ground, before we ever saw 'em.
            They rose up and started an actual walking towards us in a solid line.  We were set up on the flat ground with a tremendous number of weapons.  It was the only place we could have employed our machine guns.  We had 'em.  We just mowed them down.  They were within 200 yards of us before we ever opened fire.
            Then they showed how green they were---what was left after we had cut most of them down.  They got into small groups, gathered in hollows in the ground.  Our mortars then started slicing them to pieces.  And that pretty well stopped the frontal attack in our battalion.  (Another unit attacked between my company and the next company, and scored a penetration there.  We were in rough shape because we had replaced almost 50% of our strength.  In two weeks at Pyongyang we had gone through an almost complete reshuffle of command.  A lot of it was done because of the feeling that the war was over, that we were going back to garrison status.  The sudden Chinese entry into the war changed that.
It was a little difficult that night.  The Chinese had scored another penetration and the order came to us to withdraw.
            Under heavy enemy attack, we managed the first phase of our withdrawal.  We got back, set up just as it was getting dark.  We got into position and, just as the last light went out of the skies, the Chinese began to infiltrate our right flank.  We had anticipated it.  We knew we were bare on that right flank.  They started cutting us up in the rear then---although we didn't know it at the time.  They were really shooting us up back there.
            Meantime, there was an attack on the battalion on our right flank, about 2,000 yards away.  We finally managed to start the final withdrawal…but it turned out to be an attempted withdrawal.  The Chinese, by then, were both in our immediate---and distant---rear.  They were executing phenomenal control of troops at night, moving and patrolling with bugles and whistles.  They moved small units in, assembled them, controlled them well.  All in the dark a task that must have required tremendous training.  They were shooting hell out of us as we tried to withdraw.
            My unit ended as the rear guard of the retreating battalion as we moved through the town of Unsan.  What was left of the rest of our battalion had gone through.  The Chinese were in the town…between all the buildings, ready.  We had two tanks in town with about 100 infantrymen.  When I got there, I had 100 more.  We started to shoot our way out of town.
            The fire was withering.  The Chinese were nearly all armed with automatic weapons.  They were between every building and we were trying to go down the middle of the street.  The tanks, of course, were relatively safe.
            That night, I had been in command of the weapons platoon.  I'd been sent over to them to try and straighten them out.  They were all fouled up.  When the action had started that night, my company had been manned by six officers---for the first time in the war.  Three of them had never seen action, three of us had.  One of the rifle platoon leaders cracked up at 4:30 in the afternoon.  One of the others went half batty. The third one's platoon disintegrated.  He kept charging around saying "I don't know what to do.  My first action and my platoon's disappeared."
            The company commander grabbed me and told me to latch on to every straggler I could find.
            I picked up everybody, including the men in company headquarters who didn't look busy.  When we withdrew that night, I ended up with my former platoon sergeant, who had taken over since his commander had gone batty.  His platoon, or what was left, came along.  So did about 25 stragglers we picked up.
            We took everybody along and started back.  The Chinese had set up a couple of pockets of light resistance to the rear and we had to get past them.
            The mortar platoon had the trucks lined up in the town, ready to take off.  They were bumper-to-bumper, lights on, ready to move.  Apparently, at this point, the Chinese jumped those four trucks.
            When I got there, not too much later the vehicles were in the same condition.  But the men were all over, laying dead beside the vehicles.  Lights still on, a couple of motors still running, but not a single Chinese was in evidence.  As I later figured out, they were in town, waiting.
            We started down along the vehicles and paused there.  We wanted a vehicle to transport the wounded.  We couldn't carry them and some of them were pretty badly shot up.  So we tried to detach the trailer from one of the trucks.  It was dark.  I'll be dammed if I could remember how that trailer hitch worked.  None of the men around me knew either.
            About that time, we got a few rounds of small arms fire, over to our left front about 20 yards.  The kids with me, the enlisted man, were scared stiff by that time.  The Chinese were all around them.  They knew it.  They were disorganized…away from their own units.  We were just a loose group of people.  They fell back to the news rice paddy.
            I was with my runner, lying by this first vehicle.  The Chinese that had been firing just ducked down into the rice paddy and kept on banging away.  The men were scared to death.  They didn't know how many Chinese were there---just seeing the muzzle flashes.
            By that time, our people were firing to beat hell.  When somebody gets scared, first thing he wants to do is start pulling the trigger and he's not too careful where he's pulling.  There I was with the Chinese shooting in my direction and my own people shooting back at 'em.  So I decided to get back with my own people.  I did---but fast.
           Along about here a couple of more officers and NCOs wandered in, but there wasn't any organization at all.
            It slowly became obvious that only a small number of Chinese was holding us up.  (We found out later, it was only six of them!)
            Another officer and I tried to get our men up in a flat assault.  There was no reason in the world why 100 men shouldn't have been able to take six.  But it was the same old business.  We got our men up on their feet, they got about half way across this rice paddy shooting.  The Chinese, by luck or good sense, at that moment poked their rifles up above the rice paddy dike, took at few pot shots.  Our men saw those muzzle flashes and stopped.  They were all through.
            We tried it a second time and the same thing happened.  So the other officer and I gave it up, decided to go on around and into town from the side.  We left the trucks.
            South Korean runner, and American runner, and I, were about 30 yards ahead of the group.  We started into town through a back alley---those narrow things with the buildings touching each other.  We went on down the alley, walked out on the main street.  The six Chinese who had been behind the dike---an extension of the main street.
            They just walked up the street and we walked out of the alley into 'em.  The first was standing there with a bayonet about a foot from my nose.  He was green and he caught me by surprise, had me cold and should have nailed me right there with nothing more to it.  I don't know what it was---a fallacy in their indoctrination.  Maybe I caught him by surprise as much as he caught me.  We both stood there and looked at each other for a minute.  It was a bright, moonlight night and we each got a pretty good look.
            His five comrades walked up behind him and just stood there.  I had my two men with me and both of them didn't know what to do.  I had a pistol in my hand and ski mittens on.  The pistol wasn't cocked.
            He started waving his bayonet.  It was quite obvious what he wanted done
there.  I was waving the pistol frantically and he wanted me to drop it.
I pretended I didn't know what he was talking about.  I managed to get it cocked.
            About that time, my own people had come up from behind me and had just mushroomed out with their gun barrels in all directions.  The Chinese decided, right about here, that they had a nice big bunch of prisoners.
            I raised my pistol in the face of the Chinese who had had his bayonet pointing at me.  At the same time, I hollered and the men fired and all six Chinese just dropped in a lump in the street.
            We turned right, up the street.
            There were two tanks in town at that point.  They had difficulty.  The Chinese had knocked out a three-quarter ton truck in the middle of the street.  In those towns, the street is just wide enough for a three-quarter ton truck.
            A tank had shoved it to one side and had tried to go around it.  But they'd piled a bunch of wounded on it, had hit a house with a corrugated iron roof.  The roof ripped, came down on the back of the tank, trapped some of the wounded and cut 'em up pretty bad.
            They had been there for about 20 minutes trying to free the wounded men.  That's why they were still there when I came up.  The first one had just cleared it and gone through and the second tank had just pushed the truck a little farther into the buildings on the other side of the street.
            I climbed up on the second tank.  The commander was standing up in the turret with his microphone talking to the driver through the small opening.  Our men were in a disorganized group…all shooting away from the general direction in which they were.  The Chinese were having a great time taking pot shots between the buildings at us.
            I asked where Lt. Strife was and discovered he was in the first tank.  I ran up there and met some of my old friends from Japan.  Sort of funny place for a reunion.  We'd lost most of the old battalion from Japan, but here was fellows I'd run around with in Japan.  We all ended up in that town together that night.  Lt. Howard Miller, Lt. Dan Mahoney, Lt. Fitzpatrick---all the old friends.
            I climbed up on that first tank.  As I did, Howard said "What the hell are we gonna do?" and everybody knew: get out of there, fast.
            Lt. Strife was on the radio talking to his company commander.  He pulled his earphones off and we had a sort of odd conversation which went like this:
            "Strife---Jones.  I've brought the last of the doughs in.  Let's get the devil outta here."
            We were right at the junction of two roads in the center of town.
            "Which road do we take?" he asked.
            "Take the left."
            "You sure?"
            He'd pulled his head out of the turret for this conversation, then ducked back in.  I grabbed the 50 caliber, the tank started around the corner and then stopped.
            There was a straightaway of about 50 yards.  Between every building, you could see a damned muzzle flash.  You could hear the bullets hitting the tank.
            I grabbed that 50-caliber and started shooting.  For some reason or other, the tank had stopped there.
            I didn't know it until I came through the town on the way back to be released, but there was a monument in the center of the intersection.  I hadn't seen it that night, but I remembered the town…even some of the buildings.  But that monument I had never seen.
            Two bullets hit me.  Felt just like somebody taking a baseball bat and hitting me a whack square across the shoulders.  It felt like I was leaving my feet, like going up, turning to the right, and starting to fall.   I'm sure I never left my feet, but the bullets came from below me and actually gave me the feeling of raising smack up in the air.  I felt myself starting to fall and I blacked out.
            I went into what I later found out was a spinal shock, although the spine wasn't damaged by a bullet that went up into my neck, right at the base, rode up the spine and then jumped off.  I had a sort of paralysis for a couple of minutes.
            As soon as I hit the back deck of the tank, I woke up again.  I'd only blacked out for a few seconds, maybe ten or fifteen.  I remember blacking out and coming to.  The tank hadn't moved, up to then.
            Funny thing---I felt like I was standing on my head on the tank.  I remember when I first came out of it thinking that I couldn't stay like that---balancing very long.
            Then the tanks started rolling.  I could see my arms hanging back off the side of the tank, but I couldn't feel anything.  My body seemed to be in a sort of crouching position but my arms were straight out in front of me.
            I'd heard a lot of stories about how, if you lose an arm or a limb it feels like it's doing things.  I saw my arms hanging limp over the side of the tank, but they felt like they were sticking straight out.  I thought brother, those characters shot both my arms off.  Then it dawned on me that there wasn't a way in the world they could have shot my arms off.  But this was all new to me and how's anybody to know the affects…when you weren't even sure about the cause? 
            The tanks were moving.  You could see the muzzle flashes of the guns as we went by.  The bullets kept bouncing off the sides of the tank.  How I ever kept from being hit again as we moved through that town, I'll never know.
            I kept sliding off the tank…the back deck is curved.  I kept sliding slowly.  I started to regain some movement in my legs and my feet and the feelings progressed up my body.  Finally, as we got to the edge of town, where the tank swung to dodge a jeep that had been abandoned in the middle of the road, I was shoved right off the tank over to the side of the road.
            The tank was dragging its towline, a heavy steel cable about ¾ inches in diameter, with a steel eye on the end weighing about five pounds.  I remember watching the damned thing drag across my chest.  I couldn't feel it.  Just before the eye got to me, it hit a rock in the road and bounced up, down on my chest, and on down the road.  I never felt it.
            I hadn't bled too much at that point.  I was strong enough to get to my feet.  I walked over to the jeep that was knocked out and tried to drive it out.  But it wouldn't start.  I tried to pull it out on the starter motor, but it had a full trailer and wouldn't even move.  I got out of the jeep again.  My arms were giving me trouble, going weak.  I didn't have complete control over either one of them.  I also found out later I damaged my other shoulder pretty badly.  When I fell off the tank I lit on it.
            I started to go out on the road and managed to walk about ten yards before a fellow shouted at me out of the ditch.  It was Sergeant Gerald Cummings out of Charlie company.  I walked over.  He said he was wounded in the legs and wasn't much I could do for him.  We both started down the road.  He told me he had a package of morphine.  He asked me if I wanted a shot.
            By that time, I'd bled enough so I was getting pretty weak.  I figured a shot of morphine would fix it so I could walk on out of there.  I sat down.  That did it.  I hadn't realized that the sergeant was just a little bit out of his head at that time, not too far.  But he was.
            He tried, after a fashion.  He didn't know how to give morphine, although it's a simple job.  He managed to ruin three syrettes.  Then the second tank, and what was left of the infantry came by.
            We hollered at 'em.  They went by, didn't stop.  They weren't going to stop for anybody.
            When they passed, Cummings went screaming off down the ditch on his hands and knees and left me sitting there in the ditch.
            I figured out what it was I ought to do.  There were the Chinese moving out.  I was behind the last houses in town.  So I sat there for a while.
            Pretty soon, some more Chinese came along.  They started using flashlights most freely, which seemed to me damn foolishness---can't think of anything at night that would bring in artillery faster.  I didn't know it then---but they had already attacked our artillery.  It wasn't going to fire.
            I adopted the attitude that the best thing for me to do was to look dead.  I didn't know that I had a couple of advantages:  that the blood from the wound in the back of my neck had run all down into my hair and when I'd gotten back up the blood had run out of my hair into my face.  I figured that if I closed my eyes I wouldn't look any deader than if they were open and if I closed them, I wouldn't know what was coming up.  I figured if I kept them open, I could see what was coming and maybe keep from reacting.  If some guy came up and kicked me unexpectedly, I'd be likely to jump.
            I sat there, staring across the road.  The Chinese would come up, shine the flashlights on me and use a slang word "lau Me."  Has something to do with "old American" or something like that.  I kept hearing that all night, "lau Me" as I sat there.  They'd point and say it, take one look and decide I was quite dead.
            The major share of the Chinese finally cleared the area where I sat.  By then, I had reached the 'I don't give a damn' point you get to when you've bled and sat.  So, I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one.  Put it out when I finished.
            Just then, a young Chinese came running down the road, saw me, stopped, started digging round my right wrist, found my identification bracelet.  That wasn't what he wanted.  So he went over to my left wrist, found my wristwatch, started to take it off.  Still being in that I don't care state, I figured if I'm going to die, I'm going to die with my wristwatch.  So I just turned and said "what in hell do you think you're doing" and he went screaming down the road.  Quite a corpse.
            I had figured all the time in Korea I'd never be captured---that I'd be a dead man first.  I honestly thought that way that night.  I had three magazines for my pistol.  I'd gotten it out and decided, the first group of Chinese that came along I'd start popping off.  That way, I'd have a few of them before they had one of me.  But about the time I decided to do that, cocked the pistol, here came about six of them jogging along the road.  Funny thing---they were six medical aid men, bags over their shoulders, big white circles with red crosses on them.  This was different from the way the Koreans played the game and I figured, as an American, I don't take shots at the Red Cross.  So I put the pistol away and started thinking the thing over.  I figured I'd accomplish nothing my knocking a few Chinamen off at this point.  I figured I had a chance, by staying alive.
            I put the pistol away again, had another cigarette.  The Chinese kept coming up all night.  They went to work on the jeep which was still about 10 yards down the road.  Just before dawn, they got it operating.  After they left, I had another cigarette.
            Fortunately for me, it was pretty darned cold that night.  That helped coagulation.  Didn't bleed to death the way I would have in warmer weather.
            About daylight, I managed to accumulate enough strength to get on my feet.  I'd been watching enough---during the night they moved two regiments forward.  At dawn, the two came back and one went forward.  It showed that they were committing the major portion of their strength for night fighting.  I couldn't miss a thing:  I had switched around in the ditch---my butt was in the ditch at the side of the road, my back against the bank and my feet sticking out on the edge of the road.  I had enough sense to realize I wasn't getting enough circulation in my hands---I'd lost all sensation in them.  I'd stuck one down inside my trousers, the other inside of my jacket to keep them from freezing.  I'd lost all sensation in my feet which, amazingly, didn't freeze.  Why, I don't know.
            I struggled to my feet at dawn and managed to reach the last house in the village.  I went in.  The Chinese had disappeared when the daylight came.  I got my back up against the wall, slid down the wall, sat down, lit a cigarette, put my pistol down just under my leg, and waited to see what would happen next.
            Wasn't about 15 minutes before the Chinese came in and set up a command post in the next room!
            There wasn't much point in taking a shot at 20 of them, so I just sat there.  Funny---they sat and operated in there for about 15 minutes before they even saw me.  I was sitting there watching them.
            Finally, one of them decided to look through the doorway---and there I was looking at him.  He screamed and there were Chinamen going out every door and window in that house.
            Then they started poking their heads back in doors and windows…with machine pistols.  Pretty soon, they came back in.  First thing one of them did, was to jerk off my collar brass.  One of them got my cigarettes, lighter off the floor beside me.  Another grabbed the pistol by my leg.  They took everything I had except a pair of sterling bars in my jacket pocket…never did find them.  They took the stuff and left…except the one who took my cigarettes and lighter.  He stood there with a few more who wandered in.  I asked him for a cigarette.
            He offered me one, then offered them all around the room, ran out, threw the empty pack out the door, lit my cigarette with my lighter and then they all left.
            About half-an-hour later, the Chinese who had taken my personal belongings came back---wristwatch and everything.  I didn't see the wristwatch---although they took pains to show me all my money was still in the wallet---South Korean, North Korean, Japanese, United States.  He showed it all to me.  I don't think any was missing---I wasn't in any shape to count it.  They put it all in my field jacket pocket  I couldn't figure what was going on, but at least I wasn't losing anything right then.
            About that time, the Air Force jets came in and worked the town over.  They hit out in the street in front of the building, didn't hit us.  Had the Chinese scared three quarters to death.  Apparently we messed up the other end of town pretty well.  When things quieted down, a Chinese officer who spoke English came in and asked me if I had a wristwatch.  I told him I'd had one but that they'd taken it from me.  He went out good and mad.  Ten minutes later he came in, dug, into my field jacket pocket, and pulled out my wristwatch.  He waved it in front of my face and said "You HAVE your wristwatch."  Then he stuck it back in my pocket.
            He asked me if I had an identification card and I told him it was in the wallet.  But he discovered they had already taken it.  He left.  The jets came in again.  I sat there in the house---and I felt myself going out and coming to.  Things fogged up.  I started having hallucinations.
            Funny how clear they are in my memory.
            I actually dreamed---of course it was fixed in my mind that our people would counterattack and I'd be back with them in a day or two at the most.  I couldn't visualize our losing ground over any period of time.
            I came to once and found a little measly Chinaman digging around in my pocket where the wristwatch was, found it and went screaming out the door as fast as he could run.  He left everything else…and I couldn't even holler then.  I blacked right out again.
            I dreamed our people had occupied higher ground across the road, were just waiting for the Chinese to get everybody down, sucking them into a big trap.  They sneaked a patrol over to me and told me they'd have a helicopter in there to pick me up just as soon as they closed up the rear of this Chinese column.  They also told me this patrol was to stay there.
I would have to command this patrol, they said.  I was figuring things out.
            Then I came to, went out the rest of the evening.
            The Chinese outside were moving up to the front…just before dark.  Nobody paid any attention to me from the next room.  They figured, I guess, that I was dying and why worry.  Guess I looked it.  I was still bleeding a little.  Everything I rubbed against got blood on it.
            When they got ready to move out, they came in and tried to get me to go with them.  I figured the best thing to do---why I don't know---was to act as though I was still semi-delirious.  So they moved out.
            I got back on my feet, I managed to pull my field jacket off---the sweat rolling down into the wound on my back was painful---that salt.  They'd taken my boots off when they searched me.  But I didn't care:  the one thing I wanted to go---get the hell out of that house and get hidden.  I got outside, hid under a brush pile.  But everything was so quiet.  I came out, walked back to the house, sat down in the door of the room I'd been in, and just plain sat there and watched the Chinese mule train come down the street.  The mule train wasn't six feet away.  They didn't see me---it was dark…I was in the shadow of the house and the doorway.  It was asinine---the whole idea.  I watched 'em go by.
            Then I went into the house and right away there came a Chinese.  He shined his light into the room I'd been in.  My boots and jacket were on the floor.  He saw them.  I was up against the wall beside the door.  He couldn't see me.
            He came through the door, shined the light over.  When it hit me, he went yelling back out the door.  When he did that, I took on off the back door through the kitchen, found a cave they use for storing vegetables and stuff.  It was little, but I crawled in.  There were bags of cotton.  I got underneath them to get warm and get hidden.  Then---I passed out.
            I'd used up too much strength I didn't have---and it laid me out.  When I woke up, I was lying over the top of the bags of cotton with a bunch of flashlights shining in my face.  How long I was out, I don't know.  Maybe only a couple of minutes.  Undoubtedly the Chinese who saw me in the house had alerted the others---and it couldn't have taken them long to track me to the cave in back.
            They had guns trained all over me.  They kept beckoning to me to crawl out.  When they saw the wounds on my back, they put their guns away and came up to help me.  One of them got on each side.
            Incidentally, this whole unit seemed to be professional soldiers and reasonably ethical---which certainly wouldn't characterize any Chinese who were to follow.  They were quite obviously the old border guard.  Armed with plenty of weapons…all types…old American and old European makes.  They seemed experienced soldiers.
            They took me two houses down, where they'd set up an aid station, sat me in the corner with some Chinese, bandaged my wounds over the top of my sweater and undershirt…gave me some hot broth---first food I'd had since noon the day before.  The Chinese during the day had given me a couple rice bowls of water…but that was all.
            They had a fire under the floor---the building was pretty warm---and I was getting relaxed.  I was dead tired and didn't much give a damn about anything---just leaned back and started to go to sleep.  They woke me up, moved me outside---and here came Cummings on a stretcher.  He'd made it about 200 yards up the ditch.
            Here's a funny thing---Sergeant Cummings recognized me---I didn't know him.  We'd been in the shadows the night before.  I don't know why, but I decided to say I was a chaplain.  I knew that they knew I was an officer.  I was dubious about what treatment I'd receive.  I'd seen too damn much and wasn't too happy to be in the position I was.  Just as a snap decision, for ten minutes I figured I'd say I was a chaplain.  In my right mind, it never would have happened.  But there was Sergeant Cummings and another man on a stretcher, who, Sergeant Cummings told me later, was a man out of my company.  I would have known that, but half his face was shot away and he was dying.
            Cummings had regained his composure---at least temporarily.  He told me later, too, that he'd been with me the night before.  Maybe THAT was my hallucination about the patrol that came to get me out.
I started asking him what had happened to the man I had stationed outside the house the night before.  Well, Cummings couldn't figure out what I was saying:
            "I'm Chaplain Jones" I kept saying to Cummings.  When they started moving us---I had one walking on each side supporting me.  We started around a dark corner.
            "They're taking us around here to shoot us, chaplain," Cummings screamed.  "Do something, chaplain.  Do something."
            I said something like "There's nothing I can do for you, son."
            Actually, they were just taking us over to a three-quarter ton truck---one of the mortar trucks we'd left the night before.  When we got there, they'd rigged a light to the generator of the truck.  They were loading up with stuff they'd captured.  The truck was still loaded with the 4.2 mortar and the ammunition.  They had an American there, all in one piece, a Corporal Lamb.  They were making him drive the truck.  Virtually at gunpoint---though not literally.  They gave us each a can of GI peas and a box of corn flakes they'd captured with our rations.  Damned welcome to us.
            They loaded us on the trailer of the truck, drove up towards the front.  We later found out that our first and second battalions had been almost wiped out.  Our third battalion had been in reserve and had set up in perimeter defense.  The Chinese hit them, but they held out for four days.
            We were hauled up to near where the remnants of the third battalion were still holding out.  The Chinese unloaded that 4.2 mortar and ammunition and fired it.  That 4.2 is one of the finest infantry large caliber weapons.  No mortar in the world can touch it.  Pretty rough when the enemy gets hold of one.  Broke my heart even then---although I was in the trailer going to and from consciousness.  That truck trip in the trailer was bad---bounced the hell out of us.  Had a couple of Chinese in with us and they were screaming too.
My wounds broke open during that bouncing ride and started bleeding again.  They finally took us 10 miles to the rear to a Chinese collecting station.
            Next morning, just before dawn, we pulled up in front of this little building, unhitched the trailer, stuck cornstalks all over us for camouflage in the bat of an eye.
            They unloaded the truck but just left Cummings and me in the trailer…sitting there.  Didn't know what they planned on doing with us.  We weren't in the least bit interested in staying out in that truck and being seen by our Air Force.
            Cummings said "I'm leaving" and crawled off across the ground.  I didn't have enough strength to get up over the tailgate.  I was trying hard and finally a Chinaman saw me and figured he should get me out of the truck.  He brought another soldier and they got me to a little Korean shack, Cummings was there too---and just leaned us up against an outside wall and put cornstalks over us again.
            About an hour or two later, a medic came and dressed our wounds…first dressing in 48 hours---the first bandage was over my clothes.  This time, they did the best job you could, under the circumstances.  We lay there---they gave us more of our B rations we'd had on the truck…another can of peas.  They gave us some more of our cigarettes.
            We lay there for an hour or two.  Then in came a Chinese officer who spoke English.  He told us he hoped, when the war would be over, he could go to the United States.  I don't think he had any understanding of communism.  Didn't seem to understand it.  He surely wasn't a political officer.  Seemed to be a pretty reasonable fellow.  Enjoyed talking…both to use his English and to have something to do.
            He came around later that day and said "The general is coming to see you."  An hour later, an elderly Chinaman, large, fairly tall, well built, about 50-ish at least, dressed like the rest but well escorted.  He came, stood five feet away, looked at us for a minute, turned around, left.  And that was the general.
            They had one medic in this house…a kid I'd say about 14 years old.  I think his training was negligible.  But he was a good kid.
            By that time, you see, I'd lost complete use of both arms.  I was so darned weak I could hardly move.  They had to have somebody turn me over.
            This kid fed me every bite I ate for damned near three weeks.  When you're wounded, you develop an insatiable thirst.  Well, what with this drinking, you take a hell of a lot of pisses.  I did.  I couldn't get my pecker out.  I'd have to holler for the kid.  He was on duty the only one there and he was with me once every half an hour 24 hours a day.
            Fed me…watched me…he's one of the major reasons I'm alive today.  Without the care he gave me---although medically it was nothing---I couldn't have stayed alive.

            The Chinese apparently figured I was going to die.  They held up my evacuation to the rear in an effort, I guess, either to let me die or start getting better.  They did have the supplies or the facilities to do much.
            The first week, that Chinese officer who had showed such interest in me that first day---and who announced the short visit of that general---returned often.  Sometimes he spent most of the day with me.  Sergeant Cummings was still with me.  Corporal Lamb, after three days, left for the rear with the truck.
            My regular visitor used to bring in parts of our B rations.  He'd mix up powdered milk with sugar---his own that came with his combat rations.  He'd sit down and talk---non-political.  Mostly, his general interest in the United States.  He also brought some of our captured U.S. cigarettes.
            One day he said he was leaving, wouldn't be back, but he'd leave a large tin of powdered milk.  Said he was sorry he couldn't leave any sugar…he couldn't get it.  That was the last we ever saw of him.
            Now, this Corporal Lamb---who is now deceased as far as I know---was with us for two days.  He was quiet, retiring, non-aggressive.  He wouldn't stick his neck out, even though they had our captured rations just outside, had given him freedom of the area.  He wouldn't go out and pick them up.  I'm sure he could have gotten anything he wanted.  The worse the Chinese would have done was hollered at him.
            The first day after they bandaged up my wounds, Lamb gave me a wool undershirt…all he could spare.  He didn't even have a full allowance of winter clothing when he was captured…and it was cold.  I had a sleeping bag the Chinese gave me that first night.  It certainly got filthy before I finished with it at the end of that first, long, long winter.  One day, Lamb just didn't reappear.  I guess he must have driven our truck to the Chinese rear.
            The first few days I was there were relatively foggy because I was still blacking out and coming to again.  I do remember telling Sergeant Cummings to try to keep as accurate track as possible of our course of movement.  I told him that unless we knew where we were, we'd never be able to get back to our lines.
            Cummings figured that was foolish because the war would be over in a month or so anyhow.
            I told him at the time I figured that wouldn't be the case, that we'd be foolish---inasmuch as the Chinese had entered the war---to do more than establish a line and hold it and attack in the spring.  I was certain that would be the course of action taken.  I figured we'd attack from what was called the MacArthur line at the narrow waist in Korea…attack in the spring.  I figured that, by then, my wounds would have healed, my strength would have come back and I, too, would be ready to consider some form of action.
            We just lay around there.  Cummings wasn't the world's most agreeable individual.  Product of a poor family, not too strong parental control, CCC camps, WPA jobs.  In 1939, he came into the army.  He had been in it, off and on, ever since.  He had a ninth grade education.  He was one of those "I've been there, I've seen it" people.  You couldn't tell him anything.  At the same time, he had no hard knowledge on any subject.  It was a relatively difficult situation to live in.
            We sat it out there---leaning on the outside of that building, the cornstalks over us.  After the first week, they moved out all the Chinese who had been there, moved in some more.  It was then that they moved us on inside the building.  A couple of Chinese were holed up in there too.
            I was still unable to feed myself, but I was gaining strength.  After about a week, things began to clear up.  I began sleeping normally, but I was still weak, with no control over my arms, hands, or feet…no sensation in them at all.
            We continued there in this room until around the 18th of November.  One night, they moved the wounded out, including us, starting us for the rear in a big convoy.  We may have moved 10 or 15 miles that night before daylight came.  We made two more moves over bumpy roads and poor drivers.  Oddly, they did all their night driving with their lights on which seemed to me a foolish idea since our airplanes were in the area and were coming over that road regularly.  But---they got away with it.  How, I'll never know.
            We'd stop in a regular Korean house, they'd feed us, sometimes they'd
check our dressings.  Most of the dressings used were American-made Carlisle
bandages, or American Army triangle bandages, American Army sulfa---in fact,
nearly all of their supplies were American stuff.  They'd either bought it or
captured it from Chiang Kai-shek.  It was all old.  The sulfa, for example, our
medics don't even use it anymore.  Too many people get a reaction from it.
            But the Chinese used it, and these old American dressings.
            We arrived in a little village 10 miles south of the Suiho dam.  I later found out, when I was a free man, that the dam was the fourth largest hydroelectric power installation in the world.  The town is in a wide valley.
            We moved in that night in a tremendous convoy.  The town was completely loaded with Chinese troops.  Looked like there wasn't room to do anything but stand.  We were taken to a hospital in an old temple about a mile and a half from town.  We were installed in the hospital.
            At dawn, here came a Korean to try and shoot us.  He swore that we'd raped his wife the night before or something equally stupid.  The Chinese finally threw him out of the place.  Cummings and I had been separated so first this Korean came in to try and shoot me, was bounced out, then went over and tried to shoot Cummings.  Out he went again.
            The temple building didn't have any doors on it---pretty darned cold.  We stayed there that day.  That night, they moved us down to the base of the same little knoll the hospital was on and into a small Korean house---maybe 100 yards down.  It was about eleven at night we came down.
            Next morning, our Air Force apparently figured the town was a marshalling area for troops and they arrived.  The 51's came in first---strafed, napalmed, and rocketed the place.  Then the F-80's came in and worked it over.  Then the 51's came back and left about half the town burning.
            I'm sure heavy casualties must have been inflicted---that town was loaded with troops.  They cleared it right after the bombing.  Four 51's came in, I guess they'd seen some Chinese running around the hospital behind us…they dumped their loads on the hospital.  They are making their runs across the valley, right over the house we were in.  I could look out the door and see these 51's coming in on their passes.  They didn't hit the house---can't figure why one of the boys didn't just drop his nose a little and give a squirt to the house we were in.  But they didn't.  I just laid there and watched the whole show.  Cummings went out of control---always did when we were attacked.  Screamed, hollered, cried, would grab me and hug me.
            The 51's had eight or more rockets per plane, two napalms per plane, went into that hospital behind us.  I know it was still full.  But the Chinese brought it on themselves by not marking their own hospitals.  I don't think there's a sane American who'll attack a Red Cross-marked building.  A rocket hit about 15 yards behind the house we were in, threw up dirt and debris…but the thick dirt wall behind the house protected us.
            Dinner was late that night, but it got there.
            Late that afternoon, some fellows came in and told us there was another American and they were going to bring him to us.  For some reason or other, that wasn't what they did.  That night around eleven, they loaded Cummings and me on stretchers, carried us down into town---one of these long, narrow Korean towns that go down a road into a valley.
            Just across the road at the bottom was a railroad track and just across the track they put us in a house with the other American---a Cpl. Ernest Contreras of Denver, Colorado, who was also released when I was released.  He had an unfortunate wound---a bullet had gone in the back of his knee joint and out the front.  He never managed to get satisfactory knee motion after he was captured.  He had a splint on him…was from A company, Fifth Cavalry Regt., had been captured the day after we were.  Cpl. Contreras had been in the center of town all that day during the bombing and he was shook up boy!
            We got in there.  He'd been a prisoner for three weeks---no English-speaking people around.  That doesn't help.  He seemed to be in fair shape.  But we hadn't been there a couple of hours before Contreras and Cummings started to fight.  And that was to continue as long as we were together.
            Damndest thing you ever saw---Cummings bull headed and Contreras hot-tempered, both of them hit in the legs, couldn't do anything…but both sitting up set on fighting then and there.  That went on for a very long, long time.
            The next morning (the 21st), the B-29's came over.  Don't know what they were trying to hit---maybe Sinuiju---they were going over at high altitude.  We heard them drop their load…we were about 30 or 40 miles from there.  Later, when I was 30 miles from Suiho dam and they were bombing…I could hear it all right.
            The raid lasted an hour or so.  The planes were coming over on the way back from Japan.  One of them must have had a stick hanging or he didn't drop them all, so he spotted our little railroad about 40 yards in front of our house, kicked out the stick---maybe four or five bombs…got a beautiful hit on the railroad.  One bomb hit directly between the tracks.  Blew out the bed, cut the rails…a 500 pound bomb.  One lit about a dozen yards from our door.
            God must have been on our side.  The room next to us---floor and all---had completely disappeared.  The room on the other side, had a wounded Chinese in it, sliced him all to pieces, took everything but the floor of that room.  The roof had caved in, walls disappeared.  I was cut up in the hand and beside the head…superficial.  Finger was cut to the knuckle…but I couldn't feel it anyway…so it didn't make any difference.
            Cummings wasn't hurt except a beam on the head…gave him a knot.  But Contreras was buried under what had been the ceiling and the wall.  After the dust started to clear---I'd crept up into the corner in a squatting position when I heard the bombs coming in.  When it was over the beam was down and a shell fragment the size of a saucer only three times as thick was laying in my lap.  This beam clipped me in the side of the head as it eased by.
            No more Contreras.  Big pile of rubble.  Cummings was buried to the waist.  But where was Contreras?  About then I heard a voice calling, sort of muffled, "Get me the hell outta here."  Contreras.
            There were a lot of sticks and things in the building…they'd propped up over him like a tent, there was a hole by his mouth.  He had a little pressure on him---uncomfortable, but that was all.
            The Chinese arrived in about five minutes.  One of 'em tried to get Cummings out, didn't know Contreras was under the pile of rubble, walked up on top of him and Contreras started hollering, "Who's walkin' around on me?"
            They started to dig Contreras out.  One Chinese was on his head once and Contreras yelled "Hey, what's that weight on my head?"  He was dug out---not a scratch.
            They got us out of that building into another right in the center of town.
Right on the main street, I figured, we'd had it now…wait till the Air Force comes back THIS time!  Sure enough, next morning, they were back…but two F-80's made one pass, went by once, and left.  Why, I don't know.
            After that the Chinese decided to move us out of town.  They had been handling us separately from their own wounded.  That night, they loaded us on stretchers (the 23rd I believe) out to the edge of town, on the way towards Suiho dam about a mile.  We stayed there in a house about 500 yards above the highway.  We were there until we left for the Korean hospital at the dam days later.
            As they carried us in, they immediately pilfered the cheeses in the place…took what they wanted and then left.  We stayed there, the Chinese fed us for a few days.
            The Korean family was extremely friendly.  Every morning the woman, when she finished cooking, would bring in what's known in Japan as a habachi full of coals…a big iron pot.  Cummings was still helping me eat…although I had learned to roll over on my side, hang my face by the bowl and sort of shuffle it into my mouth.
            I'll say this for Cummings.  In his own way he tried to do what he could for me.  When we had been in the first place and had been given cigarettes by this English-speaking Chinese, Cummings didn't take his half of the cigarettes.  He was making me smoke three quarters of those cigarettes.
            That Korean family was afraid to do much for us, because of the Chinese.  The woman brought us half a gourd of tobacco.  Everybody and their cousins for 10 miles around had to come and take a look at the American oddities.  Many of them had never seen a Caucasian before.  They'd look…the men, only tried to converse with us.  I spoke a few words of Japanese, Cummings a few words more, and we developed an ability to make out.
            Every time the local farmers would come to see us, we'd have this gourd of tobacco, and they'd just help themselves and fill their pouches before they left.  But every time the gourd would be empty, this Korean woman would fill it again.  We were well fixed there.

            In town, before we'd moved up, there was a particular Chinese soldier who started taking an interest in us.  He started to push us around.  I'd reached a don't give a damn attitude.  So I'd cuss him out every time he's start pushing.  Whether he liked my spirit, but he became partial to me.
            He'd sit next to me and try to talk, for hours at a time.  Didn't work.  But it was interesting in view of what would happen later.  A few days later, he came in with eggnog mixture, a bowl of it, and gave it to me.  None for the others, just for me.  Sat there and yakked awhile.  Don't know what he was saying.  He spoke Chinese, I English, nobody understood the other…and I had the eggnog.  One of his cute little tricks---he liked to tweak our noses.  You know how our big beaks fascinate the Orientals.  They just LOVE to pull American noses. 
            This woman, in whose house we lived, wasn't friendly the first two days.  She kept yelling at us in Korean for what I figured was stealing her silverware---the stuff taken by the Chinese who brought us there.
            Then I guess she looked us over, saw there wasn't a man of us in the room who could stand up…and the stuff taken had all been in the top drawers of a big Korean chest.  After that, she did everything she could for us.
            It was obvious that the Chinese and Koreans didn't like each other and weren't getting along at all.  The Koreans were afraid of the Koreans, the Chinese looked down on the people to the south.  Relations got worse the longer the Chinese stayed in Korea.
            We stayed there, had our wounds dressed a few times and, roughly on the first of December, a week after we got there, they loaded us one night on stretchers and started loading us on a train that had stopped out there on the tracks.  After they started to carry us down to the train, a runner came up with orders.  We found out later they ordered us turned over to the Koreans.   We weren't to go to China.  I figured the Chinese were doing so well, the pressure was off up here in the north and they didn't have to move us out of Korea.  So…they took us right back into the house we'd come out of, re-installed us.
            Next morning, breakfast was brought by Korean Army personnel.  Then A Korean doctor came and looked in on us.  Along with him came a Korean nurse…
very attractive for a Korean girl.  She had been taken north when Seoul was occupied.  She formerly worked with American doctors at Children's Hospital in Seoul.  She spoke darned good English and did everything she could for us---got some aspirin for Sgt. Cummings.
            Cummings, by the way, fancied himself a singer and Contreras would egg him on.  Cummings would sing "The Sheik of Araby" and Contreras would add "with no pants on" at the end of each line.  In a position like that, anything is hilarious.  So we got quite a kick out of it.
            The nurse talked to us regularly, made arrangements for us to get padded uniforms.  She sent in a Korean barber…for our first haircut and shave since we were captured…and the last one for some time to come.
            Those padded uniforms were made for the Korean Army---a lot smaller than our size---but they were better than the rags we'd been wearing.  We stayed there until about the 15th of the month.  Just sitting…the usual group of sightseers arriving, looking, and helping themselves to our tobacco.
            But the food was different.  The Chinese, although they only fed you twice a day gave you all you could eat.  Sorghum seed furnished a main staple of our diet.  You get tired of it fast…it's cooked like rice.  We got a little rice, too.  We got one type of soup or another.  Once we had a flour sort of fried pancake, once.  Meat in the soup sometimes.
            But with the Koreans, it was one bowl of rice, one bowl of soup to a meal and if you wanted more, that was tough.  Only thing they'd do---if there was a Chinese around at mealtime, HE'd get on the Koreans and get us service.  But we didn't corner a Chinese around mealtime very often.
            This Korean nurse who spoke English heard our one-bowl complaint.  If you were healthy, that would have been enough, I guess.  But we were all run down and our appetites were about three times normal.  We just burned up the food.  All of us had lost tremendously in weight because of the wounds and the strange food.
            About the middle of December, they loaded us on stretchers and hand
carried us to the town at the base of Suiho dam…about a mile from it.  It's
an impressive dam…we used to sit in town and see it.  However, I wasn't to get a look at it for many months.
            The road was filled bumper to bumper with trucks…our planes flew overhead, but not a bomb came down.  About two in the morning, we reached a big concrete and brick building they were using as a receiving station.  I found out later, they had just established it as a hospital receiving area.  We were taken in there.
            First thing happened, of course---everybody in the place had to come out and take a look at us.  Took them damned near an hour to quiet THAT down.  Finally a Korean officer came up to me and asked "Do you have a pistol?"
            I told him no…but he felt around in my sleeping bag.  He was happy when he found none…and gave me a cigarette and smiled.  We laid around there until they had handled all the Korean patients they had.  They moved us off our stretchers onto the concrete floor---we were all separated.  Cummings was 15 feet away, Contreras about 25 feet across the room. I decided I'd get some sleep and then I looked up at a fellow sitting on a bench by the wall.
            In perfect English, he said, "When did YOU come in?"
            He was a Korean soldier.  We talked a little.  He wasn't particularly friendly.  Wanted to stay aloof, so we left each other alone.
            Next morning, we saw a Korean major who didn't seem to have any particular love for us.  But he didn't seem to have anything to do with us.  They fed everybody in the room…except the three of us.  Then, half an hour later, this Korean major said,"I suppose you want something to eat."
            I said "yes."  He stormed off and soon they produced a bowl of food with some soup poured over it for each of us.  When I asked the nurses for some water, they got that for us.  They seemed to be rather decent about the whole thing.  They had both commissioned and non-commissioned nurses there.
            We ate the meal, they processed all the Koreans, and about eleven, they
started inquiring about our names, and so on.  They made out medical records…I
watched the forms.  The girl who filled them out said she had been an English
student in the Kim II Sung Institute in Pyongyang before the war.  She didn't SPEAK much English, but she knew enough so she could write my name down.
            They moved us across the street into the main hospital.  I found out later it was number one hospital in Korea then, and was to remain in that status for a long time.  It had been built by the Japanese for their army men who had protected the dam.  It was small, but, when it was built, had been a pretty fair hospital.  It wasn't broken down into wards, but rooms.
            Contreras, Cummings, and I were installed in one room.  Oh yes, while we were having our records taken, a man in what would seem to be a stiffish business suit to us came over to me, sat down and said, solemnly, "Do you speak Chinese?"  I said no, "Do you speak German?"  I said no.  Did I speak Korean?  No.  Half a dozen…French…Japanese.  I kept saying no.  Then, after he'd run through these languages, none of which I spoke, he said "Well I'm sorry, I can't converse with you at this time---I'm only just now learning English"…and away he went.
            We were first bandaged in a room down the hall.  I was first, because, with somebody supporting me under each arm, I could walk.  Contreras and Cummings still couldn't manage even that.  I still had no shoes, just GI socks.
            There was a homely little, plump Korean nurse.  She was filling a hypodermic needle.  When I walked in, she smiled.  It was a warm, friendly greeting.  Nothing about it.  Just flat being kind.  It was one of the most welcome things that ever happened to me.  I'd been over there with all this inquisitive business and this anti-American, anti-everything but Russian, nobody agreeable although reasonable…and then this girl gave me that smile, set me at ease, put down her hypodermic needle, got me up on this wheeled table, laid me down, put a support under my head.  She went back to the needle.  Never said a word.  Later I found out her name was San Ok Su---we nicknamed her "Liver Lips."  She had a very wide set of lips…but a wonderful girl.
            The other two were brought over---one in the doorway, one out in the hall.
There was central heating for all the main buildings in the town---the
Japanese had put that in---for their garrison.  It was pretty well built, but
the Koreans had, since the last war, just about torn the system apart.

            They have a quality of getting something decent and destroying it in no time.
            An English-speaking doctor, a captain in the North Korean Army, with the major who was hospital commander, examined me.  Liver Lips stood by during the exam, did the actual dressing of my wound after the examination.  She was very competent working with patients.
            These people had few supplies.  Most of the bandages were bits of cotton cloth they'd cut into long strips.  We were to help them pull down the curtains and cut them up in the not far-distant future.  Most of the medicine they did have was Russian.  Later on, they were re-supplied by the Chinese with brand-new American medicine.
            They took care of Cummings, Contreras, and moved the three of us upstairs and installed us in a room.  The young captain-doctor came up again, talked to us.  Seemed very capable, trained in Japan during World War II.  He was a reasonably loyal North Korean, but I don't think his political inclinations were too strong.  He just accepted a situation and was living in it.  He was a likeable fellow.  I was later to spend time with him, talking over English names of parts of the anatomy, helping with his English.
            Shortly after that, they installed a guard on us in the room, which we would have 24 hours a day for many, many moons.  I stayed in that hospital from December until July, 1951.  We didn't lose our guards until March, 1951.
            The guards were to prove the most interesting part of life there---but sometimes most irritating.  We dubbed all of them with names.
            In this room, there was a young sergeant, an equivalent to our stateside nurse's aides in World War II.  She came in…a sort of overseer of a section of bedpan toters and sweeper-uppers.  She didn't like us.  Made it obvious.
            When we went in, the window had been opened---they'd been airing it out, empty.  It had really been a single room for a single bed…but they had six palettes in there before they finished.
            It had been a fairly warm day but it started to cool off.  I asked her
to close the window.  That did it:  that was the wrong thing to do.

She didn't like it---so that window was going to stay open then.  If we shouted out  something we wanted, the opposite course was the one she was sure to take.
            That went on for some time.  The window was quite a method of torment.  She'd come by in the morning, throw that window open with 30 below zero outside.  I still had this American sleeping bag…it had holes in it…and was darned cold.  The room was steam-heated, fortunately.
            But the halls were cold, all the outside doors left open all the time.  That meant the halls were outside temperature.  What with nurses going in and out, the door to our room was open a lot of the time.  But, opening that window turned it into an icebox.
            This business of her coming in and opening this window went on for three or four days.  After an hour or so, we could get one of the other little nurse's aides to shut it.  Incidentally, in North Korea, when you call for a nurse, they add the word "comrade" to it.  They add comrade to every title in North Korea.  Word sounds like "dung-moo."
            Most of the little nurses were reasonable.  Finally, one day the battleaxe came in, threw the window open.  It finally dawned on me what was going on.  She got the window open, I said in Japanese "Best thing you could have done."  That got her all mad.  Good and mad.  She stepped on my foot, I pulled it back.  She moved over, then and STOOD on my feet.  So I pulled them back again.  Then she kicked me.  Good and mad.  I pulled both legs back as far as I could and let her have it.  Threw her clear against the wall.
            She stood there and looked at me with a shocked look on her face.  Then she turned around and walked out of the room.  We weren't to see her again for a long time.  She'd come to the door of the room, peer in, nothing.  Next time we DID see her, she was going to bat for us, trying to help us out.
            The guards installed in this room---six of us and a small table and chair in the corner which the guard used.  One of the first guards we got---don't know what the deal was---but he got on guard duty and decided he had better clean his rifle.  He pulled the bolt out of his rifle, took it apart, and started to clean it.  But he'd forgotten something.  I think he missed the class on putting the rifle back together again.

            I'd messed around with their weapons a lot before I was captured and knew them pretty  well.  So, here he was, fiddling around with the bolt trying to get it back together.  He couldn't figure it out.  Messed around.  Suddenly he realized that we were watching him…so he turned his back to us, facing the corner, still working at it.
            This went on for almost half an hour.  I called his attention in sign language and indicated I'd be glad to put it back together for him.  That scared him half to death.   He was a young kid, about 16 years old.  He stuck his bolt in his pocket, put the rifle in the corner.
            When his relief came, he held the rifle down where the bolt should have been and quick, sneaked out of the room.  (END REEL 7)
            We didn't see that kid much after that.  He left for somewhere.
            Then there was the guard who was odd in build:  normal for a Korean in height but extremely thick and heavily set.  Thick chest, thick neck.  He spoke some English and lived somewhere around Seoul.
            He used to talk to us while on guard duty.  He'd do stuff for us---always cautioning us not to tell anybody about it.  He'd get us tobacco.  Once, he brought us each an apple.
            He pulled another deal that kept happening:  he'd flop down on one of the empty palettes on the floor and go to sleep.  Just before he'd doze off he'd tell us not to say anything about this.
            "No speak" he'd say.  "No speak."
            After half-a-dozen days, they'd gotten in another American over at the receiving station---a Sgt. Frederick W. Worrall of Savannah, Ga.  They decided to move us into a smaller room.  This happened the day that our nurse-sergeant had gotten my kick.  In fact, she had been giving the orders to move us when I kicked her.  She stayed at a respectful distance and supervised the actual move.  That was the last we'd see of her for about two days.  After that, doorway appearances, followed by the clean-up squad.  That combination of aloofness and helpfulness was something I never did figure out.

            Sgt. Worrall arrived.  He had been captured with the 25th Division in November when the Chinese had hit us.  He had been captured in one piece, had been in a building, with other prisoners, that one of our F-80's had strafed.  Two had been killed.  Worrall caught 50-caliber slug.  It had gone down underneath the house, where they heat the place, had ricocheted, and the armor-piercing core had lodged in his hip.  The Chinese had operated on him in the field, had removed the bullet and sent him on.  By the time he got to us, his wound was still pretty well open.  He came in a few days before Christmas.
            He was a pretty whipped boy---isolated with only Chinese speaking people for a month.  But he snapped out of it in no time and joined the rest of us.  The sergeant was a fine boy.  He'd gone from Pfc. to Sfc.
            Just about then a guard, an older man who said he was 33 or 34, came on duty.  These were older conscripts who were in the area being trained---and pulling guard duty on us.  This fellow explained in Japanese and sign language that we'd be living with Koreans and we'd have to learn some Korean.
            The first thing he taught us was "tobacco, please."  Next "thank you" in Korean.  That was lesson one.  Next time he came on duty, he said he didn't smoke.  He had his hands behind his back, indicated that he wanted us to do something.  Finally, in desperation, he showed us a handful of tobacco, then quickly stuck it behind his back again.  When we said "tobacco please" in Korean, he handed each of us the tobacco…but he wouldn't let go until we said "thank you" in Korean.  We went all along the line that way.
            Poor guy---that night he went to sleep on guard a little early.  The sergeant of the guard caught him, they took him out, and we never say "tobacco please---thank you" again.  The silly thing was that, after a few days, they realized we were no great problem and the night guard always slept on duty.
            The nurses used to come in, catch them asleep, steal their rifles.  We had fun watching them.  The nurses would gesture to us to be quiet, not give away the gag, tiptoe out with the guard's rifle.  The sergeant of the guard would then come, wake up our man, and give him a dressing down asking "Where's your rifle?, Lost it?, Where is it?"

            Life there wasn't devoid of humor---at times anyway.  We needed it---not much went on.  It took quite a time to exhaust all possible subjects of conversation---but we were to do that, too, before long.
            The day before Christmas, we got two negroes in to bring our group to six.  They were Cpl. William Mansfield, Detroit, Michigan, and Pfc. Frederick A. Saunders, Buffalo, New York.  Saunders is now dead, the rest are alive.
            I'll just run through the whole bunch in that room now:
            There was myself, lst. Lt. Roy M. Jones.
            Sfc. Gerald Kenneth Cummings, out of my battalion, Charlie Company.
            Sfc. Frederick W. Worrall, Savannah, Georgia, 25th Inf.
            Cpl. Ernest Contreras, Denver, Colorado, one of the released prisoners, with A Company, Fifth Cav. Rgt.
            Cpl. William Mansfield, Detroit, Michigan: lst Bn. 24th Inf. Regt., 25th Div., a bazooka gunner,  His ammunition bearer was the other boy.
            Pfc. Frederick A. Saunders, deceased…Buffalo, New York.
            Cpl. Mansfield was extremely intelligent, raised in industrial Detroit, after being born on a small plot of ground in Alabama.  He had done a lot to raise himself.  Hard-working and industrious---even though he freely admitted a background of some hell raising as a young boy.  But no more.  He liked classical music, subdued clothes.
            The other was Pfc. Saunders, a slow-thinking boy…had his 19th birthday while with us.  He enlisted in the army after some mix-up in his personal affairs.  He'd heard something about Korea, vaguely and bam, there he was IN Korea.  There he was---very young, very immature.
            Nothing happened at Christmas that was different.  Just conversation about did Koreans know about Christmas, what were our families doing at home.
            We had a new guard, a singer…or at least he liked to.  For some reason or
other, he was always assigned to guard duty at night.  He sang Korean songs
which are not pleasant to listen to unless you happen to be a Korean.  He sang
one song that, in South Korea, had been a love ballad about a boy and girl
skipping over the hills.  In North Korea, the music was the same but the words
had been shifted around to make it a political song.  That was typical---plenty typical.
The biggest share of North Korean military songs are Russian.  Sound much different.  They sound very, very western.
            This singing guard sang all night long and got to be a mighty big pain.  He had another cute habit…leave the door open for a long time.  Used to hang his head out the door and yak at the nurses all night.  I suppose you can't blame him for that.  (I found out later that there was a North Korean law against making love during the war.  The young men and women were supposed to devote their thoughts and efforts to the war.  When it was over, then they could make love again.  They didn't obey THAT law too well.)
            We had a good chance to watch Koreans---day after day.  Each day, they considered more as just patients.  We were lucky on treatment.  The hospital was commanded by a 2-star colonel---like our lieutenant colonel.  He was a fine, ethical doctor.  Educated in Japan and Germany, spoke some English.  He could read English perfectly with a fine British accent.  And he understood what he read.  But it had been years since he had the opportunity to practice it.
            I was convinced that he wasn't a communist himself, although I saw his home later and he was reading Das Kapital in German.  He showed me that book.  I don't think he was more than a fine doctor who tried to get treatment to the Korean people and the place he was needed most at that time was the North Korean Army and that's where he was.
            He had given orders that we were to be treated the same as any other patients in the hospital.  The nurses, of course, could cross that up a little…serve our food last, or what was left over and cold.  But we had enough of it to eat.
            As a general rule, though, the nurses made a half-hearted attempt to harass us.  As time went on and they got to know we weren't the child-eating, raping tools of the warmongers, that we were reasonable people, we became rather popular with the nurses.  Before we left, I don't think there was a staff member of that hospital who wouldn't have done anything in the world for us.
            I did some embroidery work to pass the time.  I tried to get threads in colors and they'd run themselves to a frazzle trying to scrounge up some thread the color I wanted.  In high school, I'd tried to embroider names on a shirt…I had a needle, cloth, thread and started to pass the time with embroidery.
There was one little nurse---we called her Burp Gun---who didn't have any love for us.  She was a short, fat Korean girl.  She'd step into the room, held her hands as though she had a burp gun, and go "Brrruuuppppp" as she swung around the room.  We got a kick out of her.  But she had no love at all for us.
            There was a big girl, bigger than the average American girl…a good 5 ft. 7, taller than most Korean men.  Her hair reddish-brown and not black.  She avoided us very definitely.
            There was a young, second-lieutenant nurse who seemed to divide her time between the overall training and supervision.  She had all the qualities of a young second lieutenant.  She was attractive for a Korean girl.  The average Korean girl is homely---to our western eyes.  (They sure have a flock of 'em getting married and having children so they must be attractive to each other.)  But not to most Americans.
            But the girls they trained for nurses seemed different.  They were from urban areas, had better education.  The percentage of attractive girls among them was surprising.  Some were downright beautiful…some FEW were.
            This young lieutenant was very prim and proper and tried to make everybody else that way.  Always making inspections.  The officer of the day had to carry a pistol.
            Well, these girls had a horse pistol, big, clumsy thing.  Used it on officer of the day.  I swear the thing was a foot long.  They get a Sam Browne belt strapped on…little short girls with the great big pistol…ridiculous.
            There was one girl who was a sergeant and was promoted to lieutenant.  And if anybody went chicken SHE did.  More about her later.
            New Year's Day the Koreans had a big celebration.  They and the Japanese recognized our calendar New Year's and, since the commies took over, the Chinese are whooping it up on January 1st too.
            Our part of it, as patients, was an elaborate meal from salad, little pieces of veal deep fried---quite a meal for us.  Wouldn't have made a snack in the United States.

            The diet along in here consisted of rice---mainly.  Because this was the main medical installation that we got that instead of corn.  We got a small amount of pork regularly.  But that cracked corn started coming in.  Other prisoners had it as their only item of diet…we had it only as a side dish with the rice and sorghum seed.
            We had a guard we nicknamed Turham Bey---a dead ringer for the actor.  A likeable young fellow, decent to us. He was a very heavy smoker and always made long cigarettes out of shorter ones…stick four of them together.  Really king size.  He'd smoke that gadget all at once.
            But he still got cigarettes for us.  He is to show up later as a patient after the recapture of Seoul.
            Then there was another one who'd come in before dawn and say "Mr. Jones…Mr. Jones…wake up and speak English."  He wanted to practice his school English before he went off duty.  (END REEL 8)
            He always wanted to talk of something he'd seen in English language movies, most of them made during World War II.  He had read a few English books---the one I remember more Koreans had read than any other was "Gone With the Wind."  It was pretty darned dull.  His English was bad.  So much for Mr. Jones---a pain to have around.
            These Orientals who haven't had much education all read aloud…and that's what those guards did most of the time they were on duty and not sleeping---just sitting at that table in our room reading aloud in Korean.
            This room may be interesting---we got to know it for sure.
            It was wide enough for four men across one end, two the other way…about 30 inches…I'd say, 10 feet, by 12 feet.  We had six men and a guard in there.  We slept on bags filled with rice straw.  We wore what we had when we came in.  Worrall, Cummings, Contreras and I had sleeping bags.  The two other boys didn't.  The Koreans had given us a cotton blanket that was extremely thin and wasn't worth much for keeping one warm.  Wouldn't have been bad, with the heat in the building if they'd kept the door and window closed…but they didn't.  These two boys without sleeping bags actually suffered.  Both of them had mild frostbite in their feet before they came.  It was a painful winter for both of them.

The room had one window with an inner and an outer set of panes.  The outer one was covered with blackout paper and was always closed.  There was a single, bare light bulb always burning 24 hours a day…for no daylight ever entered that room.  There were six straw mats on the floor, each mat covered with a coarse, heavy cloth.
            We never left the room, night or day.  Performed all the functions of ordinary life there.
            The most unexpected visitors we had---a group of Russian soldiers---about February 1951.  The Russians must have been transportation personnel of some type.  Eight or ten of them, in Russian Army uniform and looking picturesquely Russian---large mustaches, swarthy complexions.
            They smelled of gasoline, never came again, so I guess they were convoy men.  They seemed jovial, cheerful, insisted on shaking hands with all of us, joking in Russian, of course.  We couldn't understand a word they said.
            Sgt. Fred Worrall had a beard that looked like Lenin's.  All of us had four-month beards, but Worrall's came out a sort of goatee-like affair.  Because of this, the Russian visitors, using a poor interpretation through a Korean who spoke a little English, told us they were certain that the Sergeant was an American-Russian.  He shook his head NO, but they refused to believe him…and showered him with several packs of Russian cigarettes.
            They were strong, not bad in flavor, and welcome to us then.

Then there was a civilian girl---not with the services at all---who had cheek wounds from rocket fragments fired by one of our planes.  She had been indoctrinated as anti-American before that ever had happened.  When this scarred her cheek, her vanity reinforced this hatred of Americans.  She was there at the hospital being treated, apparently her family was politically important to be treated in a military hospital.
            We had a little kid pulling guard duty---not much beyond the age when he was discovering that girls were different from boys.  This little girl came around when he was on guard duty.  When she wasn't there, he was one of the nicest kids you ever saw.  No trouble, tried to help us.
            Then this girl would come around, start agitating for him to kick us and poke us with his rifle.  Nasty little incident happened one night.  He was kicking our boy Saunders, middle of the night.  She had come in and she and he were BOTH kicking.  I finally sat up and started raising hell with them.  They quit kicking him and started kicking me.
            I got mad, the kid got mad and SHE got mad.  I pointed my finger at him and I was giving him the works in English.  But HE understood from my tone what the gist of the thing was.  But he also got the impression that my finger pointing---they never do that---that I meant that I'd shoot him if I had a pistol.
            He kept on kicking.  Other patients woke up and came in from the hall and all started kicking.  There was one patient who refused to come into our room.  You'd see him in the hall, walking up and down.  When our door would open, he'd tear down the hall and peer in.  When everybody was inside kicking that night, he just stood in the doorway and kicked through the doorway at the kid next to it inside.
            The officer of the day was someplace, don't know where.  The sergeant of the guard was sent for by the nurses.  We knew about the orders for our treatment, that the OD was responsible for us.  We could put a guard back in line by calling the OD.  The sergeant came i