The Battle of Compound 62

The Battle of Compound 62 Compound 62 is one of the toughest in the prison camp on Korea's Koje Island. Communist leaders among the 5,900 civilian internees hold mass demonstrations, sing Communist songs, refuse to work, and intimidate the other prisoners with beatings and occasional murders.

Last week the island's commander, Colonel Maurice J. Fitzgerald, ordered the combat-famed U.S. 27th (Wolfhound) Regiment, which now guards Koje, to screen Compound 62 and give the non-Communists a chance to get out. At 5:30 a.m., a battalion of Wolfhounds under Major John J. Klein of Houston, Texas, moved in hoping to catch the prisoners asleep. But prisoner sentinels gave the alarm.

"They came storming out of the buildings in groups of three with their arms locked," Major Klein reported later. "When they got outside they locked arms with other groups until they were a solid line. You pulled one and you pulled 5,000. They threw rocks and they shouted, 'Kill the Americans, they are your enemy!'?:

The Wolfhounds had orders not to fire unless attacked. But the Communists flooded toward them, grabbed at the nearest soldiers and dragged them struggling into the Red ranks. Other U.S. soldiers went to the rescue with bayoneted rifles and carbines. Suddenly, from the rear of the prisoners, a homemade grenade came hurtling at the Americans. The mass of prisoners, urged on by group leaders charged the soldiers. Singing and shout ing, they swung clubs, tent poles, barbed wire flails and iron pipes.

The Wolfhounds at first replied with non-fragmenting grenades, but the explosions did not stop the prisoners. Said Major Klein, "Nothing else could stop them so we fired." The mob backed up. On the ground they left 75 dead or dying, another 139 wounded. One U.S. soldier was killed, 39 more wounded. The Battle of Compound 62 was as deadly as any fought on Korea's battlefront last week.

Tokyo sent Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd, U.S. Eighth Army Deputy Chief of Staff, and a board of seven officers to investigate the riots. At Panmunjom, Red truce negotiator Colonel Tsai Chengwen sneered, "The massacre fully testifies to the brutal inhumanity with which your side treats our personnel." U.N. officers were convinced that the riots testified to something else: a deliberate Communist attempt to discredit the U.N. demand for voluntary repatriation of prisoners.

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