The Enemy Is Like This

I WAS A CAPTIVE IN KOREA (253 pp.)--Philip Deane--Norton ($3.50).

A year ago, in the North Korean town of Kaichun, a native woman of 40 politely addressed Philip Deane as "grandfather." Deane, still under 30, felt a little hurt. Then he looked in a mirror and was shocked by what he saw. But by that time he had already been a prisoner of the North Koreans for two years.

I Was a Captive in Korea is probably the most perceptive book that has come out of the war in Korea. It is also the most harrowing, a grim and terrible reminder of the nature of, the foe and the incredible Communist brutality toward the helpless. Yet it is a book curiously devoid of hatred or even resentment. It is the straight, lucid report of a keen observer who seems to have stored the horrors he witnessed and suffered in a cool corner of his punished brain.

Thirst & Beatings. As war correspondent for the London Observer, Author Deane had flown from Athens "to cover this little war." He hitchhiked his way to Taejon in time to see Major General William Dean's green 24th Division chopped to pieces by 15 divisions of North Korean Communists. On his very first day, he helped with the wounded. He saw the army "doctors operate ceaselessly, their hands bare, blood spattered down their fatigues. No rubber gloves, no white smocks here. Stitch this, clip that, sponge, stitch, clip, saw--faster, faster, faster, there are more waiting." At the front, he was wounded by mortar fire and ran a gauntlet of fire back to temporary safety as the Communists overran the U.S. positions. On the morning of July 23, Deane went forward to join the single tank company that covered the U.S. retreat. He never reached it.

The jeep in which he rode came under fire, one man was killed, and Deane and the other G.I.s crawled to the nearest house. Of the seven men already there, two were dead. One after the other, three more were killed as Communist fire poured in. Deane dashed out to get a jeep started, got a bullet in his hand, four in his thigh. When the Communists charged and captured the house, their first act was to shoot the wounded G.I.s who could not stand. Then the survivors were stripped, kicked, beaten and marched off. At each village, they were turned over to the civilians to be beaten further. The heat and thirst became maddening: "Rice paddies are fertilized with human excreta, but we drank, drank deep, and dipped our burning heads in the stinking water. A shaggy, dusty buzzard dropped not six feet away from me and resumed the meal the pilots of the United Nations had interrupted. Under his claws were the remains of an American sergeant. We marched on."

Thus began 33 months of imprisonment for Philip Deane. That he survived is a tribute to his toughness, his refusal to lose hope. There were others as indomitable in the European civilian group, mostly diplomats and missionaries, of which Deane was a member. They were shuttled from camp to camp, death-marched, frozen, starved. Old men and women were ruthlessly liquidated. Mother Superior Beatrice of the Order of St. Paul was shot when she could not go on. She was 77. Salvation Army Commissioner Lord, a heroic figure in Deane's book, wrote her "death certificate" with a pistol at his head: "From heart failure."

Death of a Texan. One Texas lieutenant was executed because the men in his platoon collapsed, but he showed his captors how to die:

" 'Why did you let those five men drop out?' asked the Tiger [the North Korean commandant].

" 'Because, sir, they were dying.'

" 'Why did you not obey my orders and have them carried?'

" 'Because, sir, that meant condemning the carriers to death from exhaustion.'

" 'You knew I had ordered no one should drop out?'

" 'Yes, sir.'

" 'In wartime the penalty for disobedience is death. You disobeyed orders. I will kill you. That is what would happen in the American Army also, is it not?'

" 'In the American Army, sir, there would be a trial.'

"The Tiger turned to the assembled Korean soldiers. 'I have authority to kill him. He has disobeyed orders. What must I do?'

" 'Kill him,' screamed the soldiers, 'kill them all.'

" 'You see,' said the major to Lieutenant Thornton, 'you have had your trial, a People's Trial, People's Justice. Now I will kill you.'

" 'In Texas,' said Thornton, a tone of contempt in his voice, 'we call that lynching, not justice' . . .

" 'Tell him,' said the Tiger, pointing to Thornton, 'he must turn about.'

"Lieutenant Cordus H. Thornton was on parade. His shoulders squared, head up, chin in, arms firmly at his sides, he about-faced as one does during drill. The Tiger took a handkerchief and bound Lieutenant Thornton's eyes. Then with his pistol he shot him in the back of the neck. A tall, blond sergeant jumped forward and caught his officer's body before it touched the ground. Tenderly, as if carrying a child, the sergeant took the lieutenant's body to the ditch."

The "Peace Express." Deane and his companions had little to hope for, but a few of them never gave up entirely. They were repeatedly "brainwashed" and proselytized by Communist indoctrinators who were no match in dialectical debate for their starved captives. They were interrogated endlessly. Deane was often offered his freedom in return for broadcasting to the world about U.S. "atrocities." He as often refused. Now and then their treatment would briefly improve, and they even had a party or two with special rations provided by their jailers. But there were other times when grown men, Deane among them, fought for a cabbage leaf on the floor.

Then, last spring, Deane's group was brought to Pyongyang, where they were waited on hand and foot by Communist generals. The food was good and plentiful, they got new clothes, they even had a barber assigned to them. It was April when the good news came and seven of them were given their freedom, demanded by Britain and approved by the Soviet Union. At the Korea-Chinese frontier, Deane managed to smuggle out the notes for the book he finished two months later. In Mukden, they boarded "a beautiful blue train" decorated with Picasso doves --the "Peace Express." They were headed for Moscow, then home.

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