Eleven Come Home

The eleven, wearing tieless cotton shirts, T shirts and odd trousers that had the shapeless look of Red China tailoring, stood bunched without regard to rank at the barbed-wire barrier. Some carried pasteboard Red Cross cartons; some had a few extra odds and ends of clothing tied into bundles. All seemed tense and expectant as the Hong Kong police superintendent called out their names: "Colonel Arnold . . . Major Baumer . . . Captain Vaadi . . ."

Responding one by one, the eleven flyers formally crossed the barrier out of Red China and were greeted by a trim-looking U.S. air attache, "in the name of the U.S. Government, the American people and the U.S. Air Force." Lieut. Colonel John Knox Arnold, 41, leader of the eleven flyers, stuck out his hand and smiled: "We're sure glad to see you." While the attache shook hands with his men, Colonel Arnold looked back at the jagged mountains of China, then turned away with finality: "Well." he said, "I don't want to look any more." Thus did Red China last week release the eleven U.S. flyers they had imprisoned for 2 1/2 years in direct contravention of the terms of the Korean armistice.

"A Long Way to Go." After Cokes and U.S. cigarettes at the customs house, the eleven were driven to the Hong Kong Jockey Club, where they shaved, sang in their showers and rested joyously on real beds ("You mean you don't have boards under them?").

"I want to talk and talk and talk," said Colonel Arnold happily to U.S. officials, doctors and reporters. Captain Elmer Llewellyn of Missoula, Mont, had himself a time drinking beer from a glass in one hand, milk from a glass in the other. Major William Baumer of Lewisburg, Pa., on crutches and with injured hands, told how he had spent months of solitary confinement conceiving and memorizing poems, learning the principles of musical composition. Just before lunch, Colonel Arnold said he had composed a lesser bit of doggerel on the way down from Peking, and to the tune of Tipperary, the flyers sang it: It's a long way to Usashima* It's a long way to go It's a long way to Usashima To the sweetest land I know.

Then came the shouted chorus: "To hell with People's China!" Payday. High spot of the first day of freedom was lunch, the first meal. The Jockey Club served sizzling steaks with eggs on top. Sergeant Howard Brown of St. Paul, Minn, said grace, and the U.S.A.F. paymaster was on hand to give each man his share of $70,000 in back pay, $150 each in greenbacks and the rest in checks, "every cent the U.S. owes you up to day before yesterday." Afterward, it was time for the flyers to start telling their story.

"We were on a leaflet mission against six targets in Korea --on Jan. 12, 1953 . . ."Colonel Arnold began by way of denying Red China's charge that the U.S. flyers were spies. "We were picked up by lights over the third target . . . We were attacked and hit by two MIGs shortly after . . . and we knew we had to abandon the aircraft. When we were first captured, we were treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention covering prisoners of war. Not until Jan. 16 did they come out with that crappy story of our being down in China illegally." Colonel Arnold and his men were taken into Red China. Not until "20 minutes past 3 o'clock on the tenth of October 1954"--21 months after their capture--were they formally charged with espionage. Did the Peking government deserve any credit for releasing them? Replied Colonel Arnold: "Not a goddam bit." "I Got It in the Face." Flying on to Tachikawa Air Base in Japan, the eleven flyers prepared to tell the rest of their story. Colonel Arnold seemed no longer forceful, no longer jubilant; his mouth worked and often no speech emerged. "I was subjected to types of persuasion that civilized people don't believe in ... They wanted any information I might have. I have to tell you--I'm not proud of it, but I have to tell you--they got what I had." An Air Force major quietly interceded, told Colonel Arnold that he need not answer any more questions. But Colonel Arnold, sobbing, continued: he had been moved from one underground cell to another, always in irons; he was interrogated "and no matter what answer I gave, I got it in the face. One time the guards took the lid off the pail in my cell, dipped sticks and beat me with them. They took smaller sticks and used them as whips. They had a one-piece gadget that fits around the wrist. When the cuffs are closed, they cut off the circulation. I had them on several times--once for 96 hours. During interrogations the soldiers would walk behind me and milk my fingers like a cow. It was very painful." Then sometimes they would bind my feet tight as if I had a sprained ankle and make me stand that way for days. One time I stood six days--30 hours of it with bandages on--and at the end of it, all I remember was that I was just screaming. I had periods of complete irrationality. I would go completely out of my head." Fitfully and still sobbing, the colonel concluded: "I had to leave a lot out . . . There are some things you don't want to talk about." "Clap for That Man." Next, Major Baumer took up the story. The Chinese Communists, he said, put him into solitary confinement for 14 months in an 8-by-5-ft. cell; then they decided to take away his crutches, leaving him to crawl through the long months as he could.

"Sometimes,They would even take away my reading material--their own political propaganda . . ." Colonel Arnold interrupted to comment about Major Baumer: "You ought to clap for that man." Colonel Arnold pointed out that the Communist confinements and torturings went on "right down to the 31st of July." While their sickening story was clattering into the chancelleries and capitals of the world, warning that the nature of Chinese Communism had not changed, the eleven put the cold war behind them and happily headed for home. "We figured out a long time before we got here," said Colonel Arnold, "that we hadn't been forgotten ..." That was correct.

*A form of G.I. slang for the U.S.

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