"A Line Must Be Drawn"

"By virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the U.S., and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the U.S.," President Eisenhower last week enunciated the U.S.'s first formal code of conduct for prisoners of war. The code resulted from the bitter experience of the Korean war, in which 38% of 7,190 U.S. prisoners of war died of disease, malnutrition or maltreatment,* and in which at least 192 P.W.s were found chargeable with collaborating with the enemy. It was a stern document, founded upon "the qualities which we associate with men of integrity and character," for it summoned U.S. fighting men to defy enemy interrogators, and to deny the enemy the advantages of luring Americans from their allegiance.

"A line of resistance must be drawn somewhere, and initially as far forward as possible," the Defense Department's Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War reported to the President. "The name, rank and service number provisions of the Geneva conventions is accepted as this line of resistance. However, in the face of experience, it is recognized that the P.W. may be subjected to an extreme of coercion beyond his ability to resist. If in his battle with the interrogator he is driven from his first line of resistance, he must be trained for resistance in successive positions. And, to stand on the final line to the end--no disclosure of vital military information, and above all no disloyalty in word or deed to his country, his service or his comrades." President Eisenhower appended his own soldierly footnote: "Every member of the armed forces of the U.S. is expected to measure up . . ."

Codes of Chivalry. The new U.S. code of conduct for prisoners of war (see box) is the kernel of a finding by the Advisory Committee on what happened to U.S. soldiers captured in Korea. For several weeks the committee consulted former P.W.s and their records, sifted through military histories and reports of the P.W.s in Korea seeking answers to the problems from service chiefs, educators, clergymen, doctors and psychiatrists, officials of labor and veterans' organizations. To set the precedents for the new code, the committee researched back to primitive man, who automatically slaughtered all of his prisoners, and it quoted from I Samuel: "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts . . . Go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not." The committee reported the exhortations of Germanicus as his legions poured into the Rhineland: "Slay, and slay on! Do not take prisoners!"

As Christianity brought the Western world concepts of mercy and chivalry, the treatment of prisoners improved. During the Revolution, the Continental army decreed death for American P.W.s who took up arms for the British after their capture; duress or coercion were not accepted as an excuse unless the P.W. could show he had been threatened with death. During the Civil War, 3,170 Union P.W.s who joined their Confederate captors were liable for prosecution and some were put to death; the U.S. also ruled at this time that it was the duty of P.W.s to escape.

Trial by Degradation. In Korea, the committee reported, the 7,190 P.W.s were crowded into 20 squalid camps--if they could survive the death marches to get there. "On one of these marches 700 men were headed north," the committee reported. "Before the camp was reached, 500 men had perished."

Inside most of the camps the P.W.s got a diet of rice, occasionally augmented by foul soup. Men in the "bad" camps lost 50 pounds in a few weeks; hundreds died from dysentery. The committee continued: "By [Communist] design, and because some officers refused to assume leadership responsibility, organization in some of the P.W. camps deteriorated . . . The men scuffled for their food. Hoarders grabbed all the tobacco. Morale decayed to the vanishing point. Each man mistrusted the next. Bullies persecuted the weak and sick. Filth bred disease, and contagion swept the camp." This was often the point where the Communists offered food and better treatment to those of the P.W.s who would become "progressives." "The prisoner might start the hard way--and be punished by restricted rations and other privations," said the committee. "If he began to show the 'proper spirit'--to cooperate with his captors--he was lectured and handed Communist literature. A docile prisoner who read the literature and listened politely to the lectures was graduated to a better class. Finally, he might be sent to 'Peaceful Valley.' In this lenient camp the food was relatively good. Prisoners might even have tobacco . . ."

Trial by Indoctrination. The committee continued: "When plunged into a Communist indoctrination mill, the average American P.W. was under a serious handicap. Enemy political officers forced him to read Marxian literature. He was compelled to participate in debates. He had to tell what he knew about American politics and American history. And many times the Chinese or Korean instructors knew more about these subjects than he did. This brainstorming caught many American prisoners off guard. To most of them it came as a complete surprise, and they were unprepared . . .

"A large number of American P.W.s did not know what the Communist program was all about. Some were confused by it. Self-seekers accepted it as an easy out. A few may have believed the business. They signed peace petitions and peddled Communist literature. It was not an inspiring spectacle . . . Ignorance lay behind much of this trouble. A great many servicemen were teenagers. At home they had thought of politics as dry editorials or uninteresting speeches, dull as ditchwater. They were unprepared to give the commissars an argument . . . The uninformed P.W.s were up against it. They couldn't answer arguments in favor of Communism with arguments in favor of Americanism, because they knew very little about their America."

The committee was gratified that few indeed of the P.W.s became Communist converts, but found that many more of the P.W.s who were not "progressives" nonetheless "went along." The committee concluded that these men weakened because they lacked sufficient knowledge of U.S. democracy. The committee therefore recommended, and President Eisenhower agreed, that U.S. fighting men must henceforth be fully grounded in the principles of U.S. democracy before they go to war, because "the Korean story 'must never be permitted to happen again."

Trial by Interrogation. The committee inquired into cases of Communist torture, into the effect of psychological pressures like the simple denial of food and sleep--perhaps the most effective tongue-looseners of all. The committee found that for the P.W.s of Korea "the ordeal was never easy. But things weren't easy either for the combat troops battling out there in the trenches."

The committee could detect no rigid pattern of Communist interrogation, and was often impressed by the inconsistencies of the Communist enemy. "Sometimes he showed contempt for the man who readily submitted to bullying. The prisoner who stood up to the bluster, threats and blows . . . might be dismissed with a shrug ..." Some of the P.W.s who appeased the Communists by giving them "biographical sketches" later found that the Communists used the documents against them, punishing them for "lying"; many of those who signed confessions were later informed that they were liable for new prosecution as war criminals.

The Safeguard of Character. In the course of its inquiries the committee came across a lot of evidence to confirm what every experienced serviceman and ex-serviceman knows: that pride in one's unit is the cement, whether at base, in the line, or in P.W. camps of Korea. "Many servicemen exhibited pride in themselves and their units," the committee reported, discussing the one encouraging portent of the P.W. camps. "This was particularly pronounced where they had belonged to the same unit for years. They stood by one another . . . If a soldier were sick, his fellow soldiers took care of him. They washed his clothes, bathed him, and pulled him through. These soldiers did not let each other down. Nor could the Korean Reds win much cooperation from them."

The committee thereupon concluded: "War has been defined as a contest of wills. A trained hand holds the weapon. But the will, the character, the spirit of the individual--these control the hand. More than ever, in the war for the minds of men, moral character, will, spirit are important. As a serviceman thinketh, so is he."

*The highest death rate among U.S. prisoners since the Revolutionary War. During the Civil War, 14% of the Union's P.W.s died in Confederate captivity, including 26% of the 49,485 prisoners at Andersonville, Ga. During World War I, 4,120 U.S. soldiers were captured, but only 147 died in the German Kaiser's prison camps. During World War II, the toll was 14,090 out of 129,701 U.S. prisoners --a cruel 10.9%; 10,031 out of 26,943 U.S. Army and Air Force prisoners died in the hands of the Japanese--37%--while only 1,238 out of 96,321 Army and Air Force prisoners died in the European and Mediterranean theaters.

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