Turncoats' Odyssey

Between Tsinan, an industrial city in the Chinese province of Shantung, and the Mississippi valley of the U.S.A. lie 8,000 miles, an ocean, half a continent--and an ideological infinity. One dark, rainswept night last week, two ex-G.I.s of the Korean war completed the long journey between those points. For Arlie Howard Pate, 25, the trip ended near Carbondale, Ill.; for Aaron P. Wilson, 24, it was over at Urania, La.

Latest to come home of the 23 American turncoats who went over to the Communists at Panmunjom in 1953,* they returned to the free world when they walked across the international line into Hong Kong on Dec. 2. They were penniless, homesick and sullen and they wanted only to be home for Christmas. The U.S. State Department provided the means: non-interest-bearing loans to cover their $636 airline tickets to the U.S.

Poverty & Ignorance. In their backgrounds there is much that Arlie Pate and Aaron Wilson share. Both come from Godfearing, churchgoing, poverty-ridden families. Pate's parents own a farm in the poor clay hills of southern Illinois; Wilson's live in a rickety three-room house in a company-owned lumber town in north-central Louisiana. Both youths quit school early--Pate in the ninth grade, Wilson in the eighth. They were in the Army at 17, fighting in Korea as infantrymen in the U.S. 7th Division the following year. Both were captured near Chosin Reservoir in December 1950. After that came prison camp, Panmunjom and life under Communism.

Aside from their backgrounds, Pate and Wilson have little else in common. After reaching Hong Kong, Pate's confidence expanded with each passing hour, his glibness grew apace, he fended deftly with reporters and mugged happily for cameramen from China to Carbondale. In Arlie Pate's phosphorescent wake, Aaron Wilson, mouse-timid, dull-eyed, tongue-tied, went almost unnoticed.

Curiosity & Cho. To the inevitable questions Arlie had ready answers--for both of them. Why had he gone over to the Communists? "Curiosity. I wanted to take a look at China. I was just an adventuristic young kid." Why, after three years, had he changed his mind? His family needed him, he was homesick. And there were other reasons: while working in a Chinese People's Republic paper plant at Tsinan, he had met Cho, a coworker, and they enjoyed each other--until Cho uncommunistically began to hint of marriage. "If I had married her," said Arlie. "I might not have been able to get home." Then there were those headaches. Said Arlie: "Thinking all the time gives a man headaches."

In Carbondale the reaction to Arlie's return was mixed. Some were prepared to forgive and forget. His ex-boss at an East St. Louis auto-parts company said he could have his old delivery boy's job back if he wanted it. But others were angered by Arlie's basking in the spotlight. "If he comes in here," said a Carbondale bartender, "he might just get it. This is still rough country."

Cake & a Helping Hand. Three hours after Pate's homecoming, Aaron Wilson reached Urania. Housewives there had baked pies and cakes and brought them to the Wilson home. "I'm too shook up to lift a pot or pan," said Aaron's mother, "and those good folks have just took over." "All I ask," said his father, Henry Wilson, "is that they leave him be."

And Urania, which gave Aaron a big sendoff when he enlisted in the Army in 1949, seemed ready now to leave him be.

*Eight of the 23 have now returned to the U.S., one died in China, 14 presumably are still there.

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