with. Medicines were almost nonexistent. The food continued below the calorie content necessary to keep an average American's flesh and spirit together.
One American doctor in the camp told Schlichter the 400 to 600 grams of boiled cracked corn and millet— with occasional dabs of soya beans and Chinese cabbage—issued each day could not contain more than 1,600 calories, and sometimes the content was only 1,200.
While under this diet extreme weight loss was inevitable, the worst was the diet's lack of mineral and vitamin content. In East Asia soya is almost the sole source of protein for the poor. But the Americans did not understand how to cook the beans; usually half cooked, these were often indigestible, and their sharp edges tortured men already suffering from starvation-induced diarrhea. Many men refused to touch the soya—cattle fodder in the States—and ate the starches alone. Few of these men lived.
The Geneva Conventions, revised after Western experience in Japanese POW camps in World War II, state:
But to expect an Asian nation accustomed to famine to feed its prisoners of war better than its own half- starved peasantry was and remains wishful thinking on Americans' part.
The evidence does not suggest that the Chinese deliberately tried to starve the POW's with the end of extermination in mind, in the footsteps of the Nazis. When in late winter the death rate climbed alarmingly, to twenty-eight men each day, the Chinese commandant of Camp 5 showed signs of concern; he ordered the American doctors in the camp to stop the deaths, at once. More medicines were made available—but the commandant angrily resisted the Americans' demands for more food.
He admitted the POW's were fed worse than the guards—but they were receiving the same diet that class enemies of the Chinese state received, who not only had to undergo two or more years of reorientation on such rations, but hard labor, too. It was only with the coming of spring and summer, when most of the deaths had already occurred, that the Chinese improved the POW's diet. It was again improved, late in the war, for obvious reasons of world opinion. The Chinese did not wish to repatriate tottering skeletons.
And one fact that stands out starkly among the pieces of evidence is that while 50 percent of the American POW's died, and a percentage of British that caused grave concern later to her Majesty's Government, few South Koreans experienced much difficulty, and not one Turkish prisoner of war died.
Chemistry and culture killed the Americans.
The disciplines, attitudes, and organization that Americans brought into captivity killed many of them.
Only an extremely cohesive group, with tight leadership and great spiritual strengths, coupled with inner toughness and concern for one another, could have survived the shocks visited upon their minds and bodies.
The British sergeants stood like rocks, and did well. The British other ranks, largely National Servicemen drafted from the factory towns, with little sense of purpose or cohesion, did less well.
But it was the Turks who did best of all.
The Turks were a completely homogeneous group, with common back-ground and common culture, and with a chain of command that was never broken.
They remained united against the enemy, and they survived.
The Turks did not come from an admirable society. Only a few decades back in time, Turks were slaving in Egypt, and conducting vast pogroms in Armenia. In the last century Turks still blew living men from the mouths of cannon for minor crimes and punished more serious ones by impalement—a peculiarly horrible form of execution, in which a man was seated on a sharpened tapered stake, toes off the ground, and his body weight, and movements, slowly drove him downward.
There had never been anything approaching freedom, or democracy, in Turkey. Elections have been held, but the losers normally wind up in jail.
Turkey had journeyed partway into the twentieth century only under the iron fist of Kemal Ataturk and his successors, who were just as determined as the Chinese Communists to destroy an ancient, backward, Oriental way of life.
Ataturk was determined to Westernize his people by force. He broke the power of the Moslem clergy, revised education, changed the traditional head-gear and alphabet.
But in the middle of the century the Turkish soldier who served his country's colors was still a fanatically devout custom-ridden peasant, close to the soil and survival, accustomed to the fiercest discipline all his life, from father, state, and army—but with a barbarian's pride in himself and his people.
He would take baths only with his clothes on in the prison camps, or allow a nonbeliever friend such as Schlichter to view his Koran only through the seven veils, and he went white with outrage if venereal disease were even discussed. But he was completely aware of what he was—he was a Turk, and a Turk was unquestionably the finest of all possible things to be, even as there was no God but Allah. These matters he felt no need to prove or argue; he had imbibed them with his mother's milk, and his mind had not been cluttered with other notions since.
He knew Russians were Communists, and he knew Russians were enemies, always had been, always would be. He hated Russians; he hated Communists. The matter was not arguable.
He was close to the soil, and knew hardship; he ate what Allah or the dogs of Communist Chinese provided, without complaint. He also knew enough to eat any scrap of greenery he could place his hands on, and in the camps many better-educated Americans watched him eat weeds in amazement. Later, many of them followed suit.
He was barbarian-proud of his manhood and his fighting ability. He knew, dimly, that his ancestors had been the backbone of Near Eastern armies since the Empire of Roum and that their courage with cold steel had rarely been equaled. He knew, dimly, that firepower had vanquished his vaunted empire and that economically he was backward, but this had not lessened his faith in Turks or Turkdom. What schools he had attended used no economic arguments in teaching the greatness of Turks.
Even after thirty years of state anticlericalism, his faith in his God was childlike, ignorant, and complete.
He had enlisted for a minimum of six years, and he could not hope to become a sergeant until after that first six years. He had served long with the men about him in these camps, and he expected to serve beside these same men again, if Allah willed him to survive. He could not understand these Americans who often acted like strangers to one another, and as if they would never see one another again.
His senior enlisted man took command in the prison camp, because he was senior. Neither he nor the British N.C.O.'s held an election, as did the Americans—who elected in Camp Five a corporal masquerading as a sergeant who was popular with the Chinese guards.
His senior enlisted man ran a detail roster daily. There was never any question of who would chop the wood, haul the water, or care for the sick—while American N.C.O.'s and doctors and chaplains often begged men to feed the sick, wash the unconscious, or go outside for firewood—and were told, 'Go to hell, you're no better than I am!'
When his senior enlisted man was threatened by the guards for defiance, it did them no good to remove him. The second, the third, even the hundredth senior man took over, and nothing changed.
When one Turk was too friendly with the Chinese, court was held, and Sergeant Schlichter was invited to observe. The senior N.C.O. sat as judge, and trial was held, with argument and testimony. When one Turk was found guilty of amiability toward the enemy, he was severely beaten. His defense counsel was beaten, too, for daring to extol such a traitor.
When Schlichter asked, 'What happens if he does this again?' he was told,
'Then we shall kill him.'
It was a rigid society, far from admirable by Western standards. Disturbingly, it had the best record of any group in Communist captivity.
Americans should remember that while barbarians may be ignorant they are not always stupid.
The sociologists, soldiers, and doctors will argue long why Americans died in Communist prisons, why some broke, and why others lived. The evidence has been fed into hearts, not computers, and the answers are unclear.
In Prisoner of War Camp 5, at Pyoktong, the Chinese tried to reeducate their captives. The methods were much the same as those of all Communist reeducation—reiteration, argument, lies, confusion, and the application of
