A few days after Boatner took command at Koje, Van Fleet had visited him. At that time the Eighth Army CG said, 'You've got to tighten up on security.' It was obvious to all that a grapevine ran from Panmunjom and P'yongyang down to Koje-do.
'Then, General,' Boatner said, 'I've got to move all these thousands of civilians away from the camps. There's the security problem.'
But Van Fleet argued. 'You can't do that.'
So for a few more days the POW camps were surrounded by a raucous throng of hawkers, prostitutes, and probable Communist agents. It was common practice for civilians to throw notes back and forth across the wire with the POW's.
One day, the correspondents asked Boatner why he permitted this. He told them General Van Fleet's orders. Shortly afterward, Van Fleet's orders were changed.
Boatner had no legal authority to move the civilians away from the camp—but all it took was a little action. He gave orders that they must not be brutalized, and put trucks at their disposal; in one day and a half, all were moved far away, and not allowed to return. There was no further trouble from that source.
By this time, the brass studiously refrained from nibbling on Boatner; technically, there were a number of people in the chain of command between him and Mark W. Clark, but each of these, whatever his own notions may have been, was knowledgeable enough to keep his finger out of the pie.
Phase II, the building of the new compounds, took almost thirty days, while Boatner sweated out each day, expecting trouble to break at any moment. It was not until 10 June 1952 that he was ready to begin Phase III, the breaking up and movement of the existing compounds.
With this move, he would accomplish three things: the breakup of the tight Communist control organizations in some compounds, the placement of POW's into secure compounds from which they had little chance of escape, and the reducing of the huge, unwieldy compounds into smaller ones more easily managed.
This had to be done, but he also knew that the Communist leaders would
resist it to the death.
Boatner planned and organized the moves as a military operation. Four weeks before, Phase III would have been impossible—but Boatner had used his month well. Not only had he beaten the will of the POW's down day by day; he now had also a completely disciplined, taut American military structure under his command, immediately and efficiently responsive to his order.
To begin Phase III, Boatner decided to crack the toughest nut first. Compound 76 held the hard-core Communist officers; it had captured Dodd. It was also closest to the U.S. hospital in which were American female nurses. In 76 were the meanest and most vicious POW's, and the best leadership.
Putting 76 out of operation first, Boatner felt, would go a long way to reducing the others.
The 187th Airborne and the 38th Infantry dug in two battalions along the road into Compound 76, in plain sight. Also in plain sight, the infantrymen and paratroopers set up machine guns and mortars, laid on the prison camp.
Then Boatner had the paratroops stage a mock advance into an empty compound next to 76, with fixed bayonets and flamethrowers, while the Communist prisoners watched. The demonstration went like clockwork; it had been timed and scheduled to the second, and every officer briefed on his part.
The demonstration was both impressive and frightening.
Then Boatner sent for the senior Korean officer of Compound 76. He told him that the POW's were to be moved, into better quarters. He took him to inspect the new compounds, and told him when and where he would be moved, in an attempt to forestall any panic among the prisoners.
But the Communist leadership could not be trusted to tell their people the truth. Loudspeakers were set up outside all compounds, and in English, Korean, and Chinese, the same word was put out for the rank and file. The compounds were bluntly warned that they were going to be moved, by force if necessary, and if there was any resistance the POW's would be responsible for the results. Compounds other than 76 were informed so that they would not panic when trouble began in the first one to be moved.
When the word was out, 9 June 1952, General Boatner's officers reported to him that instead of getting ready to move, the North Koreans in 76 were putting out pickets to see that no one attempted to obey his instructions.
Early the next morning, 10 June, Boatner and Brigadier General Trapnell, the paratroop commander, stood on a low hill outside Compound 76, watching.
The troops had their orders; everything had been planned and rehearsed down to the most minute detail. Phase lines within the compound had been drawn, and the troops were to cross them at given times. A large number of paratroops were to be used. Inside the compound, they would operate from a fixed base, sweeping movable forces through the compound to force the POW's out. The paratroops had bayoneted rifles, but no cartridges in the chambers. They could fire only on the express command of an officer.
With the compound completely ringed by men and steel, the paratroops who were to enter 76 massed. At 0615 they tore down the wire fence, and went in.
The Koreans fell back, to a preplanned defensive line within the compound. Suddenly, many of them brandished long spears and sharp knives, made in the workshops.
The paratroops reached Phase Line A, having covered one-eighth of the compound area, without contact, and without result. They moved on, slowly, deliberately, irresistibly, grinding the mass of POw's before them, pushing them around against the fixed base of men set up in one area. At Phase Line B—one half the compound—they began to throw concussion grenades.
Now the bulk of the POW's began to come apart, to flee before the grim Americans and out into the fields ringed by men and guns. They were pushed on into their new homes.
But behind a line of trenches they had dug in one section of the compound, 150 holdouts refused to surrender. They screamed and shouted defiance, and waved spears and knives.
The paratroops advanced, slowly, grimly, pushing them back. Now there was chaos. The POW's had set their huts afire, and smoke blanketed the area, choking men, obscuring vision. In the Korean press, a number of men panicked, and tried to run.
They were killed by their own people, with spears in the back.
Then the tough paratroopers met the lines of Koreans, and in a wild melee broke the back of their resistance. At a cost of 43 POW's killed, 135 wounded—half by their own officers—the 6,500 hard-core Communists in 76 were broken down into groups of 500 and placed behind new wire.
As the resistance ended, Boatner walked into the still-flaming compound, into which no American had gone for days. Not far within the circle of huts he recognized an odor familiar to all men who have intimately known the battlefield: the smell of death.
Inside a hut, he found a five-day-old corpse, hanging by its heels—a symbol of the Communist determination to dominate, placed there as an example by the leadership.
And in a ditch, cowering, the paratroopers found Senior Colonel Lee Hak Ku, of the North Korean People's Army; they dragged him out, roughly, and pushed him on his way. Colonel Lee, who had expected to be killed, never afterward gave much trouble.
Nor did the other compounds, some of whom had witnessed the reduction of 76, and some of whom heard of it on the grapevine, when their own turn came.
Buried in 76, Boatner's men found two sets of plans. One was the defense plan by which the North Koreans had resisted movement.
The other was the plan for a mass breakout by the dedicated Communists of all compounds, set for 20 June 1952.
The plans called for the POW's to cut the wire, make for the hills, and slaughter everything in their path.
The plans, however, were eight days too late. For on 12 June 1952, with the compounds broken up, Brigadier General Bull Boatner was at last in command of Koje Island.
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