Brother Fish (48 page)

The effort it took to give this explanation seemed to have been too much for him and he suddenly sat down against the wall hugging his knees, head thrown back, eyes closed. I remembered my own stay in the cage with Dave McCombe and shuddered. I noticed the cracks around his mouth, indicating he was malnourished. We all had these cracks, but somehow I'd hoped the grub at the POW camp might be a little better than the various field hospitals we'd been in. Fat hope.

‘What happen when dem cats get back?' Jimmy asked.

‘Ain't comin' back,' the man said, then closed down again, this time resting his chin on his chest, his knees obscuring his mouth as if to indicate that he'd terminated the conversation. We were to learn that going to hospital was an almost certain death sentence.

On the way to our compound I'd seen a hand-printed sign that read ‘Royal Ulster Rifles'. As most Australians have more than a dash of Irish in them, I made my way over to make their acquaintance. I confess I'd been with Americans too long and looked forward to a slightly different viewpoint. In my experience, the Irish and Australians have a good deal in common. Approaching on crutches, I observed a scrawny, red-headed bloke sitting outside a mud house sewing a button onto his tunic.

‘G'day,' I said.

He looked up and smiled. ‘You'd be Australian, then?' he said right off.

I nodded. ‘Know if there are any others around?' I was hoping I might find Dave McCombe.

‘Was one, if I remember rightly. Moved on.'

‘Moved on? What, died?'

‘No, I'd be thinking they moved him on to another camp.'

‘You wouldn't remember his name?'

‘Now, I'd by lying if I said I did. To be honest, I didn't know him meself,' he replied.

‘By the way, I'm Jacko McKenzie,' I offered.

‘Doug Waterman.' He extended his hand. ‘Pleased t'meetcha, Jacko. Just come in, have you?'

‘Yeah, early this morning.'

‘I see. When and where were you captured?'

‘November. Wounded on patrol north of the Imjin River practically on the border.'

‘We've been hearin' you fellas gave the boogers a bit of a belting at Kapyong.'

‘Well, I don't know about that, mate. We certainly brought a good few of 'em to a screaming, if temporary, halt.'

He looked at his watch and bit the end off the cotton, the button on his tunic once again secure. ‘Well, we'd better be down to the company kitchen for a feed – for what it's worth.' Then he corrected himself. ‘The food's pretty bloody awful – it smells and tastes like shit, and it might well be exactly that and all, but you'll be taking my advice, Jacko; eat it and eat it all – there's that many dying of malnutrition, it's no joke.'

‘I'm not with you blokes.' I pointed to the American compound.

‘How come? You should be with the Commonwealth lot, with us.'

I explained about Jimmy and his albino ploy and the Irishman laughed. ‘If you're going to lie to this lot, be extravagant and remember what you said – it's the simple explanations they suspect. Come along, anyway, you'll not be taking anyone else's food. You'll be getting no more than the smell of an oily rag, and there's no seconds.'

On the way he explained the camp system to me. There were three rooms to every mud house with a squad of a dozen or more in each room to make up a platoon. The houses were in a cluster roughly sufficient to house a company of soldiers and the cluster was known as a compound. ‘Except for your lot,' he laughed. ‘You're known as the ghetto.' He went on to explain that the officer and sergeant prisoners had their own compounds where the men had very little contact with them.

At the company cookhouse we were given a bowl of boiled millet and a spoon. I had grown to detest the vile stuff, but I took Doug Waterman's advice and ate every grain. It later became apparent that, in the grub stakes, the Chinese didn't discriminate – the food in our cookhouse was every bit as bad as the stuff I'd shared with the Ulsterman.

When I got back to our compound the company was assembling and we were marched to a parade ground in the centre of the camp. We arrived to find more than a thousand men already standing at ease, and I could see a lot more prisoners and their guards streaming in from every direction. A public-address system in front of a better-looking building than most had been set up on a raised platform flanked by wooden steps. These buildings were apparently the camp headquarters.

After the last of the prisoners had arrived, a Chinese officer rose to the platform. He cleared his throat in front of the mike and hawked the result in an arch over the platform to the feet of the front row of men standing below him. The effect had been magnified by the microphone and drew a titter from the crowd. The Chinese did this all the time and it didn't necessarily indicate contempt. We'd got accustomed to the practice, though I'd never before heard the disgusting habit dramatised over a loudspeaker.

‘Four prisoners try to escape!' he yelled, holding his hand above his head with four fingers extended. ‘They have rejected the generosity of the Lenient Policy and are war criminals! They can now be legitimately shot!' The commandant paused, and looked around at the assembly. ‘But we are not capitalist warmongers and have given them the chance to repent and embrace
the truth
.' He turned to look towards the wooden steps where a tall, gaunt man looking much the worse for wear was being escorted by a guard to the microphone. The prisoner began to speak, hesitatingly at first, the microphone positioned too low for us to catch his voice except for small snatches that made little sense. A Chinese soldier rushed up carrying a set of mud bricks under his chin then, lowering himself to his knees, he unloaded the bricks and built them into a platform, placing the microphone stand upon it. Evidently Chinese microphones were not built to extend any further than roughly the height of the officer who'd just addressed us.

‘I shall begin again,' the gaunt man said, in a pronounced English accent. ‘I have been wrong to try to escape and I am only now beginning to understand that the warmongers of Wall Street have had me in their greedy grasp. They have befuddled my mind. Their lies have been a blindfold so secure that even though I have received the kindness of the Chinese People's Volunteers I have previously been unable to see the light. But now they have shown me the
true
path, lighting my way in what was previously the darkness of my mind.' His voice then seemed close to tears as he announced, ‘I want to apologise for abusing the hospitality of the Chinese People's Volunteers.

‘I want to warn you all of the folly of trying to escape. I want to remind you of the generosity of our Chinese hosts, who feed us. I want to tell you food is very difficult to find beyond this camp. Here the Chinese People's Volunteers' kitchens cook our food; out there how can you cook what little food you come across? Why suffer sore feet following the rough mountain track north, why wade through three dangerous rivers and risk getting lost, when you can enjoy the comfort of the housing of the Chinese People's Volunteers? I want to apologise to the Chinese People's Volunteers at the checkpoints along the bridges and roads for causing them unnecessary trouble. But most of all, I am forever grateful to the small boy from the village close to the confluence of the two rivers who saw me and reported me to the authorities. It is through him I was brought back here where I can have the blindfold lifted that has prevented me from seeing the truth.'

The camp commandant and the officers with him on the platform were beaming from ear to ear and, to my enormous surprise, a large number of the prisoners were cheering.

‘Jesus, Jimmy, what's goin' on? These blokes are bloody cheering?'

‘Brother Fish, I been most of mah life in places like this. What dat soldier sayin' he ain't saying – he sayin' somethin' contrariwise and opposite.'

‘Huh? Whaddyamean?'

‘Well, the way's I heard it like so. He done told us iffen we escape we gotta take food and somethin' to cook it. He say make sure yo' boots is in good re-pair, follow da mountain track north, cross three rivers and watch for da guards – dey stationed at da bridges and roads. He say to take some navigation e-quip-ment wid you and, above all, stay clear dem North Korean chillen near where two rivers meet.'

Doug Waterman later gave me a more or less identical interpretation. He explained that the gaunt bloke was the British forces escape organiser. What Jimmy knew instinctively, I had yet to learn. But I did learn something from the episode without Jimmy's assistance. I'd guessed correctly the reason the Chinese were not concerned about the camp's lack of perimeter security was that they considered it near impossible for anyone to last long outside. The British soldier had said it all – rugged terrain, a population hostile to the prisoners and Chinese soldiers patrolling the roads and bridges. Add to that our weakened state and the distance to the front-line and I could see why they would sacrifice perimeter security for camouflage from the air.

However, learning of a quite different kind was in store for us. The following day the twenty new arrivals were assembled for our first talk by the company political officer. It seemed every company was allotted one of these coves whose job it was to indoctrinate us. Our bloke, Lieutenant Dinh, spoke passable English and informed us that the day's topic would be ‘The South's Aggression Against the North'.

The rave was pretty predictable stuff. The South attacked the innocent, peace-loving and prosperous North when the American running-dog president Syngman Rhee decided he wanted all of Korea for the purpose of capitalist exploitation by his few millionaire cronies in the South, who had grown rich by keeping the masses poverty-stricken and enslaved. The criminal, Syngman Rhee, could not allow the remainder of the world to see how the people of the North prospered under communism while the South suffered great hardship under capitalism, so he'd decided to invade with the help of the Wall Street profiteers who stood to make untold fortunes from supplying him with weapons.

However, determined to defend their gains under communism, the shocked and peace-loving North bravely repelled the criminal attack. When, armed with a righteous cause, they'd beaten back the
invading
army from the South, lo and behold, the Americans had arrived to save their South Korean lackeys from humiliation and defeat, blah, blah, blah. This, of course, is an encapsulated version of Dinh's talk, which continued for more than two immensely dreary hours.

Once Dinh had finished speaking, he invited discussion and questions. Silence followed, and when he insisted I have a go I spoke my mind, which, in retrospect, was bloody stupid. ‘I have seen North Korea. I have been in the capital, Pyongyang, and in many of the villages, and there is no prosperity – and it is easy to see there has never been any. Am I to tell my eyes that they are lying, Lieutenant Dinh?' I then asked what was to be my killer question. ‘Why didn't I see any refugees streaming North?'

I could sense Jimmy's discomfort beside me, and at one point he cleared his throat noisily as a warning not to continue. But in my Little General mode I wasn't going to waste all that good stuff I'd learned as my so-called excuse for joining K Force, so I let Dinh have the lot – the whole catastrophe, chapter and verse.

Lieutenant Dinh made no attempt to answer me. ‘So,' he said, ‘we have a
reactionary
amongst us.' He looked at me disdainfully. ‘You may try to prevent your fellow war criminals learning the truth, but you will not succeed. You must please understand that a hostile attitude will put you outside the Lenient Policy. I will give you one more chance.'

And then Dinh began to talk again. Blah, blah, bloody blah, going on forever about Wall Street warmongers and profiteers bought by the blood of the proletariat. Before he finally stopped this seemingly endless monologue, he frequently paused to ask if we understood him, without waiting for any confirmation before continuing. At the conclusion of his talk he started to quiz us on what he'd said. This took another hour. It was late, and finally the time for our afternoon meal came and went, but still he continued. When he'd finally finished we hot-footed it to the company cookhouse where we were waved away, the food all long since gone. To add insult to injury, Jimmy and I were told to stay back to wash a whole pile of enamel dishes. There wasn't a hope of finding any leftovers on them as the plates had been licked clean.

It wasn't difficult to tell that everyone knew that because of my stupid carry-on we were being deliberately punished. Even being chosen for the dishwashing chore wasn't exactly a coincidence.

‘What a shit act of Dinh!' I exclaimed to Jimmy in an effort to shift the blame.

‘Brother Fish, da new arrivals here dey ain't happy, man. Yoh fucked us real good! No chow, dat da punishment we got.'

‘Yeah, I know,' I finally admitted, thoroughly ashamed of myself.

‘In America,' Jimmy replied, ‘iffen a white man he tell a Negro somethin', it da God's truth. It ain't da truth because it make good sense, it ain't da truth because it based on a fact or der lotsa ev-e-dence. It da truth because he a white man and you a nigger.' He paused, and sighed. ‘In dis camp we all niggers, Brother Fish.' It was the closest Jimmy had ever come to reprimanding me.