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By Al Zdon
Wayne Pickett was never bitter about his 999 days as a prisoner of war.
"I volunteered for the Marines. I volunteered for the Active Reserve. It's an occupational hazard of
the job, and you just deal with it."
Pickett was a guest of the Chinese Army at Prisoner of War Camp 1 in North Korea from late 1950 until the Korean War ended in 1953. He endured bad food, endless
tedium and an attempt of brainwashing by the enemy. He lost 60 lbs. He watched many of his comrades die from sickness or simply a lack of resolve to survive.
In the end, he was treated to a hero's
welcome in his native Duluth, complete with limousine, color guard, a large crowd at city hall, and a jubilant crowd of supporters waving "Welcome Home Wayne" signs.
None of that was even the
faintest blip on Pickett's future radar when he enlisted in the Marine Corps right out of high school in 1946.
It had not been an easy childhood for Pickett. He was born in a township north of Pequot
Lakes, and when he was five years old, his mother died while giving birth to twins. They were the eighth and ninth children in the family.
His father tried to keep the family together, but when
Pickett was six he was sent to an orphanage, the Owatonna State Public Schools. He spent time at the orphanage, and then two years on a farm in western Minnesota, and then more time at the orphanage.
At the age of nine, he was adopted by Allan and Clara Pickett of Duluth. He grew up in Duluth's West End, and graduated from Central High School in 1946.
"My dad had been in the Marines in World War
I, and he always told me how tough Marine boot camp was, but I didn't believe him." He did survive boot camp in San Diego, and then was sent to Sea School to learn the ways of the Navy before being
assigned to the USS St. Paul, a heavy cruiser, as a seagoing Marine.
The cruiser's overseas base was in Tsing Tao, China, an important American port in the days before the Nationalist Chinese were
overthown by the communists in 1949.
Pickett's first encounter with a hostile enemy came in 1947 at the end of a Naval war games exercise.
A group of Corsairs did their job in protecting the
cruiser, but due to some missed communications, they stayed too long and didn't have enough fuel to get back to base. "One of them went down 25 miles from the base, and he was able to walk the rest of
the way. Another one, though, went down about 150 or 200 miles from the base, and he was captured by the Chinese Communists."
A destroyer near the coast sent in a rescue party, and it was quickly
repulsed by the communists. Pickett and his fellow Marines from the carrier were sent on a similar rescue mission, and were also fired upon. Eventually the pilot was recovered through diplomatic means.
That wasn't Pickett's only encounter with the communists. "Our officer wanted us to have plenty of experience with landings, and so he was leading us ashore all the time. Once, when we were
bivouacked on a point leading out in the ocean, the communists came by and told us to move or we'd be flooded when the tide came in. They were right. The Chinese communists were just like anybody else,
sometimes they were friendly and sometimes they were not."
After a year's cruise, the St. Paul was bound for drydock, and the Marine Corps, like the rest of the services, was cutting back on manpower.
Pickett took an early out in 1948, and went back home to Duluth.
"First I signed up with the inactive reserve when I was getting my paperwork done at Great Lakes, but when I got back to Duluth some of
my friends talked me into going into the active reserve.
"And even that wasn't so bad. My enlistment was up on 1950, and my big mistake was in re-enlisting."
The men trained every week on Tuesdays.
Pickett was taking courses at the Duluth Business University. "I still had this idea that I wanted to be a businessman."
Pickett and the rest of his fellow Marines in B Company, 4th Infantry
Battalion of the Reserves, began to hear rumors in 1950 that they might be called up.
The North Koreans invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, and the rumors became facts. On Aug. 1, Pickett's unit was
called up. His recollection is that the announcement didn't make that much of an impression on him. "I don't know. I really didn't think a whole lot about it."
He and his fiancee, Helyn, decided to
postpone their marriage until Pickett was back.
On Aug. 21, the men of B Company marched down Superior Street to the Duluth Depot to board a train for San Diego. After three days, it arrived at Camp
Pendleton. Some of the men were sent off for basic training, and some were sent to advanced training.
For Pickett and the other experienced Marines, most of them World War II veterans, the destination
was Korea. On Sept. 1, the men were bused down to the USS Bayfield, a troop ship, for the voyage across the Pacific.
The troops, in varying degrees, kept up with the news of the war through the ship's
newspaper and the rumor mill. The North Koreans had pushed the South Korean Army and the American forces into a small perimeter on the tip of the Korean Peninsula before the U.S. and ROK forces began
pushing back.
As the tide turned, Gen. MacArthur planned a massive landing at Inchon, south of the South Korean capital at Seoul.
The Bayfield spent 36 hours in Kobe, Japan, to rearrange the ship
to offload its troops and gear in the proper order, and then headed for Inchon. They landed on Sept. 21, exactly one month since their festive march down Superior Street in Duluth, and six days after the
invasion by UN troops on Sept. 15.
What were his thoughts heading into battle? "Well, there's always that possibility of being shot. And there's a smaller possibility of being killed. Becoming a
prisoner of war never entered my mind. Mostly you just take things as they come."
Pickett had been assigned to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, First Marine Division.
The
Marines aboard the Bayfield landed about 5 p.m. on Sept. 21 and began the long walk toward Seoul. The unit first got into the battle about 20 miles north of Seoul. "We heard fighting coming from the area
held by Dog Company, and then we came under fire later that same day.
"The first time you hear a bullet go by, you really don't know what to think. You just make yourself as small as possible."
The company helped the UN forces free Seoul from the North Koreans on the 29th of September, and then continued in action around the capital until the middle of March, 1950, when it marched back to
Inchon. MacArthur was now planning his second great landing, this time on the east coast of Korea with the intention of driving the North Koreans back toward China.
"We came around the Peninsula, but
we weren't able to land because the harbor was mined at Wonson," Pickett said. "By the time they cleared the harbor, the ROK had gone through Wonson and we were able to make an 'administrative' landing."
On Oct. 27, the Chinese Communist forces, which had been slipping into North Korea quietly for several weeks, entered the war by attacking American and ROK units at Unsan.
Fox Company did some
patrols out of Wonson and then headed north toward the Chosin Reservoir. On Nov. 2, the Seventh Marine Regiment relieved ROK troops west of the Chosin, and almost immediately encountered Chinese troops.
By Nov. 10, the temperatures had begun to plummet, and while the Marines were issued cold weather gear, it wasn't always good enough for the sub-zero temps. "They gave us shoe packs, and they were
pretty good. If you sat perfectly still, they worked. Or, if you were moving around, they worked. But if you were doing something, and then had to still still, they didn't work very well. It was frozen
toes waiting to happen." The men also had parkas and winter sleeping bags.
"They also gave out cold weather trousers, but by the time they got to me, nothing fit."
Fox Company eventually got to
Hagaru, on the southern tip of the Reservoir, in mid-November. Marine units were advancing up the west side of the Reservoir, and despite the encounters with the Chinese, optimism was still high that the
war would soon be over.
"There was some betting among the troops on whether we'd be home by Christmas."
Fox Company was kept busy by running patrols, and by guarding the airstrip at Hagaru, which
later proved so important in evacuating troops from the area. Most of the Marines were now about 14 miles north at Yudam-ni. "I don't know why we got left behind."
Thanksgiving dinner was at Hagaru-ri
and it was a treat for the troops. "We had turkey and sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and stuffing and everything else. When they handed it to me, it was hot, but by the time I found a place to sit
down and eat it, it was cold."
Fox Company finally got orders to occupy the Toktong Pass, a critical part of the road between Yudam-ni and Hagaru-ri. It would be easy for the enemy to cut off the
Marines to the north if they occupied the pass. There was only one road.
The company was able to hitch a ride with an artillery unit heading north, and they took up their positions on Nov. 27.
"Captain Barber (who later won the Medal of Honor) had driven up the day before and scouted the position, so he knew where he wanted his people. The ground was completely frozen, so it was hard to dig
in. Our fox hole was mostly a big rock right behind us."
Because they arrived late in the day, the Marines were unable to do some of the things they would have liked, such as putting trip wires around
the perimeter with tin cans attached to warn of an enemy attack.
Pickett was the leader of a four-man fire team, and they were joined by another Marine, Daniel Yesko, who had been given hardship
discharge orders and was to depart Korea the next morning. "He said it was his last night here, and he wanted to spend it with his friends."
"The platoon leader was pretty nervous, and he kept coming
around to see how we were doing. First we just had one person staying awake, and then they called for two of us to be awake at any time."
The temperature that night, by some accounts, dropped to 30
below zero. "I have no way of knowing. I just know it was cold."
About one or two in the morning, the 28th of November, 1950, the Chinese attacked.
"They were on us before we knew what was
happening. I heard years later that we were on one of the main points where they attacked. They pushed our line back about 15 or 20 yards. They hit us and took us down. I could hear Yesko yelling, 'I've
been hit. I've been hit.'"
The Americans were taken prisoner and brought down to a company command post. "There was a discussion. They didn't know what they were going to do with us."
In the end,
the Chinese soldiers began to bring the handful of Americans back toward the U.S. lines. "I'm not sure what they were going to do. It seemed like they wanted to return us to our lines. But when we got
close, an American machine gun opened up on us, and that was the end of that."
Next stop was a battalion commander post where the prisoners spend the rest of the night in a barn. "They got us out in
the morning, and we hadn't been out of that barn for 10 minutes when a Corsair came by and blew it to pieces."
The prisoners were marched about four miles to an enclosure surrounding a Korean
dwelling. By this time, there were seven or eight Americans. "They put us in the enclosure and pretty much left us alone, except at meal time. We were not allowed to go out, even to go to the bathroom."
Pickett said at this point the treatment by the Chinese was good. "Most of the front line troops were pretty decent. But the further you got toward the rear echelon, that's where you found the bad
ones." Many of the front line troops had once been in the Nationalist Chinese Army, and had little personal hostility toward Americans.
The small group of Americans bided their time and took care of
two wounded Marines, including Yesko, the Marine who was supposed to go home the morning of the attack. He had been shot in the buttocks. Finally, the two wounded Americans were taken away by ambulance.
The prisoners were moved up to Yudam-Ni, now evacuated by the Marines as they retreated south through the Toktung Pass, guarded by the remainder of Fox Company. In the end, the company had 26 dead,
89 wounded and three missing — including Pickett.
Next was a long march south to another holding area. "They had five guards for two prisoners. I don't think they were that worried about us escaping,
they were just trying to protect us from the North Koreans. The North Koreans would just as soon shoot you as look at you."
All through this time, there was no interrogation. "I think they were still
trying to figure out what to do with us."
This early stage in his captivity, Pickett said, might have been the best. They ate the same food as the guards, and the security was, while not lax, not
overly cruel or unusual.
The next walk was more difficult. They Chinese wanted to move the prisoners all the way across the Korean Peninsula to permanent camps that were being set up.
"On the first
day of the hike, a Corsair attacked the column. I dove and hit the ground, but the ground was frozen and it hit back a lot harder than I hit it. My knee swelled up three or four times its normal size.
Every day of the march, everybody would start out at the same time, but I would arrive three or four hours later than everybody else. My guards would stay with me, and now and then they'd help me carry
my rice supply."
Pickett arrived at Chang Song, in what was first called POW Camp 3, and later renamed POW Camp 1. It was in northwestern Korea, about seven miles south of the Yalu River, the Chinese
border.
Back home, his family was still in doubt as to what had happened to their son. Helen recalls that they assumed he had been captured because they heard from other Marines in Fox Company who
said there were no bodies where Pickett's foxhole had been.
It was over a year before the U.S. Government officially notified the Picket Family that their son was a prisoner of war.
The prisoners
were fed twice day, once at about 8:30 a.m. and again at about 4 p.m., but rice became a luxury. Instead, the food was usually something made from barley, sorghum or millet. Now and then there would be a
little rice or even some noodles or something that looked like dumplings.
In late 1952, a bakery was set up and the prisoners started getting a barley bread once a day instead of their bowl of
whatever. "It was almost a beet color. Most people, when they first tried it, got sick."
There were quite a few deaths in the camp early on as people adjusted or didn't adjust to the prison life. "A
lot of guys got sick and died because they wouldn't eat the food. Other guys got dysentery or some other sickness. I remember 10 or 12 funerals early on."
The officers were separated into one group,
sergeants into another, and the rest of the men into a third group. Likewise, the British, Australians, Greeks and other United Nations forces were separated by nationality.
The brain washing began
sometime during the Summer of 1951. "They were trying to convince us that their way of life was better than our way of life. It was a technique that had worked on the Nationalist troops, but it didn't
work too well on us."
Pickett describe the technique: " We would sit out in a big field and listen to someone who couldn't speak English tell us how great life was in a communist country. They would
do it for two or three hours in the morning and then two or three hours in the afternoon.
"Now and then they would hand out Russian books written in English, or copies of the London Daily Worker or
the New York Daily Worker. There were a few guys who fell for it. I think there were about 19 turncoats (out of 11,000 UN prisoners).
There were also a few who tried to escape, even knowing how
futile it was. "Where could you go? And of course you'd stick out like a sore thumb. The Koreans wouldn't dare help you. A couple of guys took off when we were harvesting wood, and they were caught in
just a few hours. They got six months hard labor. I never have heard of a successful escape from those camps."
Pickett said one of the greatest hardships of the camp was the tedium, and he partially
overcame it by having long and deep discussions with a couple of friends he made from Texas, Mickey Scott and Bob Arias. "We had discussion groups. We'd do anything to keep our minds going."
The men
were issued dark blue clothing in the summer and light blue, padded clothing in the winter. They slept on the floor on top of a bamboo and straw mat. Lice was a problem early on in the camp, but was
mostly solved when the prisoners were sprayed with DDT. The Americans had no tooth paste, tooth brushes or soap.
Mail delivery was haphazard. "We got to send four letters a month, and I'm not sure how
many of those got through. I think about 10 percent of the mail that was sent to us got through."
"Flies were always a problem, especially at certain times of the year. "They would award people who
killed the most flies two or three cigarettes. So we'd take turns and give all our flies to one guy every day. The next day it would be somebody else's turn."
The main break in the routine each year
was when the men would be sent up into the surrounding hills to bring firewood back to the camp. "We would carry these logs, six to 10 feet long and five to 10 inches in diameter on our shoulders back to
camp. The best part about the firewood detail was that you were fed three times a day. That was really a big deal."
The men were kept informed of the progress, or lack of progress, in the peace talks.
"Of course, everything that went wrong was America's fault."
As time went on, though, and peace became more evident, conditions improved slightly at the camp. A barber was allowed to cut hair. "We
were all pretty shaggy with long beards, but our food was so poor that our hair didn't really grow that fast."
Later, there would be a tobacco ration, and two packs of cigarettes on your birthday. In
1953, the Chinese allowed all the sick and wounded prisoners to go home.
Finally, on July 27, 1953, the United States, North Korea and China signed an armistice. "It was mainly a great sigh of relief.
We knew we were going home even if we didn't know exactly how long it would take. Before that, it had seemed like it was never going to end."
For the prisoners, it meant a definite improvement in
life. Red Cross packages were finally allowed in, and the men could clean up. The food got better, but Pickett still had lost over 60 lbs. by the time he was released.
Most Americans who were
captured made it home. Many did not.
Pickett said that early on his captivity, he heard a voice that told him he was going to make it. "After that I never doubted it. I got dysentery and diarrhea, but I had just decided that I was going to make it back. I ate my food like a good little kid."
On Aug. 21, 1953, the prisoners were loaded on trucks and brought to Panmonjom where a little bridge to freedom awaited them. "You stood there until they called your name, and then you went across.
When you got to the other side, they put you in an ambulance and took you to a field hospital to check you over."
A few days later, Pickett was on a ship heading back to San Francisco, and on Sept. 9,
he was in San Francisco where he was greeted by his parents. On Sept. 11, he was back in Duluth where he was greeted by a delegation, color guard and limousine that took him, Helen, and his parents
downtown for a major celebration. He was given a watch. "At first they said they were going to give me a car, but then they found out there were three other guys in the Duluth area that were also POWs.
So we all got watches."
After six weeks of recuperation leave, he was given his discharge at Great Lakes. His official Marine records showed that he had been held prisoner for 999 days, and he was
paid quarters and rations for that time. He had earned only about $2,500 in back pay since most of it had gone home in an allotment.
Helyn laughs at the 999 days. "I told him he couldn't even make a
thousand." Wayne replies, "That's because the Chinese couldn't take me any longer."
He used the money to marry his fiancee. There were no jobs in Duluth at that time. The Picketts moved to California
for a time before returning to Minnesota where he took a job with 3M as an engineering designer. He worked there for 33 years before retiring in 1994.
The Picketts have six children and eight
grandchildren. Wayne uses some of his free time on the Ft. Snelling Rifle Squad and as a volunteer bus driver for a senior center.
He said he harbors little resentment about the lost time in his
life. Pickett said his readjustment was due in part to the support he got at when he arrived home.
Helen agrees. "The community was there when he needed them. I think there were times when he wished
people would leave him alone, but they didn't. Plus, he had no bitterness. That's why he's adjusted so well."
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