Operation BIG SWITCH—Circumstances of Capture—The Communist POW Camps—CCF “Lenient Policy” and Indoctrination Attempts—The Germ Warfare Issue—Problems and Performance of Marine POWs—Marine Escape Attempts—Evaluation and Aftermath

Operation BIG SWITCH538

Between August 1950, the month that the first Marine was taken prisoner and July 1953, when 18 Marine infantrymen were captured in final rushes by the CCF, a total of 221 U.S. Marines became POWs.539 The majority of them—nearly 90 percent—ultimately returned. After the conclusion of hostilities, Marine POWs were among the UNC fighting men returned in Operation BIG SWITCH.

The new mission of the 1st Marine Division, with the cease-fire, called for organization of the Post Armistice Battle Positions and establishment of a No-Pass Line approximately 200 yards south of the Demilitarized Zone boundary. In addition to maintaining a defensive readiness posture for full-scale operations if hostilities resumed, the Marine division was charged with control of the Munsan-ni area and assisting in repatriation of prisoners of war. Obviously, since the Panmunjom release point for receiving the POWs was located in the Marine zone of action, the division—as in the earlier LITTLE SWITCH prisoner exchange—would play a major part in the final repatriation.

With the armistice and ending of the war expected almost daily, the Munsan-ni Provisional Command was activated and reorganized in June. Once again, the 1st Marine Division was responsible for the United Nations Personnel and Medical Processing Unit, organized along lines similar to those used during the preliminary exchange. The division inspector, Colonel Albert F. Metze, was designated Processing Unit Commander. Sections under his direction were staffed by Marine and naval personnel. The normal command structure was reinforced by special engineer, medical, interpreter, food service, chaplain, security, signal, supply, and motor transport teams. Planning for the project, like all military operations, was thorough and continuous.

As in April, the Munsan-ni Provisional Command assumed responsibility for handling the UN repatriation at Panmunjom as well as supervision of the receiving and processing of ROKA personnel. Brigadier General Ralph M. Osborne, USA, was placed in charge of the command, with headquarters at the United Nations Base Camp. The RCT landing exercise for the 1st Marines, scheduled in July, was cancelled because of shipping commitments for Operation BIG SWITCH, as the Navy Amphibious Force readied itself for the repatriation of prisoners. By the end of July, the 1st Marine Division was supporting “approximately 42,400 troops with Class I [rations] and 48,600 with Class III [petroleum products] due to the influx of units and personnel participating in Operation BIG SWITCH.”540

Several days before the exchange, however, it became evident that the old site of the Gate to Freedom used in the April exchange would have to be abandoned. It was found inadequate to handle the larger number of returning prisoners—approximately 400 daily—to be processed in the new month-long operation. The new site, Freedom Village, near Munsan-ni contained an old Army warehouse which was renovated by the 1st Division engineers and transformed into the 11th Evacuation Hospital where the UN Medical and Processing Unit was located. Members of the division Military Police Company provided security for the exchange area. Marines from practically every unit of the division were assigned duties at the United Nations Processing Center. As General Clark, UNC Commander later recalled:

On 5 August, the first day of BIG SWITCH, Colonel Metze took a final look around the processing center. Readiness of this camp was his responsibility. If anyone had real understanding of a prisoner’s relieved and yet shaken reaction to new freedom it was this Marine Colonel. Chosen by the United Nations Command to build and direct the enlarged Freedom Village, Colonel Metze himself had been a prisoner of war in World War II. He knew from personal experience how men should be treated and what should be done for them early in their new freedom. For many, this was after nearly three long years in Communist prison camps. That morning, as described by an observer:

Fifteen miles northwest another group of Marines assigned to the Provisional Command Receipt and Control section waited almost in the shadow of the famous “peace pagoda” at Panmunjom. UNC receiving teams, each headed by a Marine Corps major, “watched the road to the north for the first sign of a dust cloud which would herald the approach of the Communist convoy.”543 The United Nations POWs had been assembled at Kaesong and held there in several groups, preparatory to the return. The exchange agreement had specified that the repatriation would begin at 0900. Precisely at 0855 the Communist convoy, led by three Russian-made jeeps, each carrying one CCF and two NKPA officers, moved out from the Communist side of the peace corridor. Trucks and ambulances followed the jeeps.

As they approached the exchange site, “a Marine officer bellowed the familiar naval command, ‘Marines, man your stations!’”544 Rosters of the UNC prisoners in the trucks and ambulances were then presented to the Marine team captains who checked the lists. As they called the names, “thin, wan, but smiling men shuffled from the trucks to the medical tents.”545

Official receipt of the POWs at Panmunjom was by the Munsan-ni Provisional Command Receipt and Control Officer, assisted by 35 officers and enlisted men from the 1st Marine Division. After their screening by medical officers, UN returnees not in need of immediate medical aid were transferred by ambulance to Freedom Village at Munsan-ni for further processing. Helicopter priority went to litter patients too weak to travel by ambulance. POWs requiring prompt treatment were loaded aboard the HMR-161 carriers and flown to the 11th Evacuation Hospital at Freedom Village.

Seriously injured men were transferred directly to the Inchon hospital ships for embarkation to the United States, or were air-evacuated to Japan. South Korean repatriates were processed and went their way to freedom through nearby Liberty Village, the ROK counterpart of Freedom Village. A huge map was used to check progress of the POW convoys en route from Panmunjom to Freedom Village. The departure of ambulances and helicopters from Panmunjom was radioed ahead to Freedom Village, where medical personnel and vehicles lined the landing mat.

At Munsan-ni, the newly-freed men received a more thorough physical exam and the rest of their processing. Here they were again screened by medical officers to determine their physical condition. Able-bodied POWs were escorted to the personnel data section where necessary administrative details were recorded and their military records brought up to date. Those medically cleared were available for press interviews. New clothing issue, individually tailored, probably as much as anything emphasized to a prisoner that his particular Korean War was over. And nearly all of them found news546 awaiting them in letters from home. When all basic details were completed, returnees went into the recreation and refreshment section. Commonplace iced tea, coffee, ice cream (the favorite), milk, sandwiches, cigarettes, and the latest periodicals were luxuries. In their weakened condition, the POWs could be served only light fare; the big steaks would come later.

The first Marine and fifth man in the processing line on the initial day, 5 August, was Private First Class Alfred P. Graham, Jr., of H/3/5. Although too weak to enter the press room, the 21-year-old repatriate told newsmen later in Tokyo of being fed a diet of cracked corn during his prison camp stay and of being forced to carry firewood 11 miles each day. The second Marine returned that day, and the 34th man to enter Freedom Village, was Sergeant Robert J. Coffee, of the 1st Signal Battalion. Captured in November 1950, he had been wounded just before being taken prisoner and had received little medical treatment. Like other returnees, Coffee stated that the treatment had been very poor while he was in the hands of the North Koreans but that it had improved somewhat after he was turned over to the Chinese.

Third and last Marine to come through the line was Private First Class Pedron E. Aviles, previously with the Reconnaissance Company of Headquarters Battalion. Knocked unconscious with a rifle butt while battling the enemy on a patrol on 7 December 1952, he regained consciousness to find himself a prisoner of the CCF.

On the second day, three more USMC infantrymen traveled that final road to freedom. They were Private First Class Francis E. Kohus, Jr., of A/1/7; Corporal Gethern Kennedy, Jr., I/3/1; and Private First Class Bernard R. Hollinger, H/3/5. Like the preceding three, their stories bore a similar pattern: usually they had been captured only after having been wounded or clubbed unconscious. As with other UNC prisoners being released daily, they told of the physical cruelty of their North Korean captors and the mental strain under the Chinese. Observers noted that many of the men released this second day were in much poorer physical condition than the initial returnees. In fact, one ROK prisoner was found to have died in an ambulance while en route to Liberty Village.

Mostly the repatriates asked questions about their old outfits: “Do you know if any of the other guys on the outpost got back off the hill?” and “Did we finally take the damn thing?” “Where’s the 24th Division now?”547

Technical Sergeant Richard E. Arnold was one of the two Marine combat correspondents at Freedom Village during BIG SWITCH. He described his impressions of the returning men—in some cases, coming home after 30 months’ confinement in North Korean POW camps, and others, as little as 30 days:

As in prison life everywhere, the POWs told of the hated stool pigeons, the so-called “progressives.” These were the captives who accepted (or appeared to accept) the Communist teachings and who, in turn, were treated better than the “reactionary” prisoners who resisted the enemy “forced feeding” indoctrination. Continued the Marine correspondent:

One of the last—possibly the last—Marine captured by the Chinese was Private First Class Richard D. Johnson, of G/3/1. The 20-year-old machine gunner had been in the final battle of the war, the Boulder City defense, and was taken 25 July, just two days before the signing of the truce. Private First Class Johnson was returned the 19th day of the exchange. Another Marine seized in that same action was Private First Class Leonard E. Steege, H/3/7. As he entered the gate, he momentarily shook up Corporal James E. Maddell, a military policeman on duty at Freedom Village. Maddell said the last time he saw Steege was during the fighting for the outpost. “He was a dead Marine then,” Maddel said, “but I guess it was just a case of mistaken identity.”550

Captain Jesse V. Booker of Headquarters Squadron 1, the first Marine POW of the war, who had been captured on 7 August 1950, was also one of the earliest MAW personnel released. Booker and First Lieutenant Richard Bell, VMF-311, were returned to UNC jurisdiction on 27 August, the first Marine aviators to be sent back.

In addition to the regular issue of Marine utilities, gold naval aviator’s wings, donated by 1st MAW fliers, were pinned on the chests of returning pilots by Wing General Megee and Division General Pate. Also welcoming Marine returnees at Freedom Village were Brigadier General Verne J. McCaul, the new Assistant Wing Commander; General Burger, ADC; and Colonel Metze, who also “found time during the busy days to greet and talk with every Marine and Navy Corpsman who passed through.”551 Among those dignitaries552 present for the occasion were General Taylor, EUSAK CG; General Clarke, I Corps Commander; Secretary of the Army, Robert T. Stevens; and various U.S. senators.

During August enlisted POWs were recovered in large numbers. Officers, generally, did not arrive at Kaesong—the first step to Panmunjom—until about 21 August. After that date they were gradually returned to friendly control.

Even as late as 26 August there was considerable concern over the fate of hundreds of Allied officers not yet repatriated. Some early returning officers told of colonels, majors and captains who had been sentenced up to ten years for forming “reactionary groups” in camp. One field grade officer had been sentenced to a long prison term on the eve of the armistice.553 A similar thing nearly happened to Captain John P. Flynn, VMF(N)-513, long a thorn in the side of his Communist captors. Like a number of UNC airmen falsely charged with waging germ warfare, he vigorously denounced these allegations. “Even as late as the end of August the Marine was threatened with nonrepatriation, and his experience formed the basis for an episode in the novel A Ride to Panmunjom.”554

Between 5 August-6 September, 3,597 U.S. servicemen were returned during Operation BIG SWITCH, including 129 ground and 28 air Marines. This 157 figure represents a total of 42 officers and 115 enlisted repatriated during this second and final POW exchange. Of the 27 Naval personnel freed, at least 6 were hospital corpsmen serving with the 1st Marine Division when they were taken. Counting the 157 Marines released in Operation BIG SWITCH and the 15 wounded POWs sent back in April, a total of 172 division and wing Marines were returned in the two POW exchanges.

Although the switch took place over a five-week period, 38 Marines, or 24 percent, were not released until late in the proceedings, in September. As one author noted, “It was Communist policy to hold the ‘reactionaries’ ... to the last.”555

Two of the best-known Marine “reactionaries” who had openly defied their Communist jailers during their entire period of captivity, were then-Lieutenant Colonel William G. Thrash, a VMA-121 pilot, and then-Major John N. McLaughlin, taken POW in November 1950. McLaughlin was released on 1 September and Thrash on 5 September in a group of 275 Americans returned, the largest number for any single day’s transfer since the exchange began. The most famous U.S. prisoner held by the Communists was Major General William F. Dean. Formerly commander of the U.S. Army 24th Division, he had been captured in August 1950 after the fall of Taejon.

Ever since Operation BIG SWITCH got under way, every returnee had been asked if he had seen or heard of General Dean. None had. Many UN officers felt—uneasily—that he would probably be the last officer to be sent back. In fact, he emerged from imprisonment on 4 September “to be greeted with cheers at Freedom Village.”556 Major Walter R. Harris and the most senior Marine captured during the war, Colonel Frank H. Schwable, later to be the central figure in a Court of Inquiry, were among the last nine Marines returned on 6 September, the final day of the switch. And so, one by one, the last 160 American POWs passed through Panmunjom. All were men marked by the enemy as “war criminals.”

One Army sergeant, who freely admitted he could “never adequately describe how he felt when he knew he was going home”557 recalled those final moments as a newly-freed prisoner:

In the preliminary prisoner exchange, the week-long “LITTLE SWITCH” in April 1953, all of the returned Marine personnel were men who had been wounded at the time of their capture. They were recently-captured POWs, deliberately segregated by the enemy from early captives. All of these home-coming Marines had been captured since May 1952. Generally speaking, they had all been fairly well-treated.

During Operation BIG SWITCH, by contrast, 41 Marines were repatriated who had spent nearly three years as Communist prisoners of war. The majority of USMC returnees in this second exchange, however—a total of 91—had been captured relatively recently, in 1952 and 1953, and 25 had been held since 1951.

Throughout Operation BIG SWITCH, the Allied Command transferred a total of 75,799 prisoners (70,159 NKPA and 5,640 CCF) seeking repatriation. The Communist returned 12,757 POWs. In addition to the 3,597 Americans, this total represented 1,312 other UNC troops (including 947 Britons, 228 Turks, and small numbers of Filipinos, Australians, and Canadians) and 7,848 South Koreans.

The BIG SWITCH exchange went relatively smoothly, marred for a while only by the unruly behavior of some Communist diehard POWs. In a manner reminiscent of their earlier camp riots, the Communist POWs put on a blatant propaganda show for the benefit of world newsreel cameras. As the train carrying CCF and North Korean prisoners moved into the Panmunjom exchange point, enemy POWs noisily shouted Communist slogans, defiantly waved Communist flags, and hurled insults at UN forces. Some POWs stripped off their [U.S. provided] uniforms, “tossing them contemptuously to the ground.”559 Others spat in the faces of U.S. supervising officers, threw their shoes at jeep windshields, and sang in Korean and Chinese “We will return in the Fall.”560

Marine division and wing elements were designated responsible for the security of nonrepatriated enemy POWs. By terms of the armistice agreement, these were held by UNC custodial forces from India. In commenting on the airlift operations, performed largely by HMR-161, the UNC Commander noted:

One of the recommendations made by military officials after the April LITTLE SWITCH exchange was that all interrogation of returning POWs be done either in America or on board ship en route home, rather than in Tokyo. This system was followed and worked out well. The POWs boarded ships at Inchon, following their clearance at Freedom Village. Interrogation teams, in most cases, completed this major part of their repatriation processing before docking at San Francisco. Two weeks of recuperation, good food and rest aboard ship enabled many POWs to arrive home in far better shape for reunion with their families than they had been in when received initially at Panmunjom.

As in LITTLE SWITCH, Marine and Navy personnel were processed by members of the Intelligence Department of Commander, Naval Forces Far East, augmented by officers from other Marine staffs. Marine officers who conducted the shipboard interrogations again included Lieutenant Colonel Fisher, ComNavFE liaison officer, as well as Lieutenant Colonel William A. Wood, Major Stewart C. Barber, and First Lieutenant Robert A. Whalen. All returning POWs were queried in depth by counterintelligence personnel about enemy treatment and atrocities, questionable acts committed by that small proportion of our own men whose conduct was reprehensible, and routine military matters. A security dossier was prepared on each prisoner, and all data about him went into his file case. The LITTLE SWITCH reports had indicated earlier—and this was subsequently confirmed—that some U.S. servicemen were definitely marked for further detailed questioning and scrutiny.

Circumstances of Capture562

As the Commandant, General Shepherd, was to testify later during an investigation, “the prisoner of war question had never been a major problem [in the Marine Corps] due to the extremely limited number of Marines taken prisoner.”563 As one returnee at BIG SWITCH bluntly put it: “You fought until they reached you with a bullet or a rifle butt—that was the end.”564

Of the 221 U.S. Marines captured during the Korean War, more than half—121—were seized after 20 September 1951. For the Marine Corps this date marked the time when “warfare of position replaced a warfare of movement throughout the remaining 22 months of the conflict in Korea.”565 Both in the X Corps sector in eastern Korea where the 1st Marine Division was located at that time, as well as later on the Korean western front, the Marine Corps was denied its traditional aggressive fighting role. The Marines (along with the rest of the UNC forces) ceased offensive operations, were reduced to making limited attacks, and were under order from higher echelons to “firm up the existing line and to patrol vigorously forward of it.”566

The mission of the Marine division thereby evolved into “an aggressive defense of their sector of responsibility” as records duly phrased it. On a larger scale, the nature of the Korean War, from about November 1951 on, reverted to that of July and August,567 characterized primarily by minor patrol clashes and small unit struggles for key outpost positions. This became the pattern for the remainder of the war. It changed only when the decreed mission of an “active defense of its sector” by a UNC unit became this in fact. Normal defense then escalated into sharp, vigorous fighting to retain friendly key ground positions being attacked by the enemy. One American writer, in a discussion of the British defense in depth concept (adopted by the Marine Corps late in the war), went so far as to blame heavy Marine casualties in Korea on EUSAK’s outpost system.568

Approximately half of the 100 Marines taken prisoner by September 1951—43—had fallen into enemy hands during the last two days of November 1950. They had been part of the ill-fated Task Force Drysdale,569 a composite Royal Marine-USMC-Army convoy that was ambushed by the Chinese en route to the Chosin Reservoir. These facts are relevant to a better understanding of the Commandant’s statement that, traditionally, few Marines become prisoners of war.

Overall, the survival rate for Marines taken captive during the Korean War was 87.8 percent. Even for the worst year, 1950, when NKPA treatment was more ruthless and brutal than the CCF (and in any event, for those men longest-held), the Marine survival rate was 75 percent. Marine Corps statistics show that of 221 Marines captured, 194 (43 officers, 151 enlisted) returned, and 27 or 12.2 percent died.570 Only a few Marines were afflicted with “give-up-itis,” the malady that struck countless POWs and took a heavy toll of lives. Included among these 194 returnees were the 172 men from the two POW exchanges, as previously noted; plus a group of 18 Marines captured in 1950 who escaped and rejoined USMC units in May 1951; two enlisted men who escaped less than a week after being taken; and two others released by the enemy after less than a month’s captivity.

In a pure statistical oddity, the survival percentage for both Marine officers and enlisted (as well as the overall return rate) turned out to be the same: 87 percent.

Without going into an analysis here of the possible relevant factors, it is interesting to note that 62 percent of all U.S. captured military personnel returned after the Korean War and that roughly 38 percent died while imprisoned.571 During World War II, the death rate for U.S. prisoners held by the Axis powers was approximately 11 percent.

Circumstances accounting for the capture of Marines during the Korean War were, as in every war, an occupational hazard. In most cases, prisoners were taken in one of two situations. One occurred when overwhelming numbers of hostile forces suddenly surrounded and overran a small outpost, and either killed or captured a high proportion of its defenders. The second resulted from the well-known increasing accuracy of CCF antiaircraft fire. Halfway through the war it began to take its toll of 1st MAW pilots with similarly predictable results: either death or capture. Simple mischance and the human error of confused directions caused at least two ground Marines to blunder into enemy territory.572

A brief review of the Korean War, chronologically, illustrates how some of the men of the 1st Marine Division wound up as prisoners. In the first week of August 1950, leading elements of the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade and the 1st MAW air squadrons arrived in Korea. Soon thereafter the Marine Corps was in the thick of these early-moving offensives: at the Pusan Perimeter; the September Inchon-Seoul amphibious landings; Fox Hill at Toktong Pass, Yudam-ni, the Task Force Drysdale operation, all in November; and the October-December Chosin Reservoir campaign, including the two-day movement from Hagaru to Koto-ri in early December. Marine infantry, military police, tankers, motor transport personnel, and artillerymen were listed MIA in these operations.

Altogether, 79 Marines were captured during the first year. November 1950, when 58 Marines were lost to the enemy, would rank as the most costly month of the entire war in terms of Marines seized in combat. The first air POW, Captain Booker, was shot down 7 August while flying a reconnaissance mission from the USS Valley Forge. (This was the same date that infantrymen of the Marine Provisional Brigade saw their initial heavy fighting in what was then considered only a “police action.”) Captain Booker was to remain the only Marine pilot in enemy hands until April 1951.

One ground Marine captured during the hectic days of August 1950 escaped before ever becoming listed as a casualty. Although Private First Class Richard E. Barnett thus does not technically qualify as a POW statistic, he still holds the distinction of being both one of the first Marine captives and one of the few to escape.573

Few Marines were taken during 1951. Of the 31 seized throughout the entire year, 13 were from the division and 18 from the wing. The Marines were engaged in antiguerrilla activities until late February when a general advance was ordered by U.S. IX and X Corps to deny positions to the enemy. The 1st Marine Division was committed near Wonju, as part of the IX Corps. A second offensive, Operation RIPPER, was launched in March, and for the next six weeks small inroads were made against CCF forces. Relieved in the Hongchon area the next month by elements of the U.S. 2d and 7th Divisions, the Marines continued to operate as part of the IX Corps. Their mission was to secure objectives north of the 38th Parallel. On 21 April the 1st Marine Division launched its attack, on IX Corps order, encountering moderate to heavy resistance. Throughout the first half of 1951, only five Marine infantrymen were captured.

Truce negotiations, as earlier noted, began at Kaesong on 10 July 1951 and ground fighting slowed. When the Communists broke off the truce sessions in late August General Van Fleet, then EUSAK commander, ordered an offensive by the X Corps to seize the entire Punchbowl. Along with other X Corps divisions, the Marines attacked on 31 August. They secured initial objectives, and then moved north to the Soyang River to seize additional designated objectives. Following the bitter action in the Punchbowl area, the Marines were involved in consolidating and improving their defenses.

As the battle lines became comparatively stabilized in 1951, the enemy began to develop his AA defenses to peak efficiency. Marine pilots engaged in CAS, observation, interdiction, and armed reconnaissance missions began to encounter accurate and intense ground fire.574 Aircraft losses increased, and with them, the number of USMC aviators who fell into enemy hands. More than half of the Marine POWs taken during the year—18 of 31—were on 1st MAW station lists. Captive airmen represented VMF-323, VMF(N)-513, Hedron MAG-33 (Headquarters Squadron 33), VMO-6, VMF-312, VMF-311, and VMA-121.