Perhaps I should digress a moment to discuss this particular guard, because we related to each other on more levels than was the case with any of the others. The relationship was both positive and negative, mostly the latter. When he first came, he was friendly and on a couple of occasions helped feed me. We swapped some English for Chinese. This led to mathematics, when we traded “jah,” “jan,” “chung,” and “tuo” for “add,” “subtract,” “multiply,” and “divide.” I discovered that he didn't know the multiplication tables, so I wrote them for him and he started to work with them. However, on his next tour of duty, he brought a paperback book which he began to study. It was largely pictorial.

Soon it became evident that this was a propaganda publication concerning atrocities, supposedly committed by Americans in Korea. Some of it was about the riots in the POW camps in South Korea, which took place before I was captured. There the treatment of North Korean and Chinese prisoners had become so lenient that they had been able to take over the camp and capture the commandant. The prisoners had made weapons and had their own army within the camp. They even established kangaroo courts and killed some of their own people. Naturally, it had become necessary to use force to restore order. Some more men on both sides were killed. The camp, having been too large, was then broken into smaller units, and communication between these units was restricted. Of course, in the propaganda book, the account of all this was distorted, casting the Americans as “barbarians” who were denying the rights of, and torturing and killing prisoners.

The riots had been part of an elaborate plan to discredit the UN Forces while the peace talks were in progress at Panmunjom. The Communist press used the riots to gain a propaganda advantage, and, as my guard demonstrated, probably influenced their readers considerably.

In the past the guard's personality had been inoffensive, and his jibes toward me were in a half-joking vein. Now he gradually became more somber. He muttered to himself as he struggled with the printed matter and studied the pictures. He began to glance at me and finally began to tell me of the contents. He snarled as he showed me some “photos” of alleged atrocities. But, of course, denials by me were to no avail. He became Mr. Hyde; and after this character change, we argued about religion and any other subject he wished to choose, as a basis for verbal confrontation.

Hyde was now another major problem for me, because, to him, I represented everything he'd read and seen in that book. Among other things, he decided that he would get the bedpan for me when I needed it. This was not a humanitarian gesture on his part. Through both words and attitude, he conveyed to me that his motive was to limit my contact with all persons other then himself. Oddly enough, it was this decision which might have lead to my death by bullet! I say “might,” because I'm still uncertain about the degree of his emotional imbalance at the time of the incident.

I awoke during the night with a clear urge to use the bedpan. He heard me preparing to summon the nurse; and grumbling as he went, he left. After his return with the required item, I attempted to use it, but for some unexplainable reason I had absolutely no success.

Hyde sat on his bed, waiting for me to finish. Finally I said I could not use the pan. He got up, and, standing between the beds, said, “Ni bu hao!” (You're no good!)

He was very angry with me, and fired off a tirade in Chinese so rapidly that I missed most of it. The meaning, however, was very clear. He became more and more infuriated, eventually working himself into something bordering on irrational rage. I tried to apologize about the bedpan, but finally tired of his abuse and getting into bed, I answered him in a tone he could readily identify as being anything but servile.

He pulled his automatic pistol from his holster; and pointing it at me, said he would kill me like the Americans “killed the prisoners in Korea!”

I didn't take all this very seriously. I guessed that it was probably all bluster, and that he was unlikely to commit such a rash act, here in the hospital (he certainly couldn't make a very sound case for an escape attempt). I rolled onto my side with my back toward him, telling him, “Go ahead, you dim bulb, shoot.”

There was absolute silence.

The room seemed to be getting smaller.

I began to question how accurate my assessment of the situation had been.

Finally, I heard the pistol slide back into the holster. Reason had won out over what, apparently, had been an awful urge to shoot me. The creak of the springs told me he had gotten into bed. He hadn't even bothered to return the unused bedpan.

Neither of us mentioned the incident; and when his tour was over, he did not return.