After leaving the hospital, I was taken for a ride in a Jeep. The ride ended at the railroad station where we boarded a sleeper car that had compartments with no partitions on the side toward the hallway. There were three stacked bunks per compartment. Each bunk resembled the old, hard, parlor sofas which were stuffed with horse hair. They had little, permanent inhabitants which bit me as I lay on a top bunk. I had been boosted up there, so I would be as inconspicuous as possible in this car filled with civilians.

Not knowing the destination I was forced to adopt some primitive methods to make a determination (guess). Lying awake most of the night, I listened to the clacking of the wheels to get a rough idea of the speed. This, along with the time traveled, obtained from the watch I still had, would give me an approximate distance. The general direction would probably be one of two: southeast into Korea and across the 38th parallel to freedom (much preferred), or northwest into China and ? ? ? (not preferred). To determine the direction, I needed a dawn to break in a clear sky, so I could see if the sun came through the cracks around the blinds on the left or the right side of the train.

When the sun edged over the horizon, the sky was cloudless. The sun sneaked around the blinds — on the right side of the train.

We were traveling deeper into China!

Now came the time to use my map. It was one I'd seen in the magazine, “China Reconstructs” and it was tucked away in my memory. I hauled it out and laid my rough calculations on it. They told me that, when the train finally made its last stop, we were in Mukden (Shenyeng). Later information bore this out.

When the Chinese Communists flooded across the Yalu, they had acquired many things left behind by United Nations forces. Most of the hospital equipment, supplies, and drugs used on me bore the stamp of the United States Army. Now I was riding in still another Jeep, but this time the destination was even more disturbing. First, I was further from Korea; and second, I was entering a real prison, not a prisoner-of-war camp.

We walked into the building and down some stairs. In the semi-darkness I was able to discern a row of solid green doors along both walls. The walk gave me the impression of a journey into the dungeons, and with every step I was more convinced that, had I been given a vote, it certainly would not have been in favor of stopping off at this site on the “excursion.”

We halted, a door was opened, and I entered a ten by twenty foot cell. In the center was an iron cot with a table standing nearby. Over the table, a bare light bulb was suspended from the ceiling. In the wall opposite the door were two half-sized windows, so I could not see out. The one wall was oddly shaped. It was of greater thickness from the floor to a distance of about four feet upward. This outset had a sloping top which faired into the thinner, upper portion of the wall. I wasn't there long enough to learn the reason, if any, for this unique architecture. Later I was told that it had a very definite purpose. The thick portion of the wall was hollow. In cold weather it served as a furnace into which burnable materials were thrown from the outside. This was how the cells were heated.

During my initial tour about the cell on my crutches, I saw some large spots on the wall. My imagination conjured up an image of some hapless prisoner being bounced off the concrete wall. No one did this to me, for which I was grateful. Maybe no one did this to anybody here. Maybe some crazy prisoner threw his gruel at the wall. I never asked.

On one of my many trips around the cell I discovered, scratched on the back of a shutter, the name, Cameron. I didn;t know this name, but it turned out that a Lt. Cameron was detained in China after the war, along with others, and he had occupied this cell at one time. Also, the letters “U S A F” were carved on the window sill.

Less than an hour after my arrival, I heard tapping on the wall. In Morse code someone was asking my name. I began sending my name but had to stop when the small observation panel in my cell door slid open and two eyes peered in at me. That other prisoner must have been moved to another cell almost immediately because I was unable to reestablish contact. Later information caused me to believe he had been a Canadian named McKenzie.

Here at Mukden I met another interrogator who spoke English. His name was Kwong. He used the “good-fellow” approach and talked quite freely. However, one of our conversations ended abruptly when I mentioned that his friends, the Russians, had just recently released Japanese prisoners of World War II, some eight years after the war had ended. He said he hadn't known this and was generally taken aback.