While in his junior year at Drake University, Gordon was reactivated from the reserves and ordered to report to Camp Atterbury. What he assumed would be a brief interruption from his pursuit of a law degree turned into a three-year hiatus as a guest of the Communists. When he departed Iowa in September 1950, he made it as far as Chicago when his ultimate destination of Germany was struck off and changed to Korea. He turned around and headed to San Francisco to sail across the Pacific and join the 23d Infantry Regiment at the end of January. The regiment was just recovering from their bitter winter battles and replenishing lost ranks with troops from the United States. Sergeant Madson was one of a few soldiers who had served in World War II, but his office job in Washington was far from field experience. It was funny, he thought, to be there at twenty-four commanding men not much younger than him only because he had wanted to complete school to become an attorney.
The enemy appeared to be fleeing north from Wonju, but on January 31st a X Corps patrol that was ambushed indicated that the enemy was in the area of the Twin Tunnels. The recovering 23d Infantry was assigned the operation of destroying this force and moved four miles south of the area. Gordon’s I Company, with 3d Battalion supported by the French and 37th Field Artillery, were within a thousand yards of the recently discovered Chinese.
Near dawn on first of February, two Chinese regiments attacked 3d Battalion from the north and northeast. They assaulted L Company to the chorus bugles and whistles, a familiar sound to those who had already been through the winter campaign, but was new and haunting for Gordon. A third Chinese regiment joined from the west after daylight. From his quiet foxhole, he listened in anticipation to the battle ahead for an hour and a half before men of L Company ran back through I Company lines seeking safety. Behind them, the trees began to tremble and shake as swarms of Chinese moved through them in pursuit.
Their foxhole positions on the slope of the hill quickly became little deathtraps as the Chinese lobbed grenades over the crest. Any that did not explode near the Americans tumbled right into their foxholes, forcing them to scramble out to avoid getting blown apart by the hail of stick grenades. The platoons of I Company resorted to charging up the hill rather than face the torrent of grenades. By the time they made it to the top, they were so low on ammunition they had to turn right back around and return to their vacated foxholes to regroup. The company formed a new plan to attack into the forty-foot-deep saddle beyond the crest of the hill. The main body of Chinese waited on a finger of land that extended out of this shallow depression. The entire area was thick with short pines and underbrush. Armed with three grenades each, I Company intended to blitz their attackers with a hailstorm of explosives. They ended up throwing too many too early, giving the Chinese enough time to recover and hold their positions, forcing Madson and the men of I Company back down the slope a second time.
Shortly after noon, bolstered by reinforcements from K and M Companies, I Company attempted a third assault up the hill. They barely succeeded in pushing the Chinese off, but a tactful sniper terrorized the company enough to force them retreat again. Twice more that afternoon they tried for the hill, but faced similar results and only artillery and air strikes saved them.
*
The regiment spent the rest of February trudging through trackless mountains. The Chinese were scarce, but movement became difficult especially after the Chechon River flooded which made movement by vehicle limited or impossible. Even Korean carrying parties had problems navigating the terrain and ration supply and personnel evacuation was always hindered.
On the morning of March 2d, I Company joined a broader attack that had been occurring since the previous day across the regimental front. Reinforced with a platoon from L Company, a platoon of tanks, and a platoon of engineers clearing mines in the lead, they moved out down the road. Liaison craft droned overhead watching for any movement.
After a few hours, they eventually met fifty enemy securely dug in that even after a heavy artillery barrage held firmly and it was up to the infantry to assault the slope. The Chinese quickly resorted to a barrage of grenades. One blast smacked Gordon with fragments that lodged at least ten burning metal bits from the left side of his face and jaw, along his back, and spiraling to his right buttock down his leg. Another decapitated the man beside him, leaving the headless body to dart around animatedly like a headless chicken. Unable to walk further, Gordon crawled down the hill before the tanks in the valley below blew the top off of it and the company took the hill shortly after.
He rode back through multiple aid stations and a MASH unit until he transferred to the USNS Repose and then to Camp Omiya. The doctors left a fragment about the size of his thumbnail just above his right ankle that he scratched at occasionally.
MAY MASSACRE
It took a month to recover before he was back as an assistant platoon sergeant with I Company. As the platoon guide, he had the additional responsibility of carrying maps of their ammunition dumps, rations, platoon and weapons rosters. He wrote home on May 16th to let his family know he was returning to the front the next day and the most news he had was that ‘something big was coming.’ All units received foreboding instructions to hold positions at all costs during the hours of darkness and any movement challenged with no reply would be considered hostile. The entire Division prepared for a fight and the next day, as expected, the 23d Infantry left from reserve and was committed to hold against a massive Chinese attack. By that evening, the 3d Battalion was already surround and the Chinese were swarming the command post area.
Early in the day on May 18th, an observation plan dropped a message for the regiment: ‘Enemy out in front of you in regiment strength.’ That soon became: ‘Maybe two divisions of enemy’ and ultimately escalated with a helpless note: ‘I can’t see the end of them.’ The 23d Infantry had been in positions for weeks as part of Task Force Zebra, building up defenses along “No-Name” line north of Chaun-ni. The land before them was planted with mines, barbed wire, trip flares, and tanks defenses. To the northwest was a valley between steep slopes, rising up from a meandering stream made impassable by huge boulders. On either side were rice paddies and cultivated slopes that cut sharply skyward to young maples and ridgelines thick with pines. To the northeast was another valley that made the main supply route by means of a wide road.
The valley filled with an ocean of bodies rushing toward their positions that morning and the company received an order to withdraw, but it was impossible to get out of the Chinese encirclement. The proposed withdrawal became an attack out to the south with I Company, who were suffering the worst of the onslaught, were left alone to defend as the rear guard.
As bullets and mortars cut through them, it seems two Chinese took the place of every one that fell. Gordon witnessed “tanks spraying each other with their own machine guns to pick off Chinese soldiers crawling aboard…Tree branches sliced by bullets were falling all around” and bodies of Chinese falling on top of one another “like cordwood.” By the afternoon, the regiment was shredded to bits. The company officers led most of the men out and upon leaving, ordered Madson to remain with only five men and no ammunition. He looked down into the valley to see the tanks spin their turrets and flee south and he knew there was nothing left for them. The small group held for a grueling hour and half against three banzai charges to cover the battalion’s withdrawal and the evacuation of wounded. When they finally ran out of ammunition, Gordon ripped the bolt out of his rifle and flung it down the hill where it thudded into soft earth. He had nothing left to fight with and accepted his fate.
It was near dusk when the Chinese popped over the ridge, chattering between themselves and barking at Madson and his buddies. He lifted his arms for the men poking submachine guns at him, who flashed yellow teeth that split their hard cordovan faces. It was clear they were pleased to have some prisoners. They grabbed his gear, field jacket, boots and anything else of value with a number of gestures to illustrate their demands. He was left with just trousers and shirt that did little in the barely warming spring climate. Madson withheld his role as a sergeant and managed to hide his maps and rosters. The Chinese might take him, but he sure would not let them find documents like that. They bound each man by the wrists with telephone wire and prodded them forward, beginning the long march north.
*
The next day, the Chinese gathered their prisoners taken at Soyang to a collection point and waited. Gordon met John Wheeler among the captured, also a member of I Company, who became an ‘eleventh man’ with Gordon. The Chinese designated every eleventh prisoner a squad leader of other prisoners. John led first squad and Gordon was assigned the ninth. From there, they went four days without food. It was during these first few days that he managed to destroy the platoon documents he secretly carried and determined he would carry on his masquerade as a private. His platoon membered never hinted otherwise. The Chinese had good information that Gordon was a sergeant and interrogated him for several days before giving up, but they watched him closely. Water was only available when crossing streams or rice paddies during marches, which only occurred during the night. The prisoners quickly looked terrible without means of washing or shaving. It seemed the haggard Americans were being paraded in front of incoming Chinese troops as propaganda. Gordon quickly found that the Chinese did not seem to be living much better than the captured prisoners. He also recognized the impossibility of escape across rough terrain without resources and an obvious difference of skin color from the native inhabitants.
The biggest threat to survival beyond the lack of food was their own American bombers that droned closer and closer. On one occasion, the bombs slamming into the earth drew so close to the mud hut Gordon rested in that he was sure the next one was going to obliterate him. The fear of these bomb runs lingered for the entire trek north until they could finally reach their prison camp months later.
After a month of trekking through the North Korean wilderness, Gordon and John were separated from the main body of prisoners. Their captors knew Gordon had some college education and he felt John was proficient in English, and the Chinese used the pair to practice their English with. They were escorted far back into some hills with only a few mud huts reachable only by a few foot paths. There were no roads or even cart paths. They ended up with about two hundred Chinese who talked, interrogated, asked thousands of questions about their homes and families, and practiced English. Madson met an American Counter Intelligence Corps lieutenant who had been shot down in an Air Force plane. The two contemplated escape, but they were separated when the lieutenant was sent to a special prison for ‘intensive study.’
Gordon and John also became tasked with supply runs (a thirty-mile round trip) to collect rice sorghum that they ate alongside the Chinese. All of this walking and marching wore through their combat boots and they replaced their shredded boots with Chinese tennis shoes. Gordon was able to fit his size 8 foot into what they provided, but John, at size 12, was out of luck.
They continued their work into July, leaving the rudimentary ‘classroom’ setting and taking on harder labor of hauling logs and building bunkers. Both men were very weak and becoming thin – Gordon estimating he was under 100 pounds and John could not have been over 115. The Chinese stated “No work, no eat!” and the pair obliged as their captors were the ones with weapons. During that labor, John contracted a skin disease that afflicted the backs of his hands, nose and ears with a dark brown, yellow matter that would break through and drain. Their captors did help with a provision of captured sulfa salve, but their meager supply only lasted so long. They became afraid of catching John’s disease and segregated the two Americans to eat alone.
On August 6th, the Chinese took John away claiming their finest Chinese doctors would see to his condition. Before he left, he presented Gordon with his Bible, as he had none and John said he would need it with no one to talk to but their Chinese captors. Gordon watched with tears forming as three guards escorted the soldier who had become his closest friend. They had known each other for only weeks, but it felt like he was using a lifelong companion. He disappeared over a ridge and Gordon cried.
CAMP #1
Gordon finally reached a prisoner camp on November 11th. They called it a mining camp and he learned it was the same one that Wheeler had been taken to. There were only a few men there and no one knew the true name of the camp, but due to the large mine on site they aptly referred to it as the mining camp. Most of them had been there in August and Gordon asked fervently if they had known John. They callously informed Gordon that the ‘hospital’ the Chinese had mentioned was only a death house and they wagered only one out of a hundred men ever returned from there, vaguely recalling a man by the name of Wheeler a part of the majority who never returned.
After a few more stragglers arrived during the week, they set off for Changson, Camp #1, arriving November 18th. Near the banks of the Yalu River along the Chinese border, the prisoners were as far north as they could go. The idea of escape was even more improbable. Gordon did have one good friend who eventually tried and successfully got away from camp after killing a guard. He was free for three days. Reflecting on his capture, Gordon stated: “they finally caught him because you don't like a Korean. You don't like a Chinese. Your skin is not yellow. Your eyes are not slanted. You look just like you are. You are a white American. So, they brought him back, and they executed him in front of all of us with a firing squad. And so, I don't know of anybody else that ever even tried. Why? Because how are you going to get away? He wanted to get to the coast and swim out to where our battle ships and all our cruisers and the Navy were patrolling up and down the coast all around it. But you had to get out three or four miles in order to do it. You better swim or at least steal a boat. I know there was not a single one that of my knowledge of my friends or anybody else that did get away, ever did. They were either executed on the spot when they were captured or whatever. The Korean would turn them in.”
In the camp of all privates and some corporals, Gordon did begin to feel a bit guilty about getting paid twice as much as a full sergeant and suffering the same conditions. The sergeants went to another camp and the officers to a third. The privates and corporals were subjected to the most propaganda as they were the most impressionable – young and many draftees or new recruits. He helped a lot of them avoid any potential allure of the relentless propaganda. They were constantly fed the glories of Communist philosophy and for the few collaborators that did get special treatment, Gordon told his men to pay no mind and “they were cutting their own throat when they got back.” All of the repatriated prisoners did, in the end, ensure their names were turned over to the military.
The Chinese proclaimed to the world how well they treated the prisoners, but so many died due to malnourishment. By wars end, thirty-eight percent of American prisoners died in the hands of the Chinese and North Koreans, rivaling the astonished thirty-seven percent held by Japan during World War II which grossly overshadowed death rates in Europe by seven times. They ate a lot of Sorghum, which Gordon recognized as hog and cattle food from Iowa farms, and if they did get rice, it was a treat. Without medical attention and the horrible diet, the men soon suffered night blindness, dysentery and beri beri. To supplement their meager diet, they reached for anything of substance, including grasshoppers and frogs. Many men gave up and refused to eat the slop to their own detriment. “Look, if you don’t eat this slop, you’re going to die,” he would tell them. “You have probably twelve days before we bury you. Do you see out there?” Gordon would gesture at the growing quantity of unmarked graves. He buried many men that way.
After peace talks started, they were allowed to write home twice a month. Each time they were questioned by the Chinese who had great interest in their personal lives. The same interrogations occurred when receiving letters from home. Madson explained that his father was just a poor farmer who worked night and day out in the fields hoeing weeds and everything else that farming entailed. I did not divulge that his father was a banker and they lived in a nice home. He was willing to make up any stories for them except in his letters home in which he falsely explained how much food he was getting. If there was anything in their letters that the Chinese found undesirable, it meant time in solitary with only small bowl of sorghum and no opportunity to rewrite.
Any letter that arrived to someone in the squad or hut was a communal event. The men all considered each other family and gladly shared among each other every letter and news of home. In his nearly two years in the camp, Madson only received five or six letters after his first one finally made it out of North Korea in December 1951. He signed with the rank of private and his parents, who surely thought only his dog tags had been picked up, recognized his terrible handwriting and addressed all letters to Gordon with his assumed rank of private. He appreciated their observance of his ruse.
*
The first Christmas in camp began with preparations a week before. The Chinese ordered the men to decorate with pine trees and wreaths cut from nearby mountains in the frigid Manchurian winter. Each squad also received two sheets of colored paper to cut out stars or “Merry Christmas” to paste on the walls of their hut, but the frost on the walls of the 45-degree room prevented the homemade paste from sticking. The forced festivities made for an awkward atmosphere and but the second Christmas, the men hated it and dreamed of home even more.
For Christmas eve, the squads were allowed to stay up past their nine o’clock bedtime and keep the single bare bulb in the hut lit until midnight when they signaled with a whistle blow that it was bedtime. The Chinese also provided a ration of ‘soju’ which Gordon likened to the smell and flavor of fingernail polish. They supplement the meager ounce with their own diabolical brews made from burned rice scrapings, water and sugar which fermented in bottles hidden in the floorboards and roofs for weeks. When their bedtime whistle sounded, they retired to their thin straw mats and attempted to stay warm with three men under a single blanket.
They did manage to draw names and provide a present for the two men who were drawn - a cake made from collecting morsels of rations over several meager meals. They combined salvaged bread scraps, sugar and soybean milk to bake in a British mess kit. Everyone eagerly waited to see who would receive the cake, but Madson held out until Christmas day to reveal the two lucky recipients, who graciously shared with everyone anyway.
The Chinese provided a more robust dinner of soybeans mixed with pork scraps, bread and boiled turnips. The second Christmas was a bit better with some beef, a single chicken for every squad, and an orange, dates and a bottle beer for every two men. Over a three-day period they also got half a spoonful of jam, a tablespoon of coffee grounds, and two tablespoons of powdered milk. These foods came at a cost – it looked good in photographs and for propaganda purposes, but in the days surrounded Christmas their other rations were cut to supplement the ‘larger’ Christmas meals.
*
In the summer of 1952, Madson was finally targeted for his behavior and put into solitary confinement. While some American planes passed overhead, he stood in the yard to wave and cheer at them, which a guard responded to by shooting over Gordon’s head and taking him to solitary. They claimed he was guiding the planes in. For two days, he could not stand or lie down, only sit with his lonely bowl which he ate and washed out of. If he drifted off to sleep, the guard outside would prod him with a bayonet.
The mental strain of appeasing the Chinese was among the biggest irritants of prison life. The prisoners requested at one point to have their captors string barbed wire around the camp assuming it might actually deter them from entering the camp and ironically, give the prisoners more freedom to mingle and talk freely. That solution never materialized and many men cracked under the constant stress.
To pass time of otherwise dull days and keep their minds away from the hovering guards, they played cards and managed to take up some organized sports. The Chinese sponsored farcical Olympic games between camps in late 1952 and gifted the Camp No. 1 team with uniforms. They marched through Camp Pyuktong on opening day, November 13th, to a stadium specially built for the occasion. It became a spectacle for the locals and was well suited for propaganda – attempting to demonstrate how well nourished, active and free the prisoners were to organize and compete in their own games. The program included track and field, American football, soccer, baseball, basketball, volleyball, boxing, wrestling, and gymnastics. Much like the Christmas celebrations, there was an element of forced joy and entertainment, but it was a welcome break from camp life and a fine way to mingle with other camps and participate in a truly international event.
*
He returned to United States military control in August 1953 with malaria, amebiasis, and beri beri. Along with a fellow Iowan, Corporal Louis Rund, the two crossed Freedom Bridge stripped to their shorts in contempt of the Communists, refusing to wear their blue prison uniforms anymore. Gordon managed to liberate his Olympic games jersey, John’s bible, and a brass spoon he used to both eat and bury the dead. He participated in a repatriation interview where they found him to be remarkably emotionally stable, noting considerable ego strength which contributed to his survival and that of others. He was given a thirty-day furlough to see his family and soon enough had his discharge and substantial back pay. He enjoyed Christmas for the first time in two years and looked forward eagerly to completing his education at Drake and finally obtaining his law degree.