War Trash by Ha Jin

Author:Ha Jin [Jin, Ha]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: prose_contemporary
Published: 2011-07-13T21:00:00+00:00

18. AFTER THE VICTORY

As we were celebrating our victory, hundreds of GIs sealed Compound 76, and no representatives, except for the three women, were allowed to return to their compounds. So the four of us Chinese got stuck there. On the same day General Smart revoked the agreement Bell had signed, declaring it illegal, made under duress. He announced that he would take all necessary measures to restore order in the camp, including the use of force. Soon we got word that Bell and Fulton had both been demoted and had left Koje Island. From the radio we heard that Pyongyang and Beijing had widely publicized our victory, which had provided ammunition for propaganda and some leverage for our negotiators at Panmunjom. Yet I began to feel uneasy about this victory, which had caused us to be trapped here and might bring more trouble to the Korean prisoners.

From mid-May on, the American troops harassed the POWs. They fired rifles, pitched tear-gas bombs into different compounds, and drove tanks up to some fences to spew fire from flamethrowers onto the slogans and the portraits of Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il Sung erected by the prisoners. Every day the guards would fire at the inmates in Compound 76. Within three weeks about two dozen men had been wounded. Obviously the enemy intended to provoke the inmates so that they would have a pretext for punishing us.

After a few meetings among the leaders of Compound 76, to which Chaolin and Ming were both invited, a conclusion was reached: the enemy must be planning to take revenge, so we must prepare for it. In addition, General Smart might have another object in mind – six compounds controlled by the Korean Communists had repeatedly refused to be screened by U.N. personnel, so he might be intending to solve this problem as well. Very likely the enemy would attack Compound 76 to set an example for the other bellicose compounds and intimidate them into obedience. Therefore the leaders decided to organize for self-defense, preparing for the impending violence; at the same time, we must not give the enemy a handle for any large-scale attack, so we should avoid acting rashly and know where to stop. The Korean prisoners responded to the leaders' call enthusiastically and organized themselves into different task groups. An assault brigade was formed: its members were armed with self-made weapons – cudgels, gasoline bombs, and long spears made of pieces of steel ripped from oil drums, sharpened, and tied to the tips of bamboo poles with iron wire. They also began digging trenches within the tents to protect themselves from gunfire. We, the four Chinese, all joined them in building defenses.

On the early morning of June 12, about forty tanks and armored personnel carriers and twelve hundred GIs surrounded Compound 76. The snarling of the vehicles woke us up, and we watched them from within our tent. General Smart supervised the operation on the spot, wearing a steel helmet, a pistol, and binoculars on his broad belt.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.