We Fight for Peace: Twenty-Three American Soldiers, Prisoners of War, and Turncoats in the Korean War by Brian D. McKnight

Author:Brian D. McKnight
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookmasters Group

All of these symptoms combined to make prisoners very paranoid. Bloemsma’s opinion was that Dickenson’s life was “threatened from day to day,” as was that all of the PsW, and, as a result, he became “very suspicious.” He noted that “[r]umors are always believed; and if a rumor hasn’t been in a camp for a certain time, rumors are made up; and this is a typical thing of an advanced fence complex patient.”52 Bloemsma explained, “nearly every POW ‘loses his sense of right and wrong’ after he is held captive behind a fence for any length of time,” making a compelling case for Dickenson and his defense counsel.53

The next day, April 28, more evidence as to Dickenson’s mental health while a captive was submitted in the form of testimony by three psychiatrists. Giving credence to Bloemsma’s “fence complex” assertion, Morris Kleinerman described Dickenson as being ‘emotionally unstable’ and irrational while a prisoner. Winfred Overholser, who was superintendent of Washington, D.C.’s, St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital, agreed with Kleinerman and offered that “the type of treatment given some prisoners ‘could be pushed to a point where almost any one would submit’.” To no one’s surprise, army psychiatrist and colonel Emmet Litteral held Dickenson responsible, testifying that he could in fact distinguish right from wrong while imprisoned and did possess the strength to do right. Moreover, while neither the court nor the defense saw the importance of this, Litteral, rightly or wrongly, suggested that severe paranoia drove Dickenson to see the army as seeking to destroy him and that “every order given him was an insult.” Steeling himself against the pitfalls of interpretation, Litteral stuck strictly with the legal definition of sanity as written into military regulations and declared Dickenson to suffer from ‘acute situational maladjustment.” Kleinerman and Litteral agreed that Dickenson had a passive aggressive personality, but differed otherwise with the former arguing, along with Overholser, that the corporal exhibited a great level of dependency, particularly when presented with harsh circumstances.54

With recent and similar charges against Frank Schwable and William Dean, both officers, Guy Emery attempted to introduce General Dean’s testimony on life in a prisoner of war camp. Calling Dean an “expert witness” on the conditions, Emery was disappointed when the court took a narrow view and found the general’s information to be “wholly immaterial.”55 Emory had hoped that the court would afford his client the same opportunity at defense given to Schwable and Dean, both of whom had chalked up their own behaviors to the desperation that resulted from the poor conditions of imprisonment. Unfortunately for the enlisted men of that era, the army had grown exceedingly rank-conscious and that custom extended into the realm of military justice. Although the separation of officers and enlisted men in the military is supported by considerable reason, the Dickenson and Batchelor cases saw two different laws being applied. For officers who broke protocol and committed crimes while imprisoned, lenience and compassion was practiced, but for enlisted men, severe punishment was demanded.

On Thursday, April 29, the court relented and allowed the Dean deposition to be read aloud.

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