It was six-thirty now, and our battalion began singing the "Internationale" while slowly our flag was raised. I looked around and saw many faces enraptured and bathed in tears. The flags in the other barracks were rising too. All the battalions were chanting the same song, though the chorusing was out of sync.
After the "Internationale," we started to sing our national anthem. By now hundreds of GIs had assembled at the front gate to the camp. We saw a column of tanks turning the northwestern corner, coming our way. On the guard towers machine guns were aimed at us while the GIs were talking wildly with one another or into telephones. Then came Colonel Kelly's voice through a bullhorn, ordering us to haul down our flags and return to our quarters immediately. "If you don't obey, we're going to make you," he announced.
In response, we shouted slogans: "Down with American imperialism!" "Long live our motherland!" "We won't stop without a full victory!" "Defend our honor with our lives!" "Send us home!" "Observe the Geneva Convention!"
Eight light tanks, M-24S, were lined up at the front entrance now. More than five hundred GIs had assembled outside the camp, ready to come in. A few minutes later two guards opened the front gate and the tanks rolled into the central field, followed by the GIs, all in steel helmets and some in gas masks. They toted rifles with fixed bayonets, wearing grenades and tear-gas bombs on their belts. A dozen of them carried on their backs flamethrowers, each of which consisted of three steel cylinders hooped together. Colonel Kelly dispatched two companies and four tanks to the western side of the camp, then directed most of the remaining force to Compound 7, but he also posted trucks and half-tracks topped with.50-caliber machine guns at the entrances to the other compounds. After all the GIs were in position, the paunchy colonel issued his ultimatum that we must take down our flags immediately. He shouted, "You're out of line, I tell you. My patience is wearing thin. If you don't listen to reason and pull down. those rags now, I'm going to kick your butts."
Still we ignored him. The red flags, though fluttering now and again, drooped in the damp daylight, weighed down by the metal stars.
Through the bullhorn Colonel Kelly ordered the officer leading the troops assembled at the gate to Compound 7, "Proceed as planned!" From a window of our shed Shanmin and I watched them, my heart palpitating. I wished our leaders could have talked with the enemy. Even though it might not have resolved the crisis, it might at least have reduced the enemy's momentum and kept violence at bay. About eighty GIs rushed into Compound 7 and cautiously closed in on the rows of barracks, at which all their Ml Garand rifles were pointed. Although that compound was as quiet as if deserted, I saw some prisoners crouching in a ditch behind a shed. Heavens, they wanted to ambush the fully armed Americans! This was suicidal. Why were Chaolin and the other leaders of that battalion letting their men act so recklessly?
As I was wondering, the GIs got within twenty yards of the sheds. Suddenly the shock team jumped out of the ditches, shouting "Kill!" and charging at the enemy with stones, clubs, kerosene bombs, bottles of hot water mixed with bleach. Meanwhile, the men in reserve shouted slogans and hurled all kinds of objects at the GIs – tattered boots, clods, rocks, fragments of bricks. The enemy was taken by surprise, its formation thrust out of order, and some of them paused. A bottle of urine crashed on a GIs helmet and set the man screaming – he must have thought the stinking liquid was acid. Several of them were scalded by the bleach water, howling for help. Indeed the hot solution terrified them, because they took it for some kind of chemical weapon. So they withdrew immediately but kept firing at the men charging forward. About two dozen prisoners were shot, lying in the yard. Some of them were motionless while the others were moaning, kicking their legs and flailing their arms. Two or three of the Americans were wounded. An enemy platoon commander had been hit in the face by a stone; he took off his helmet and wiped his bloody nose with a wad of bandage. He couldn't stop swearing and stamping his feet as a medic dressed his wound.
The moment the prisoners had carried their casualties back into the sheds, the GIs came to attack again. This time they first pitched about three dozen tear-gas bombs and concussion grenades, then four flamethrowers launched torrents of fire at the sheds, whose roofs burst into flames, forcing the inmates to flee in all directions. Machine guns and rifles broke out rapping. The Seventh Battalions assault team, about to charge again, was at once rendered defensive. Their second echelon, already fully exposed and without any fortifications, was drawn into the battle now. Wave after wave of men dashed toward the GIs and were mown down. The yard was littered with bodies and puddles of blood while dark smoke rose and drifted away toward the ocean. Behind the sheds the flag hardly swayed, as if frozen.
I was sure Commissar Pei and Ming were observing the clash from the prison house. Why hadn't Chaolin had some deep trenches dug in the barracks, as the Korean prisoners had done on Koje Island, if he wanted his men to fight such a battle? Even though it was the commissar who had initiated this whole operation, Chaolin should be held responsible for the heavy casualties, I thought.
Suddenly, fifteen prisoners sprang out of the last shed and dashed toward the flagpole; only one was armed, with a short spade. A group of GIs were headed toward the flag too; believing that the approaching inmates intended to charge at them, they opened fire. Some of the prisoners were struck down, but none of them turned back. One was shot in the thigh yet still hopped toward the flag. I counted the bodies in their wake: seven fell before they reached the oil drums. Fortunately the enemy held their fire. Hurriedly the prisoners pulled down the flag and set it ablaze. At once the flames engulfed the nylon cloth, which blackened, shrank, then vanished.
The enemy commander took this to be a gesture of capitulation, so he withdrew his troops from the compound. Soon a team of American medical personnel arrived to help the wounded POWs, some of whom were crying loudly and waving at whoever was nearby. But the doctors and medics ignored them and checked the motionless ones first. Near the wall of a shed lay an American soldier, entangled with the bodies of several inmates; they had all been knocked out by concussion grenades.
During this part of the battle, a fight had also broken out in Compound 5, which was too far away for us to see. All we saw was black smoke going up in columns and puffs in the southwest, and we also heard guns clatter sporadically. Unable to do much to help their comrades in the two compounds, the other eight battalions just went on shouting slogans and throwing things at the GIs, who ignored them.
Toward midafternoon we received the report on our casualties. Fifty-three men had been killed in Compound 7, and another six had died in the hospital. There were 109 men seriously wounded, most of whom had been carried away by ambulances. In Compound 5 four prisoners had been killed and twenty-one wounded. Among the dead was their chief, Zhao Teng. His death saddened me. He had been a good man, hot-tempered but honest. The year before, in his former unit, he had shot a platoon leader because the man had raped a Korean girl. He and I had never been close, but I had respected him as an officer who would take the lead in anything he ordered his men to do. His men had loved him.
We got an odd message from the Seventh Battalion that afternoon, saying they had scored a great victory. Why had Chaolin made such a foolish claim? This was beyond me. Obviously he hadn't taken into account the heavy losses. What kind of leader was he? Under normal circumstances he ought to have been reprimanded, if not punished. I was dismayed, but dared not express my thoughts to anyone, not even to my friend Shanmin.