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.
More surprising was that toward evening we received congratulations from Commissar Pei. I had seen Ming walking left and right behind the window of the war criminal's cell, busy sending out a message. He appeared rather stooped and coughed into his fist from time to time. In addition to congratulating us on "the glorious victory," the message declared that all the comrades who had sacrificed their lives today were named Hero Fighters, that every man in the Seventh Battalion had earned a second-class merit citation, that every member on the shock team was awarded a citation of the special class, and that on every wounded comrade in both compounds was conferred a first-class citation. Pei also called on us to salute the men of the Seventh Battalion and to learn from the example of their mettle.
I was more dubious about this business of the citations now. Indeed, a senior officer like Pei was entitled to issue a few awards once in a while, but definitely not so many of them. Why had he acted as though all the citations had been in his pockets and he were at liberty to hand out as many as he liked? I had been awarded three already, but never had I seen a medal, and I couldn't help but doubt their value. Accompanying each major citation – the first or the special class – one should also receive a raise in both rank and salary, but never had that been mentioned. These awards might just be a hoax; I truly doubted if Pei had even kept a record of the hundreds of citations he had bestowed on us. Who had ever heard of every member of a battalion being given a second-class citation? This kind of award inflation seemed fraudulent, but the men were not skeptical of them. They tended to take the citations as something that might reconfirm their loyalty to our country and the revolution, and therefore as something that could reduce their shame. Some men in our barracks even envied those in Compound 7.