The Courier News from Blytheville, Arkansas • Page 2

PAGE TWO BI.YTHEVILLE (ARK.) COURIER NEWS TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1983 Escape Effort Foiled By Frightened Koreans of tlirop slorirs he (ells of the thwarted plan of an American pilot with whom he escaped to steal a Russian-mad M1O 15 Jet flchter and fly It to an American base. EDITOR'S NOTE: Frank Noel, AP Pholne- nphcr and Pulillier priie wilier in 1913, came baek from more than 32 months In a rmiiniunlsl prison camp on Aug. 9. In this second of a series By FIIANK NOKI. As Told to Olen Clements TOKYO (AP) In the minds of prisoners whether it is Lcavcnworth or a Communist hole in North Korea escape always is running though your mind.

Four time 1 planned to escape. Once I did. It was with a pilot, Capl. Cachary Dean of Kansas. It happened in August, 1951.

I had been a prisoner of the Communists then nearly year. Dean, P51 pilot, was shot down In April. 1951. He was a bridegroom of six days. First I'll give you the picture.

Escape In a country where yon can't speak the lansuaae, rend the rond siRns, show your tare at all. Is something that must bo Uiousnl out. Dean, a lanky Kansnn with the, guts of a lion, wanted, to Kteal a MIG15 and fly it back to an airfield in South Korea. Beini; Aiv Force he knew how much those things were worth. So we planned to swim the sneaK down around Antung, Manchuria, He up around the airport few days, and watch the Chinese security guards.

Eventually lie planned to snatch a hot jet and fly It away. I was going to steal a fishing boat or bribe or clobber somebody and get out the best way I could. UTTLC Middle age is the time when men give up hoping their kids will amount to something and start concentrating on their grandchildren. Three in 1'ltil 'more were three of us involved in Uie escape plot. Wt 1 to connive, scrape 1 food howls for leftovers and horde up everything we could lay hands on thiit could eat.

or use (or trarimi' or bribery. Communists are easy 1o bribe. We knew the route from the crimp we were groin? to take. Tt was through a corn patch. But.

the corn wasn't high enough. So we watched that corn Ki'ow, kept an eye on the moon and hided our time, One stormy night looked like the night. We were ready. The third man just come down with yellow jaundice. Dean nnri I dec.ided to go it alone.

TVmV is not good because in that country you might sprain an nnkle tripping over undergrowth. It is best, that three men together just in case of illness, injury or to keep watch while the other two slept. But Denn and I were We sneaked out into that corn patch. The rain was booting down. We had all our possessions Dean's wrist watch, two or three fountain pens, about $10 in greenbacks I had borrowed from Turkish prisoners, a straight razor Dean had stolen from the company barber a Boy Scout knife I had.

ft couple oi rocks and the cover for sleeping bag which we were going to use for a sail on any small boat we might left my derrier bate. I think it was an open grave the Reds had dug, We floundered around there find got going ngam. It was black us pitch. We didn't know it but we had nigtil blindness due to n. luck of vitamins.

We stumbled on and pretty soon we came to a little opening. Blindly 1 I walked on, over Ji fence I and right into a pig sty, Well, that damned pig wanted no human company. He squealed and mouthed round there until he woke up the Korean farmer. The fanner poked his head out of a window, a cigarette glowing, but he never did come out. We bold our breath.

Nothing happened. We would have killed that pig if had a weapon. It took us most all night but we swam the half-mile wide lake and got over on the other side of it. Probably all night long we walked. Yet we didn't make over ja mile from the camp.

But we had the lake between us and the camp. We step! nil day in some bushes. It was raining and were wringing wet. We were bending for the Yalu, going to swim across-. Trim-led At Night Trails in that country nil have security guards on them.

We trav- elled only at night, of course, and we couldn't nee much on ar-joimt of this lack of vitamins. We almost, bumped into two or three guard scaped. hl we had a talk. I said; "I'll stick with you until you eat off then I'll go on down the ioust, sti-iil a bout, bribe a fisherman or something and try to make it down of the 3tith Paiallel or hit an Allied carrier or something out in the Yellow Sea and go ahosml It." decided we would stick together until the MIG stealing because you can never tell, a guy might net sick, break leg traip- j.sniL' around, at night like that or something. You know how It is.

Our tnbircco was wet. The hook Dean brought along so we could tear the JMIKPS out of it to roll cifiaiTlu-s was all wet, We were miserable. Rut we were free. That night we stumbled right inio a Korean road block. There were a couple of guards in the hut and they heard us.

They stumbled out, in their underwear, thfre bamboo pike spears of theirs and making a.lot of noise because they wue scared. Like a couple of schoolboys in a grave yard at Dean Got Sick They looked around, went back into the hut and closed the hut door. Dean and I took off in high gear. We sneaked up on a hill, hid in some bushes all day, becauie we knew we had been detected. It was good and dark when we stirred.

Dean began to get sick. His back hurt. There was a. swelling in his groins. It was jaundice Dean had.

There WHS no mistake. I Dean was very sick. "I can't go any farther," he said. "We've got to find a hiding place for a couple of days." Finally we saw a cowshed and crawled hi there. We had been three' days and nights in a torrential rain.

We were cold. We wanted warm food iliuic uig "boys" aren't playing stringing up preservative-impregnated wood samples at a Bell laboratories lest "farm" in Chester, N. J. More than 20 million telephone poles support the nation's network of wires, and with replacements and new poles going up at the rate of 800,000 per year, maximum weather-resistance of wood is of utmost importance. We saw the farm compounds.

We decided we'd take a chance. Maybe they wouldn't turn us in. Dean could get two or three days rest. We made a mistake. There were about seven families in it.

That's where your Commu- The (heir Six Miles From Yalu Koreans could not grabbed me on the left shoulder. I grabbed his thumb and doubled it up. It must have hurt hUn to Ms elbow. He was at my mercy. Dean whipped out this razor he stole from the company barber and he made a couple of swipes at his two tormentors.

They retreated. Dean, who was free, said: "What the hell are we going to do?" I said: "Let's get over in that cornfield and Ilishl them if Ihey find us." So we dived Into that cornfield and under some climbing bean vines. We laid there in the mud for about nn hour. Then they found us. The kids found us.

Turned In They turned about 50 boys between 10 and 12 loose to look for us. They found us and raised hell. Then the grown folks moved in. They bound our arms behind us and bound us together with ropes. Dean told them he'd give them his watch.

If we had had two, we'd have been free. They we were tied, together. They never let us loose until we got back to camp, Then they threw us in the hole tence but the Communists never let us forget that we still had part of our sentence hanging over our heads Dean served about 32 In that hole an abandoned, un- cleaned latrine. I served about 42 days, because Dean's sentence originally was shorter than mine, in a better hole which was not a latrine. But It stank.

But we were lucky. We thought we'd be shot. The Communists they are bai- tards. body So we started to leave. We got out on the road.

We didn't know it but we were only I six kilometers from the Yalu. We nism comes in One of them lurned We'd taken a long shot and way Thcse KorMns sajd They did give us warm food, kindness, dry tobacco. Then the insiduousness of i reared its ugly head. They had to tell the gestapo. Too many people had seen us.

Koreans could not 1 trust Then they threw us in the hole Dean for two months. I got six. fellow Communists. Some- Ncilher 01 us serv ed the full sen- iiad to report us, we siN a should go the other way. Dean offered them his watch, They grabbed us.

Dean was much taller so two of the three men who were trying to detain us grabbed him and one NOTICE My office will be closed from August 12th to August 24th. Hunter C. Sims, M.D. We got throuMh that corn patch nil right. Then we hit, a wood and tripped over the undergrowth and I down an embankment that oing to steal a MIG.

MIGs can not carry any pnssen- gr-rsi nncl I'll have lo go it alone. What are you going to do?" FOR SALE acres hlurk loam, dltoh on 3 skips, taxes about 5100 year, All in Millivalion, House, electricity, mull and bus. 3 miles west of Holland. Mo. (2 miles black- lop, 1 gravel.) Known as Hall Farm, price $10,500.

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