KOREA: The Prisoners Go Free

At 8:45 one morning last week, a U.S. Marine captain stared down the frozen clay road to Panmunjom. He could make out a distant blaze of standards, the glint of their points in the winter sun. "Here they come," the captain's squad muttered, as the tramp of marching feet grew loud. "All right," the captain said. "Everybody get back and keep this road clear. These guys have been waiting a long time for this . . ."

"Come & Be Free." The Chinese prisoners came in columns of five, and proudly, out of the neutral zone (see NEWS IN PICTURES). The first two men flourished pictures of Chiang Kai-shek and of Sun Yatsen, the founder of China's republic. The tight-drawn ranks bore red, white and blue Nationalist banners, the Stars and Stripes, the pale blue and white of the U.N. Some P.W.s wielded crude, homemade flagstaffs, their jagged points torn from beer cans. A few kept their prison camp basketballs. One clasped a French horn. "Dear anti-Communist comrades," boomed a loudspeaker as the P.W.s neared the edge of freedom, "we have come here to welcome you." The P.W.s called back, "Hsieh, hsieh [Thanks, thanks]," and their voices swelled into the U.N. zone. The loudspeaker told them: "Please come quietly, and be free."

All day in the sunshine, and late into the night, 14,209 Chinese anti-Communists poured across the line. They broke ranks to embrace the welcomers. They passed out mimeographed pamphlets thanking "Dear U.N. honorable fighters" for not letting them go back to Communism. One gaunt P.W. hailed an Irish Franciscan friar he had known in the camps of Koje Island. "That was Kuo Shu-han," the priest said. "Among the men he is a hero. He went into a 1,500-man compound dominated by Communists, and brought out 300 anti-Communists." A middle-aged P.W. thanked a young lieutenant, then broke down. "One thousand days behind the wire," he sobbed, "one thousand days . . ." A band rataplanned a Sousa march, and the P.W.s, loaded into trucks, were driven off towards Seoul. Korean farmers lined the road to cheer them. The Chinese P.W.s waved their flags and chanted, "Resist Russia—Down with the Reds." Then they sang songs of what they would do to the women when they got to the Nationalist island of Taiwan (Formosa), and cried to themselves that they were free.

"Have You Seen Him?" In Seoul, 40 miles to the south, some 8,000 Koreans were swarming into a bullet-pocked suburban station to greet the first Korean P.W.s, who were coming by rail.