Posts Tagged ‘Korean War’

Interview with Reverend Sam Davies
Monday, March 21st, 2011

Context: Research for Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control
Location: TBC
Date: 2005
Interviewee: Reverend Sam Davies

Reverend Samuel Davies was the only British military padre taken prisoner during the Korean War. Here he reminisces about the camps he was held in, the alleged ‘brainwashing’ received by British and American troops, and discusses why some men broke down and made false confessions whilst others managed to resist.

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What made people confess to crimes they had not committed in Korea?

Difficult one, that. I think people at times felt that if they didn’t make sort of pretence at giving some sort of – something – they might even be killed or treated very, very severely indeed. People varied tremendously in the way they reacted to that pressure. Some were totally heroic and wouldn’t say a single word – and faced very unpleasant experiences; others gave way a little, hoping that the people at home would understand that they were under pressure. I couldn’t give the exact numbers but I think a number of the American prisoners gave way compared with – I think hardly any of the British prisoners – perhaps one or two. But there it is.

Was this the result of just plain brutality or was it something more?

I think the threat of very unpleasant, cramped imprisonment in cages: we had a young Northumberland fusilier, Kinne, who would never yield to any Chinese pressure, and he spent some time in a sort of cage with hardly room to lie down in. He wrote a book about it.

So it was just brutality?

Yes. I think the conviction in people’s minds was so strong that they were doing the utterly wrong and disgraceful thing to join in the Communist propaganda at this time. It was so strong that they would not, and could not, give way. We were – people varied tremendously about it but I think – also the threat of prolonged punishment and confinement in appalling conditions, often very cramped, was a threat some people couldn’t really live up to. Others could, and did.

In my camp we had to attend these absolutely boring lectures on Marxism-Leninism from the instructors day after day, and we were often told ‘Now, tonight you will get a pencil and paper. You must write down you appreciation of what you’ve learned’. Well, of course, we all had to do that in the officers’ camp. And we wrote a lot of verbal tripe really, which confused the Chinese. They were rather naïve and were trying to take it really seriously. We were not. We wrote a lot of verbal stuff so that nobody could really understand what was going on at all. But we had to write something and that’s how we managed to – you’d be taken down to Chinese HQ with Ding, the very able interpreter, he’d tell you what the Chinese commandant was saying and you had to account for what you had written. It was up to you to play it as coolly and stupidly as you could. And it often succeeded.

Did the Chinese/Korean interrogators deliberately target the officers? Colonel Carne for example?

[Carne] was the senior officer and the Chinese realised as far as he was concerned that he had tremendous influence. Sadly the officers and senior NCOs’ camp was isolated from the other ranks. I begged the Chinese to allow me, as the only surviving padre, to visit the other ranks. I begged them but they wouldn’t hear of it. Because they thought it was all bound up with sort of anti-communist propaganda. I was never allowed to visit them.

On Christmas day [they would present us] with special food ‘and in return we want you to sign this greetings card to our commander at the front.’ Well, of course, we all said ‘no’. Nobody in the camp was prepared to sign the greetings card.

It seems that the Chinese were being pretty sensible, separating the officers from the men?

Absolutely. The Chinese sensed that it was his [Carne’s] example and his steadfast adherence to what was the right thing to do in the face of this. They knew that his example and his leadership were immensely strong. So they wisely, from their point of view, thought to take him away completely. We never saw him again, until 19 months later.

Was there a particular trait that helped some to resist when others confessed and signed false confessions?

I think there were only one or two British prisoners who agreed to do that and they were other ranks. No single officer did – though I don’t think that’s true about the Americans. There was just something in our backgrounds. We were British and I suppose we were very proud of that. We would rather die in prison, or face death, than take part in any seditious propaganda.

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Interview with SAS NCO Trained Interrogator
Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Context: Research for Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control
Location: Via telephone
Date: 3rd Febuary, 2005
Interviewee: SAS NCO, Trained Interrogator and Korean War veteran

This individual – one of The Regiment’s most famous characters – is in a great position to talk about interrogation and the evolution of the techniques used by the British Army in the early 1970s: he was captured and held in Korea for some time, then returned to the UK, where he joined the SAS and was trained to interrogate by the Intelligence Corps at Maresfield. Here he talks about the whole experience – including the evolution of the use of white noise, sensory deprivation and hooding during interrogation exercises.

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Brainwashing?

I’m very sensitive to brainwashing of various sorts and have been utterly disgusted. The Chinese didn’t get anywhere well with us. They used brainwashing techniques on us which they had used on Chiang Kai Shek’s troops in the civil war in China. Basically they had the wrong techniques for the wrong people. I don’t think –well – from what I saw they got nowhere with it. Absolutely nowhere. There were times when we thought ‘Christ, this communism thing must be a good thing’, probably, I don’t know. But it didn’t last long before you saw through it.

The British mentality is not easily baffled. They had some of their best patter merchants there, the commissars, who lived, ate and scoffed communism and politics and they could tell you black was white and prove it, politically. But they couldn’t get through to us. Not because we were thick, but because we were way ahead of them most of the time. Although we knew nothing about politics, and the vast majority of the army in those days knew absolutely nothing about politics, and I mean that. We were as thick as shit with politics, didn’t want to know. I was twenty. A lot of the blokes were 19, 20-odd in my group.

They split us up into squads of ten in the camp and ten squads to a platoon and 3 platoons to a company or something. I can’t remember. But they had us organised into platoons but the squads of ten were each to a room and in my room we were jammed in like sardines. Some rooms they had plenty of room but not many. Most of the rooms were about 7-8ft by 6, something like that. Our room was 6’ by 6’ and there were three of us who were over 6ft at least. So we didn’t have much room, and we were jammed in like that and being taught politics, for Christ’s sake.

They had us out on the square, lectures for hours on end, freezing cold or burning up in the sun, whatever times of year it was. We started off [sat on the ground] but we just weren’t strong enough to sit like that, really. People just keeled over and went to sleep. It was a job for the instructors – so-called – to keep us up together to listen to the lectures. We were supposed to stay awake. We finished up getting stools, made of a log about 18 inches long with a plank nailed across one end so that you sat on the plank, like a one legged stool. That sort of kept us up where we could be watched in rows and it made sleeping more difficult. But in fact for the rest of my life I’ve been able to go to sleep during a lecture and make it look as if I’m not asleep – with my eyes open. I switch off. I have a hard time being lectured. The army didn’t know it of course and I was sent on lots of courses when I got back, different things, and lectures just put me to sleep. I sat there with eyes wide open, never knew a thing about it.

What did you think? Lectures about communism?

It was done by saying ‘You’ll wonder why you’ve been left alive’. It’s because the Chinese – Chinese People’s Volunteers, as opposed to the PLA, the People’s Liberation Army, their regular army. CPP were all supposedly non-military people. Or not army units. They were volunteers that had volunteered to go and help their Korean brothers. They had this lenient policy. This was the cornerstone of all their propaganda and everything, the lenient policy. And they had this lenient policy which was to take prisoners and not shoot them all. And they said ‘But of course, it’s a two way thing. We have kept you alive and your families will be grateful for that but you must learn about the lenient policy and where it comes from.’ And that was the edge of the sword, the leading edge of the brainwashing.

So they said ‘This is a deal’?

Yeah. Devised by Communism for POWs and that’s why the communist forces were so kind to their prisoners. And we were not ‘prisoners’, we were ‘students’, liberated from capitalism. Oh yeah. We were called ‘students’.

Presumably this didn’t wash with you?

No, it didn’t wash at all. We thought it was washing a bit with the Americans and I suspect they thought the same about us but I suspect we were as bad as each other, as students. They took the mick out of the Chinese rotten and so did we. The great thing about that whole experience was that I didn’t finish up hating the Chinese but I finished up hating politicians and politics and most of all Communism. I have volunteered for wars against communism ever since. My little bit of ability going here and there.

We’d never heard of brainwashing, we knew nothing about it, we knew nothing about the press, back home. We knew absolutely nothing. It wasn’t until we were released that I realised the Glosters had put up quite a fight at the Imjin River. We were just beaten troops. And we’d lost. As far as we were concerned, we’d had a hell of a hiding. They just trampled all over us and we couldn’t stop them

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Interview with British Army Interrogator #3
Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Context: Research for Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control
Location: Reading, UK
Date: 2005
Interviewee: British Army Interrogation Royal Intelligence Corps

This army interrogator, a senior NCO from the Intelligence Corps with a number of decades’ experience, is very good on the role of interrogation in war and the importance of maintaining the ‘shock of capture’ . He has some interesting revelations about the US military’s use of white noise – and some straightforwad views regarding journalists who accuse men like him of ‘torturing’ subjects – when in reality they have no idea what war is actually all about.

His views on Northern Ireland (‘It’s not the Irish Republican TEA PARTY, is it?’) are well worth reading. Funnily enough, I put his comments on the harsh interrogation techniques deployed in Belfast in the early 1970s to a former IRA member – who agreed with them entirely. It’s worth noting that both men were appalled by goings-on at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. This interviewee’s comments on interrogation there are well worth noting. The interview was conducted in a pub in Reading, UK  in 2005

Download: Download Interview (PDF)

Where were you taught to interrogate?

Every single Intelligence Corps NCO certainly and indeed officer was expected by the time they’d been in the Corps for about 4 or 5 years to have gone through a tactical questioning and prisoner handling course. But we were taught, certainly during the training side, all about interview techniques and extraction of information, bearing in mind that a lot of our work was all to do with investigation – let’s say the loss of a parcel in an office. Or it might be (and I was involved in), in West Germany, interviewing people who came across the border by train or something… The whole business of human intelligence and extraction of information was inherent in the Corps and had been inherent in the Corps for many, many years. It was nothing new. We just carried on where the field security team left off.

Then when we did RA1 as NCOs – class A trade exam, class one, we then did the week’s tactical questioning/prisoner handling. And this was to equip us with skills that would allow us to select a prisoner and how that prisoner could be briefly questioned, or was required for further interrogation further up the line. Every unit should have had a tactical prisoner handler. The whole part of the prisoner handling was to be taught how to handle a prisoner so that – while that prisoner was not mistreated in any way – but was nevertheless handled in a fit state when he was pushed up the line he was still going to be indoctrinated (if that’s the right word) into talking to an interrogator.

Keep him sweet?

Keep him sweet.

So there is a rapid first interrogation – and then if the prisoner seems to have relevant information, he is moved on up the chain?

Yes. It’s important to appreciate that a prisoner of war is a bit like a dead body or a document, a piece of SIGINT or something you pick up, a wrecked vehicle. A prisoner is nothing more than an element of the intelligence process. The prisoner has the same value as a body to a certain extent, as signals intelligence. But there is one critical difference: that the prisoner has been in contact with the enemy most recently. You have to bear in mind that a prisoner is probably the most defensive person on the battlefield. He is being handled by people who don’t speak their language, doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him, doesn’t know when he’s going to see his family again, doesn’t know when he’s going to get his next meal, or his next drink. All he knows is that he is in the hands of the enemy. That’s all he knows. And it is frankly a very upsetting experience. It really is. And that is shown in a thing called The Shock of Capture. When a person is captured, they go through a psychological process of shock. And you will experience shock, perhaps, at school, when somebody said to you at school, ‘Oh, the headmaster wants to see you Monday morning at 9’. And you spend the entire weekend wondering what the headmaster wants to see you about. Your heart will race, your hands will feel clammy. If you’re roaring down the motorway at 90 and you see a blue light in your mirror, and as the police car comes nearer and nearer, you will begin to get the signs of shock. As the car passes, everything will drain away, of course. But the whole idea is to retain that shock of capture in the best way possible. Very, very difficult in different conditions.

Nevertheless, every prisoner will experience that shock because he doesn’t know what is going to happen to him. Life for him is very bleak. It really is. The prisoner himself, if he is trained, will be thinking about a) Escape; and b) ‘If I can’t escape, how am I going to resist?’ So that’s what we were trained to do. We were trained to identify the prisoners, for further interrogation. To maintain the shock of capture, and to decrease the chance of resistance in further interrogation.

Did they teach you about the history of interrogation?

Oh yeah, I remember the training film. We used to watch a training film called Camp 020. Absolutely. It was all there. We used to get handouts on the turning of prisoners. It was all part of our job. The Intelligence Corps is a very special corps. It was all part of our job, to turn people if we could. To use agents and sources. 020, the experiences of the prisoners of Korea and so forth, was all part of the history that we learned.

When did you join?

I transferred in 1970 from the **** Corps. …We had an exercise in Germany against the Danes, and each rounded each other up and up against the wall and so forth. I became interested in the interrogation process.

When the Danes caught you, they used the full white noise treatment?

No. Just tactical questioning. But we were questioned by Brits who I now know to be **** Company. We were given about 8 hours worth or so. Quite an experience.

Not with the noise, though?

No. You wouldn’t get the noise at that stage. It was just a couple of troopers, perhaps the odd officer, in a barn somewhere. As you would expect to be captured. I think we were not allowed to go through the full lot at that stage because we were not what was called at that stage Prone-to-Capture. Every soldier is prone to capture, of course, but there was – aircrew, special forces, navy divers, and a whole raft of other people.

There was a relationship to what happened in Korea, wasn’t there? Were your lecturers Korean veterans?

Yes, of course. And when I was an instructor, we got a sergeant from the Glosters who had been captured in Korea. He had been captured at the Imjin River. He had spent three months denying that he knew anything about a 303 rifle – which was his weapon! Great resilience. Why do you want to tell these Koreans about the 303? We also used to get Americans who had been captured in Vietnam. This was when I was instructing. We were exposed to these people.

The real push in counter-interrogation training came from Korea in the first place, didn’t it? Escape and Evasion?

Yes. It’s a bit more fundamental than that. By then the threat was a communist threat. Resisting the Germans in WWII was – there was no real, there was a programme in WWII on resistance to interrogation. But because it was wartime, not many aircrew went through it. They were told, ‘When you bale out of the aircraft, the only thing you think about is survival. And when you hit the deck, you’re in enemy territory.’ There’s this whole trauma – burning aircraft, or being captured at Dieppe. Very real. Very hard to get it across just how traumatic these experiences can be.

The problem with Korea was that for the first time, Allied/Western forces had fallen into the hands of communists and they had a whole different way of approaching this. Much more against the individuals. The other factor about the army of Korea is that a large number of the men who fought then were left-wing. And so the Koreans and the Chinese would say ‘But of course, you are our allies, aren’t you?’ This was a major dilemma for ordinary men – suddenly to be exposed to this whole ideology. And there was this re-education process. Very hard to get through, and men signed confessions – I don’t blame them. None of these men had ever had this training before. Suddenly these pressures are coming, conditions are very bad.

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