At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  There had been lice in Middle Street before they’d bought the houses. He and Rosie used to crush the lice there too. Steve checked Nigel’s arm again, because Jack could not, and it was then that Jack said, ‘Thanks. I couldn’t do it.’ It was the first time he had said thank you to an American since Maisie had left, but he couldn’t look at him when he said it. And it was for Nigel that he spoke, not himself.

  That day, they heard a cuckoo call as they lay on the hills which were drenched in colour. Jack eased himself on to his back and thought of the Somerset village, the hill, the May blossom, the camp he and the other evacuees had made. He thought, too, of the cuckoo which he and Ed had heard. But then he thought instead of Rosie.

  Each night they marched, each day they hid, drinking boiled water, eating sorghum, rice. Each day all the prisoners cracked lice and Steve checked Nigel’s wound. They listened to the Chinese and wondered how long this would go on for.

  For weeks they marched with the ox-cart trundling behind and more prisoners joined them until there were eighty of them. They brought news, but it wasn’t good. The Chinese were advancing.

  Dysentery had killed fifteen of them after four weeks and still they marched. The heat sapped their energy and now the flies were thick around them as they hid on the hills, resting, lying on the dry ground. They crawled in their ears, their eyes, their noses, their mouths.

  When they covered their faces with squares of shirts they felt them crawling on the surface, heard them buzzing, but Nigel’s arm was better, the maggots were gone, and he carried his own sack of sorghum. They had no need of Steve now, but he continued to march with them, though Jack barely spoke.

  In the second week of June they entered a camp which was set on a peninsula, in a valley between two hills beyond which was the sea. There were barely any soles left on their boots. Their skin was burnt, their hair and clothes were thick with encrusted dirt. Their lips were cracked.

  ‘This is exquisite,’ Nigel said, bracing his shoulders, marching in step.

  Jack laughed, looking up at the blue sky.

  ‘Hardly exquisite, dear boy,’ he answered, looking down now at the single strand of wire which marked the perimeter of the camp, knowing that the geography was the real restriction. He, too, braced his shoulders and marched in step to the huts, then gave news to the prisoners who had been there over the winter; who were thin, bruised, hungry, but who said the regime was kinder now. Indoctrination was the order of the day. It wasn’t very successful. Jack looked at Nigel and they smiled. Steve smiled too.

  They ate corn and millet that evening. They wanted to sleep but were taken out into a large hut and lectured and Jack looked at his thumbs which were black with the ingrained blood of the lice, but still he itched, still he scratched. They all did, but tomorrow they wouldn’t march. At least there was that.

  In the morning they were put on a wood rota and Steve and Jack went up into the hills with eight others but Jack talked to the others, not to Steve. They collected wood, brought it back, boiled water for drinking, but it was too late for some. Five of their men died of dysentery in the camp that first day.

  They were broken down into companies by the Chinese for daily political study sessions. Nigel, Steve and Jack were kept together and there was nothing Jack could do about it. They sat in rows, cross-legged, trying not to listen.

  ‘You soldiers have come here as dupes of the imperialists, the warmongers, the Wall Street big-shots who have tricked you to leave your countries and fight this war to increase their profits,’ the lecturer told them. His voice droned on and on.

  There were flies everywhere. Jack dropped his head on to his chest and thought of the cool breeze of England, Rosie’s soft hands.

  They were given paper to write an essay on the lecture they had received. Nigel wrote, and Steve and Jack copied his words. They were all sent for that evening. They stood before the Commandant and confessed their copying crimes as the Commandant insisted they must. But Steve and Jack couldn’t write the essays that the Commandant now insisted upon because they had not been listening. They were taken to cells in the village.

  The North Korean guards pushed them inside the clay and wattle building which smelled of excrement, urine, and the gasoline which was stored in drums at the end of the passage. There were doors either side. It was dark. Steve murmured, ‘This looks kinda fun.’

  Jack looked at him now, really looked, because there had been no fear in his voice and he wondered how that was possible. But now he saw the fear in the American’s eyes. There was youth too, and kindness, and Jack smiled but then he was pushed alone into a cell.

  The uneven dirt floor was soaked with oil. It was dark. So dark. The door opened and he turned. A North Korean guard stood there, a pistol in his hand.

  ‘You come.’

  Jack left and Steve called, ‘Good luck, buddy.’

  He was taken to a wall which flanked the square outside the cells. His arms were tied with wire. He was turned to face the guard. The sun was too bright, the shadows so sharp. For Christ’s sake! He was going to be shot. Shot, now. Jack put up his hand. No, but the word was silent. There was no time. The guard had levelled the pistol, pulled back the hammer. The gun fired into the wall behind him and Jack’s legs shook and he nearly fell.

  The guard returned him to the cell and Steve tapped on the wall.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just fine. What else can you do on a quiet afternoon?’ But he wasn’t OK. He sat on the floor, his arms round his knees, trying to stop the shaking and the tears, listening as Steve in his turn was taken, but he also returned and so the shaking stopped and the tears too. Because he hadn’t died today and he wasn’t alone.

  The guard handed in a blanket, rice bowl and spoon and took their boots, and he couldn’t sleep that night because he didn’t know when they would come again to take him. The cells were full, and he knew the others couldn’t sleep either because they tapped and talked in whispers. So, although there was no light, there was comradeship, and that kept the fear from all their voices.

  The next day the guards came and took them one by one, barefoot, to the earth latrine at the end of the passage, then back to the cells. They were made to sit bolt upright from five-thirty a.m. onwards. Jack’s back stiffened, burned. He slouched. The guard looked through the grille and shouted. He sat up again, back rigid now, until eleven a.m.

  There were no more trips to the latrines. A young American air navigator had dysentery and Steve told the guard, who hit him in the face with his fist, and Jack wondered how he could ever not have liked this man.

  The navigator used the corner of his cell.

  ‘That is good. You need to learn humility,’ the Chinese officer called through their doors.

  At eleven breakfast arrived. They stepped three paces outside the cell to collect the food, but one at a time so they saw no familiar face. Jack forced it down. Boiled water was brought. Jack filled up his bowl, sipped it. Tipped a little on to his fingers, wiped his face, his hands.

  At midday the flies and the heat rose. The Chinese bugles blew and the guards shouted that they must lie down for one hour. Jack pulled the blanket over his face, lying on the dirt floor. He heard and felt the flies, felt the sweat soak into the blanket, but it was better than having them in his mouth, crawling heavy and bloated across his skin.

  They were then made to sit again, bolt upright, and there was comfort in the knowledge that others were having to do the same. There was such comfort in not being alone.

  Each minute seemed an eternity. He thought of Rosie, of the coolness of the bines, the softness of her lips. He didn’t think of the cold ground in Yorkshire because it made him feel so disgusted with himself, and so grateful that she could still love him. The shirt had shown that and it was more than he deserved. But at least there had been no child for her to struggle with alone. She would have told him.

  At twilight they were ordered to lie down and sleep. They were inspected at nine p.m
. A torch was shone in his face. He pretended to be asleep. He pretended to be asleep when Steve tapped, and when he spoke, because the disgust was still with him.

  As he walked to the earth latrine in the morning he watched a guard carry a bucket towards a sheet of wrought iron on the ground. He saw him kick the sheeting to one side. An American officer emerged wearing flying boots. He was white and haggard and stumbled to the latrines ahead of Jack.

  Jack’s guard laughed. ‘He not confess to crimes.’

  ‘Good luck, buddy,’ Jack called and the man turned, dazed, his eyes deep sunken. He smiled before Jack felt the blow of the rifle, felt it thud into his ribs, felt the dust in his mouth as he fell.

  He was dragged back to the cell before he could use the latrine. He was made to sit all day without food, without water, and there was only the corner of his cell as a latrine. But it was worth it to have reached out, for that one moment, to a boy, an American, who was suffering more than he.

  That evening, after twilight and after inspection, he talked to Steve about Ed and Maisie and Lee because all the anger and the bitterness were gone. They had disappeared when Steve had spoken without fear and when the American had crawled from the pit.

  They were out of the cells within a week and at the end of June the Chinese danced as evening came, swaying in weaving columns to the discordant sound of a drum and clashing cymbals in celebration of a festival only they understood.

  ‘How exquisite,’ Nigel murmured and Jack nodded.

  ‘Kinda strange, out here,’ Steve said. ‘Can’t quite catch the tune, but I’ve heard those cymbals before.’

  They had all heard them, but then they had been almost drowned by bugles and guns.

  There were fewer North Koreans now and less brutality. They were allowed to wash but there was no soap or towels. They were given anti-malarial tablets and louse powder. They were fed twice a day from the Chinese troops’ kitchen. They knew it was all to re-educate them through leniency but by now Nigel had dysentery and none of this helped that.

  So each day they listened to lectures, wrote essays, but thought their own thoughts and clung to their own dreams, their own memories, and longed to be home.

  In July the Commandant spoke to them. He smoked Dragon cigarettes from China and shouted when Nigel had hiccoughs and couldn’t stop.

  He told them that some of them were righteous progressive men who were self-consciously learning the truth.

  ‘You are our friends and we will help you to struggle free from the toils of the warmongers.’ He looked at Nigel who was still hiccoughing. ‘Others of you are semi-righteous, uncertain. You are swayed by every wind that blows. You listen to both sides but cannot make self-conscious decisions.’

  Nigel was still hiccoughing, clenching his hands into fists, holding his breath. Men were laughing now, but not the Commandant.

  ‘Others of you are bad men. You believe slanderous things. You close your minds against the truth. You distract others from learning.’ He motioned with his swagger stick to Nigel and the guards came and took him and now there was no laughter.

  Steve looked at Jack. ‘He’s too weak. That dysentery. He ain’t fit enough to take that cell, or the pit.’

  Jack nodded. He began to stand but Steve pressed him down.

  ‘That won’t help. We’ll have to wait.’

  They didn’t take Nigel to the pit though. They took him to the Commandant’s hut where he spent the evening writing a self-criticism which he had to read the next day to the camp.

  It was clever, very clever, Jack thought, grinning. It was a criticism of the Commandant, not capitalism, but written in a way which made this impossible to grasp. Afterwards Nigel told him that he wanted to go to university when this mess was over.

  At the end of the week they were given paper to write a letter home, c/o The Chinese People’s Volunteers’ POW Corps. Jack wrote to Rosie, telling her that he loved her, that his friend Nigel was here, and Steve, an American. That all the anger was gone, that he would survive. That he was ashamed. That he hated himself for hurting her. That this couldn’t go on for too long and he would be back.

  They handed them in but an American who knew Korean heard the guards say that they would never be sent and home seemed very far away.

  The wood-gathering parties had to scavenge further afield now but suddenly the trips became more popular because Mexican POWs had discovered marijuana growing on the hillsides and now they rolled the leaves between book pages and smoked them to ease the boredom of the days. But Jack and Steve refused to smoke because they needed to care for Nigel who was weaker each day from dysentery and beri-beri.

  There were no medical supplies, though there was a doctor who tried to help. The Chinese had no drugs for themselves either.

  They still sat through lectures, listening just enough to be able to answer questions, but they also talked to the Puerto Ricans who knew and understood the herbs which could save lives. Steve and Jack used the remains of the paper which they had been given for their essays to write down descriptions of the plants.

  The following week they strayed from the wood-gathering party, searching, picking, stuffing the herbs into the pockets of their trousers, remembering to carry wood under their arms as well. They brewed the mixture up behind the hut and no guards stopped them because boiling up water was common. Nigel drank it from his cigarette-tin and he seemed a little better and they talked of home, and of Oxford where he would go when the war was over.

  They did the same the next week, and the next, and then it was the beginning of August and new prisoners said that talks were being held in a tea-house in Kaesong on a ceasefire in Korea. That this must almost be the end, and that day the wood party looked up at the hills, felt the heat and the dust, and because the war would be over soon it didn’t seem so important to stretch themselves beyond endurance. They were late mustering, slow in leaving and Jack watched them straggle in on their return. He watched the Commandant too, standing frowning, and waited for what he knew would happen.

  The Chinese herded all the prisoners into the square. They were lectured on their negative attitude to labour and made to sit in the sun for the afternoon and Nigel became worse as the heat increased. The herb gatherer had forgotten to gather.

  Jack and Steve went out on the wood detail the next morning, even though they were tired and weak and it wasn’t their turn, but Nigel was worse. They needed herbs, they needed to make sure the squad were brisk and that Nigel didn’t need to sit in the sun again.

  They took the sloping paths, lifting the wood which was already hot though it was only eleven a.m. They found the herbs, bitter, sweet. The smell clung to their hands. They moved further from the others, picking, leaning over for wood, glancing behind, checking the guards, picking, always picking. And others did too now for their own friends.

  They came out the next day too, and the next, picking for Nigel, and for others, but on the Sunday afternoon Jack and Steve were not cautious enough as they searched and picked. They didn’t check how close they were to the squad. Jack heard the shouting of the guards first, then the warning from Steve, then bullets thwacked into the ground at their feet. There was the sound of running feet and they were pushed face down and kicked, then dragged back to the camp.

  They were brought before the Commandant, who accused them of trying to escape. They said nothing. The scent of herbs was still on their hands. Steve looked at Jack who shook his head. They couldn’t admit to the herbs in case others were stopped too. In case the marijuana smoking was discovered and men punished.

  ‘You must admit your error,’ the Commandant said.

  ‘I’m kinda sick of admitting to errors,’ Steve said. ‘Why don’t you go take a powder.’

  The Commandant didn’t speak, he just nodded and the guards took Steve across the square. He dropped the herbs on the ground. They were picked up by another prisoner and taken to Nigel.

  Jack saw this. He also saw the flies around his head. Then he watc
hed the smoke rising from the Commandant’s cigarette and there were no flies near the smoke. Power brought advantages, that was for sure.

  ‘And you. You will admit your error? Your attempt to escape.’

  Jack stood to attention. He rubbed the scar the scissors had made. He was tired too, of obedience, of humility. Yes, he was tired and the war was nearly over anyway.

  ‘I have made no errors,’ he said.

  He also dropped his herbs on the ground and they were picked up too and the soldier who did so said, ‘I’ll get them for Nigel until you’re back out.’

  He was thrown into the pit near the latrines and Steve called out from the other, ‘You’ll like the privacy, Jack.’

  He didn’t, though, and neither would Grandpa, he thought, smiling wryly. It was dark, it was hot, so hot. The sun beat down on the iron, the guards banged with sticks and he sat crouched, hugging his knees, feeling the sweat rolling off his body. He stripped off his clothes, held his head in his hands while it ached enough to burst.

  As the heat of the day beat on the steel covers he took shallow breaths, panting, seeking air, lifting his head, but there was none. He rolled on to his side. The earth was cooler. He buried his face in it but the dust entered his mouth, his nose. He crouched, he wept and the tears were salty and then he sat, still and straight, as Suko had done before the Shinto shrine. He thought of white blossom, of the cool of the stream about Rosie’s legs.

  They lifted the covers at twilight. He staggered to the latrines, heard Steve’s voice as he returned. It was cracked and dry.

  ‘Kinda like a long holiday, eh, Jack?’

  Jack slipped down again into the pit. The guard handed him sorghum in a tin and half a can of boiled water. It was warm. They pushed him down. Some of the water spilt. They slid the sheeting over again.

  He heard Steve being taken now and when he returned he called out to him.

  ‘Better than a deckchair at Southend, eh, Steve?’ His voice was cracked and dry too.

  The next night was cold and the morning took so long to come, but then the heat came too and the flies and the noise of the sticks and because they had spoken to one another their arms were tied behind their backs after they had been taken to the latrines. Food was still passed in, though, but they had to bend over and lick it from the tin like animals.