1 A PERFECT AMBUSH
A few minutes after midnight we spotted our Chinese agents’ signal, three fires in single file. For the first time since we had taken off from Seoul, South Korea, I began to feel tense. Our pilots, Bob Snoddy and Norman Schwartz, turned the plane straight at the fires. Dick Fecteau and I grabbed the supply bundle and manhandled it past the winch, which was bolted to the cargo door. We watched the supply parachute open and drift toward the fires. We swung north to make a wide circle while the agents retrieved the bundle and assembled the pickup poles and ropes. Our loop carried us near the Manchurian city of Forever Spring (Chang Chun). We saw its lights in the distance and, as we drew closer, whole swathes of its brightness
W E HAD a bomber’s moon, and the landscape below was bathed in a flood of light that made it featureless. The great, conical bulk of the Forever White Mountain (Changbai Shan) loomed out of this ether as our plane, an unmarked, fixed-wing propeller-driven Douglas C-47, reached the northern finger of North Korea that points toward the Soviet seaport of Vladivostok. The snow-covered volcano seemed to be larger than the sky. We turned ninety degrees to the left heading west. Our crossing of the border into the territory of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) went undetected and we headed for the predesignated drop zone.
2 A PERFECT AMBUSH
At one o’clock we reapproached the drop zone. As planned, I took a length of rope attached to my parachute harness and tied the loose end to a metal brace inside the cargo area. The rope was to be my lifeline in case I should slip from the door opening while thrusting the hook pole into its sleeve outside the fuselage. Because of the rope, I wore only a reserve parachute on my chest. I reminded myself the reserve chute ripcord did not pull automatically. I felt for the ripcord ring to memorize its position, just in case I would have to bail out. We made one pass over the drop zone, straining to see any activity on the ground. We saw nothing but the signal fires telling us all was in order. We circled one last time and descended for the pickup. Snoddy and Schwartz straightened their course and the C-47 swayed from side to side as they flattened its path for the retrieval, Fecteau crouched at the winch. We had worried that the engine might not start after four hours exposed to the frigid air, but it coughed then caught. I stood over Fecteau, pole in hand. The cold wind raced past the cargo door. We were thirty feet above the ground, and we could see that it was covered with light snow. An electric bell, the pilot’s ready signal, rang insistently. I leaned out into the wind and slammed the pole into position and locked it into the sleeve with a twist. I looked for the colonel and thought I saw him, hunched between the tether poles. We hit the rope and lurched upward. At the same instant, the darkness was broken by flashes of gunfire. There was no mistaking it, even though the roar of wind and engine drowned out the reports of rifles and machine guns.1 I knew we were being fired on because tracer bullets punctured the fuselage and flew by my face like tiny comets. I stood mesmerized as they came through the floor, through the door, and through the sides of the plane. I didn’t think to move. It flashed through my mind that I hadn’t been to confession and I was conscious that my groin felt terribly exposed.
Suddenly, I sensed the C-47 had ceased climbing. It hung in midair and shuddered, a clumsy bird stricken at its moment of greatest striving. I felt the nose dipping then leveling. I fell toward into the sleeping bags and blankets behind the pilot’s cabin. Stumbling, I called
abruptly blinked out. Apparently, we had been detected now. Within a minute or two, the entire city had hidden itself in darkness, afraid of our tiny presence.
At that moment we saw a single Chinese soldier emerge from the woods near the burning C-47. He carried a rifle and aimed at us as he approached and shouted a single, harsh syllable. I reached for my revolver as Fecteau and I edged out of the trees and into the clearing. As the soldier moved toward us, others began to appear from all directions at once. I knew immediately that resistance was useless. I dropped the revolver and raised my hands over my head. We were led into the flickering light cast by the burning C-47. Without warning, an officer stepped forward and struck Fecteau across the face. It seemed to have no impact. It was only a sound swallowed by the night. We were searched, and our hands were tied behind our backs. I wondered whether they would shoot us then and there but assured myself it was more likely that they would take us somewhere for interrogation. Soon the order was given to move out. We left the plane burning and walked away in single file. I had come to the Far East for adventure, but now I had more than I bargained for. Later, when I remembered the crash, one frightening thought stood out among the rest. It wasn’t the tracer bullets or the
A sheet of flame quivered like an orange, red and blue waterfall in front of me. I must have stood and moved, for the next moment I was outside the plane. I tried to move away and was brought up short. Fecteau appeared at my side and helped me slip out of my harness. Together we stumbled toward a stand of young trees, where we tried to get our bearings. The nose of the plane rested against the base of a small hill. Snoddy and Schwartz were nowhere to be found. I knew the gunfire had been concentrated on the cockpit, and there seemed little chance they could still be alive. I wondered whether our crash landing was luck, or if one of them had died a hero, bringing the plane in level and switching off the engine to prevent an explosion. Through the trees, I saw a stream.
“What do we do?”
A PERFECT AMBUSH 3 out for Bob and Norm, there was no response, only the sounds of the plane crashing through the woods. I couldn’t tell when the plane hit the ground or why it didn’t cartwheel. I only knew the battering and noise stopped and that we were no longer moving.
“I dunno—follow the stream down to the Yalu?”
Two years of merciless interrogations, leg irons, solitary confinement in a 5ʹ by 8ʹ empty cell, and three thousand pages of written confession later, I find myself standing in line with the other defendants in a military courtroom.
4 A PERFECT AMBUSH
ride through the treetops or the fire. It was the lifeline. What if the plane had gained more altitude after being hit and I had tried to bail out? I would have jumped and fallen only the length of my lifeline. Then I would have dangled, watching the ground rush toward me and waiting for the plane to crash on top of me.
“John Downey, New Britain, Connecticut, United States of America,” I declared. The tribunal of judges in military uniforms stared sternly down from their high rostrum. Along the opposite wall, a hundred Communist Party officials were grinning, evidently pleased to be the privileged witnesses to the sentencing of a pair of American CIA agents and their Chinese collaborators. We stood in a long row before the judges. The nine Chinese defendants, all former army officers whom we had recruited after they fled the Communist revolution, had parachuted into the Manchurian mountains in the summer of 1952. The Korean War was stalemated and we hoped our guerrillas would find support for a counter-revolution, though we had been able to find little evidence such support existed. Dick Fecteau and I had been ambushed on a nighttime rendezvous with the guerrillas. The C-47 we were flying in was brought down by two anti-aircraft 50’s and small arms fire. The two pilots had been killed in the crash landing and Fecteau and I were captured. That was at midnight of November 29, 1952. Now it was two years later, the war had ended, but we did not know it, and neither our families nor our government knew we were still alive. For two years the Communists had held us in isolation, each in solitary confinement so strict
“Be still,” I commanded myself. “Don’t let them see the trembling. They will take it as a sign of fear.” Perhaps it was fear. But I told myself I was shaking from pain. For weeks I had an infected toe and the Peking2 prison treatment of antiseptic applied with soiled cotton had done nothing to cure the inflammation, which now was raging so badly it hurt to stand. I tried to hide my shaking inside my baggy prison uniform, and when the court called me forward to identify myself, the confident tone I intended emerged as a near shout.
A PERFECT AMBUSH 5
that for months we were allowed to stand only to be fed or to go to the toilet or to be questioned. The interrogation lasted eighteen months, and its conclusion with coerced confessions of “crimes against the people of China,” had led to a trial and now this sentencing. As I stood before the judges, I tried to prepare myself for the worst. I knew the Chinese regarded us as spies, not prisoners of war, yet I was convinced they had to consider the diplomatic consequences of our imprisonment. On the basis of nothing but my own conjecture, I assumed that our release could be negotiated. But even another year in prison was unpleasant to contemplate. Five years would be an ordeal I hoped I could find the strength to endure. I was only twentyfour years old, a middle-class college kid who had been willing to risk death in a war against Communist aggressors, but not to watch his life slip away day by day in a prison cell whose sole furnishings were a nine-inch high plank bed and a chamber pot, where boiled vegetables were the main diet, where the only visitors were lice and maggots, where there was nothing to read except propaganda tracts, and where there was no one to talk to except interpreters who used their broken English relentlessly to reform my errant imperialist mind. Ten years under such conditions would be impossible. It would be the same as death. Beyond ten years, I could not think. While I played this dire numbers game and tried to cope with my throbbing toe, I listened to the solemn drone of the court proceedings. Only statements deemed pertinent to Fecteau and me were translated into English. Occasionally our names bobbed up in the stream of Chinese. My name was pronounced Tahn-nye and Fecteau’s was Fe-ke-toe. Suddenly, I realized the preliminary speeches were over. The center judge of the tribunal fixed his eyes on the Chinese agent at the farthest end of our row. He pronounced the sentence and it was repeated in English. “Life.” I had no time to conjure the implication of the sentence before the judge turned to the next agent in line. He also got life. I felt as though I had been clubbed from behind. I retained enough of my wits to hear the third agent, who was a radio operator, receive twenty years. The severity began to sink in. A few minutes before, a ten-year sentence seemed inconceivable. Now ten years seemed a slap on the wrist. The judge addressed another agent. He got life. And the next? Death. Inwardly, I staggered again. I heard
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another death sentence, perhaps two more deaths, when I realized the judge had arrived at Fecteau. During our trial, defense attorneys for the Chinese agents had argued that they were the dupes of the “American Imperialists,” that I was the real criminal and that Dick was my chief accomplice. The judge pronounced the sentence, Fecteau got twenty years. Immediately, I knew my sentence would be more severe. I would either be condemned to life in prison or death. The judge was now looking in my direction. I concentrated on holding myself steady; I was too flooded with sensation to feel normal fright. Every nerve in my body blazed with electric fire. I looked at life and death, and I braced myself. The interpreter listened to the Judge speak. I held my breath. “Life.” Life imprisonment was the punishment ordered by the court. I exhaled, and my body drained with relief. I became aware again of my throbbing toe. The command was given to leave the courtroom. We pivoted to the right and marched out. I did not have the chance to see the reaction on any of the Chinese agents’ faces. Once we were outside the courtroom, Fecteau and I were led into a small antechamber where we were told to sit on the floor. Fecteau was black with bitterness. “Well, it looks like my wife will die childless,” he said. “I don’t believe it,” I answered, my voice surprisingly high. “New Year’s amnesty.” I was grasping for straws of hope, trying to retrieve a future.“There’s no way I’m spending twenty years here,” said Fecteau, as if anger could alter his sentence. We knew talking was forbidden, but when a guard gestured for silence, Dick swore at him viciously. He had nothing left to lose. The guard jabbed his hand at a wall clock. My overheated imagination leaped to a conclusion. “It’s bugged!” I hissed at Fecteau. He looked at me oddly. Moments later, we were separated for the return trip. Back in my cell that evening, the jagged emotions I had felt at the sentencing flattened to the lowest despair ever. I felt as if a granite slab had been laid across my heart. I was not thankful for having been spared a death sentence. All I could think was that my life would never be my own. I imagined a stooped, white-haired American,
A PERFECT AMBUSH 7
“You could have been sentenced to death,” he said, suggesting he personally thought the court had been merciful. Then he went on, “Of course, you understand there is no hope for any reduction in your sentence, or any chance of appeal. But there are ways you can help yourself. Your conditions can change.”
shuffling about the prison corridors, doing menial chores and speaking a pidgin tongue to guards one-third his age, all the way into the next century. They would regard him as a curious relic from a time they learned about in history class. He would be too infirm in body or in spirit to pose any escape threat. The image was so vivid. The old man seemed to be standing there in my cell. I prayed I would not become that old man, but even if I didn’t and my sentence were commuted, it seemed likely I would be locked up for years. My youth would be taken from me and I could not imagine what good the rest of my life would be.
I must have looked as bad as I felt, because a guard was posted at the window to my cell and he stayed there all night. My jailers may have worried that I would try to kill myself. The thought did cross my mind. But I had been raised to believe suicide was the ultimate sin. Even in that deepest despair I could not consider suicide seriously. The guard’s passive face was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep. The clanging prison bell woke me the next morning and before long the sun was shining and some of my optimism returned. I began to think less of the hopelessness of a “life sentence,” and more of what hope remained to me. My release still might be negotiated, if not soon, then in a year or two. A few years seemed nothing now. Perhaps there would be an amnesty or a change in the Chinese government. I was occupied with such musings when the interpreter came to my cell. I noticed he was thin and pale, obviously a member of the upper class, who, before the revolution, had been sent abroad to be cured of tuberculosis. Despite his lost privilege, he embraced Communism zealously and his inbred arrogance was now overlaid with political piety, an unattractive combination. He was gloating as he spoke to “Whatme.did you think of your sentence?” he asked.
I told him I thought it was severe, much tougher than I expected. I didn’t expect any sympathy from him and I didn’t get any.
He was still gloating, but he had told me more than he had intended, and I was elated. After two years of interrogation, I had become experienced at fencing with interpreters, and I knew most of their psychological feints and thrusts. If this fellow threatened that there was no hope for an early release, it could only mean that there was. As for what he said about better conditions, I took that to mean that if I behaved myself and answered whatever questions the Chinese might have left to ask me, I could get better food or other minor prison amenities. But at that moment I was immune to such pompous“Look,wheedling.ifyou’ve
8 A PERFECT AMBUSH
got questions, I’ll answer them,” I told the interpreter. “But not because I want any favors from you. The only thing I want is to be left alone.”
If I was going to spend one more year, or fifty, in their prison, I’d be damned if I would give the Chinese the opportunity to pretend they were humanitarian captors. I’d shut myself away from them. My own prison would be far tighter than any they could ever provide.
—Ret. Lt. Gen. James Clapper, former U.S. director of national intelligence
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS New cup.columbia.eduYork IN THE U.S.A. NANCY BERNKOPF TUCKER and WARREN I. COHEN Books on American–East Asian Relations
PRINTED
“This inviting, smartly observed account of one man’s experience is all the more emotionally palpable because of its unsentimental presentation. The impressive interspersed chapters add perspective that will be invaluable to readers.”
—Charles Hayford, former editor of the Journal of American–East Asian Relations
“In this extraordinary book, Jack Downey vividly describes how he, an American POW and an American hero, lived through the horror of twenty years of solitary confinement in Mao’s China. Thomas J. Christensen insightfully narrates the larger background—why and how confrontation was replaced by rapprochement between Beijing and Washington.”
LOST COLD WARthein
—Chen Jian, author of Mao’s China and the Cold War
Praise for “An engrossing read, Lost in the Cold War is a testament to one man’s incomparable strength of character and endurance—both physical and mental. Inspiring and enlightening all at once.”
—John Lewis Gaddis, author of The Cold War: A New History
“Most Cold War historians knew that Jack Downey had spent twenty years in Chinese captivity, but because of the low profile he kept following his release, they didn’t know him. Now, posthumously, he’s introduced himself with an extraordinary account of endurance, perseverance, and ultimately quiet triumph. Highly recommended indeed.”