The soldier lived to tell about two experiences in the hands of the enemy.
By McGregor McCance - The Roanoke Times
Dec. 19, 1944: A sense of resignation fell on Eddie Davis as Nazi troops overran his position in the Ardennes Forest above Bastogne, Belgium.
"Well, this is it," he said to himself.
Swept up among the thousands of Americans captured during the Battle of the Bulge, Pvt. Davis became one thing every soldier fears being: a prisoner of war.
As he would later learn, his four months at Stalag 3 near Wittenberg, Germany, weren't so bad.
The Germans treated him and his colleagues reasonably. Food was scarce, but neither captives nor captors where Davis was held had the heart for serious confrontation in the closing moments of World War II.
Davis came home to Henry County for a while. Then, for reasons his friends of today, and even strangers he falls into conversation with, struggle to understand, he signed up for another tour with the U.S. Army.
Now 90 and living in Stuart, Davis chuckled when asked for the millionth time what he was thinking then. Spread about before him and his wife, Louise Rogers Davis, on the kitchen table in their home lay photographs, military commendations, medals and documents chronicling honorable discharges and re-enlistments.
"I just wanted to see what was going to happen next, I guess," he said.
The answer was worse than surprising. It was cruel.
Davis found himself on the front lines of the Korean War on July 4, 1950. A week later, he was again forced to surrender.
Two wars.
Two-time POW.
Davis endured more than three years as a prisoner of war in Korea. Unlike his German captivity, this was an experience of brutality, neglect and psychological hazing - treatment that grew into an iconic image of Americans taken prisoner during the Korean War and led to changes by the U.S. government on how it prepared soldiers for the specter of captivity.
New lows in Korea
From the Revolutionary War to the "war on terrorism," American prisoners have received dramatically different treatment.
Those captured during WWII by Germans likely experienced humane treatment. Americans captured in the Pacific theater by the Japanese, however, suffered mightily at the hands of a military culture that would rather commit suicide than suffer the humiliation of being captured.
Davis witnessed how prisoners of war in North Korea experienced, almost universally, new lows. Of about 7,100 Americans taken prisoner, 3,800 returned home alive. The rest were killed or died in captivity.
"Korea was bad business," said Col. Malcolm Muir, a professor of history at Virginia Military Institute.
In charge of a mortar section, Cpl. Davis and his men got bull-rushed by North Korean soldiers cutting through the fog on the morning of July 11, 1950.
He and his men ended up waist-deep in a river, where they fought until the odds grew overwhelming. As he had in the snow of the Ardennes, Davis realized his group must surrender or die.
He ordered his men to disassemble weapons. Davis scooped a hole in the riverbed and tried to bury his carbine so the North Koreans couldn't use it.
The enemy forced them up the riverbank. The men knelt in a road as their hands were bound behind them with their own communication wire. A machine gunner set up his weapon.
Davis prayed, convinced the Americans were about to be shot. There wasn't enough time to second-guess himself for re-enlisting.
Back at his home in Stuart, Davis looked down at the table as he recalled the moment.
What does a soldier think about when he's about to be killed?
"He thinks of a lot of things in a few minutes," Davis said. "He thinks of his people at home. You just don't stop praying. You just keep on praying."
Death march survivor
July 11, 1950, wasn't Davis' last day after all. American planes strafed the area, sending the North Koreans and their prisoners scrambling to a building a mile away.
The prisoners were herded next by train to a camp near the Yalu River in North Korea, where they stayed about a month. On Halloween night of 1950, Davis and more than 700 others began what came to be known as the Tiger Death March, named after a brutal major who supervised the trek. The Americans called him "The Tiger" because of his ferocity and ruthlessness.
The hundred-mile march took nine days, crossing mountainous North Korean terrain on the way to Camp No. 3 in Changsong as winter approached.
Davis concedes today that details about the march and the prison camps get "tangled" sometimes. He remembers clearly that men who couldn't keep up were shot to death. He remembers men being executed for stopping to drink water.
The details were more vivid when Davis gave a newspaper interview upon his return to the United States in 1953.
"We were a sorry looking lot," he told the International News Service, "weak from dysentery, crawling with lice, smelly, whiskered, wearing the same summer uniforms we'd been captured in, foul and gummy now."
The former POWs meet annually, though Davis couldn't make last year's convention because of a heart attack.
"Many were shot or beaten to death, but the majority died because of exposure and untreated respiratory infections. Out of nearly 850 who were captured, only 165 are alive today," writes Wilbert "Shorty" Estabrook, a founder of the Tiger Survivors organization.
Confronting abuse and neglect
Harsh as the march would be, prison life was hardly an improvement for the Americans.
Fed sparse amounts of rice balls or dried fish strips, Davis seemed to evaporate. His weight dropped from 150 pounds to 85.
On one occasion, a North Korean guard cracked a long, wooden baton across Davis' back, knocking him unconscious. On another, a guard jammed his rifle butt repeatedly into Davis' chest.
A low point arrived when Davis and another prisoner were forced to drag a beloved lieutenant's body up a mountainside and bury it.
In January 1951, Bill Skinner straggled into Camp No. 3 along with other new prisoners. He was fresh from the battle of Chosin Reservoir, where both his feet froze.
Someone handed Skinner packs of cigarettes when he arrived. A nonsmoker, he traded them to Davis for extra food and a spoon. Later, his new friend helped him remove bandages and pluck off eight frostbitten toes.
"They'd turn black. And they're just dead," Skinner said during a recent phone interview from his home in Clarksburg, W.Va.
Years later, Skinner would serve as best man during Davis' second marriage.
"I remember Eddie mostly as a good, jolly person, friendly and carrying on," Skinner said. "Eddie was more of a father figure because he was 10 or 15 years older than most of the guys."
Instinctively, the POWs relied on leaders like Davis and depended on an ability to find humor in the worst situations to help them persevere. But American soldiers were unprepared for life as prisoners. They had no training on how to act or to cope.
'Closed my ears to everything'
Davis and other POWs figured their luck had changed after 18 months in Camp 3. Communist Chinese took over the prison. The Americans suddenly had more food, less abuse, new clothes and even played baseball.
Their luck had changed, but for the worse in ways. The Chinese systematically applied psychological pressure, trying to pry information, force confessions and record statements to use as propaganda.
Camp 3 prisoners were required to attend daily classes on the evils of capitalism and other topics.
"I just kind of closed my ears to everything," Davis said. "I didn't want to hear nothing."
Still, some prisoners broke. "Progressives" who exchanged information or confessions for favors and better treatment were despised by fellow POWs. At the war's end, 21 Americans refused to be repatriated and instead went to China.
Words such as indoctrination and brainwashing attached like leeches to returning POWs after the war.
"All prisoners coming back then, even those who resisted the most brutal treatment, were suspect," said Muir, the VMI professor.
The military's realization that it had offered no instruction to help those who were captured and reports of turncoats among some American POWs prompted changes, Muir said. In 1955 the Eisenhower administration issued the Code of Conduct for all service members. It was designed in part to make it clear what was permissible for POWs to give to captors and what they were expected to do, such as provide name, rank, serial number and birth date.
The code, among other things, also advises soldiers that they are required to attempt escape and to follow traditional chains of command in custody, or establish one if officers are separated from others.
Suffering, surviving
In his 1953 interview, Davis said he didn't see POWs give in to Chinese mind games in his part of Camp 3. Resisting those efforts was a point of personal pride.
The plight of POWs in Korea and, later, in Vietnam taught the military that every person has a breaking point.
Shot down over Vietnam in 1966, Paul Galanti spent almost seven years as a POW. Torture and psychological pressure were regular parts of prison life.
"We had guys who fought the entire time they were over there and others who caved in right away," said Galanti, who now lives in Richmond and remains active in national POW issues.
Though relatively new at the time, the Code of Conduct helped in ways, but hurt in others. American prisoners strictly following its language believed they must give only the basic information and nothing more without feeling they'd betrayed their country. Given the choice, many POWs suffered far more than necessary.
"It took some of us a long time to learn how to lie," Galanti said. "The game plan now is if you lie enough they can't trust anything you say."
Three years after Galanti was released, and 23 years after Davis was released, the Code of Conduct was altered a second time. Minor word changes conceded that prisoners could give more than the most basic information without violating the code.
"The reasonable thing," Muir said, "was to resist as long as you could."
The Code of Conduct is part of standard military training now. And some military personnel who are at higher risk of capture, particularly those in the Air Force, get intense "evasion and escape" training, Muir said.
Spirit still burns
Eddie Davis spent another decade or so in the military after the Chinese and North Koreans turned him and other POWs over to Americans in August of 1953.
After his first wife died, Davis met Louise Rogers by chance at a Martinsville produce market. Her first husband, who died in 1986, had been captured the same day as Davis during the same WWII battle.
In 1995, they were married. The running joke is that Louise Davis has custody of her husband, making him a three-time POW. "I have him now and he's not going to be liberated," she said with a laugh.
Davis and Louise traveled often, though hardly at all since his heart attack last year. He cemented his friendship with Bill Skinner over the years and kept up with as many buddies as he could.
And when he saw the twin towers falling on Sept. 11, 2001, and the war starting in Iraq, Eddie Davis wished he were young enough to help.
Treatment of POWs
Since 1949, the Geneva Conventions have offered guidance on the humane treatment of POWs. Still, those captured in Vietnam suffered years of torture. And Americans taken prisoner during the first Persian Gulf War were treated with "great brutality," said Col. Malcolm Muir, a professor of history at Virginia Military Institute.
Today, it might appear, all bets are off on treatment of prisoners.
"You can't or shouldn't expect the radical Islamists to be anything less than brutal," Muir said.
At the same time, the U.S. military was harshly criticized for mistreatment of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"The U.S. armed forces have generally been scrupulous about its treatment of POWs, partly in hopes of gaining reciprocal good treatment for its members who might fall into enemy hands," Muir said. "I think it is important to note that those guilty of atrocious behavior at Abu Ghraib are being punished under the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice)."
American prisoners
Revolutionary War: The British considered Americans to be rebels, not legitimate war prisoners. Enlisted men were often held on hulks in New York Harbor. Death rates were high.
Civil War: Prison camp overcrowding and mistreatment occurred on both sides. Andersonville, Ga., and Elmira, N.Y., were two places with especially high starvation rates.
World War I: The few Americans captured by Germans received mostly proper treatment.
World War II: Germans typically treated American POWs in alignment with the Geneva Convention of 1929, which first addressed POW issues. The Japanese, who did not sign the 1929 convention, viewed prisoners generally as subhumans, Muir said. Prisoners were tortured, starved and some were even used for medical experiments.
Korea: American POWs experienced torture and neglect by North Koreans. Chinese captors used physical and psychological pressure to get information and confessions.
Vietnam: Similar to the Korea experience. "In the end, the Communists were able to wring confessions from even the toughest of prisoners," Muir said.
Were you a POW?
Or was a member of your family? We'd like to hear stories about Western Virginians who were prisoners and stories about how their families coped at home.
Write to:
POW Stories
Attn: McGregor McCance
P.O. Box 2491
Roanoke, VA 24010
Or e-mail: mcgregor.mccance@roanoke.com