March 2007

This will be the start of a series of items I’m providing, but I’m also looking for odd bits of memory that might help things along a bit later, when we get back into North Korea. As POWs go, Tiger Group came first, they stayed longest, and many good men did not survive that first terrible Winter. Right now, we’re trying to “prep up” for one or more missions into the North. Not likely for 2007, but possible, and a much better chance in 2008. We’ve never been able to go to the far-away Apex Camps where Tiger Group spent that first Winter. But the area is very high on our list… Meanwhile, we can try to keep the best possible count of men, in case we get a chance to move quickly. So we are watching and waiting, and not without hopes.

Back to Tiger Group. I’ll use that term straight through, even though the men did not meet The Tiger until Manpo at the end of Oct 1950. Let’s start in South Korea, as the group was forming. After leaving the battle zones most of these POWs gathered at Seoul. Several men had already fallen along the way, but four men died at or near Seoul in Jul-Aug 1950: R.E. Barnett, K.R. Mahoney, H. Oxner, and J.J. Tiernan. All four have been recovered, and are buried in the United States. H.L. Driskell, W.B Mitchell, and A.L. Vercolen died en route, only Driskell has been recovered. So Mitchell and Vercolen would “count” as among the first men still missing from Tiger Group.

I do not know of any Tiger Group members who died between Seoul and Pyongyang. But at Pyongyang, four men died in Aug-Sep 1950: R.M. Burnett, F.T. Burns, L.N. DeCicco, and R.C. Niemann. These four men were buried close together near the school house where Tiger Group was being held. After Tiger Group left Pyongyang, the extended grave was found and exhumed by U.S. forces. The four men, still unidentified, were reburied at the new U.N. Military Cemetery in Pyongyang, and so they were lost for a second time when the Chinese entered the war. But the Chinese and North Koreans returned some human remains during Operation Glory in Sep 1954, as required by the Armistice. Many of these remains were fragmentary, but we were able to identify most of them, including Burnett and Burns, and send them home. We do not know whether we have DeCicco and Niemann. They might be among the Unknowns at the Punchbowl, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific [NMCP] at Honolulu, or not. We still have a lot of work to do there.

Then three men died on the train, early in Sep 1950, en route from Pyongyang to Manpo on the south bank of the Yalu River: E.J. Girona, E.M. Kelley, and F.F. Perry. The remains of all three men came back during Operation Glory, they were identified and went home, as well.

J.J. Roberts, still unrecovered, died just as or after the train reached Manpo. He was likely the first loss there. A lot happened at Manpo. We are concerned with three periods, one after another. Tiger Group arrived on or about 11 Sep and stayed until 11 Oct 1950. This was their first Manpo period, and 18 men died. The group then left on a side trip to Kosan and Jui-am-nee, to keep them completely separate from the Chinese armies entering North Korea at Manpo. This interlude lasted from roughly 11 through 25 Oct. In villages or along the way, 16 more GIs and 1 U.S. civilian died. Finally, Tiger Group returned to Manpo, staying at the nearby “cornfield” from 26 through 31 Oct, where 32 more men died. Of these, 16 had to be left behind, unable to go any farther, with no hope of survival.

I mention all of this because it is part of our planning. You see, there is an airport just south of Manpo. But there isn’t one farther along in the area of the Apex Camps. (We’ll talk about them next time.) So there are a couple of possibilities for working in the Manpo area, if it’s ever allowed. Our recovery teams could be flown into the airport and encamped there, then taken by truck to specific work sites around Manpo, Kosan, and Juiam-nee. The teams might also work the lower end of the Death March trail that began at Manpo on 31 Oct 1950 (more on that next time, too).

If the Manpo Airport were not usable, then the teams might be trucked in from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Or, a real thin possibility, they might even be allowed to enter North Korea from across the Yalu River in China. Manpo in North Korea and Chi-an in Manchuria are “sister towns,” and Chi-an has road and rail links to the outside world, as well. For now, all of this is very iffy… but it is an important part of what we would like to do. I’ll pick up the story in Manpo next time…