How did this soldier survive a POW camp?
Darrel Comstock shared his harrowing experience as a Prisoner of War during the Korean War:
"... In December 1950, twenty medics went to Pusan Harbor in South Korea. I was 22 years old and assigned to a Marine Corps medical battalion. As a medic, I carried medical supplies but no weapons and I wore a red cross on my helmet.
"On March 20, 1951, I got word of some Marines who were holed up in a bomb crater... I still have nightmares about this," Comstock said, sighing heavily. "There were three wounded Marines. I sent one soldier to get stretchers. He never came back. Another died during the night.
"There was a gray fog in the morning. At first light, we heard some talking and clicking. Undoing the safety of their rifles, a dozen Chinese were peering down the pit at us.
"We were immediately separated, tied up with a stick through our elbows behind our backs. Everything except for our clothing was taken from us, including our dog tags. We were deprived of our identity. We were marched every night for many nights, prodded by bayonets, in absolute silence.
"We were moved to four different camps, always marching toward North Korea. Sometimes we were moved in an ox cart. They pushed us into a ditch and we were there all day, frightened, disoriented and abandoned.
"When we finally got to a permanent camp two weeks after my capture, there were at least 2,000 of us in a metal warehouse. It had a tin roof with holes in the siding and no windows. People slept in dirt, cold and huddled together.
"Sanitation was terrible; food was worse. Rats were a delicacy. It was all part of the demoralizing process," he explained. "They did everything they could to take away our identity, our faith in God, to disorient us and make us feel like the victim.
"The 'box' was worst of all. It was about the size of a coffin with baffles at the end. In the box, we couldn't tell day from night. We were forced to move the box into a field and be there all day, moved upside down and backwards to disorient us.
"Everyone took their turn in the box. All around were barbed wire fences and prison guards dragging soldiers out to the box. The guards enjoyed kicking and sticking. They had to be psychotic to be prisoner of war guards," he grumbled. "I tried to think of anything else and not panic..."
While on his way overseas, Comstock had become friends with a farm boy who got a letter from home with about a teaspoon of wheat seed in it. "We shared our letters and I put a pinch of wheat seed in my pocket. I had read that wheat had been found in Egyptian tombs and it was still viable thousands of years later.
"That wheat went into the seams of my trousers. When I was in the box, there was nothing in my pockets, but I could feel three kernals of wheat. I knew they were alive and viable. They didn't care if they were separated," he recalled with moist eyes. "If those wheat could make it -- if they could survive the quiet and the dark -- so could I!"
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