Ha Jin - War Trash

He had noticed me from my first appearance at the church, probably because I was attentive when he was speaking. Most of the audience, not knowing English, couldn't make out what he said, and my facial expressions must have shown that I followed him. One day after the sermon, as he was taking off his surplice, I went up to him and said, "Father Woodworth, may I ask you a favor?"

"How can I help you?" he said.

"Can I have a copy of the Bible? I want to study it on weekdays."

"You can understand it in English?"

"Yes."

His eyes gleamed. "All right, I will have it delivered to you. Put down your name and unit number here."

He opened his spiral-bound notebook, in which I wrote down the information. Although I had said I could understand the Bible, I wasn't very sure of my English. Ideally I should have had a dictionary. I had lost everything when I was taken captive, including my dictionary and the dog-eared Uncle Tom's Cabin. Whatever kind of book the Bible was, it was at least something I could read.

Among Father Woodworth's forty attendees, a number of them seemed attached to him, probably because they intended to seek his protection, though some might truly have been drawn by his eloquent manner and his deep, resonant voice. These men were better educated than most prisoners, and the majority of them were pro-Nationalists. However, none of them knew English well enough to read the Bible or talk with Woodworth, so I must have been a rarity to him.

On Thursday afternoon the company's orderly came to our tent and summoned me to headquarters. Off I set for the office, which was just a two-room hut, with the Nationalist flag and the Star-Spangled Banner flying above its door. The company leader, Wang Yong, was sitting at his desk when I stepped in. He motioned for me to take a seat in front of him and then patted an opened parcel on the desktop. Without any preliminaries he said, "So, you're a well-learned man, Feng Yan. You know foreign words, eh?"

"Yes, I can read English."

He poured a splash of saki into a coffee mug and handed it to me. "Have some," he said.

"I don't drink, thanks."

"Wow, a clean man," he sneered.

He then offered me a cigarette, which I accepted. I wondered what he had up his sleeve. He said with narrowed eyes, "I tell you what, the minute you walked into this company, I could see that you're not an ordinary fish."

"Thank you for your attention." I pretended to take his words as a compliment.

"What I mean is you were an officer, not an enlisted man like you claimed."

"I was just a secretary, in the Third Company of the 539th Regiment."

"Come on, stop trying to hoodwink this old man. I served in both the White Army and the Red Army. I met hundreds of men and know you must've been somebody. I strongly urge you to go to Taiwan with us and not to follow the Commies. One of these days Generalissimo Chiang's forces will sweep away all the Reds and recapture the mainland. It's time for you to decide which side to take, and you better decide wisely."

"Chief Wang," I said in earnest, "to be honest, I'm not a Communist. The reason I cannot sign up for Taiwan is that I have an old mother at home. She's alone and I'm her only child. My father died long ago."

"You see, the Commies would even recruit an only son like yourself. They use men like ammo. Damn them, in just one battle with a British battalion last spring, our division lost over a thousand men. So much blood flowed on a hill slope that the next morning hundreds of rooks flew around with blood-stained wings. Still, the higher-ups called it a victory, because we had overrun the enemy's position in the end."

"That's true," I agreed. "I never thought so many Chinese would be buried in Korea." His words conjured up the horrible image I hadn't been able to shake off – that the war was an enormous furnace fed by the bodies of soldiers.

"Think about what I just said, Feng Yan. I won't force you, brother, but honest and true, you don't have a lot of time to shilly-shally anymore – everybody will have to decide soon."

"I'll think it over."

"Okay, let me know once you're done thinking. Now you can go and take this with you." He pointed at the parcel wrapped in kraft paper.

I dared not offend him. If he took a dislike to me, he could easily destroy me. Already he'd had a number of men taken to company headquarters and forced them to sign an anti-Communist vow, which he then posted publicly. By so doing, he had cut off those men's route of retreat to China, where punishment from now on would await them; thus he coerced them into becoming nonrepatriates. These days Wang was busy promoting a tattoo movement among the pro-Nationalist prisoners, who volunteered to have words and drawings marked on their arms, chests, bellies, and even foreheads. Technically this primitive procedure wasn't painful – with a writing brush they inscribed words or a picture on a man and then used a needle to puncture the skin stained with black ink. The words were mainly slogans, such as "Fight Red Bandits to Death!," "Oppose Russia and Marx!," "Capture Mao Zedong Alive!," "Loyal to Nationalism!," "Root Out Communism!" The drawings included a radiant sun representing the Nationalist emblem, a knife plunged into a hairy pig that symbolized Mao, a boat bound for the Treasure Island – Taiwan. The tattooed men often walked around with their upper bodies naked to show off the words and drawings, which did intimidate many of us.

On the way back to my tent, I was delighted to see a brand-new copy of the Holy Bible in the parcel. It was the American Standard Version, leather-bound, with Jesus' words in red and a concise concordance at its back. Since it was too noisy inside the tent, I sat outside and began reading Genesis. The words made me slightly giddy, not because of the meaning of the Scripture but simply because I was reading something that wasn't just propaganda. I hadn't come across a real book for half a year; the deprivation had whetted my appetite. The English of the Bible was not difficult and I seldom came across a new word. This meant that from now on I could read some pages every day!

The next morning I met Ming again. I told him that I had been pressed to go to Taiwan and that soon everybody would have to make up his mind once and for all. He said he had also heard this. In fact, in Compound 76, which held Korean prisoners, an operation was already in the works. It was called "the screening," at which every POW had to declare formally where he would like to go, the Koreans to North

Korea or South Korea and the Chinese to mainland China or Taiwan. Ming also said that a few of our former comrades had been transferred to the company where Commissar Pei was now, because the Communists had regained power in the Third Battalion of Compound 86. Ming might go there soon, and the Communist leaders had offered the First Battalion of my regiment to exchange a pro-Nationalist for me so that I could join my comrades in Compound 86, but Wang Yong wouldn't let me go. This last piece of information unnerved me. Why would Wang keep me in his clutches? How could I be useful to him? Then it flashed through my mind that both the Communists and the pro-Nationalists were interested in me because I knew English.

In addition to preaching, Father Woodworth also taught the prisoners hymns at the education center on Wednesday afternoons. A burly Korean man played the accordion to provide music for him. More people attended the singing sessions than the sermons, perhaps just for the fun of it. Few of them, however, understood the contents of the songs; it was the music that attracted them. I liked the hymns very much. Whenever I heard the joyous, melodious tunes, my heart would leap. Regardless of the uncanny words about God and Christ, the music was the only beautiful thing in this hellish place. So more and more people went to learn to sing hymns.