One day they called out the names of nineteen of us, and told us we were going to welcome some Marines as they brought them into the prison camp. They drove us in a truck and we had no idea where we were, but we could hear the sound of Allied artillery. Our Chinese guards took off in fear, and surprisingly, some Korean civilians helped us hide out in a house. We were in Chinese uniforms -- those Chinese hats with the ear flaps -- and we had no weapons, so we were in quite a predicament. But we couldn't figure out why these Koreans were helping us. Early the next morning we saw an Allied spotter plane, and somebody got the idea to take down some of the hut's wallpaper, which was peeling from the walls, and cut it into strips that would spell out "POW" and the figure nineteen. So we laid this stuff out on a rice paddy. and with some shell casings we spelled out "rescue" and ran back into the house. A few minutes later the spotter plane came down real low and looked at it, and we were waving our old dirty skivvy shirts at him. About fifteen minutes later he came back and dropped a message in a streamer saying he'd sent for help. And soon three tanks came around the bend. Luckily, one of us had the idea to take the hats off, because later the tank lieutenant said he had almost mistaken us for the Chinese. Then, we asked where we were and found out that we were in South Korea. We had crossed the 38th Parallel and didn't realize it, that's why the Korean were so friendly

We were just overjoyed to be back with Allies. I think every man had tears in his eyes, overwhelmed with joy. We realized we were going home. I weighed one hundred pounds. All of us were malnutrition cases. But we were the only group ever to escape from the enemy in Korea. And we were the first Allied troops to come home as graduates of the political indoctrination course.