POW Gillespie remembers Christmas in a prison camp

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SFC Bailey Gillespie, a member of the 27th Inf. Reg. (Wolfhounds) was captured by the Chinese on Nov 26,1950. Gillespie, who lives in Spindale with his wife Joy, spent 1,013 days as a prisoner of war.

Following are two excerpts from his book, Korean War Remembered: Prisoner of War, 1013 Days of Hell.

The Gillespies have given permission to use these excerpts:

Christmas Day of 1950 was the worst Christmas any of us had ever experienced -- very demoralizing -- it came and went like it'd never happened, just another day - we probably didn't even know for sure when it came and went, no one had a calendar or anything and every day was just another day and there was no way of knowing the day of the month or the day of the week.

We never had meat or vegetables to eat, or even water to drink. We had to use the snow outside. Sometime around Christmas I looked outside and there was no guard, so I stepped outside and went down below to a hut. There was a barrel with a lid on it, and I looked inside and saw that it was full of kimchi, a sauce they used to put on their food. It was good for seasoning and gave the food more nutritional value, so I reached inside the barrel with both hands and took as much as I could. It was soft like paste, even at 60 degrees below zero.

Then I pushed the lid back over the barrel and turned and hurried back up the hill to share the kimchi with the other prisoners.

If a guard had seen me he could have shot me or made me stand at attention until I froze to death. Some who disobeyed were beaten or made to stand until they had frozen hats and feet. She were left so long in the cold they died.

Things did get a little better and they let us have a Christmas service my second year as a prisoner in 1951 at Camp 5. A black preacher conducted the service. They let us use a building, and all faith attended the same service, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, maybe Muslims? Turks.

During our Christmas service we were singing the hymn Jerusalem, when a British soldier, Sgt Andrews in a loud, clear tenor rose above us in the back. It hadn't been planned. It just happened. It made the hair on your neck stand up. He was only able to sing it once because it hurt his throat too much to do it again. The starvation and lack of vitamins had taken their toll.

As he sang it was so beautiful that a lot of us wept.

We knew that God was with us.