Summarizing it another way, of the 221 Marines captured during the three-year conflict:
— 49 were officers and 172 enlisted;
— 190 were ground personnel and 31 aviators;
— of the 190 ground troops, 19 were officers and 171 enlisted;
— of the 31 aviators, 30 were officer pilots and 1 was enlisted.
The 7th Marines, which was the unit on line at the time of several major CCF attacks, had the highest number of POWs in the division. A total of 70 men, or 59.3 percent[577] of the 118 infantry Marines taken, were from the 7th. The record during this 1950–1953 period for the others is as follows: 1st Marines, 15 POWs; 5th Marines, 33; and the division artillery regiment, the 11th Marines, 14. Six pilots from Marine Fighter Squadron 312 found themselves unwilling guests in North Korea. Four other units—VMO-6, VMF-323, VMF-311, and VMF(N)-513—each had five members who served out the rest of the war as POWs.
[577] Recapitulation of facts from MacDonald, POW, pp. 260–269 and passim.
The Communist POW Camps[578]
[578] Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is derived from: MacDonald, POW; Montross, Kuokka, and Hicks, USMC Ops Korea—East-Central Front, v. IV; Barclay, Commonwealth; Fehrenbach, Kind of War; Leckie, Conflict; Rees, Korea.
The Communist POW camp system, under Chinese direction, began in late December 1950. Marines captured in November and December, along with U.S. Army troops, British Commandos, and other Allied personnel, were forced-marched north to Kanggye, not far from the Manchurian border.[579] In the bitter cold, while winter howled through North Korea, the column of prisoners limped its way to its final destination, arriving the day after Christmas. Several of the group, including Marines, perished during the four-day march—victims of malnutrition, untreated combat wounds, pneumonia, the stinging, freezing wind, and subzero temperatures. Usually, “the Communists moved them [the prisoners] by night, because they feared the United Nations air power which ... ranged over the whole of North Korea.”[580]
[579] Although some American prisoners were taken in the summer of 1950, it was not until the late autumn that large numbers of men taken in several major engagements created a need for a permanent prison-camp system. Rees, Korea, p. 330.
[580] Fehrenbach, Kind of War, pp. 423–424.
During the first three months of 1951, a network of POW camps was developed along the southern shores of the Yalu River. Occupants of the forlorn villages were evacuated, and newly captured UNC prisoners moved in. The main camp operation at this time was in the Kanggye area. This was a temporary indoctrination center established in October 1950 before the development of regular POW camps. (For various CCF camp locations, see [Map 34].) Ultimately a group of a half dozen or so permanent camps were developed northeast of Sinuiju, along a 75-mile stretch of the Yalu.