An additional four enlisted Marines returned to military control after a brief period of capture. Corporal William S. Blair, B/1/7, and PFC Bernard W. Insco, D/2/11, were taken prisoner on 24 April 1951 while the 1st Marine Division was operating as a component of IX Corps. Although originally sent north to a POW camp, both were released on 12 May by the enemy after less than a month’s captivity. Another pair of lucky Marines were PFC Richard R. Grindle and Corporal Harold J. Kidd, both of B/1/7. Seized on 11 May in patrol actions, they were the only Marines captured in ground fighting that month, and escaped to return to the division four days later.

At least six escape attempts are known to have been made by Marine POWs, and another elaborate plan late in the war was foiled before it got under way. The incidents follow:

#1. In the early winter months of 1951, Sergeant Donald M. Griffith, F/2/5, became increasingly upset by the filth, steady attrition of POWs, and semi-starvation diet at The Valley. He vowed to escape. Late one night he pretended to go to the latrine and finding the guard asleep, instead hurried down the path leading out of the valley. He walked until dawn, then found a hut where he hid among a pile of rice bags for some much-needed sleep. Later, he knocked at a hut, asking for food. While he ate, however, his genial host’s son was out contacting a military patrol which even then was on Griffith’s trail.

A group of Communist soldiers closed in to recapture him. As early punishment, Griffith’s shoe pacs were taken from him and he was forced to walk back to the Valley in his threadbare ski socks. Returned to the camp, the Marine sergeant was beaten across the face. He was also directed to walk up a nearby hill and for three successive times a rifle bullet tearing by his head barely missed him. Later he learned that plans of his escape were leaked to the CCF by an informer, thus triggering an early search.

#2. In May 1951, Captain Bryon H. Beswick, VMF-323, was a member of a large POW column being marched north. Although still suffering severe burns on his face, hands, and leg incurred while bailing out of his plane that had caught fire, Beswick and four others attempted to outwit their guards while on the march. All the would-be escapees were placed in solitary confinement.

#3. Shortly after his capture in July 1951, PFC Alfred P. Graham, Jr., H/3/5, was interned temporarily at what appeared to be a divisional headquarters. One afternoon when the guards seemed slack, Graham and another Marine sneaked off. Ultimately they approached a farmhouse to get food and there stumbled into a half dozen Koreans who took them into custody. The two Marines were beaten with a submachine gun and their hands were bound behind their back with communications wire. On their forced reappearance at the original site of escape, a Korean officer beat and interrogated them for three days.

#4. A short-lived escape attempt at Pak’s Palace, not long after his capture in October 1951, had earned Lieutenant Gillette a solitary confinement tour. Arriving at Officers’ camp in Pi-chong-ni the following spring, the former VMF(N)-513 squadron member and a South African air force pilot laid plans for a mutual escape. Gillette deliberately set himself on a course of reduced rations to prepare himself for the coming feat. When the two men made their break, they were shot at but managed to safely clear the camp.

The first night out the other pilot so badly injured himself in a fall that Gillette had to leave him and go on alone. Although the apparent escape route lay to the west, nearer the coast, the Marine chose to go east across rugged mountains that offered little in the way of cover, concealment, or food. His unorthodox planning nearly paid off. “Whereas most escapees were recaptured within hours, or at best within days, Lieutenant Gillette was free for several weeks before the Communists found him halfway across Korea.”[627] One Royal Marine described the attempt as “the finest and most determined one he knew of.”[628]

[627] MacDonald, POW, p. 169.

[628] Ibid.