[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 124 (Friday, July 28, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1556-E1558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


   TRIBUTE TO COL. WALTER L. MAYO, JR. (USA-RET.) KOREAN WAR VETERAN

                                 ______


                          HON. JAMES P. MORAN

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, July 28, 1995
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, this week we gather as a nation to honor the 
soldiers and sailors, marines and airmen, and all those who served, 
fought, and died in our Armed Forces in the Korean war. The Korean War 
Veterans Memorial, which we dedicate 42 years after the signing of the 
armistice of July 27, 1953, occupies a place of prominence and 
remembrance on the Washington Mall. This location among the grand 
monuments of our country is a fitting tribute to the veterans of a 
forgotten war that for too long has dwelt in the shadows of our 
history.
  Among the ranks of those who served in the Korean war, one group has 
received scant attention and recognition even to this day--the more 
than 7,000 prisoners of war and 8,000 still listed as missing in 
action. I would like to tell the story of one man, Col. Walter L. Mayo, 
Jr. (USA-Ret.) of McLean, VA, and Centerville, MA, who fought from the 
Pusan perimeter to 

[[Page E 1557]]
the banks of the Yalu River and who spent 3 years as a prisoner of war. 
His story stands as testimony to the thousands of others whose heroism 
and sacrifice went unrecognized for too long.
  Walt Mayo was no stranger to combat when he arrived in Korea in 1950. 
A World War II veteran, he had served as a rifleman during the Battle 
of the Bulge and was captured by the Germans. After his release, he 
went to Boston College on the GI Bill, joined the ROTC program, and 
received a Regular Army commission on January 1, 1950. He landed in 
Korea on August 10 as a field artillery forward observer in the 99th 
Field Artillery, attached to the 3d Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 
1st Cavalry Division, just weeks after the June 25, North Korean 
invasion of the Republic of Korea [ROK]. There he joined the thin line 
of American and ROK forces that held the Pusan perimeter against 14 
North Korean divisions and several tank regiments. The toll was high. 
By the end of his first week in combat, Lieutenant Mayo was the only 
survivor among the three original forward observers in his unit.
  By mid-September, MacArthur's landing at Inchon had combined with a 
breakout from the Pusan perimeter led by the 1st Cavalry to shift the 
tide of the war. The 8th Army pushed north to the Yalu River, crushing 
the remnants of the North Korean army. On Halloween, the 8th Cavalry 
Regiment was at the leading edge of the American forces, at the town of 
Unsan only miles from the Chinese border. The men did not know it, but 
they had reached the high-water mark of the American advance for the 
entire war.
  The Chinese Communist forces struck American units in force for the 
first time of the war on November 1. Lieutenant Mayo's unit, the 3d 
Battalion, had established a perimeter near an odd-shaped bend of the 
Nammyon and Kuryong rivers. The unit had received orders to withdraw, 
but in the morning darkness of November 2 the Chinese attacked on three 
sides. Scores of Chinese poured into the American position near the 
battalion command post, and the fighting quickly became hand-to-hand. 
The men regrouped around three tanks and held off enemy attacks until 
daylight. They dug in during the day of November 2, protected by 
fighter-bomber strikes. Six officers, including Lieutenant Mayo, and 
200 men were left to fight. Some 170 wounded were brought inside the 
small perimeter.
  The fate of the 3d Battalion was sealed when the rest of the 1st 
Cavalry Division was ordered to withdraw on the evening of November 2. 
Completely cut off, the 3d Battalion had no further hope of rescue. But 
the men continued to fight, fending off wave after wave of Chinese 
attacks--at least six separate attacks each during the nights of 
November 2-3 and 3-4. As the
 American soldiers exhausted their ammunition, they crept out at night 
to collect weapons and ammunition from the dead Chinese soldiers that 
littered the ground around them. One soldier described Lt. Mayo during 
this time as ``the finest combat officer I have ever seen.''

  The situation on the morning of November 4 was grim. More than 250 
men lay wounded. They had almost no ammunition and the tanks had long 
since been destroyed. The officers decided to attempt a break-out. The 
battalion surgeon, Captain Anderson, and the chaplain, Father Emil 
Kapaun, volunteered to stay behind with the wounded.
  That afternoon, Lt. Mayo and three others crawled across the bodies 
of the dead Chinese to scout a way out of the encirclement. He found a 
hole in the lines and sent word back for the rest of the group to 
follow. The survivors broke out just as the Chinese fired a massive 
artillery barrage in preparation for a final attack on the perimeter. 
The official Army history records the 3rd Battalion's fight as the 
``Ordeal Nuclear Camel's Head Bend.''
  The group evaded the Chinese for 2 days. The official account states 
simply that,

       The next day, within sight of bursting American artillery 
     shells, Chinese forces surrounded them and the battalion 
     group, on the decision of the officers, broke up into small 
     parties in the hope that some of them would escape. At 
     approximately 1600 on the afternoon of 6 November the action 
     of the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, as an organized force came 
     to an end. Most of these men were either killed or captured 
     that day . . .

The entire 8th Calvary Regiment had lost some 600 men--a 45-percent 
casualty rate that meant the unit effectively ceased to exist.
  Walt Mayo was captured by the Chinese on November 7 and marched north 
for 2 weeks to Pyoktong near the Chinese border. By the end of the 
march, the column of American POW's had grown to almost 600 men. Walt 
Mayo's parents were told he was missing in action.
  Camp 5 at Pyoktong consisted initially of these 600 men housed 15 or 
20 to a room in partially destroyed sheds and houses. The men had no 
way to clean themselves, little fuel, and no blankets to ward off the 
sub-zero temperatures. They had not received winter issue clothes 
before they were captured, so they only had light field jackets. The 
men were filthy and soon became covered with lice. Wounds became 
infected and sores began to break out and fester. The meager diet of 
cracked corn and millet took its toll, as limbs began to swell from 
beri-beri, night blindness struck and the men felt the effects of 
pellagra and other nutritional diseases. Pneumonia, hepatitis, and 
dysentery afflicted the weakened soldiers. The men began to die.
  In February, 1951, 800 more POW's, including members of the Turkish 
Brigade, joined the original group at Pyoktong. Members of the Royal 
Ulster Rifles followed in April. But the death toll among the weakened 
men who had been in the camp through the freezing winter of 1950-51 
continued to climb. By the late spring, more than two dozen men a day 
were dying. The death toll did not begin to drop until August, 1951.
  The period from November 1950 until October 1951 was the darkest and 
deadliest chapter for American POW's. The Chinese did not feel they 
would have to account for the men, so they gave them almost nothing and 
sought to do little more than exploit and punish them. Some Americans 
gave up under the pressure of disease, deprivation, and despair. The 
vast majority of the 2,700 American POW deaths took place in these 
first 11 months, with almost 1,500 dying in Camp 2 alone.
  Most men held on to their dignity and a few even reached deep inside 
themselves to find reservoirs of great courage and strength. Father 
Emil Kapaun was one such man. Walt had known Father Kapaun since the 
Pusan perimeter, when Father Kapaun had his pipe shot out of his mouth 
by a sniper. He had shown incredible bravery during the ``Ordeal Near 
Camel's
 Bend,'' constantly risking his life to tend to the wounded.

  Father Kapaun served as constant source of cheer and inspiration in 
Camp 5. He ministered to the sick and dying, and emulated St. Dismas, 
the good thief, in stealing food from the Chinese for the men. The 
Chinese feared Father Kapaun and the strength of his faith. When he 
developed a blood clot in his leg in April, 1951, the Chinese took him 
away to die. Walt joined with others after the Korean war ended to 
dedicate a high school in Wichita, KS, in honor of Father Kapaun. They 
gave the school a crucifix, with a crown of barbed wire, that a Jewish 
officer, Jerry Fink, had painstaking carved in the camp in honor of 
Father Kapaun.
  After Father Kapaun's death, Walt tried secretly to document the 
horror of the camp with a movie camera that he had received from an 
intermediary, Corporal Buckley of the Royal Ulster Rifles, from a 
Private First Class Magelski. But an informant turned all three of them 
in to the Chinese. Their refusal to break under interrogation kept the 
punishment relatively light--just over 2 months in solitary 
confinement. Walt was thrown into a hole in the ground so small he 
could neither stand up nor lie down. He kept his sanity by scratching 
out the lessons of the Jesuits in the dirt and on scraps of paper--math 
equations, Latin conjugations, and anything else to resist the 
isolation.
  In November 1991, Walt and the other officers were moved to 
Pingchong-ni some 8 miles northeast of Pyoktong. The conditions 
improved slightly and the resolve, discipline, and camaraderie rose. 
The British officers in the camp felt a particular kinship with Walt 
because of his broad New England accent and dubbed him the ``boy 
Lieutenant.'' The men became more imaginative in their resistance to 
the Chinese. They had a ``crazy week'' complete with operations from an 
aircraft carrier sketched in the dirt. Helicopter pilot Johnny 
``Roterhead'' Thornton rode an imaginary motorcycle everywhere he went. 
Another shaved his head, wore a feather, and told the Chinese he was a 
blood brother of the Mohawk Indian tribe celebrating national tom-tom 
week. The bonds forged there with Hank Pedicone, Bart DeLashmet, Harry 
Hedlund, Sid Esensten, and others have lasted to this day. Most of all, 
the men helped each other to survive for almost 2 more years.
  Under the terms of the Armistice signed on July 27, 1953, the Chinese 
had 60 days to return POW's. They used that as the last opportunity to 
punish the resisters. The ones who had caused the most problems were 
held to the last. Walt Mayo crossed Freedom Bridge on September 5, 
1953, on the 58th day of the prisoner exchange.
  Of the 7,140 American POW's in the Korean war, more than 3,000 died 
or were never heard from again. The total number who died as prisoners 
was probably much higher, given that many of the 8,000 missing in 
action were certainly taken by the Chinese. But we know that at least 
two out of every five men died in captivity, a toll matched only by the 
POW's held by the Japanese in World War II.
  Walt Mayo said that he lived because of three weapons his captors 
could never take from him: faith in God, faith in his country, and 
faith in himself. He, like so many other Americans who fought in Korea, 
used these common values to achieve uncommon courage, 

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strength, and discipline. The memorial's stark, moving depictions of 
weary fighting men seem to somehow capture this inner quality. It is 
right and proper that we at long last give this due honor to Walt Mayo 
and the POW's who survived; to Father Kapaun and those thousands of 
Americans who lie buried along the banks of the Yalu; and to all of the 
veterans of the Korean war.


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