I Killed My Captor: in North Korea

By William Fricks

Violent death-justified death can be a soldier's nightmare. This is a story of mental survival after multiple violent deaths caused by the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781640035782

Book preview

I would like to dedicate this writing to my lovely wife who has put up with me all these years, my PTSD, and my erratic behavior and to my grandmother who always had faith in me and believed that I would amount to something and never knew of the horrors I had experienced in Korea. To all my friends and family who listened to me for years and suggested I write this story and to most of all Dan.

Prologue

The year 1985 found me moving to Orange County, California. My hospital auditing business was booming. Life was good.

Not long after getting settled, I started attending church services at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. One year, I participated in the Glory of Christmas. It was an event put on by the church to celebrate Christ and the holiday season. Life was certainly good.

Eventually, my wife and I were baptized by Robert Schuller, the minister of the church, therefore, becoming members.

My business and my life was good and fulfilling.

The fall of 1990 found me beginning to worry about the coming war with Iraq. At this time, I was president of a small but unique medical auditing firm located in Irvine, California. The information that was coming public on the television was of the enormous casualties this invasion of Iraq was going to produce and there was talk of setting up surgery centers in Germany to treat the wounded American soldiers.

I talked this over with my wife and we decided that since my background was surgery, I would volunteer my service. I immediately went to the Federal Building in West Los Angeles to get my passport. It was ironic that just a mile from the Federal Building was the large and well-known Veterans Hospital in Westwood.

The casualties of the war did not develop like the television said it would. The surgery centers were never overloaded, but I seemed to be stuck with the beginning symptoms of PTSD.

I made a few trips to the Veterans Hospital in Long Beach which turned out to be a terrible experience. Eventually, I made my way to the Sepulveda Veterans Hospital’s outpatient section where I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. PTSD was not a common expression at that time. The staff at the VA Sepulveda were understanding and helpful in helping me understand what was happening.

I was referred to a therapist at the VA Hospital in Westwood with whom I saw weekly for several months. In 1994, I was awarded 20 percent disability by the Veterans Administration. The medical auditing business was falling apart.

My business, my income, and my life was falling apart.

My dreams were terrible—I could not tolerate crowds and malls. One day, just after I had a session with my therapist at the VA Hospital in Westwood, I was driving home and I noticed a car full of Orientals and I lost it. After a few blocks of chasing that auto, I finally managed to control myself as I pulled up in front of the Police Station in West Los Angeles, parked, and calmed down. My PTSD was increasing.

In 1998, eight years after my first episode with PTSD, I received 100 percent disability. My medical auditing business was gone and life was not good. The following is how this all started.

The story you are about to read is true. The facts may be tinged with time for it has been over sixty years for this memory to be exempt from challenge. But I hope the reader will, after reading this book, have a sense of what the combat soldier may experience in time of war.

I will try to give to you the events as they happened, my feeling, fears, and other factors as they develop.

To give you a foundation for these events, I must explain the circumstance of where we will begin. I was a soldier in the 3rd platoon, I company, 3rd battalion, 8th regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division.

Chapter 1

It was just before dusk on November 1, 1950 that what was left of the battalion decided we must retreat. We had been overwhelmed all night and day by a new enemy, which was the Chinese Communists Forces. Normally, when a body of troops move from one place to another, a point leads the way, alerting the main group of any obstructions or problems. To this day, I don’t recall how Dan and I were selected.

Dan and I had met a couple of months ago when we first arrived in Japan at Camp Drake. We had become friends rather quickly, and our first adventure in that strange land was sneaking off the base through a hole in the fence into the town of Asaka. We were not alone for many of the guys had this adventure to brag about. Strange, I remember, that Japanese guards patrolled the fence.

These days, when I think of Dan, I remember him on one of our trips into Asaka negotiating with a mama-san for her daughter. It never came to pass for she wanted more than Dan was willing to pay. But mostly, I remember Dan’s big smile. Some thought that we were brothers, except he had dark hair and I was almost blonde.

North Korea seemed like it was all hills, and what is not a hill is a rice paddy. We decided we would stay about twenty to twenty-five yards apart so that we could alert the others if there was a problem. We were told which direction to go, and off we went. It started with a hill and it seemed we remained on the hill for a long time, more like a ridge. Our energy level