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Show Family Weekly / May 25, 1969 How Faith Saved the Crew of Taunted and beaten for their belief in God, these brave Navy men an unforgettable message for this coming By BILL O’NEILL “They had me repeat the prayer several times,” Sterling later told a “1 left religion out of mylife when I joined the Navy,” he explained. “I U.S. Navychaplain. “They asked me to explain what ‘blessing’ meant. They told me that the food was a gift from the Korean people, not hadn’t helped my wife to become a Christian or encouraged the chil- from God. They told me, ‘You are laughing stock. You make fool of yourself.’ After making me stand at After 11 months of suffering, iiberated Pueblo crewmen give gestures of triumph. Memorial Day, 1969 Ina time of questioning and disenchantment, Americans soon will pause again to honor those who gave their lives for their beliefs. On this coming Memorial Day (Friday), one so remembered will be Duane Hodges, a sailor killed when North Koreans seized the U. S. Navy's Pueblo Jan. 23, 1968. His sacrifice and his fellow- grily across the floor, and cuffing him about. Peppard lost his cross— but he continued to pray. Peppard’s experience was typical among the 82 officers, enlisted men, and civilians from the Pueblo during the 11 months they were held captive in North Korea. To the strict regimen of poor food, cold quarters, and crew’s religious faith seemed actually to grow stronger. Few ofthese men had ever thought of themselvesasreligious. Lieutenant Harris was the ship’s Protestant lay leader, and he said that after several occasions before their capture when only two or three men showed up, he this traditional day of remembrance. by beatings and torture, the Communists added religious persecution. had abandoned efforts to hold services at sea on Sundays. Yet, in captivity, the religious training of their youth came to the The men were constantly admon- ished that “this is not a church.” Tc men starved for newsof the outside world, the North Koreans announced fore, and many of the men credit N A COLD,barren field in the middle of a prison crewmen's faith add new meaning to compoundin the North Korean capital of Pyongyang last year, 40 men from the captured U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo played volleyball under the watchful eyes of their Communist guards. endless interrogations, accompanied the latest Soviet space achievement by saying, “God was shot out of the sky yesterday by a Russian rocket.” Lt. Stephen Harris, 30, Melrose, Mass., recalls that being found with ~any religious article “was worth a few bruises.” Catholics who had rosaries had Communications Technician Don- these taken away when they entered the prison camp. This did not stop ald R. Peppard, 31 of Bremerton, Wash., noticed a discarded ammunition box lying at the edge of the ball field. When the game was over, he casually picked up the empty wooden the four other Catholics in reciting the rosary daily by ticking off the prayers onhis fingers. boxand took it with him into hiscell. Using a small penknife with a twoinch blade, Peppard laboriously carved a cross, before which he prayed every nightfor his loved ones at home and that he might be set free to return to them. Chief Electronics Technician James F. Kell, 32, Honolulu, from leading Communications Technician Charles R. Sterling, 29, Stratford, Conn., was hauled out of the mess hall when a guard caught him softly During a routine search of Pep- saying grace before his meal ofrice, turnips, and rancid pork. Twoofficers questioned him closely on what he had been doing. Sterling told them pard’s cell, the handmade cross was discovered. The North Korean guards he had simply said, “Lord, we thank You for these blessings, and all of us flew into a rage, breaking the reli- ask for Christ’s mercy. Amen.”It was a prayer taught him by his father. gious symbol, kicking the pieces an- 2 4 attention for a time, they dismissed meand told me not to pray again.” Sterling heeded the warning only to the extent that he was morecircumspect in his prayers after that. For under the taunts and beatings of their Communist captors, the Pueblo Family Weekly, May 25,1969 their faith and their prayers for seeing them through their ordeal. As one told a chaplain after his release, “All we had left was religion.” Oneof the men who neverattended shipboard services, for example, was Hospital Corpsman HermanP. Baldridge, 37. “Doc,” as he was known to his shipmates, has anattractive wife, Nobuko (Japanese for “Trustfui Daughter”) in Sasebo, Japan. and two small children. Although she was reared as a Buddhist, Nobuko had been sending the children to Sunday school. “Before my captivity, and even for a time after we were captured, I wasn’t what you would call a religious man,” Baldridge said recently. “But when things got really rough, I turned to prayer. It didn’t lessen the beatings, but it gave me something to rely on. Somehow, it made things better. “Sometimes ‘he guys would be standing around talking about their fear and saying that they had prayed. One day I joined in and said, ‘I prayed, too.’ One of the guys turned to me andsaid, ‘I knowit helped.’ dren, But now that’s going to change. I want to do all that I can to encourage Nobuko to understand the Christian faith and embrace it for herself. And I want to make sure that the children are attending Sunday school and that they continue.” When the Pueblo was brought into Wonsanharbor on Jan. 23, 1968, the crew was taken to Pyongyang and jailed in a big, badly heated barracks which the mencalled “the barn.” Four enlisted men shared each 14-by-16foot cell, while the officers were held separately in single cells, In March, the men were moved to a building in the Koreancapital. Officers again were locked up singly, in rooms 12 by 18 feet, according to Lieutenant Harris, who recalls pacing it off night after night. The enlisted men were placed in 18-by-24-foot rooms, with eight men to a cell. Each man had a bed, a chair, and a nightstand, and the enlisted men’s cells had large tables in the center. Each wood-floored, plaster-walled room was lighted by a bulb in a glass globe in theceiling. Because they were locked up at night in groups, the enlisted men could join in informal prayer services, something that was denied the officers. But the Americans had to exercise great care not to be caught praying by their guards. Rather than kneel together, they prayed lying in. their bunks. The men called it, “talking with ComWorldFleet”—Navy jargon for the Commander of the World’s Fleets. Every night, from their bunks in the prison camp, the Pueblo’s crew re- ported to “ComWorldFleet.” Blowsandridicule failed to shake the crew’s faith. Storekeeper Ramon Rosales, 20, was severely beaten by his guards, who thought he was a South Korean. By speaking only Spanish, he finally convinced them he was a Mexican-American. A North Korean officer, whom the mencalled “Colonel Specs” because of his glasses, laughed at Rosales for believing in God. |