On December 10, 1968, Glorious General (G.G.) called an all-hands meeting. His fury was unmistakable. The Americans, he declared, would now pay for their insincerity. Each man must confess not only his own crimes but those of his shipmates as well. This, G.G. warned, was their final chance to tell the truth. Tables were set up, and the men were ordered to begin writing a new round of “confessions.” From his cell, Ensign Tim Harris could see Commander Bucher sitting across the corridor, staring blankly at the wall, shoulders slumped in defeat.

The next morning came the unmistakable sounds of furniture being dragged and rearranged. Guards were clearing rooms to make space for interrogations. Sailors not writing were forced to sit motionless in chairs, heads bowed, hands gripping their thighs. Talking, sleeping, and even fidgeting were forbidden. The heat was shut off, and the lights blazed day and night. Guards stood in every cell, ensuring that no man dared move without permission. If anyone wanted water or needed to relieve himself, he had to ask.

The ordeal the men would forever remember as “Hell Week” had begun.

From his cell, Ensign Harris looked up when he heard a scuffle in the hall. Odd Job and Silver Lips burst into Bucher’s room. The captain, seated at his desk writing, started to rise in surprise. Odd Job slammed his fist into Bucher’s mouth. The captain stayed on his feet only for Silver Lips to smash him across the face, knocking him onto his desk. The translator hauled him upright and struck him again. “You CIA man!” Silver Lips screamed as Odd Job kept hitting him. Finally, battered and bleeding, Bucher confessed to instigating the so-called Hawaiian good-luck sign. Silver Lips shoved him back into his chair, and the two guards stalked out, leaving the captain half-conscious on the floor.

The same brutality swept through the prison. Quartermaster First Class Charlie Law was dragged into a cleared interrogation room where Odd Job and a translator waited behind a desk. Though pegged as a ringleader, Law had managed to avoid the worst of past beatings. He hoped to bluff through this one as well—perhaps endure a few blows and be sent back to his cell.

Odd Job (guard) immediately began questioning him, demanding to know which crew member was the CIA agent. Law decided to take the blame himself. “There’s no point in going through this,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I am.”

Odd Job ignored the confession. “Bucher was the agent, wasn’t he?” he pressed.

Law again refused.

“Why you afraid of Bucher?” Odd Job snapped.

“I’m afraid of him because he can make it real rough for me,” Law replied.

“Why you afraid of Schumacher?”

“He went to college and uses big words.”

The colonel’s face twisted with rage. After more than an hour of fruitless questioning, Odd Job exploded, pounding the floor with his fist. “You son of a bitch!” he screamed before storming out. Moments later, he returned with the Bear and another guard.

Law was ordered to his knees. The Bear punched him hard below the ear. When the sailor merely swayed, the guard grabbed his hair and struck him again and again before driving a kick into his stomach. The Bear then seized a five-foot wooden rod and began thrashing Law’s back and shoulders. The pain was searing—like being lashed with a whip. When the stick finally splintered, the Bear used the jagged half to stab Law in the ear. For the first time in captivity, Law feared he might be beaten to death. His body was numb with pain as the Bear resumed the assault, breaking the stick twice more before collapsing in exhaustion and kicking Law one last time in the belly.

Law lay gasping on the floor, sobbing.

“Ready to be sincere now?” Odd Job sneered.

“Every goddamned thing I told you was a lie, you bastard!” Law shouted back.

The Bear smashed him in the head, knocking him to the floor again. Another guard entered carrying a thick wooden board. “God, you can’t hit me with that!” Law cried. The guard brought it down across his back, sending him sprawling. Barely conscious, Law was dragged upright and hauled into Bucher’s room.

The skipper knelt in the center, trembling, while Silver Lips loomed over him like a madman.

“Aren’t you a paid spy?” Silver Lips screamed.

“Yes, yes!” Bucher gasped.

“Aren’t you going to tell us the instruction you passed to Law?”

“Yes, yes!”

Turning to Law, Silver Lips demanded, “What instruction he give you?”

“Pardon me?” Law muttered.

Silver Lips struck him hard in the jaw. “Pardon me!” he mocked, shouting the words again and again. Two guards joined in, hammering Law with fists and knees until one drove a blow into his groin that made him retch.

Dragged back to his interrogation room, Law was ordered to confess escape plans. When he said he had none, the guards beat him to his knees and kicked him repeatedly until he collapsed. “Escape plans!” Silver Lips shouted again.

Dizzy with pain, Law invented a story—that he, Bucher, and a few others planned to steal a truck and drive to Panmunjom. The idea was absurd, but Silver Lips listened as if it were gospel.

“You using crossword puzzles to pass messages?” he demanded.

“I don’t know about that,” Law mumbled.

A guard struck him on the head.

“Yes!” Law cried out. “We were passing the puzzles back and forth. They were messages on the plan.”

By then, Law had been beaten and questioned for five straight hours. His thoughts blurred. Ordered to write a confession, he scribbled nonsense—petty infractions, anything to fill the page. When Odd Job returned, he flipped through it impatiently. “I already know this,” he said coldly. “I want the serious stuff.”

Law wrote through the night. Each time he paused, a guard struck him. At six in the morning on December 13, after nearly twenty hours without food, he was given a bowl of soup and a slice of bread. He devoured them both. When Odd Job returned four hours later, he read the latest pages and nodded.

“You are starting,” he said approvingly, “to become sincere.”

The beatings continued for days. Bucher was assaulted twice daily and at least once each night. Later he would write, “My ribs felt cracked, my gut ruptured, my testicles ready to burst, and my face a pulp with all my front teeth loosened and almost falling out.” Between thrashings, he lay weakly on his bunk, listening to the screams of his men. The sounds carried him back to the horror of January—the blood, the vomit, the helplessness. Yet even through the agony, Bucher tried to keep his men’s spirits alive.

“At least we’ve rattled these bastards by making them look stupid to the outside world. That’s something we can all be proud of!”

The pain was unbearable. Bucher again contemplated suicide. He wasn’t alone. After a savage beating by the Bear, young fireman Howard Bland tried to hurl himself from a second-story window before guards caught him. Law reached his own breaking point when he was forced to scoop human waste out of a clogged toilet with his bare hands.

Hell Week had reached its depths—and the men of the Pueblo were barely clinging to life.

Featured image:
QM1 Charlie Law

Source “Act of War”, by Jack Cheevers