During one interrogation, after Petty Officer Donald McClarren refused to sign a confession, his guard pulled out a gun, put it to McClarren’s head and pulled the trigger. The crew were terrified of the North Koreans. The war that led to the division of the country had only stopped 15 years earlier and bloody skirmishes were still common. ![]() Like today, 1968 was a period of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Their officers, particularly Lloyd Bucher, the ship’s commander, came in for vicious punishments, as their interrogators demanded they sign “confessions” stating they were illegally spying in North Korean territorial waters when they were captured. Inside, the men were denied sleep, forced into stress positions, whipped and beaten. Russell was one of 83 Americans held captive inside North Korea, following the seizure of the USS Pueblo spy ship in international waters, on January 23, 1968.įor weeks they were kept in a sparse, freezing-cold building they nicknamed “the Barn.” It had no running water and was infested with rats and bed bugs. ![]() “This is it, they’re taking us out here to kill us,” Stu Russell thought as he trudged through the snow in the middle of the night into a dark forest.
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