"After the initial shock, I found out that these Chinese soldiers were just like me." One soldier in particular, a young guard at the camp, could scarcely speak a word of English, but the two young men found a common language in humanity — and cigarettes.

"We came to the conclusion that old politicians made wars and young men died in them."

But the horrors of war had a way of resurfacing. During the spring thaw, the bodies of former prisoners began turning up throughout the camp. They had been hastily buried beneath rocks during the icy winter, but mild weather and rain had exposed their shallow graves. Badowich was among the prisoners assigned to put them into the ground.

On another occasion, Badowich and another prisoner were dispatched to a village high in the mountains to bring back several bags of rice.

"When we got to the village, all of a sudden two American jets came over — they started bombing and strafing." Taking shelter in a cave, the prisoners lost the Chinese guard assigned to watch over them. They found trouble. The cave was full of villagers, many maimed and dying from the unyielding firestorm.

"We sort of kept to ourselves," Badowich says. "But the men started looking at us. They started picking up rocks and encircling us." The prisoners ran outside with the angry villagers in pursuit. Their missing guard lay in a dust-covered heap outside — a victim of the barrage. His rifle was broken in two and he wept uncontrollably. The terrified prisoners prodded the guard, who collected himself just in time to talk the angry mob out of murder.

On July 27, 1953, the killing sky fell silent.

Badowich recalls turning to a friend in camp, a notorious pessimist, and telling him the war must be over.

Another five years, his friend replied. The Korean War did end on that fateful day in July of 1953, but the betrayal that awaited Badowich would feel like an eternity.

Len Badowich has been to hell.

While a prisoner during the Korean War, Chinese Communists force-fed Badowich a steady diet of propaganda for four months. Body and soul were beaten and bent toward renouncing his country, the Red Cross and the United Nations. He had built a fortress of his mind; it proved ironclad and unassailable. That very bastion of belief turned to pained disbelief when peace finally came to Korea on July 27, 1953. A month later, a Red Cross truck bore him from deep inside North Korea to Panmunjom- a city in the demilitarized zone where former prisoners were repatriated.

And where the theatre of war took a turn for the absurd.

"It was the height of McCarthyism," the 69-year-old Canadian veteran recalls. "They were looking for Communists under every bed." After watching interminable films of Chinese propaganda as a prisoner of war, Badowich became a reluctant theatre-goer once again- this time forced to watch hours of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

"We were being interrogated by our own intelligence. These guys came right from Canada. They wanted to know who didn't try to escape." But as one of only a handful of non-Asians deep behind enemy lines, escape was the stuff of suicide, not Hollywood movies.

"In Germany, you could mix in with the population. There were no escapes in Korea," Badowich says. "Those kinds of questions left the worst taste in my mouth." Former POWs, he adds, were treated "like we had committed a crime."

After a week of interrogation, Badowich was allowed to lay aside the arms of war and fall into the jubilant arms of family and friends. If Canadian security agents in Panmunjom didn't afford him a hero's welcome, his hometown of Brandon, Man., strove to make up for it when he arrived in September, 1953.

"My mama kissed me all over. All my relatives were there and had a big party." And at 21, the war hero was finally legally entitled to a beer at the local pub. But it would take much more to wash away the bitter taste in Badowich's mouth.

"I learned a lot about human nature," he says. "I learned how cruel man can be to man. I learned about fear and I learned about bravery. I also learned how yesterday's friends could be tomorrow's enemies."

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