James Carne - Prisoner of War

Prisoner of War

Carne fell into Chinese captivity after his 700-man battalion's astonishing resistance against an estimated 11,000 attackers was finally overcome. As the senior British officer among hundreds of prisoners kept in appalling conditions in camps in communist-held Korea, he was singled out for special treatment. While the other ranks were "re-educated" by the communist commissars at their camps, Carne was kept in solitary confinement.

According to documents held at the National Archives in Kew and not made public until 2006, when Carne was released in September 1953 he told Sir Esler Dening, the British ambassador in Tokyo, "an extraordinary story". "He says that between January 1952 and August this year he was kept in solitary confinement by Chinese communists and subjected to a softening-up process including the use of drugs, result of which was, as he put it, to make his brain like a sponge, capable of receiving any kind of information put into it," Sir Esler told the Foreign Office in a "top secret" category telegram.

The note, which was sent straight to Sir Winston Churchill, in his second term as Prime Minister, went on: "In March of this year, (i.e. about the time when the communists displayed a new interest in concluding an armistice) various thoughts were put in to his mind, and he remains convinced that he was meant to retain these and pass them on to Her Majesty's Government." The thoughts comprised a peace deal not just to end the war in Korea, but to reach a settlement covering the whole Pacific region. Sir Esler opined: "The whole thing might be pure fantasy except for the fact that Colonel Carne could hardly have invented it and does not strike one as that sort of person." The Foreign Office was skeptical about the plot, but suggested that perhaps its aim was to split Britain from its American ally.