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Perry, 68, was 14 when he enlisted in the Army in August 1949, after having a notary public sign his age as 17 on the U.S. government paperwork. He turned 15 during boot camp at Fort Knox, Ky., then shipped out for Korea, arriving there about the same time North Korean troops pushed U.N. forces south and the war heated up.
"I was a kid . . . and I really looked like a kid, but nobody seemed to notice. And that was OK with me, because I enlisted to see what war was all about and I knew I was going to get my chance," Perry recalled.
One of his first jobs in Korea was driving a Jeep. "Up until then I'd never driven anything," he said.
Perry, an artillery gunner, got his first trials by fire when the fighting around Pusan lasted 27 days. Then, on April 22, 1951, in a battle zone north of the 38th parallel, Perry and seven other Americans found themselves cut off from their outfit 15 miles behind enemy lines and were captured.
According to the Department of Defense, 7,245 U.S. troops were taken prisoner in the Korean War. More than 4,000 were repatriated; 2,806 died while captured. Others remain unaccounted for.
Five months after Perry was captured, he and 750 other American POWs began a forced 22-day march across North Korea. The march started on Sept. 16. Eleven days later, Perry turned 17.
"You had to carry a 50-pound bag of rice, and you were responsible for the man in front of you," Perry said. "If he went down, you had to pick up his bag of rice and go on. I kept poking holes in my bags so they would be empty if I had to carry another one."
Perry quenched his thirst during the march by tearing the bark off wild rose bushes.
"We lost 535 prisoners on that march," he said. "Quite a few died, but I'm not really sure what happened to the others."
"Escaped from the camp twice," he said. "Once for four days, the other time for three days - but both times they caught me. After my second escape, I spent something like 63 days in solitary confinement. My 'cell' was a 55-gallon drum turned upside down. And for two weeks as I was hunkered down inside the drum, guards beat on it with sticks from morning until night, with the only breaks coming when they changed guards."
During his time in solitary, Perry received one meal a day. It consisted of a half-cup of soupy rice, a handful of boiled peanuts and a glass of hot water.
The punishment didn't faze Perry. When he returned to the general prison camp population, he continued to be a thorn in the side of his captors.
"The Chinese had gardens, where they grew lettuce and cucumbers," he said. "Our camp didn't have barbed wire, just little guard shacks, so I'd slip out at night and steal their vegetables so we could have salads. I also took advantage of the fact that GI clothing was highly prized by the Koreans. I'd leave camp and go to a nearby village, where a pair of trousers was worth 18 eggs, and I'd make trades. We ate pretty well."
When Perry was freed as part of a prisoner exchange in 1953, his total time in Korea was four years and two months.
"I matured real fast," he said. "I was fortunate, because I never got wounded in nine months of combat. It was a tough time, but I made it through, and I think I did my part of boost the spirits of others, too."
He isn't bothered that that some people argue the fact that he was the nation's youngest Korean War POW. "Oh, sure, they've tried to disprove it," he said of the occasional challenge to his claim. "But, hey, nobody's done it yet," he said with a smile.
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