NPR 11-12:Remembering the Tiger Death March 令我终生难忘的“死亡行军”

Korean War POW Wayman Simpson remembers the Korean officer who led the Tiger Death March, a brutal¹ trek² that claimed nearly 100 lives.
This is Dave Isay, creator of StoryCorps, the project that records the stories of everyday Americans. StoryCorps airs each Friday on NPR's morning edition. Support for StoryCorps comes from AT&T, proudly bringing StoryCorps listeners America's past, present and future. The new AT&T, your world delivered.

Welcome to the StoryCorps podcast, I'm Katie Simon, filling in for Dave Isay this week. In this episode a story from a POW--Wayman Simpson Sgt. in the Korean War. He was captured in 1950 soon after fighting began. As a POW Simpson came under the command of a Korean officer nicknamed The Tiger, who led the prisoners on the brutal 9-day trek that claimed nearly 100 lives. The ordeal³ came to be known as the Tiger Death March.

On Halloween night in 1950, the Tiger took over. We nicknamed him The Tiger because he was so mean. The first thing he did was, we had 16 men, they were wounded in their legs and couldn't walk, and him and his buddies⁴ machine-gunned every one of them. We knew then we were in trouble. He shot a man a mile on the march.On (the) second day we asked him to slow the pace down. And you know what he said to us? Let them march till they die. He wasn't gonna give us any water that's the way he was going to kill all of us. But it started snowing the second day out, we ate the snow off again next to us. That's the way we got our water. We got up to a prisoner war camp 12 miles near the Siberian border. I had been in there a little over 38 months. We hadn't shaved, cut our hair, brushed our teeth, taken a bath or nothing. Now I had 2 holes in my left leg they weren't healed enough, no medical care. They stayed open wounds for 26 months. I finally poured boiling water in them and they healed up after that.

I weighed 77 pounds when I came home. That's pretty thin on a 6-foot-3 frame, you know? That's about the only way we can get by unless to joke about it. A lot of youngsters died since we come home because they couldn't turn it loose, they wouldn't, they just dwelled on it all the time, you know? I even make a joke about it, it don't worry me none. I just let it go.

Wayman Simpson at StoryCorps in Lawton, Oklahoma. Read more stories from the project in the first ever StoryCorps book, “Listening Is an Act of Love”, available now in bookstores.

Major support for StoryCorps is provided by AT&T, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The StoryCorps archive is housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Tune⁵ in the StoryCorps broadcasts Tuesdays on NPR's news and notes and Fridays on NPR's morning edition. I'm Katie Simon, thanks for listening.

1 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

2 trek   

vi.作长途艰辛的旅行；n.长途艰苦的旅行

参考例句：

• We often go pony-trek in the summer.夏季我们经常骑马旅行。
• It took us the whole day to trek across the rocky terrain.我们花了一整天的时间艰难地穿过那片遍布岩石的地带。

3 ordeal   

n.苦难经历，（尤指对品格、耐力的）严峻考验

参考例句：

• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。
• Being lost in the wilderness for a week was an ordeal for me.在荒野里迷路一星期对我来说真是一场磨难。

4 buddies   

n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人

参考例句：

• We became great buddies. 我们成了非常好的朋友。 来自辞典例句
• The two of them have become great buddies. 他们俩成了要好的朋友。 来自辞典例句

5 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。