CARIBOU, Maine — From tales of the cultural differences witnessed in foreign lands to the bonds formed in the name of camaraderie to the horror of witnessing death and destruction taking place around them, any member of the U.S. military, especially those who have seen combat, has a story to tell. And those who were held prisoners of war have memories of a different sort, most of them never spoken aloud.
George E. Berube, originally from Fort Kent and a resident of Caribou for over 50 years, was one such veteran. Berube, 87 when he passed away in December of 2012, was a Navy soldier during World War II from 1943 to ’47. When he returned to U.S. soil after the war, he worked as a cab driver in Connecticut. Finding the taxi business not very lucrative, George decided he might as well join the service again, this time enlisting in the Army.
In 1951 George was sent to Korea to take part in the Korean Conflict. On Sept. 6, 1951, ironically on the same day that he was due to be rotated, George’s company was attacked. According to his account of the attack in a 1953 Bangor Daily News article, his company was outnumbered by 20 to one and the majority of the 200 soldiers in his company were killed. Only 11 made it out alive, taken prisoner of war by the North Koreans.
Having been shot twice in the foot, George was forced to march 120 miles in seven days with no medical treatment except for a bandana wrapped around his wounds. George was subsequently held in the camp for almost two full years with nothing provided to the prisoners to eat but a ration of a cup of rice per day and frozen turnips.
“The food tasted like chicken feed and was called bug dust feed,” George commented in the BDN article.
According to George’s widow, Flo, the former POW did not speak much about his time at the prison camp during the majority of their 57-year marriage. After Vietnam Era veterans began to publicly open up about their tragic experiences, Flo found that George also was willing to share more, finding it cathartic.
Flo recounted George’s tale of the servicemen trapped in the camp drawing straws to see who would sneak away at night to steal chickens from a nearby farm. The men would wring the chickens’ necks with their bare hands, pluck them and cook them on rocks that were hot from resting on the ground over an underground heating system pipe.
George was caught once while on a chicken-nabbing mission and was banished to a tiny wooden cell for 30 days, shackled the majority of the time with his feet not touching the floor and his hands bound behind his back.
According to Flo, George was full of other disturbing stories of his life at the camp, such as having to share a blanket at night with three men, and being awoken in the morning by guards calling out, “Is anyone dead?” If someone had passed away in the night, the desperate, starving survivors would hide the fact that the soldier had died so that they could split the half-cup ration of rice that would be left for him.
The captives were forced to haul wood on their backs, shovel massive amounts of snow and kill flies, just to name a few of the numerous unspoken horrors they were subjected to, in order to earn their measly rations of food.
George and his fellow POWs were released from the camp on August 21, 1953 following the signing of the Korean armistice. George returned home to Fort Kent where the town greeted him with a much-deserved hero’s welcome.
The veteran lived with his parents and on one fateful day, met his future wife, Flo, after she introduced herself to him, mistakenly thinking she was talking to George’s brother, Fred.
“I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t remember working on our potato farm,” Flo recalled. “Then I realized it wasn’t Fred. George and I just hit it off.”
The two were married about a year and a half later and went on to have three sons. George worked as a mechanic for several years and at Potato Service in Presque Isle. The couple attended several POW reunions held at various locations around the country over the years and George, who had lovingly been christened “Frenchie” by his fellow POWs, was reunited with a few of the men who were at the North Korean camp with him.
George received the first of the two Purple Hearts he earned in the mail 30 years after his capture. He was also awarded the Bronze Star, among many other medals.
Two years prior to his death, George was diagnosed with an untreatable form of cancer, but according to Flo, the contrary man would never give in to the disease, or even admit that he had it.
“Sometimes I could see that he was in pain,” Flo said, “and I would ask him if I could give him a pill for the pain. He would just wave me off and ask me, ‘What for?’”
George remained at his home through his illness, and passed away on Dec. 6, 2012, at the Maine Veterans’ Home in Caribou after having only been a patient there for two days.
Harry Hafford, chairman of the Northern Maine Veterans’ Cemetery Association, commented that the absence of George’s presence has cast a shadow over the cemetery’s functions.
“He was a regular at the cemetery,” Hafford said. “We miss him. He was a definite unsung hero. He came home, handled himself very well and was dedicated to his fellow veterans.”
George’s extraordinary life is chronicled in several memory books filled with photographs, newspaper articles, commendations and other memorabilia. And his memory lives on in the hearts of his family, friends and fellow veterans.
