For almost three years, Cpl. Robert L. Rudisill awoke on a mud floor.
"There were no beds," he said, as he sat at his kitchen table. "We slept in the dirt."

Rudisill's walk in 1950 to a dirt bed in a hut in North Korea began in Chattanooga, Tennessee, May 27, 1927.

In time, his family moved to North Carolina; his father worked as a sharecropper.

In high school, Rudisill ran track and played basketball, football, baseball and horseshoes. He also recited poetry and sang.

On Nov. 5, 1945, he was drafted into the Army. After stops at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort McCullough, Alabama, Rudisill departed for a defeated Germany as part of the occupation Army.

"One of the most prestigious jobs I had was as a court room guard during the Nuremberg Trials," Rudisill said.

By the end of 1949, he was stationed at Fort Benning.

His stay was short.

In the closing days of World War II, the Soviet Union and United States occupied Korea, with the boundary between their zones of control along the 38th parallel.

As relations between the two countries cooled, attempts to create an independent, unified Korea failed.  

In 1948, elections were held in the U.S.-occupied south, which led to the establishment of the Republic of Korea.  To the north, the Russians sponsored elections, which created the People's Republic of Korea.

On Sunday, June 25, 1950, 75,000 North Korean tank-supported troops surprised and overwhelmed the South Korean and American armies.

American leaders decided to liberate South Korea and push back the communist Chinese and North Korean forces.   

Sgt. Rudisill was headed into the Korean War. He was assigned to the 503rd Field Artillery, Battery C, 2nd Infantry Division.

"I had been trained as an infantryman," Rudisill said, "but I found myself as a cannoneer on the 155mm howitzer."

During an encounter Dec. 1, 1950, with North Korean and Chinese forces, he and 16 other Americans were surrounded by an overwhelming number of Chinese soldiers.

"We were cut off," Rudisill said.

The Chinese forces set fire to the American vehicles.

"They didn't realize there were high explosive and white phosphorus shells in the carriers," he explained. "When the explosions happened, everyone ran for cover."

A Chinese soldier shot a running Rudisill in the left leg.

"I had to heal myself; there was no first aid," he continued.

Rudisill and his fellow POWs began a month-long march north toward China.

"It was a death march," Rudisill said quietly. "The cold and disease took a toll."

The POWs received little food.

"They gave us a sock full of frozen cracked corn. That was it; we ate that."

Rudisill was imprisoned in Camp 5 at Pyotong, near the Yalu River. He would be there for three years.

"To stay warm, we had to hunt wood and start fires under our huts," he said. "We slept on the floor; we breathed in the dirt and dust."

Dysentery was a constant threat; hundreds of POWs were weakened and died from the disease.

"We called the place Death Valley," Rudisill continued.

His days in the camp were filled with classes on communist ideology with an emphasis on Lenin and Marx, digging foxholes and finding wood. Punishment was severe for those who did not agree with what they heard.

"The last I saw of one guy was he was tied to a tree," Rudisill said.

The worst task in the camp was burial detail.

"I wondered if I was strong enough to bury the dead."

But he survived.  

"I kept my faith in the Lord; I recited poetry; I sang with my fellow soldiers," Rudisill recalled.

He was released Aug. 8, 1953, as the war wound down.

Sgt. First Class Rudisill remained in the Army until his retirement in 1968 from Fort Lewis.

From there he went to school and earned a BA in Business Administration from Pacific Lutheran University.  He soon found work with Pierce County, retiring in 1987.

"'Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country' President Kennedy said," concluded Rudisill. "I think that is a good message for all."