The U.S. Fighting Man's Code; DOD Pam 8-1, DA PAM 21-71, AFP 34-10-1

vii, [1], 94, [2] pages. Wraps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Covers has some, erasures, wear and soiling. This publication includes the report of the Secretary of Defense's Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War. The Code of the U.S. Fighting Force is a code of conduct that is an ethics guide and a United States Department of Defense directive consisting of six articles to members of the United States Armed Forces, addressing how they should act in combat when they must evade capture, resist while a prisoner or escape from the enemy. It is considered an important part of U.S. military doctrine and tradition, but is not formal military law in the manner of the Uniform Code of Military Justice or public international law, such as the Geneva Conventions. The contents include a Letter of Transmittal, Background, A Brief Look at History, The American Fighting Man and Korea, A Code of Conduct for the Future, Korean Summary, The Road Ahead for America and the Armed Forces and an Addenda. During the Korean War in the early 1950s, Chinese and North Korean forces captured American military personnel as prisoners of war. Unlike America's previous wars, these American prisoners then faced a deadly new enemy, the Eastern World's POW environment. It was the first American war that U.S. prisoners of war were viewed by an enemy as more than soldiers from the other side temporarily restrained from conducting war and whose desire to control the minds of U.S. prisoners extended the war into the POW camps. North Korean and Chinese communists were not hesitant to use brutal and bloody torture as gruesome tools in their efforts to exploit U.S. prisoners of war into making public statements that appeared favorable to the communist war effort. For the American prisoners brutal torture, lack of food, absence of medical aid, and subhuman treatment became a daily way of life and many of them found that their training had not prepared them for this new battlefield. …