Code of Conduct

The Code of Conduct, now formally known as the Code of the U.S. Fighting Force, provides American military personnel with guidelines for dealing with the threat of capture, interrogation, and coercion by enemy forces. The code was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on August 17, 1955, with the expressed purpose of better preparing each service member “to counter and withstand all enemy efforts against him,” and to help instruct him on “the behavior and obligations expected of him during combat and captivity.” Today, every member of the U.S. Armed Forces receives annual training on the code. High-risk personnel, such as pilots and commandos, receive additional training in survival, evasion, resistance, and escape techniques, known as SERE. This entry highlights the content of the code and its history from the Korean War to the present.

Prior to the Korean War, American military leaders paid little attention to the conduct of captured Americans. The United States did participate in a series of international agreements, most notably the Geneva Conventions of 1949, that defined the responsibilities of captors toward enemy prisoners of war, but these agreements ignored the responsibilities of the prisoners themselves.

Korea, however, marked the first conflict in which enemy captors waged a comprehensive campaign to exploit American prisoners for political gain. During the war, North Korean and Chinese jailers employed torture, starvation, and intense political indoctrination to coerce various acts of collaboration from their American prisoners, including radio broadcasts, peace appeals, and germ warfare confessions. In addition, 21 Americans (and one British marine) refused repatriation at war’s end, leading many to suspect that the communists had somehow “brainwashed” their captives. These suspicions gained publicity at the height of the McCarthy era, when many Americans feared a secret communist plot to overthrow the government.

Under intense pressure to address reports of widespread misconduct and brainwashing, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson appointed a Pentagon committee to study these allegations and propose solutions. The committee heard expert testimony from scholars, physicians, and former prisoners and recommended a series of policy changes, including establishment of a code to guide the conduct of captured American servicemen. The code’s six articles emphasized the prisoner’s obligation to resist capture, keep faith with fellow prisoners, obey lawful orders, and “make every effort to escape.”

In addition, prisoners were to provide interrogators with only their name, rank, service number, and date of birth, later dubbed “the Big Four.” According to an internal Pentagon summary of the committee’s deliberations, U.S. Air Force representatives initially opposed this restriction as unrealistic, archaic, and inherently passive. They advocated that prisoners be allowed to discuss routine matters that provide no aid to the enemy while making every effort to evade and resist interrogation by adopting various stratagems designed to mislead the interrogator. U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps representatives, however, insisted on the more restrictive language, and the air force complied. Although the code was not incorporated into the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it repeatedly emphasized the accountability of prisoners for their actions.

Following Eisenhower’s approval, the Pentagon distributed several thousand copies of the Code of Conduct to schools and civic organizations while implementing a broad, well-publicized program of training within each branch of the armed forces. In response to the brutal interrogation of its pilots during the Korean War, the air force established a school for SERE, and attendees endured imprisonment, interrogation, and mistreatment within a mock prison camp. During the Vietnam War, the other services established their own schools, each designed to provide intensive training for those personnel considered most vulnerable to capture and exploitation.

...