The debate goes on over how far we can go in persuading prisoners of war to talk, despite President Bush’s acceptance of Sen. John McCain’s amendment to the $445 billion defense appropriations bill banning “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Bush said such a ban would tie the hands of our secret agents to get information to prevent another 9/11 and threatened to veto the whole thing unless they were left out of it. McCain said that would allow them to torture but offered a counterproposal protecting the agents from being accused of violating the standards. Bush said OK.

I came across a passage in one of the Patton books I was rereading that shed some light on prisoner interrogation in World War II. “Before the Colors Fade” is a 1964 book by Fred Ayer Jr., Patton’s nephew. His father was Mrs. Patton’s brother. It’s a portrait of Patton as seen by Ayer during the latter’s boyhood and service overseas in World War II where he was an intelligence officer.

Ayer writes at one point of when the Germans launched a massive Panzer attack westward by Bastogne that shouldn’t have been a surprise because at least four high ranking intelligence officers had picked up enough information to predict it. Higher-ups just didn’t believe them.

“Allied counterintelligence personnel had been capturing enemy parachute and line-crossing agents of various nationalities — many in U.S. and British uniforms, in locations back of Bastogne. Some of these men had admitted, under what can politely be described as intensive interrogation, that their assigned tasks were to cut the gasoline pipeline and land phone lines, also to commit high level military and political assassinations. Others were equipped with a shortwave radio transmitter to report disposition and movement of Allied troops and supplies into and within the areas.”

Ayer was invited by a French Special Intelligence officer in the resistance named Colonel Dubos to be present at one of the interrogations of the prisoners and declined. “I did not feel my digestion would stand witnessing the questioning and told him so, which seemed to offend him.”

“’But my dear Ayer,’ said the Colonel, ‘we are not such barbarians as you imagine. I give you my word that we shall not lay a single finger, not even the little one on this filthy pig of an Alsatian.’

“He was literally true to his word. The door of the Colonel’s office swung open and the prisoner walked rather arrogantly in, and behind him a guard. The Alsatian was tall, blond and muscular, dressed in the clothes of a farmer. Dubos at once ordered him to kneel on the thin brass edge of the fender before the fireplace, and to extend his arms rigidly to the side. ‘And do not let them sag, I warn you,’ said the Colonel. ‘We shall see how long this arrogance will last.’

“The prisoner was tough. The pain of the sharp metal biting into the tendons at his knees must have been excruciating, the ache of shoulder muscles nearly unbearable, still he held out for a remarkable length of time. Finally, one arm began to sag. Dubos quietly picked up his gun and sent a bullet crashing under the man’s armpit. ‘Up, I said. Keep them up.’

“A little later, he repeated the performance. The Alsatian’s thigh muscles were by now visibly trembling and he was twisting slowly in agony. His face was drained of color and covered with sweat drops. Dubos was on his fourth cigarette and second coffee when the man at last grunted, ‘I will talk. I will tell you who and where the others are.’

“Afterwards, the Colonel explained to me, ‘You see, my dear Ayer, you Americans are not realistic. You would have been polite. You might have taken days and this one pig might have cost the loss of thousands of your own men.’”

Was the French treatment of the spy cruel? Inhuman? Degrading? Well, cruel anyway. But appropriate to gain information to save lives for our side? I’d say so. We were and are at war.

Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.