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The crew came through their ordeal with surprisingly few psychic bruises. "They were trying to create doubts in our minds about our country and about our religion," says Hayes. Law was assured that the American people had forgotten Pueblo. When the freed crewmen were granted a brief New Year liberty from questioning by intelligence officers, only Bucher was restricted to a San Diego Naval hospital room, recuperating from nervous and physical exhaustion.
Happier Than Hell. Law was beaten on Dec. 12, only eleven days before the crew's release, when the Communists discovered they had been outwitted by their prisoners. When a North Korean photographer snapped eight grinning sailors last October, nobody noticed that three of the captives were wigwagging an internationally recognized signal of obscenity with their middle fingers.
Unknowing Communist functionaries used the picture to advertise the home comforts of their jail. When a horse laugh heard around the world apprised them of their gaffe, the jailers turned on their hapless prisoners. Although all the men in the picture were tortured, they were elated by their feat. "About everybody in the crew was happier than hell," Law recounted, "because everybody could see what we were trying to do." Making fools of their captors and signaling their view of North Korea's crude propaganda had made the exercise worthwhile.