We got down. I had a concussion and shrapnel in the wrist and in the arm. They had got us with a radar-controlled antiaircraft 37-millimeter.
The second time, something went wrong. Two companies were supposed to have taken a position, and this second lieutenant popped his smoke and called in air support. The Cobras went in. And then the gunships. But once we got in there, he didn’t tell us there was any antiaircraft gun. We got hit by a 37 again, and went down in the river. I got a severe concussion and a lot of water in my lungs. And then I contracted some kind of tropical disease from consumption of the water.
In the spring of 1969 we started to lose a lot of ships, based on the fact that we were getting hit by heat-seeking missiles. This guy in intelligence kept saying he saw elephants around Dong Tam. The elephants were their transport systems being that they ain’t have any APCs, no motorized vehicles. So he wanted us to go investigate. At ten o’clock. In the Cobra. Now you never send your daughter out to the store at ten o’clock at night in the ghetto. That’s what they did. They sent a daughter out, unescorted, unprotected.
And we got hit. And it was like here we go trees. The blade went. You know, the main rotary. But the pilot knew what to do, and we broke through the trees constantly, constantly. I was in the front seat, and you constantly had trees coming. You sitting there in that little plastic bubble. Something that’s 37 inches wide. You sitting in the nose. It’s like I wonder if Hughes did this right. If this s’posed to be a single piece. Is there a seam in the middle? Am I going to be going off one way or the other? And the tail hit, and we slid down the side of the tree.
I asked the pilot, “Can you move?”
“No.”
I can’t get out, so I had to break the canopy because the lock doesn’t work. I got out the side, and laid down. And I thought, Well, goddamn. Let me regroup.
I’m bleeding. Not only am I bleedin’, excrement is coming out of the wound, which means that my lower intestines are damaged. It’s oozing out. It don’t run out. All these little enzymes are just rolling down over your clothes.
I was first concerned that I was gon’ bleed to death. My pulse was up, and my body hadn’t responded to shock yet. But the main artery wasn’t severed. A round took out the left side of my prostate gland, came through my lower intestines, and came out the left hip.
The pilot was bleedin’ from the mouth. That meant blood had gotten into his stomach. I thought his ribs had punctured somethin’, but he was still breathin’.
I cut him out, got him out the back seat. And dragged him away, ’cause, you know, the fuel can blow anytime.
He can’t move his arms. When the turbine had exploded, his seat—the back seat—jerked and his back was gone.
I covered him up to stop the shock and gave him some morphine. I jacked him right up to the ceiling. We ain’t had no water.
Then I dropped a grenade in the cockpit to destroy the maps. The fuel blew, and that will take care of the mini-guns and the rest of it.
The first thing you do on your way down is turn a little device on that’s like a homing device. So somebody knew we were down, but nobody knew where. Of course, the hostile force knew, and you could sense they were out there.
We talked and talked. I had to keep him awake, because he was keeping me awake. And amazingly enough, we talked about screwing. ’Bout all the fine dames we ever knew. We lied about everybody we wished we could have had. We weren’t bragging, we were lying. And he talked about what life was like when he was a kid. What it was like for me. And what we doin’ out here.
It was 13 hours when they spotted us. They spotted us through an opening in the trees that we made when we fell. A couple of Phantoms came and laid down the firepower to get rid of everybody that was within distance of bein’ able to pluck you off. And then the Cobras did their thing. Then they brought in that Chinook, and dropped the basket. And there come Rosey down the ropes. “Goddamn, boy,” he says. “Good to see your ass.”
The medic came down and said, “I think the war’s over for you.”
When they operated on me in Japan, I had to be detoxified. I had took so much morphine since the first time I got hit I had a morphine habit.
When I got out, I applied for disability. But they didn’t give me 10, 20, 30, 90 percent. Nothin’. They said I was physically fit for service. But for years I had to exercise, exercise to tone back the stomach and pelvic muscles. And even today, if I don’t follow a perfect game plan eating proper foods, I get congestion in my intestines. And, at first, sex was a problem, but then it became a mental thing. At least there is no more of that to worry about.
I started to free-lance. And I was rolling in this industrial photography, doing the whole deal when they were building the Washington subway. But the contracts dried up. I am a highly skilled photographer, but I can’t get a job. And my art is becoming more and more sophisticated, becomin’ computerized. And I’m still on the outside looking in. I know that if I go someplace and I tell this employer I’m a Vietnam vet, it don’t mean shit. Pardon the expression.
You know, I was sitting in my apartment with Carolyn. We weren’t married yet. And I picked up the Washington Post, and it said Saigon had fell. I said, “What the F was I there for?” I mean what was the whole purpose? All of a sudden you—your—your mechanism said, Hey, you don’t have to worry about it. It cuts off. You don’t think about Vietnam. That’s the way it was.
Then about two years ago, one day, I decided that I’m not out to lunch. I’m null and void. I am not getting up today for no reason. And not getting up today for any reason is not justifiable in our society. See, you can’t quit our society.
I don’t have the flashbacks and the nightmares. It’s the depression. And you can’t identify what the depression is. Plenty of times I just wouldn’t come home. All day, you know. And 30 minutes not coming home in my house is a long time. Or you walk into your house one night, take all the clothes out of your closet, and stack ’em up on the floor.
We came back totally fucked up in the head. But it took ten years for our bodies to catch up to where our heads were. All of a sudden you feel this psychological pain become physical pain. Then if you’re lucky, which I was, somebody come up and pull your coat and say, “Hey, you need some help.” ’Cause if my old lady hadn’t decided I needed some help, I would probably either be dead or in jail today.
I went to Walter Reed first. They put me in a situation with about 34 people in a room. How in the hell are you gonna talk to me about my problems with 34 other problems in your face? I went to the VA hospital in Baltimore, and they gave me two aspirins and told me to go to bed and call in the morning. By my wife havin’ a job that she could have Blue Cross and Blue Shield, I got a private shrink gettin’ me through the moment. But I don’t understand why we gotta pay this guy $90 an hour when I gave you three years, four months, five days, and twelve hours of the best of my life.
This psychological thing, we try to suppress it. But it kills us quicker than if somebody just walked up to you and put a bullet in your head. ’Cause it eats away at your inner being. It eats away at everything that you ever learned in life. Your integrity. Your word. See, that’s all you have.
Vietnam taught you to be a liar. To be a thief. To be dishonest. To go against everything you ever learned. It taught you everything you did not need to know, because you were livin’ a lie. And the lie was you ain’t have no business bein’ there in the first place. You wasn’t here for democracy. You wasn’t protecting your homeland. And that was what wear you down. We were programmed for the fact as American fighting men that we were still fighting a civilized war. And you don’t fight a civilized war. It’s nothing civilized about—about war.
Like this day, they took this water buffalo from the farmers. Either paid them off or killed them. It didn’t matter. Whichever was best.
They lifted it with the Huey about 300 feet. Nobody paid much attention. ’Cause you on a chopper base. You see helicopters liftin’ off with all
kinds of strange things.
So he flew the chopper up, just outside Bien Hao. The game plan was to drop it. And when you drop a water buffalo 300 feet, it has a tendency to splatter. So that meant the farmers around knew that you were almighty. That you would take their prized possession. That we’ll come and get your shit.
So we dropped it in the middle of a minefield. Set off a whole bunch of ’em.
I know the Vietnamese saw it. They watched everything we did.
I think we were the last generation to believe, you know, in the honor of war. There is no honor in war.
My mama still thinks that I did my part for my country, ’cause she’s a very patriotic person.
I don’t.
Captain
Norman Alexander
McDaniel
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Electronics Warfare Officer
432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron
U.S. Air Force
Takhli, Thailand
March 1966–July 20, 1966
Various Prison Camps, Hanoi
July 20, 1966–February 12, 1973
I could smell the hate.
Some of them had pistols. Some guns. Some shook knives at me, shovels, even hoes. They motioned for me to stand up. Then they inched forward. About 50 of them. Communist militia, like popular forces. And just plain folk, too. All pointing guns at me.
They looked to see what I had and took my .38. They made me strip down to shorts and T-shirt. They took off my boots. They tied my hands behind me.
Then they marched me about a 100 yards, right down this hill to this hut. Then around to the backyard. There was a large hole, like a pit. They motioned for me to get into that. I hesitated. Then they pushed and shoved me into it.
I thought I was going to be executed.
I said to myself, This is it.
I guess I was in a state of shock. I wasn’t afraid. I just thought my time had come.
It was July 20, 1966. Just seven days short of my twenty-ninth birthday I had come a half world away from Fayetteville, North Carolina—the son of sharecroppers—to die in North Vietnam at the hands of peasants.
When I was growing up, Fayetteville was no different from most of the other cities in the South and some in the North. You couldn’t go in restaurants. You rode in the back of the bus. And there were separate sections and toilets for the black people in bus stations and train stations. I went to a segregated elementary and high school about 15 miles from our home. There was a bus stop to pick up white students about a block and a half from where I lived, but I would have to walk 5 miles to get the bus for black students. But it didn’t bother me to walk 5 miles each way. I would press on to get the education. I just never let the race problem inhibit me from whatever I was trying to accomplish.
I did quite well in high school, but I could not afford to go to college. Initially, I planned to go into the Air Force as an enlisted person, and afterwards take advantage of the GI Bill to go to college. But a couple of my teachers made some calls to North Carolina A & T State University to help me get a part-time job in order to go straight to college. And that’s what happened. I worked my way through in the cafeteria.
At the time, every physically fit male had to be part of the ROTC program. I chose Air Force. And I passed the qualifying test for officer training. If you got to serve, it seemed a good thing to be an officer.
I became an electronics warfare officer, or EWO, assigned to the EB-66C electronics reconnaissance airplane. It normally carries a six-man crew—pilot, navigator, and four EWOs like me. Our job is to go up and see what kind of defenses the enemy has in terms of radar and missile sites. Then we warn our bombers and fighters to help them to be successful in their bombing missions.
When I heard we were going to Thailand for combat missions against North Vietnam, I felt good, really proud to be part of it. The Communists were attempting to take over South Vietnam. I felt that we had a good cause. And that feeling has not changed.
We took off early on July 20 from Takhli Air Base. Our missions normally lasted an hour and a half, maybe two hours. The bombers were going after railroads, bridges, storage depots. Pretty much the standard items.
The EB-66C is not armed, so in the daytime, we had fighter coverage—F-100s. F-104s—to keep the MiGs off. If we flew at night, it was assumed that the MiGs couldn’t see us. So we flew alone. We flew alone. And some nights it was kind of interesting. Moonlight nights, boy, it was just about like day. We didn’t feel too comfortable.
Just as we were completing our support, we were hit by a surface-to-air missile. We were at about 30,000 feet. The missile was not a direct hit. If it had been, the plane would have just exploded right away, and none of us would have survived. But the missile exploded a little distance from the plane, yet it was close enough for some of the fragments to puncture the fuel tanks. The plane caught on fire immediately and started to disintegrate.
We lost all communications with the front section, where the pilot and the navigator were. Smoke and fumes started filling up our section fast. We didn’t even have communications within our compartment with each other.
In our section, I was supposed to eject first. The big question was, are we as bad off as I think we are, or am I jumping the gun. But assessing the situation, I chose to eject.
The history of the EB-66C is such that normally in ejection, those who eject upwards—the pilot and the navigator—survive. Those who eject downward—the EWOs—the survival rate for them is very, very low. Later on, the North Vietnamese said one of the crew members died shortly after he was captured because he was injured severely. I tend to believe them because he was the fourth man out of my compartment. The second guy to go received more severe burns than me. The third guy had a head wound that kept him in and out of consciousness for the first couple of weeks. Probably the fourth guy got banged up far worse than that.
As I was coming down in the chute, I thought I saw the plane burning on the ground. And then I could hear bullets zinging through the air. The Vietnamese were shooting at me as I was descending. I looked up and saw a couple of holes in the chute. I didn’t look down at them. I was looking more at where I was going to land.
And this is crazy. At the time, Look magazine was being published, and as I came down and all this was happening, I said to myself, Boy, Look magazine is really going to be glad to get this story. That was my thought. Crazy. Just plain crazy.
I had to steer my parachute to keep from landing in some water. And I came down on a small hillside. Thirty miles northwest of Hanoi. Unfortunately, there were no trees, nothing to hide in. Just knee to thigh deep grass.
As soon as I touched ground, I tried to hide the chute. It was a big orange and white signal telling the whole world, here’s McDaniel. All I could do was get it a little bit out of sight. Then I grabbed my survival radio to try to let our friendlies in the air know that I was down. That took 30 seconds. Then I looked around to find a place to hide. There was just nowhere. And within a minute after I hit the ground, they were on me.
I thought about using my gun, but I said, Well, I’d better just lay low for a moment. All of a sudden, things got kind of quiet, and I thought, Maybe they’ve gone away. Then I heard some grunts, and as I looked around, they were everywhere, all around me. They had gotten quiet to see if I were going to make a move.
Whatever they were going to do to me in that pit, they stopped when a jeep drove up with four regular army men. The soldiers said something in Vietnamese and motioned for the others to back away. Then they took me out of the pit, blindfolded me, and drove me about a mile away to a little place where they started interrogating.
They asked me if I could speak French. I said, no, no, Then in English they asked me what kind of plane I was flying, who else was in the plane, what targets we were trying to hit, what plans we had next. They wanted any military information that would help them to better defend themselves. I just kept giving them my name, my rank, my s
ervice number, and my date of birth.
After they tried that a few times, they tied me up and put me in a little hut. About an hour later, somebody with a white smock on came in to examine my injuries. When I ejected, I had banged up my ankle and got some face and neck burns. He figured I was going to live whether he did anything or not. So he did nothing. Later, they smocked down the burns with something that remind you of iodine. But that was all.
They took me to the prison camp we called the Hilton first for the first extensive interrogations. That’s where they had the torture room and can put the screws to you. When I mentioned the Geneva Convention, they laughed in my face. They said, “You’re not qualified to be treated as a prisoner of war. You’re a criminal. Black American criminal.” And they said that Fred Cherry, who went down before me, and the other black prisoners were the blackest of the black criminals.
After two weeks, they took me to a camp we called the Zoo. And they put me in a concrete cell that was about 6 by 9 feet. You either had a board or a concrete pallet for a bed. And, at first, you were told to sit on it all day. If they saw you moving around, trying to exercise, or trying to communicate with somebody, then they would take you out and beat you.
I kept looking for a break to get out that first evening, but I never got the opportunity. I figured if I could get out of the hut into the jungle, I might have a chance. But I never did. Once they got us to Hanoi, there were several things going against a successful escape. Even though they had guards in towers and barbed wire on the walls, we figured it was possible to scale the walls without being seen. There was something like a moat around the camp. But from there it was people, people, people. There were more people there per square hectare than you can shake a stick at. And, unfortunately, they worked more at night than at daytime because of the bombing raids. Another thing was just our size. And the white guys had a problem with the color of their skin and with their hair. And our features were different enough to the point that a black man would be recognized very, very readily. Even so, we were always planning how to escape, the best route, individually and collectively.
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