Bloods

by Wallace Terry

  Every morning they would take me to a place we called Heartbreak. These cells were their torture chambers. Built-in leg irons. And very high security.

  At the time, James Stockdale and Duffy Hutton, Navy pilots, and Tom Curtis, an Air Force buddy, were in the camp. They were the first guys I made verbal communication with. They gave me the little bit of information they had acquired and told me to hang in there with the Code of Conduct.

  I was taken to Cu Loc Prison—the Zoo—in southwest Hanoi on November 16. A Navy guy, Rodney Knutson, was in the cell next to me. In the morning and in the night one of us would tap one time and the other would answer with two taps. But I didn’t see any Americans until the twenty-seventh, when they brought in Porter Halyburton, a Navy lieutenant jg, who got shot down five days before me. He looked like a scared rabbit, like I did.

  Hally was a Southerner, who went to Sewanee Military Academy in Tennessee and Davidson College in North Carolina. The guards knew I was from the South, too. They figured under those pressures we can’t possibly get along. A white man and a black man from the American South. And they got a long-term game to run.

  At the time, Hally is a very handsome, young gent. Early twenties. Coal-black hair. And just what you expect a Frenchman would look like. I figured any white I saw in Vietnam other than our guys would be French. I thought he was a French spy put in my cell to bleed me of information.

  He didn’t trust me either.

  He had a problem believing that I fly. And a major, too. He hadn’t seen any black pilots in the Navy, and he didn’t know anything about the Air Force. They had told him in the Navy that one reason blacks couldn’t fly was ’cause they had a depth-perception problem.

  For days we played games with each other. Feelin’ each other out. We would ask each other a question. And we both would lie. He would change the name of the ship he came from. I didn’t tell him much more than I told the Vietnamese, like I had flown out of South Vietnam. I figured he went back and told them the same lies I told him.

  Finally, we got to the place where we could trust each other. It started when he told me about bathing. “When’s the last time you bathed, washed up?”

  I said, “Almost a month, I guess.”

  “Well, you should go at least every three or four days. I’ll ask the guard.”

  Then he taught me the code. The first series of taps was in a line, and the next series in the column. Well, I learned it in reverse.

  Hally said, “What in the hell is that?”

  And I got vindictive. “That’s what you told me.”

  “You learned it outta phase.”

  It didn’t take long to learn it right. It’s amazing how sharp the old mind gets when it doesn’t have a lot to do.

  Then he slipped out and kinda whispered it to Knutson next door.

  Our cell door opened onto a porch. Then it was left down a hallway. We had peepholes. And if you caught the guard just right, you could slip out. But before long, they did something about the peepholes.

  In December my ankle had swollen so big they let somebody come put a cast on it. They didn’t x-ray it. But luckily it turned out okay. Only thing I haven’t had trouble with since. My wrist had healed by itself, but I was in constant pain with my shoulder.

  Early in February, when the bombing paused and President Johnson sent his fourteen-point peace plan to President Ho Chi Minh, they decided to schedule those of us still laying around injured for operations in case peace came and we’d be goin’ home. On the ninth they operated on my shoulder and put me in a torso cast down to my hipline. But I didn’t get a penicillin pill or a shot.

  Ho Chi Minh gave President Johnson a very definite negative. The U.S. and its lackeys should withdraw all their troops from South Vietnam and allow the Vietnamese people to settle their own affairs. They said that from day one, and they said it when we left. And they got just that.

  When they decided that we weren’t going home, you were just left in the state that you were in. No medicine. No treatment. And I was in a bad state with this torso cast.

  After a while, the incisions got infected. There are sores all over my body, and the pus is caking up. By early March, I’m just phasin’ in and out. I’m totally immobile.

  Hally was feeding me. And he always made me welcome to any part of his food. If he thought I’d want the greens out of his soup, he’d give them to me. After I got really bad, they gave me sugar for energy. It was really something desired by all of us. Put it on the bread, and it would taste pretty good. Hally had the opportunity to eat the sugar himself, but he didn’t.

  I don’t know why, but I would dream then about vanilla wafers and canned peaches. I just felt like it would be the best thing to taste in the world.

  I couldn’t stand up. Hally would take me to the wash area, hold me against the wall while he manipulated his towel, wet it, soap it, and wash my whole body. I was an invalid.

  I would tell him when I had to go to the bucket. He’d put me on the edge of the bunk. Lean me back so I wouldn’t pass out. And sturdy me over the bucket until I do what I had to do.

  He’d take whatever clothes he had to make me a doughnut to sleep on. Naturally it got covered with the drainage he would have to wash out. And the room smelled like hell. Oh, terrible. And Hally had to keep the wounded side of me by the window to try to keep some of the smell out.

  I was just lying there dying.

  And in the delirium I was having illusions like you can’t believe.

  I just would leave my body.

  I would go right through the wall.

  One time, when I was coherent, I told Hally, “We have B-58s in the war now.” I had been on a mission in a B-58 the night before. “They gave me an air medal, but I told them to give it to Jerry Hopper, another guy in the squadron. I told ’em I have enough.”

  Hally says, “That right?”

  “Yes. The war’ll be over soon.”

  Another time I left my body and went into town. Before then, when they moved you, it was in blindfolds. And if you could peek, you couldn’t tell much ’cause it was at night. But the first time I was able to see anything in daylight in Hanoi, I recognized a stream, bridges, and other things I saw when I left my body.

  Then my temperature really got high. I was just burning. I wasn’t eating anything. My body was eating itself. And I found myself in this little, sorta greasy-spoon restaurant, we would call it. It was in South Vietnam. I was hungry, and this Vietnamese lady was frying pork chops on this vertical grill. I’m just waiting to get my order to eat. And this little fella comes in and says he’s from somewhere just in the middle of North Vietnam. Says he was at a radar site, and he took care of the air conditioning. I told him I’m a prisoner and I have to go back to North Vietnam. And I said I’m having problems with my air conditioning. He said he’d see what he could do for me when he got back to the radar base.

  Well, I wake up. Sorta come around. And I think I’m dying. I just can’t stand the heat. I open my eyes, and I see right up on my chest two little men, ’bout a foot high. Big eyes and big heads. They are dark, but I can’t make out their features. Their hands are almost normal size. And I see them working around my chest. To me, it’s my air conditioning. Just every few seconds I say, “Please hurry.” Then my temperature would break. And I would think, Thank God they did it in time.

  And I’m scared the guards will see them and take them away. I can’t raise up to look for them, so I call Hally. “Did you see anything off the end of the bunk?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, do you see anything?”

  “No.”

  “ ’Bout time for the guard, isn’t it? You don’t see anything look like little men?”

  He looks again. “No. I don’t see anything.”

  Hally didn’t say, “Fred, have you gone crazy?” He was really cool. He accepted these little men and pretended they kept my air conditioning going.

  Finally, on March 18, they took me to the hospital
to take the cast off. I was down from 135 pounds to 80 pounds. When the guys in the camp saw ’em take me on a stretcher, they said, “He’s gone. We’ll never see Fred alive again.”

  When they took the cast off, a lot of skin came off with it. Then they washed me down with gasoline out of a beer bottle. That was ’bout the pits. I passed out from the fumes. I think my pulse stopped, because when I came to, they were slapping my arteries. Then they gave me a blood transfusion, fed me intravenously, and sent my butt right back to Hally.

  The cast is off, but I’m still opened up. The flesh is draining away. The bed sores are opened up, 6, 7 inches up my back. Hally keeps my shoulder wrapped, but it’s still smellin’.

  On April 10, they finally operated. I was so weak they kept me there 22 days. They put me in a little damp room at the end of a hallway, away from everybody. The guard would bring me food twice a day, but he didn’t particularly wanna feed me. I couldn’t move my hands. I’m all hooked up. But these two teenage girls who cleaned the rooms would bring me fruit and candy. One would watch for the guard, while the other would take a whole banana and just stick it down my mouth. And when they gave me hard candy, they would try to tell me, don’t let it get stuck in your throat.

  After a while, I started to get a bad infection again. I mean really bad. It looks like gangrene is settin’ in. So they decide to take me and John Pitchford—I think he got shot in the arm—to the hospital for an operation. It’s the night of July 6, when they took everybody else to march down the streets of Hanoi.

  This time there was no anesthetic. They just took a scalpel and cut away the dead flesh, scraped at the infection on the bones. I knew about what they should have to do, so I knew they were makin’ it more painful than necessary, being very sadistic. I couldn’t believe that a human being s’posed to be practicin’ medicine was doing this.

  Well, I knew they wanted me to cry out. Like a test of wills. We gon’ break him.

  Balls of perspiration was poppin’ off me. Size of your fingertips. I was totally dehydrated. It was the worst straight pain I had yet known.

  They had my face covered with a sheet. And they kept raising it to see if I’m going to beg for mercy, going to scream.

  And each time they looked down at me, I would look at them and smile.

  They kept at it for three hours. And I kept thinkin’, I can take it.

  When they gave up, I was still smilin’.

  Hally got back to the cell first. The public had gotten unruly during the march. They could hardly control them. They were kickin’ the guys, throwin’ rocks at them. Hally was all black and blue.

  When the guard brought me to the door, Hally gasped, “Fred.”

  Blood was running everywhere, down to my feet. Hally caught me, and put me in my bunk. “Fred, what in the world did they do to you?” He thought I had been where he had been.

  I cried, “Oh, Hally.”

  We both shed a tear or two.

  “No, no. I went to the hospital.”

  Four days later, the guards came to get Hally. They just walk in and say, put on your long-sleeve prison pajamas, gather your stuff, and let’s go.

  Tears start to roll down my eyes. I’m just hoping nothing happens to him.

  We cried.

  And he was gone. It took about two minutes.

  It was the most depressing evening of my life. I never hated to lose anybody so much in my entire life. We had become very good friends. He was responsible for my life.

  Then they moved in John Pitchford and Art Cormier.

  From August 4 to the end of the year, they would torture us once or twice a day. They wanted everything they could get about your personal life, your family. I would tell them anything, like I didn’t have children. And they would make you redo it. You are tellin’ so many lies, they know you are lying.

  They would cup their hands and hit you over the ears. And the guard would come up behind you and kick the stool out. Or make you stand on your knees with your hands in the air. Or stand at attention with your nose to the wall, both hands in the air. In my case, one hand is all I can get up.

  There was an officer we called Dum Dum, because he really was kinda stupid. One day in August of 1967, he said, “You have a bad attitude, and you disobey camp regulations. You communicate with other criminals. You must be punished. You must have ‘iron discipline.’ ” I said, Oh, shit. The torture is starting again.

  I ended up in a place we called the Gatehouse with Larry Guarino and Don Burns. Except when you would eat—twice a day if you’re lucky—and go wash, they kept you in manacles and leg irons.

  Dum Dum would order the fan-belt treatment, beating with strips of rubber. Or you would be struck with bamboo. And you would fall around the floor because of the irons.

  In November they took us to a building called the Barn. Burns was already there. He had lost 30 pounds. He was death warmed over. I was coughing up a big lump of somethin’. It was too dark in the damn cell to see what I was spittin’ in the night bucket. We took a little white pot from where we bathed back to the cell, and I coughed into it.

  I says, “Damn, it’s blood.”

  Larry says, “We gon’ have to tell the officer.”

  “No. No. I ask them for something, they gon’ ask me for something. I ain’t giving nothing.” Not after three months of having my ass beaten.

  “Well, we’re going to because there’s something wrong.”

  Thank God he did.

  Some days later they x-rayed me at the hospital. After they brought me back, this officer came in. I knew something was wrong. This officer got so nice. But he just told me I had a problem. Not until early February do they tell me I have a bone that’s in my lung, very close to my heart. I’m thinkin’ it came off the rib cage from the beatings. I knew the shoulder area had fused together.

  But they didn’t open me up until the first of May. They removed my seventh rib to get the chips out. And when they put me back together, they did one thing I’m sure was intentional. They left some nondissolvable stitches in.

  The Vietnamese guarding my hospital room would make me get up and mop the floor. But this lady who worked in the kitchen sorta chewed him out when she saw it. He wasn’t the worst guard in the world, because he would close the door so nobody else would see her moppin’ the floor instead of me. And she would bring me whole loaves of bread and put them in the drawer by the head stand. She knew nobody was gonna look in there, because they didn’t want to touch anything I touched as sick as I always was.

  They brought me back to the camp on May 27 and kept me in solitary. That stretch would run 53 weeks, the longest of 700 days of solitary that I would have.

  Now they want me to make tapes, write statements denouncing the war, denouncing our government, and telling young GIs, especially black ones, they don’t have any business in Vietnam fightin’ for the American imperialists.

  They want it from me more than anybody because I was the senior black officer. They wanted it bad. And by this time, our black guys are doing good work, hurtin’ ’em down South.

  Until the end of November they interrogated me four or five hours a day. Two of ’em, the good guy and the bad guy. The bad guy never gets to be the good guy. But the vice camp commander, he swings both ways. We called him Lump. He had a tumor on his forehead. The good guy was Stag. That’s an acronym for Sharper Than the Average Gook. He was a very good interrogator. He read a lot of novels, and he knew black literature. He had read Raisin in the Sun and Invisible Man. He knew more about Malcolm X than I did. And we was versed in Stokely Carmichael’s philosophy. Absolutely. Stokely was helping them with broadcasts from Hanoi.

  In those brainwashing sessions, Stag would say, “Xu, we will change your base, your foundation.”

  They called each of us by a Vietnamese name. A xu is a little brass coin, like a penny. Maybe they gave me the name because of my color. Regardless, they made me feel that I was worth less than a penny.

  I said, “You tryin’
to brainwash me?”

  And he would back off a little. They hated the word brainwash. Scared ’em.

  Stag and Lump couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be on their side, on the side of another colored race. I told them, “I am not Vietnamese. My color doesn’t have nothin’ to do with it. We have problems in the U.S., but you can’t solve them. Like you, I am a uniformed soldier. If I have you in the position you have me, I wouldn’t expect you to do what you want me to.”

  I’m being as tactful as I can.

  “A soldier’s a soldier. Things go on that we have no control over. I’m still an officer in the United States services. I will respect that, and I would hope that you will respect that of me. I can’t do what you ask.”

  They never got to home plate. Just like when they beat me, I always kept in mind I was representing 24 million black Americans. If they are going to kill me, they are going to have to kill me. I’m just not going to denounce my government or shame my people. All this time the wound don’t heal up, because of these stitches. They looked like fishing cord to me. All black. But they’re swearing there wasn’t anything there. It would heal up.

  They say, “No, no. These honorable stitches. Don’t have to take out.”

  When I asked for a Band-Aid to cover the hole, Stag said, “We don’t have. Many injured Vietnamese. We must use all medicine for Vietnamese.”

  I was hemorrhaging daily. And one time I woke up, and the stuff comin’ out of the hole looked green. I am having a serious problem.

  So when I go to interrogation, I ask for a pill. They said no. So I start quiverin’ and shakin’ on the stool. Stag starts to get excited, and he has a guard take me to my cell. Then they bring me out into the yard, so all the guys can see them give me medication. And when they pulled the needle of penicillin out of my arm, I was so infected, honest to goodness, that it felt like I was gettin’ ready to explode. My body was so poisoned, I was about as sick as any time before.