The next day they took me to the hospital, took the stitches out, and cleaned up the hole. They knew exactly where the stitches were. And from that day, November 28 to the next February, 1969, they stopped puttin’ the pressure on.
They put me back with Art Cormier in April. And for several days I was coughin’ up blood clots in the mornin’. I think it was because I was tryin’ to exercise, primarily runnin’ in place. And I had to cut that out.
One morning I spit into a piece of paper, because it felt like somethin’ in my throat that wasn’t normal.
I said, “Art, you won’t believe this.”
He said, “What you got?”
“Look at this.”
It looked like a piece of regular fishing cord. Almost one year to the day they had operated, I had coughed up a piece of the stitching.
So we showed it to the guard, and he sent for the medic. Then they gave me some antibiotics.
I had been coughing up so much blood and mucus that the stitching was coming out that they hadn’t removed.
I stayed with Art until the escape attempt May 10. Ed Atterbury and John Dramesi dyed themselves with a mix made from iodine pills, went through the roof and over the wall, shorting out the electrical shock on the barbed wire. But they were captured before morning. They brought them back blindfolded to the headquarters building in the camp. Then they were taken off to torture. Atterbury was never seen again.
By now we had secret committees for everything. We had the morale committee. We had an entertainment committee. Education committee. And, of course, we had the escape committee. And that was the one they really wanted to know about now.
So for months they really got hard on us. There was a shortage of water and toilet paper. They cut down your bath time to once every two weeks. No more cigarettes. And they nailed boards over the windows, so there was no fresh air. And they separated the senior officers, like me and Art and Bud Day, and worked us over with bamboo and rubber straps in the interrogation room. I don’t think anyone got it nearly as bad as Bud and Dramesi.
It was no point in me thinkin’ about escape at the Hanoi Hilton with only one good hand and one good leg. And I just forgot about gettin’ over the wall. It was too high. I didn’t have anything in my room to climb up on. And there was broken glass cemented to the top of the wall. Since they drove me in from forty miles, I knew all the checkpoints. You’re not goin’ anyplace. And at the Zoo, the senior officer would never approve anybody as injured and crippled as I was trying it. But I always thought about it.
And we always thought about rescue. We had a whole plan for aidin’ any outside force that came to rescue us. We were organized into teams to go after the guards. We had plans to take over. We knew who would go to which doors first.
I learned about the Son Tay raid when they took us all to the Hanoi Hilton. The Green Berets got in there but found no Americans. That was in November of 1970. We put the story together from drawings the South Vietnamese prisoners made and left for us to find. They showed something like a C-130 transport, walls, guards, and bodies on the ground.
Not more than a dozen guys ever did anything that was aid to the enemy. Most of them were young troops, Army and Marine, who were captured in the South. But there were two senior officers who refused to take orders from us, made tapes for them to play on Radio Hanoi, and met with the antiwar people, the Jane Fonda and Ramsey Clark types.
Those two got good treatment. Good treatment. Extra food. Different food. Stuff to read. They could stay outside most of the day. They didn’t lock ’em up until late in the evening. And they had fish bowls in their cell.
We were furious. And the Vietnamese knew it. They wouldn’t let us get close to them. They would have been hurt very badly. Or worse.
I had less respect for those two than I did for our captors. Most of us did. We considered them traitors then. And I feel the same way today.
A few guys went through deep depressions and weren’t cooperatin’ with us as much as they should. But that is normal when you go through a deep depression. We just wouldn’t let them quit. We would just keep bangin’ on their walls and tell them if the guard hears, you are just as involved as us, so you might as well bang back. And it worked. They would start answering.
No matter how rough the tortures were, no matter how sick I became, I never once said to myself, I want to take my own life or quit. I would just pray to the Supreme Being each morning for the best mind to get through the interrogations, and then give thanks each night for makin’ it through the day. And you would meditate with your cellmate. Or tap the letter C from wall to wall through the camp. Then everyone would stop for silent prayer. C was the call for church.
Man, did we miss the movies. And when we finally got together, we have a movie committee, too. Bradley Smith, a Navy guy, could give you the best movie reviews you could ever hope for in your life. He would hardly miss a detail. Last almost as long as the movie. You could just close your eyes and see it.
John Pitchford was a racin’ enthusiast. He knows every horse ever raced. He could do the same thing with a Kentucky Derby race Bradley did with a movie.
But I was fortunate to know one guy who talked sex from the time he got up until the time he was sleepin’. That’s every day. And I really tuned it in. For the first several months, I was kind of pushin’ it in the background. Then for months and months I was too far gone to think about it. And when you become more relaxed, natural things happen. If you didn’t masturbate, you’d have wet dreams.
Man, in solitary, in the darkness, you would see everything you have ever done. You would fantasize anything you wanted. The mind goes like a computer. It picks up from everywhere, compensating for all the deprivations that you’re goin’ through.
Women? I had fantasy affairs with the ordinary women that I met in my lifetime. I had fantasy affairs with the most beautiful women in the world. Jewels of women. I did movie stars. I never would’ve been so successful out here.
I always wanted to race cars. I would race cars for hours on a race track. And I’ve never been on one in my life. And I would do air-to-air combat. And I would calculate and recalculate a bomb release. Lots of that.
And I would re-create the times I’d go picnicking with my children. Play ball with the boys. And come home and give everybody a ride through the area on a motor scooter. And I would imagine what size they are now.
In my dreams I always went somewhere and had to go right back, or go to the airport but the plane had left.
One time I was home. My daughter was walkin’ down the country path. She was cryin’. And I never got to ask her why. I had to go back.
When I was shot down, the Air Force got my family out of Japan back to Virginia as soon as possible. Donald was twelve, Fred was ten, Debbie was eight, and Cynthia was six. Beulah sheltered them until they found a house near Langley, and they had all the facilities, Navy and Air Force, they needed within 15 minutes.
My wife got my first letter in December of 1969. My mother got to see it before she died of a stroke a few months later. She died believin’ I was comin’ home.
I got my first letter from home in May of 1970. From my sister. She had a helluva time gettin’ forms from the Air Force to write to me or to send packages. ’Cause she wasn’t the next of kin.
My wife was tellin’ the kids that I was dead. I wasn’t comin’ home.
In November ’72 I received a letter from my oldest son.
By then we knew the negotiations were going on in Paris. We could hear the B-52s. And we knew that they were going to solve it. When the bombing stopped, we knew they didn’t have any more missiles. And that the agreements were going to be signed.
The sick and wounded, the guys who had been there the longest, were the first to fly out. But the Vietnamese sorta squeezed in the guys who had gone along with them. I guess that was more payoff for being traitors.
The first meal I wanted when I got to the Philippines was sausage and eggs.
&
nbsp; I told the dietician, “One platter of scrambled eggs. One platter of sausage patties. Laid on two plates.”
She said, “But, sir. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon.”
“I don’t care.”
She thought I had been to sleep and woke up thinking it was morning.
She brought the two plates. And I ate it. I ate it. I ate it.
Then I called Beulah.
She said, “You don’t have a very nice situation to come back to.”
I didn’t ask any questions.
I said, “I guess I understand.”
I didn’t receive a single letter or package from my wife. And I’m not crazy. She’s either dead, or she’s taken off. I was really hopin’ it was the way it was. I was hopin’ it would be that way than she died.
“How are the kids?”
She said, “They’re okay.”
Then Beulah told me the boys had dropped out of high school and were in the Army.
I thought they would have been in school, but little did I know.
General Chappie James was handling the return of POWs. We were old friends, and he knew about my situation at home. So he sent a friend of ours, Colonel Clark Price, to escort me home.
Clark told me another man was involved. A child was born in October ’69. A girl. The money was gone. My allotments. Salary. Everything. And the kids were in the Army.
I didn’t even ask him about my coins. I got depressed; the boys weren’t in school.
I wanted to be taken to Norfolk Naval Hospital in Portsmouth. That was closest to home. But Clark said Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., might be better, considering the situation I was returning to. I guess many people were afraid I might have been crazy enough to do somethin’ violent. They didn’t want to put me where the sparks might fly.
I asked to see Beulah and her husband. My sons made arrangements to get there. My daughters didn’t come at first. They were living with my wife. Even after my name appeared in the newspapers that we were being released, she still told them I wasn’t coming home. It was a mistake.
When she did come to Andrews, I told Clark I didn’t want to see her.
Clark said, “I think you should.”
“Okay.”
I wouldn’t see her with the door closed. My attorney told me not to put myself in a position where I could have the opportunity to cohabitate.
I asked her to be reasonable, to agree to an uncontested divorce so the stuff won’t come out and embarrass the kids.
She said no, she didn’t want a divorce. And she tried to fight it. I understand that, too. You been gettin’ a nice fat check all these years, and all of a sudden, you ain’t got it. Who’s gonna take care of this and that?
There was no waiting period for the divorce. ’Cause I’d been separated seven and a half years.
I sued the Air Force because they were negligent in handling my money while I was away. About $150,000. And the U.S. Court of Claims upheld me. In the services we have volunteers and active-duty people who look after families split apart like mine was. They knew every letter that went one way or the other, so they knew she wasn’t writing me. Something’s gotta be wrong. They let her take the money out of my account to have the child in a civilian hospital. They didn’t question that. The $450 a month allotment that was going to my savings bank? They gave her that, too. A form was signed on October 25, 1965, three days after I was shot down. It had to be forged. But the people handlin’ the POW families were so into keepin’ these families quiet, they’d do anything.
I hope my case sets a precedent. A serviceman who gets in a position like mine must be better looked after in the future.
They gave me an extensive battery of mental and physical tests at Andrews. They said the best thing they could give me was a little more forward movement in my arm.
I said, “No. What the hell. I’ve lived with it all these years and got used to it.”
The only time it’s aggravating is when I’m trying to do something like hang a picture. Or reach over my head. Now I can change a light bulb almost as fast with one hand as you can with two.
Physically, I can never recover totally. I still suffer muscle spasms. My eyes are not as good as they should be at this point in my life. That’s because of all the periods of darkness. The years of darkness. And I don’t hear too well out of my left ear. That was where the right hook usually got to first. But I still feel extremely fortunate.
They gave me the Air Force Cross, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts for resisting the enemy. I had already received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Silver Star before for action in combat.
I had reached the rank of full colonel two months before my release.
In September of ’81 I retired. Seventy percent disability. Thirty years.
I never dreamed about Vietnam. Not once since comin’ back. But I still think about how we could have won the war. It should have been planned to hit the military targets early. It was only near the end that we started. And there would have been a lot less lives lost. And with proper leadership South Vietnam would’ve lasted a hell of a lot longer than it did. The war just went the way it did because the military was not allowed to win it. That’s all.
I don’t harbor no animosities against the Vietnamese people at all. North or South. Except as individuals. Isolated cases.
I guess I would still like to get my hands on Dum Dum. I’d like to have Dum Dum. I would know Dum Dum anyplace.
There were Vietnamese who were compassionate. The ones who fed me with bananas and pieces of candy in the hospital, taking a great risk to do that. And the doctor who acted like a doctor whatever the policy was in treating a prisoner. And the guard who caught me red-handed communicatin’. And he refused to turn me in because of my health being on the low side at the time. All he said was, “No, Xu. No. No.”
After the release, I kept in touch with Hally. In 1977 he spent two weeks with me while he was doing research at the Pentagon for his master’s degree. I gave him the key to my home in Silver Spring, Maryland. I gave him the key to a car.
We talked about how we looked at each other the first time we met. We talked about what we learned from each other. We remembered certain guys and tried to track down where they were. We rehashed the whole thing.
Naturally, I thanked him again for really, really saving my life. Other guys would’ve done the same thing, okay? But they didn’t have the opportunity.
One daughter—the one who cried in my dream—lives with me now and goes to college. And back home in Suffolk there is a Colonel Fred Victor Cherry Scholarship Fund to help capable kids who run short of money get to college.
And I speak across the country for the Tuskegee Airmen’s Association—black fighter pilots of the last three wars—telling young black people to study engineering, science, and technology.
Maybe one of those young black lads that hears me will walk across a field one day, look up at an airplane, like I did so long, long ago, and say, “I’m going to fly. I’m going to be a fighter pilot.”
Chronology of Major Events in the Vietnam War
September 2, 1945 After the departure of Japanese occupation forces. Ho Chi Minh and the Communist-dominated Viet Minh Independence League established the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi.
September 22, 1945 French troops returned to Vietnam.
December 19, 1946 The Viet Minh began an eight-year war against the French occupation with attacks in the North.
May 8, 1950 The U.S. announced it would provide military and economic aid to the French in Indochina, starting with a grant of $10 million.
June 27, 1950 President Truman announced the dispatch of a 35-member military mission to Vietnam, followed a month later by an economic aid mission.
December 23, 1950 The U.S., France, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos signed an agreement which granted U.S. aid and recognized their common interest in defending the principles of freedom.
; May 7, 1954 The survivors of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu surrendered to the Viet Minh.
July 1954 The Geneva Agreements were signed, partitioning Vietnam along the 17th Parallel and establishing an International Control Commission to supervise compliance.
October 11, 1954 The Viet Minh took formal control over North Vietnam.
October 24, 1954 President Eisenhower advised Premier Ngo Dinh Diem that the U.S. would provide assistance directly to South Vietnam rather than channeling it through the French.
May 10, 1955 South Vietnam made a formal request for U.S. military advisors.
July 20, 1955 South Vietnam refused to participate in Vietnam-wide elections as called for in the Geneva Agreements on the grounds that elections would not be free in the North.
April 28, 1956 A U.S. military advisory group replaced French training of the South Vietnamese Army.
January 3, 1957 The International Control Commission declared that neither North Vietnam nor South Vietnam had complied with the Geneva Agreements.
June 1957 The last French military training mission left South Vietnam.
July 8, 1959 Two U.S. military advisors were killed during a Communist attack at Bien Hoa.
May 30, 1960 A U.S. Special Forces team arrived to assist in training.
December 31, 1960 Nine hundred American troops were in Vietnam.
January 29, 1961 Radio Hanoi proclaimed formation of the National Front for Liberation in South Vietnam.
March 19, 1961 The National Front announced an offensive to prevent presidential elections.
May 11, 1961 President Kennedy dispatched 400 Special Forces soldiers and 100 additional military advisors, and authorized a campaign of clandestine warfare against North Vietnam to be carried out by South Vietnamese personnel.
October 18, 1961 A state of emergency was declared in South Vietnam by President Diem.
November 1961 The U.S. enlarged the military advisory mission and assigned combat support missions to South Vietnam.
December 31, 1961 U.S. forces in Vietnam totaled 3,200.
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