Defiant: The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned

by Alvin Townley

  On May 2, 1966, Pigeye watched as guards bound and blindfolded Jerry before he escorted his captive to the Plantation, a detention facility a mile north of Hỏa Lò, near the Ministry of National Defense. The complex included a large French home the North Vietnamese frequently used for press and propaganda activities. The building offered a glimpse of Paris in tropical Hanoi, with rug-covered hardwood floors, ornate decorations, and crown molding. Beginning the next spring, the North Vietnamese would use the camp to show foreign visitors how well they treated their prisoners. A row of cells called the Show Room displayed what the Camp Authority claimed were typical facilities. The glimpses presented to these international delegates in no way represented the dismal conditions under which most uncooperative POWs lived

  Pigeye shut Jerry in one of the mansion’s powder rooms, then handed him a beer. Jerry had wanted few things so badly, but he feared it might damage his emaciated body and weakened mind, so he regretfully poured it out when the guards turned away. He knew that he’d need all his faculties to execute the plan he’d hatched for the interview. Soon Pigeye pulled him from the room and ushered him down a well-appointed hallway toward a set of French doors. Through the glass panels, Jerry saw Cat, Mickey Mouse, and Rabbit sitting in the room, along with a number of North Vietnamese officials. A Japanese reporter sat in the room’s center and motioned for Jerry to enter. Jerry stepped into the blinding klieg lights, blinked hard, and thought of yet another way to retaliate.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, on May 17, 1966, television viewers in the United States watched the scene unfold in grainy black and white. Among them were Jerry’s father and stepmother, his wife, Jane, and the seven Denton children, who had been notified of the interview just before the air date by Commander Bob Boroughs at Naval Intelligence, one of Jane’s most helpful Pentagon contacts. Together in their Virginia Beach home, they watched Jerry walk from the shadowy hallway into the brightly lit room where the reporter waited. He seemed subdued, his face expressionless, his eyes glazed. His hair was cut short, and his face appeared haggard. He wore a drab suit buttoned to the neck. When he bowed, his shoulders hunched forward like those of a meek child. He walked slowly to an empty wooden chair and sat across from the journalist.

  Jerry Denton at the televised 1966 interview during which he blinked TORTURE in Morse code.

  The captured aviator looked around, seemingly confused and blinded by the bright lights. He began blinking noticeably, sometimes quickly, other times slowly. He rolled his head back and forward. His eyes looked toward the ceiling, then toward the floor. He hunched his shoulders forward and clutched his hands timidly between his thighs, almost as if he were cold despite the hot studio lights. On her television screen, Jane saw a man shockingly different from the proud commander she’d kissed good-bye more than a year earlier.

  “Those bastards!” Jane shrieked. “He looks terrible!” The startled children looked at their mother in near disbelief; they’d never heard her use such language. Several of the children shouted at the image of their father, some cried, and others watched in silence.

  Jane recalled reading a newspaper with Jerry and their son Don six years prior, in 1960. The article recounted the public apology of U.S. Air Force Captain Francis Gary Powers, who became a Soviet captive when a surface-to-air missile downed his U-2 spy plane over Siberia. At his 1960 trial in Moscow, he confessed to committing a crime against the Soviet Union; he stated that he was “deeply repentant and profoundly sorry” for his actions. After Powers had served two years of a ten-year sentence at Vladimir Prison outside Moscow, the Soviets released him to the United States in exchange for a high-ranking KGB colonel.

  “Isn’t it too bad that he wasn’t able to stand up and say something,” Jane had stated more than asked at the time.

  Her son had responded, “Don’t you know that they can make you say anything?”

  “Yes, but wouldn’t it have been great if he had found the courage to say something?” Jane said.

  Now she watched her husband face the same frightful situation: imprisoned by a Communist regime, forced to do their bidding and read their script. Did she want her husband to find the courage to speak his mind? What would happen to him if he did? How would he live with himself if he didn’t?

  Jerry continued to blink his eyes, almost deliberately. Long blinks followed by short blinks, short blinks followed by long blinks. He looked dazed as he fielded several innocuous questions.

  “Denton,” the reporter then asked, “what is your feeling toward your government’s action?”

  Jerry summoned all his courage and executed his plan. “I don’t know what is going on in the war now because the only sources I have access to are North Vietnam radio, magazines, and newspapers,” he answered, boldly defying Cat’s instructions that he condemn America.

  “What do you think about the so-called Vietnamese War?” the reporter asked next, arriving at what the officers observing off-camera expected to be the coup de grace, the payoff for all their indoctrination. Jerry paused slightly. Jane wondered what choices his mind weighed. She knew nothing of the torture he’d just received or the punishment a wrong answer would earn him. He had made his choice.

  “I don’t know what is happening, but whatever the position of my government is I support it—fully,” he began, his voice gathering strength with each word. “Whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it, yes sir. I’m a member of that government and it’s my job to support it and I will as long as I live.”

  Because of what he’d just said, he didn’t think he was going to live much longer.

  * * *

  At home in Virginia, Jane gasped. In contrast to her husband’s other statements, this one rang strong and purposeful. She knew it would anger the North Vietnamese; she rightly worried about what would befall Jerry when the camera lights faded and the journalist departed.

  Jane’s oldest son was haunted by the consequences of so bold an answer, but a sense of pride overpowered the dread. In the clutches of a foreign regime, in a situation where, for all he knew, not a single person outside Hanoi would ever see or hear his statement, Jerry Denton courageously supported his government and country. On television, the young Dentons saw their father live out the principles for which he’d always stood. Then, less than a minute later, the interview ended and his image disappeared. His family wondered when they would see him again. They wondered if he’d survive.

  When U.S. intelligence agencies reviewed the video before it was aired, they appreciated more than just the commander’s courageous statement. He had also covertly relayed information about the conditions in Hanoi. The blinks that seemed so strange to television viewers were, in fact, very deliberate. Unbeknown to his captors, Jerry had blinked in Morse code.

  Long blink (T), three long blinks (O), quick blink, long blink, quick blink (R), long blink (T), quick blink, quick blink, long blink (U), quick blink, long blink, quick blink (R), quick blink (E).

  “T-O-R-T-U-R-E.”

  6

  MY DEAREST SYB

  As Jerry Denton suffered in preparation for his spring press interview, Sybil Stockdale kept her vigil on A Avenue in Coronado. Unlike Jane Denton, Sybil had yet to receive confirmation that her husband remained alive. Each day, she opened the mailbox with a complicated sense of anticipation, dread, and resignation. Perhaps she’d find news that Jim had survived; perhaps she’d learn the worst—that she’d become a widow—but at least she’d know. After six months, however, she had begun expecting an answer less and less. Then, on Friday, April 15, 1966, she pulled a stack of letters and flyers from the mailbox and began sifting through them. Her heart nearly stopped. She saw Jim’s handwriting. She found a letter—no, two letters—postmarked Hanoi. She held both gently, afraid they might disappear. She noticed the second letter was addressed by a different hand. Maybe something had happened to Jim; maybe he couldn’t write, maybe he had died. Still, a letter with his handwriting! Shaking with emotion and not w
anting to open them alone, Sybil drove to her friend Gala Arnold’s house. Gala ushered Sybil into her study and waited in the hallway while Sybil opened the letters. First, she opened the letter addressed by someone else; if it contained bad news, she wanted to hear it first. Inside she found a letter from Jim, dated February 3, 1966.

  “My Dearest Syb,” it began. “On this chilly afternoon I am so glad to be permitted to write my monthly letter and let you know that I am still OK.” Sybil, of course, had received none of those previous letters. “One thinks of Vietnam as a tropical country but in January the rains came, and there was cold and darkness, even at noon. Keeping warm takes energy, and I lost some weight. February already brings the promise of spring, and I think I will gain it back as the temperature rises …

  “Every night I remember each of you individually; and I know you do the same for me. I live for the day of our reunion, which I suppose will be soon after the war is over. I have no idea how that is working itself out. Let us think positively.”

  He closed the letter “All my love, Jim.”

  Sybil’s eyes welled with tears of happiness (he was alive), tears of sadness (he was so far away), and tears of relief (at least she’d heard from him). Then she opened the first letter, dated December 26, 1965. “I have not seen an American since I was shot down,” it reported before musing, “Perhaps solitude builds character; I sometimes think of how such experiences gave depth of insight to Dostoevsky and the other writers.”

  At the end, he again closed “All my love, Jim.”

  He had survived. He still had his wits, he still loved her, and Sybil knew he would not stop fighting. Now she had to bring him home.

  * * *

  On the night of May 1, 1966, a navy attaché telephoned Sybil to inform her that North Vietnam had announced Jim’s capture; the next day’s San Diego Union would carry the story. With no small amount of apprehension, she wondered what the story might say—and what photos it would show, if any. Anxiously, she placed a call to the newspaper office and learned the next day’s editions would arrive from San Diego via ferry at the Coronado dock. Sybil drove to the pier at 2:00 A.M. but found the ferry had no newspapers. A dockworker told her they’d arrive on the 4:00 A.M. ferry instead. She returned two hours later and heard the boat’s foghorn before it came into sight. Once the ferry docked, she watched a truck receive the fresh stacks and followed it to the local newspaper office, where she asked the manager for a copy. With a curious look, the man silently handed her a morning edition. She tore through the pages until she saw Jim, grim and scruffy but alive. The photo caption read CDR JAMES STOCKDALE … HELD BY REDS? The article indicated North Vietnam had also released the names of four other pilots captured in 1965.

  On May 10, Sybil flew to Washington, D.C., accepting an invitation from Naval Intelligence officer Bob Boroughs. They met the next morning in his Pentagon office, where he tried to restore Sybil’s confidence in the government, as he had for Jane Denton and as he would for other wives who visited him at the Office of Naval Intelligence, where he worked with the Interagency POW Intelligence Working Group. POW wives would find few men kinder or more helpful than the endearingly disheveled officer who reminded many of a gumshoe detective. In Boroughs, Sybil found someone who offered compassion as well as information. Wearing a suit rather than a uniform, Boroughs received her graciously and shared what he could as they reviewed Jim’s two letters, which Sybil had forwarded to the Office of Naval Intelligence in April. Sybil told Boroughs that one phrase, “there was cold and darkness, even at noon,” seemed to reference Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler’s book about the Soviet gulag system. Boroughs, in turn, reported that Jim’s odd request for Sybil to “say hello to our old football mates Bobby Tom, Baldy, and Red Dog” likely referenced three downed aviators from Oriskany: Harlan “Baldy” Chapman, Ed “Red Dog” Davis, and Harry Jenkins, who shared a last name with CAG’s Naval Academy teammate Bobby Tom Jenkins. Boroughs thought that Jim’s references indicated these three men had survived. As air wing commander aboard Oriskany, Jim himself had declared Ed Davis killed in action after his August 1965 downing, so when he got to Hanoi and found Davis alive, he’d been particularly concerned about getting news of his survival back to the United States.

  Before Sybil left the Pentagon, Boroughs broached a related subject. He wondered if Sybil might cooperate with Naval Intelligence in covert communications and intelligence gathering. Would she help them send a secret message to Jim?

  “That sounds dangerous,” she said. “What if he gets caught?”

  “That’s why I want you to think it over carefully before you give your answer,” Boroughs replied.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Sybil answered. “What guarantees are there that Jim would be protected if he got caught?”

  “None,” Boroughs leveled. “He’d be on his own.”

  “And I’d be responsible for having involved him.”

  “That’s right,” Boroughs said. “But I think you have to consider whether or not he’d want you to involve him.”

  “I guess he’s already answered in part by sending those messages out in his letters.”

  “Yes, I think you could say that. But I don’t want you to give me [your] answer now. Think about it, because you’re right, it is a dangerous business, and you are taking his life into your own hands, so to speak.”

  If she involved Jim in the navy’s scheme, she’d enlist her husband as a spy, an assignment far more dangerous than being a prisoner of war. Foreign governments executed spies.

  While in Washington, Sybil had also scheduled a meeting with the U.S. State Department, the other federal channel she felt ought to help her husband. When she mentioned this to Boroughs, he asked her to learn more about State’s efforts on behalf of the POWs. The agencies did not always cooperate closely, and the more conservative Pentagon was often suspicious of the more liberal State Department. Boroughs explained that in the absence of a declared war, State led the handling of the POW issue, and Sybil detected in his words doubts about State’s efficacy. She thought it particularly odd that State and the Pentagon operated separately.

  The next day, Sybil visited the State Department office of Ambassador-at-Large Averell Harriman, who oversaw POW matters. Few in Washington could match Harriman’s pedigree. He served Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, had been ambassador to the Soviet Union and Great Britain, served as Democratic governor of New York, and twice ran to be the Democratic presidential candidate, losing each time to the more centrist Adlai Stevenson. In a thick-carpeted office, one of Harriman’s assistants, Philip Heymann, assured Sybil that the ambassador had lent his considerable experience and talent to the POW issue but that security protocols prevented him from disclosing details. He noted again that Sybil was fortunate to have someone as experienced as Harriman on the case. Sybil only cared if he could bring back her husband. She departed her meeting unsatisfied and somewhat skeptical; her faith in the Johnson administration began to ebb.

  Much like their husbands, military spouses were expected to follow orders without question, and so the growing ranks of POW wives continued respecting the government’s instructions to remain silent. They didn’t want to cause harm to their husbands. Outside family, the military community, and sometimes church congregations, most people didn’t know about the nightmare these women faced. Since the government would not share information about families of men listed as prisoners of war or missing in action, even within the military community, these women knew little of each other. They often suffered alone.

  Most affected navy families tended to live near San Diego, Lemoore, and Virginia Beach, as those were the bases for the fighter and attack squadrons that sustained most of the air losses. Within those small communities, families of captured or missing personnel slowly began finding one another. Several months after her trip to Washington, Sybil hosted a luncheon for the wives of servicemen classified as prisoners or missing. Lorraine Shumaker, Phyllis Rutledge, and nine other wiv
es spent an entire late-September afternoon commiserating in the Stockdales’ Coronado home. They shared their frustrations with the military, related scraps of information they’d gleaned from one source or another, and vented their indignation over North Vietnam’s refusal to honor the Geneva Convention. The regime had published no list of captives, had not allowed International Red Cross inspections of their prison camps, had not accepted packages for captives, and had not allowed prisoners to write home with any regularity, if at all—and to their knowledge, the U.S. government had done nothing about it. Their anger flashed and swelled that afternoon on A Avenue.

  The Vietnam War had resurrected the terms “POW” and “MIA,” and it gave birth to a new generation of POW/MIA wives. Part widow and part woman-in-waiting, yet still a mother and military wife, these women faced daunting circumstances. Sadly, neither their friends nor their government knew how to treat them. The public scarcely knew they existed. Across the country, though, they began finding one another, creating a network of families who had drawn the same indefinite fate. In time, they would rally the nation to bring their loved ones home.

  7

  LORD, I JUST NEED YOUR HELP

  The same month that Sybil received her first letter from Jim and that Jerry Denton prepared to blink his desperate message, thirty-five-year-old Sam Johnson walked through the humidity of a tropical afternoon. Sweat beaded on his forehead and soaked through his air force flight suit. On the nearby Mun River, he saw natives hunting tigers from canoes while jets roared overhead. “What a strange situation and foreign world this is,” he thought. “I really couldn’t be any farther from home.”

  The Texan’s boots fell lightly on the expansive concrete tarmac at Thailand’s Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base. Tall and handsome, Sam looked every bit the fighter pilot. In his right hand, he held his flight bag and helmet. He breathed the thick air and contemplated his upcoming flight, his twenty-fifth night mission for the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing. For more than a year now, the air force and navy had attacked the infrastructure that fed the Communist insurgency, which had only grown despite countless sorties and the more than 200,000 U.S. troops now stationed in South Vietnam. Further hampering America’s ability to beat back the Việtcộng and win over the South Vietnamese civilian population, conflict had recently broken out between South Vietnam’s prime minister and the generals who ran the country’s four military regions. When the prime minister tried to assert control over the military, protests and violence spread throughout the country. South Vietnam seemed destined for a simultaneous civil war of its own making. U.S. officers and diplomats were aghast. They wondered how this would affect public support and what it portended for America’s mission in Southeast Asia. Sam carried those same questions with him as he walked across the tarmac toward his waiting McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II.