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

  Nobody seemed to notice what he’d said. The lights switched off. The room’s attention turned to the next prisoner, and a guard returned Jim to solitary. Once locked into his cell, he turned to the pictures and Sybil’s letters. The first photograph showed his smiling wife at Sunset Beach standing behind his four sons. They looked healthy and happy, a young family enjoying the summertime. It was yet another season of memories he would miss.

  Photo received in December 1966 by Jim Stockdale, showing Sybil with their four sons at Sunset Beach.

  Then Jim returned to the photograph of his mother. Could it be her? She seemed older, much thinner, and her hair had changed color. He began reading the first letter and arrived at a bewildering paragraph. “I surely do hope you have received the pictures I have sent in my last two letters,” his wife had written. “And speaking of pictures, I am enclosing one of your mother in this letter as we had a most unexpected surprise last week. Your mother arrived in a taxi. She said she had decided on impulse to fly out and stay with us a few days and treat herself to a good long soak in the water. I took the enclosed picture while she was here.”

  His mother’s behavior confused Jim even more than the Polaroid had. Jim knew air travel and swimming both terrified his mother. She did not like surprise visits, and she detested taxicabs. The whole situation seemed preposterous. He tapped his frustration to Sam Johnson, but that helped little.

  He began wishing he’d never seen the photograph. In his fragile mental state, it tormented him. It became an upsetting presence in the cell, and when guards began daily shakedowns shortly after Christmas, Jim wished they’d take away the damned photograph of someone else’s mother. Each day, though, they left it. Although he hated to destroy anything from home, he finally resolved to shred the Polaroid into his honey bucket. Just as he started to rip the picture into pieces, however, he hesitated. “What would James Bond do?” Jim asked himself. He decided to soak the photograph. He urinated into his half-full water jug until the mixture neared the brim. He dropped the photo into the jug, half-hoping it would just disappear. After half an hour, it still floated there mockingly.

  Jim lifted it out and noticed that its backing had begun to peel, but it revealed nothing. He laid it on a bunk and went to retrieve his honey bucket, which would serve as the trash can. When he returned, he noticed dark marks materializing on the Polaroid’s back. He took the square photo to the crack below the door, where a beam of light streamed into the otherwise dimly lit room. He squinted at the tiny markings. He was thunderstruck. The markings were letters. He’d found the message explaining that Sybil’s letter was written on carbon paper, as all future letters bearing an odd date would be. To send coded letters back to the United States, Jim was to write a normal letter, then place it on a hard surface. On top of it, he should place the carbon paper, then a cover sheet. He was to write his secret message on the cover sheet with enough pressure to transfer the carbon but not enough to indent the actual letter. The instructions suggested writing the carbon message perpendicular to the horizontal lines of the letter. By writing the salutation “Darling” and the closing “Your adoring husband,” he would indicate the letter was encoded. The instructions told him to soak any photograph containing a rose and urged him to be careful; using the carbon could lead to charges of espionage. The instructions ended with two words of encouragement, “Hang on.”

  Suddenly, he understood Sybil’s hint that his mother needed a good soak. He realized how solitary had worn away his intellect—but it hadn’t eroded his survival instinct. He heard the gong that heralded the guard’s next round. He tore the photograph into pieces and mixed them into his honey bucket. He heard footsteps. He reread the words once more, then threw the instructions into his mouth as the door clicked open. Ignoring the foul taste of water and urine, he chewed the secret message as he stood nose-to-wall during the inspection. He heard the guard open his bucket lid to check for contraband. He offered a quick prayer of hope. Then he heard the guard let the lid slap shut without comment, and he offered a quick prayer of thanks. The guard completed his search, ordered Jim to bow, then left.

  Jim had not received a letter since Christmas 1965; now he knew his family and his navy had not forgotten him. In fact, they trusted him to understand the message and serve as a spy. In this way, he could fight back against his captors. If he could share the barbarity of Hanoi with the world, he could destroy the North Vietnamese ruse of humanitarianism. He could disclose the names of prisoners. Purpose returned to his life. He just needed to get permission to write home.

  Jim told Sam Johnson the news, and over the next few days, they tapped through the wall to refine their list of verified prisoner names. They developed a mental list of forty. In their isolation, they did not know that there were more than one hundred others. In anticipation of sending the names home, Jim began reviewing the list each day, committing it to memory. On January 2, 1967, Jim received his chance to write. The officer known as JC entered his cell with several sheets of paper and indicated that a visiting Women Strike for Peace delegation had offered to carry POW mail home to the United States. Jim’s spirits soared. “Act quickly,” JC said. “I must pick up soon.”

  Jim threw a blank sheet onto a wooden bunk. “Darling,” he began to write, using the salutatory signal as instructed. He rushed through the perfunctory letter, making sure to write nothing that would risk the censor’s disapproval. As instructed, he closed the letter with “Your adoring husband, Jim.” Finished, he flipped over his letter and rotated it 90 degrees. He covered it with Sybil’s original letter written on carbon paper. Then he placed a blank sheet on top of the stack and began, “Experts in Torture Hand and Leg Irons 16 hours a day.” Next he started on his list of names, “Alive here are…”

  As he finished, he heard a door open outside. He stuffed the cover sheet into his mouth, chewing and swallowing the written evidence of his subterfuge. He stuck Sybil’s carbon letter back into its place under the bed board. JC walked in as Jim wrote the last lines of his home address on the envelope. The officer took the encoded letter and left.

  Jim was surprised when JC visited his cell just two weeks later carrying paper, pen, and an envelope. As he knew from a recent Hanoi Hannah broadcast, another visitor had offered to ferry mail from prisoners back to the United States. Most POWs had little affection for antiwar delegations like Women Strike for Peace or pacifists like Reverend A. J. Muste, but their visits to Hanoi did serve one positive purpose from their perspective. Jim started writing a letter for Reverend Muste to carry home—and unwittingly aid Naval Intelligence.

  “Darling,” he began and covered the blank pages with words for Sybil and his boys. As before, he rushed through the pleasantries and utterly fictitious descriptions of his condition, anxious to begin writing his second carbon-coded message. He concluded the letter “Your adoring husband, Jim.” He then started on his secret message, listing the new names he’d learned in the past two weeks. Then he added the forty original names in case the Women Strike for Peace delegation hadn’t delivered the first letter. Next, he assumed the role of a true spy. He implored the military to attack the radio infrastructure that he believed kept the North motivated and fighting—and tormented the prisoners to no end. He wrote down information gleaned from interrogation sessions: what questions the interrogators asked, what information most interested them. He also did his best to estimate positions of POW camps.

  The cell door suddenly opened, and two guards burst into the room. Horrified, Jim looked up from his position by his bunk. He held the pen in his hand, poised over a sheet of paper that could convict him of espionage. The small pile of papers—a cover sheet, Sybil’s letter, and his new letter—surely looked suspicious, but he resisted his first instinct to eat the incriminating letter. Maybe he could play this out.

  The lead guard positioned Jim nose-to-plaster against the cell’s wall while he began teaching a new guard how to shake down a prison cell. As the guards did their job, Jim began to pra
y. He closed his eyes and saw the bright stained glass of the Naval Academy Chapel, which depicted Christ serenely walking across a blue sea below gathered storm clouds. He wondered if this vision of Christ appeared as a simple memory or as an omen the Lord would soon call him to heaven. Given the content of the letter lying on his bunk, he worried it was the latter.

  The lead guard’s rough touch interrupted Jim’s vision, and he spun around to face the two jailers. One reached for Jim’s waist and snapped the string holding up his pajama bottoms. Both guards laughed as the thin pants pooled at Jim’s ankles. They practiced a body search on the half-naked aviator, then made him bow. The two left the prisoner alone, humiliated, but immensely relieved. Jim found his stack of papers undisturbed.

  Before another guard could enter unannounced, Jim finished his writing, gobbled up the cover sheet, and folded his letter. He wrote out the address, and JC returned to collect the envelope. “Go, Muste,” Jim thought. “Go, man, go! Praise the Lord and pass the target list!”

  * * *

  The ring of the doorbell called Sybil Stockdale out of her kitchen, where she’d been packing lunches for her boys. Pulling her robe tight, she opened the front door. A postman handed her a package, special delivery. Inside, she found an envelope with Jim’s handwriting. She opened it quickly, her heart beating wildly. She saw the date—January 2, 1967—only nine days earlier. Her eyes sped through the letter, basking in his words but wondering what carbonized secrets the pages contained. Jim had begun with “Darling” and closed with “Your adoring husband.” Sybil knew he’d deciphered the secret message in her October letter. She read the letter to her boys; tears welled in young Sid’s eyes. As soon as the boys left for school, Sybil called Bob Boroughs at the Pentagon. He chuckled gently at her exuberance and told her where to send the letter. He renewed his promise to tell Sybil what Jim had encoded, even if the truth might hurt. Several days later, Boroughs arrived in San Diego. He didn’t chuckle when he met Sybil. He took her to the local Naval Intelligence office, where he led her to a small room containing a folding chair placed before a large shelf. Boroughs said the folder on the shelf held Jim’s encoded message. He left Sybil by herself to open it. In now-visible carbon, she read the words Jim had written from his dark cell in Hanoi: “Experts in Torture Hand and Leg Irons 16 hours a day.” She looked over his list of names and recognized several men whose wives lived in California. She noted that the navy had incorrectly declared Ed Davis, another man on Jim’s list, killed in action. Sybil returned to the horrifying first words. She pulled the room’s wastebasket closer; she felt nauseous. She’d harbored suspicions about North Vietnam’s treatment of POWs, and she certainly didn’t believe the platitudes in Jim’s letters. Now she stood face-to-face with her husband’s true situation. “Oh, my God,” she thought. “My own dearest, beloved Jim. ‘Hand and Leg Irons 16 hours a day.’ Oh, God.” Surely, she thought, her government would act.

  The following month, Reverend Muste’s delegation forwarded Jim’s second letter to Sybil. She opened the package and immediately saw the salutation and closing that told her she would be calling Boroughs again. The letter’s last sentence read, “You’re doing a swell job.” She basked in the words that confirmed she had made the right decision; Jim wanted to take the risk.

  In Washington, the information in Jim’s letters filtered through the intelligence community. Yet the government did not act. President Johnson and Ambassador Harriman chose not to risk jeopardizing negotiations with North Vietnam by confronting them with unpleasant accusations, nor did they want to give families of missing servicemen unconfirmed information that might spark false hopes of survival. Thus families like the Jenkinses, Johnsons, Storzes, and Rutledges continued to wonder what fate had befallen their husbands and fathers. Along with other POW/MIA families, these women and children still dutifully followed their orders to keep quiet, not cause trouble, and trust the administration.

  11

  BACK US

  “Đán! Đán!” the guard shouted, using the Vietnamese name the Camp Authority had assigned Jim Stockdale. “Roll up, roll up!” The command startled Jim from his sleep, which he’d managed to find despite the late-January chill. He heard other doors opening and closing down the Barn cellblock at the Zoo; the Camp Authority must have a big move planned. The guard indicated he’d return in several minutes and expected to find Jim ready. Jim pulled himself off his bed and stuffed his belongings—his porcelain drinking cup, Sybil’s letters on the priceless carbon paper—into his bedroll. An officer and guard appeared at the door. “You will move far away to another camp,” the officer said. “Keep silent—any communication and you will be severely punished. Leave bucket.” The guard tied a blindfold around Jim’s head and pushed him down a corridor to a waiting truck. With some difficulty, several guards manhandled Jim and his badly healed, stiff leg into the truck bed; Jim estimated his weight had fallen from 170 pounds to around 125, making their task somewhat easier. Inside the truck, guards reiterated orders not to communicate.

  Jim heard a distinctive postnasal drip nearby, the same condition that caused the most unmistakable snoring he’d heard in Hanoi. On the truck-bed floor, his bare foot touched another foot—whether of a friend or guard he couldn’t say. He gambled, and with the ball of his right foot, he tapped “shave and a haircut.”

  The other foot readjusted itself, toe-to-toe with Jim now. A strikingly large toe tapped back “two bits.” Jim’s foot pressed two times, then five; four times, then three: “JS.” The toe responded: “HJ.” It was Harry Jenkins, commander of Attack Squadron 163—the Saints—part of Oriskany’s Carrier Air Wing 16, which Jim had commanded. He hadn’t seen his close friend since he’d created such a ruckus with his snoring in the Hilton’s Heartbreak Hotel cellblock in November of 1965; that was after Harry had become the first senior officer to undergo torture. Even though he hadn’t actually laid eyes on his friend in more than a year, Jim had found a discreet message from Harry scratched into a baseboard in the Zoo’s bathhouse several weeks before the move: “Hi CAG, Saint.”

  When the truck came to a halt, guards unloaded the blindfolded Americans and pressed them through a gate toward a facility where Jim could hear cell doors opening, closing, and locking. His turn came, and a guard thrust him into a well-lit cell with four bunks. Surprisingly, the place seemed new. Fresh whitewash covered plastered walls; even the wooden bunk beds seemed newly made. Jim knew the underlying smell, though. He recognized the sounds, and later even the particular taste of the water. He’d returned to Hỏa Lò Prison, the Hanoi Hilton. The Camp Authority had now opened its northern section, partitioning the old rooms where Jim knew French jailers once held scores of Vietnamese convicts. The new architects had hoped the partitions would stifle the prisoner communication network that seemed to persist despite the Camp Authority’s vigorous efforts to squash it. Within minutes, the new American residents rendered the construction efforts worthless.

  CAG occupied the cell nearest the cellblock entrance, and, acting as sentry, he constantly looked under his door to monitor when guards came and went. When he saw the guard leave that first night back in the Hilton, he sounded the all-clear signal: two thumps on his wall. He found that the wall reverberated beautifully. By thumping the walls or simply beating out code on their chests, the men began identifying themselves. Jim Stockdale, Jerry Denton, George Coker, Harry Jenkins, and Sam Johnson all thumped their names and locations. During the interchange, a short, English-speaking officer burst into the cellblock, furious about the noise, which he knew to be communication. Unable to pinpoint the source of the thumps, he slid open the peephole of every cell door to deliver an agitated reprimand. The five men he scolded nicknamed the short popeyed man Bug. As soon as Bug left the cellblock, CAG recognized Sam Johnson’s familiar thumping: “GN GBU.” He and Sam were back with others, back in the Hilton, back with leaders and friends like Harry and Jerry. He’d only heard of George Coker—who reportedly looked like the actor Jimmy Cagney and act
ed like the pugnacious star as well. He knew he’d get to know Coker now that his long isolation had ended. CAG would remember that night of January 26, 1967, as among the happiest of that trying period in his life.

  The next morning, the Hỏa Lò guards took the new arrivals one by one to dump their buckets and wash up. CAG went first and walked into a courtyard he’d never seen. Within days, a creative air force POW named Dave Hatcher would endow each building around the courtyard with a lasting nickname based on the Las Vegas casinos frequented by pilots stationed at the nearby Nellis Air Force Base. With approval of senior officers, he named this new northeastern section of Hỏa Lò and its collective buildings Little Vegas. Along the dirt courtyard’s eastern edge, parallel to the prison’s moat and exterior wall, Jim saw two long buildings—each subdivided into eight cells—with arched windows near the eaves; these would become Stardust (to the south) and the Desert Inn (to the north); Jim and the others had spent the previous night in Stardust. A third large, pale stucco building formed the courtyard’s northern border; it became known as Thunderbird. Along the western edge of the courtyard sat a four-room shed called the Golden Nugget. The four-roomed Riviera cellblock marked the area’s southern boundary. In the middle of the Little Vegas courtyard stood the ten bath stalls of the Sands, where CAG found water trickling from pipes over large metal sinks. Studying his surroundings as he walked to and from the Sands under the two almond trees that partially shaded the area, CAG realized that the North Vietnamese were preparing a large number of cells for long-term residents; they weren’t planning to send him home anytime soon. His spirits, so high the night before, abruptly sank. Within days, a total of fifty-four Americans had arrived in Little Vegas, most coming from the Zoo or the Briar Patch.