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

  These defiant patriots found themselves among kindred resistors. Cat and Rabbit had extorted information out of them only through significant torture. Even after submitting to the ropes, each of these fighters habitually bounced back, ready to make Pigeye go another round. Then they persisted in flouting the camp regulations and the camp staff themselves. While other POWs in and around Hanoi were also tough, daring, and dedicated, the Camp Authority considered these eleven men so disruptive, dangerous, and toxic that they opened another prison just for them. Now they would battle on, proud of their membership in this elite unit.

  Along his back wall, George Coker tapped, “This place is like Alcatraz. What a lockdown.” The others found the comparison to the infamous penitentiary fitting, and they passed his words through the cellblock. Jerry Denton, the ranking officer among the cellblock’s nine POWs, soon agreed that they should call their new prison Alcatraz.

  * * *

  The next morning, across a 10-foot-wide entranceway from the cellblock holding the nine, Commander Jim Mulligan woke to a resounding gong and an unwelcome dose of Hanoi Hannah’s propaganda from the speaker, but nobody appeared at his door for some time. The silence outside seemed eerie, very unlike the morning noises in bustling Hỏa Lò to which he had become accustomed. Daylight came underneath the door, helping the still-burning bulb light the cell. Finally a guard arrived to remove his leg irons and take him to empty his bucket. He stepped into a rectangular courtyard. Studying his new environment without his blindfold for the first time, he saw he occupied the middle cell of a small three-cell building with a roof of broken tile that abutted the yard’s short east wall. Soon enough, guards would relocate him to the cell on his left, leaving an empty cell between him and Stockdale to hamper their communication.

  Farther to his left, Mulligan saw a long, windowless concrete building of similar construction. His small cellblock was directly across from the first two cells in this longer building, although his door opened toward the courtyard’s short west end, not south toward the second cellblock. He counted a total of nine doors to this cellblock as the guard walked him west across its length to the latrine. He could feel eyes straining through cracks or under doors to identify him. He wondered who languished behind each door. When he reached the building’s end, he emptied his bucket into an elevated wooden latrine that had been fashioned above an old bomb shelter. He picked up a bamboo brush and methodically scrubbed out his bucket with deliberate strokes, sending his identifying signal, “JM.” He gauged the compound’s size as between 2,500 and 3,600 square feet, mostly of packed earth. In the northwest corner next to the latrine and catty-corner from the compound’s entrance stood a pigsty, filled with swine that seemed better treated than the POWs. In the northeast corner, next to CAG’s cell, he saw a bathing facility—really just a concrete cistern and wash sink. Several walls were just like those at Hỏa Lò, pale stone and concrete topped by shards of glass. He saw what he assumed were government buildings close by, rising above the walls.

  After the guard had returned Jim Mulligan to his cell, he took CAG for the same walk. Through a crack in the mortar surrounding his cell door’s upper hinge, Mulligan watched the air wing commander hobble into the yard. A month had passed since Mulligan had last seen him—a month CAG had spent in agony on the floor of Riviera One—but he looked as if he had aged twenty years. Grizzled and bowed, he still hobbled with a pronounced limp as he swung his crooked left leg outward with each step. Once he had scrubbed out his bucket and returned to his cell, CAG tapped to Mulligan, “I can see out. Let’s see if we can find out who’s in camp with us.”

  The two aviators watched the guards repeat the morning routine with the nine prisoners occupying the long cellblock to their left. Between them, they identified Howie Rutledge, Harry Jenkins, Sam Johnson, Bob Shumaker, and Jerry Denton. They could not identify four younger officers. They suspected they were agents in their network they had never encountered face-to-face. CAG knew he had command, with Jerry Denton his executive officer.

  The North Vietnamese believed they had chopped off the head of the snake. They hoped that without these instigators and leaders, the entire POW population would become far more compliant. Jim Stockdale prayed that other senior POWs would assume command in Hỏa Lò and carry on the resistance, but for the moment, he had to focus on this new assignment, this new challenge. The hardened commander had no plans to change his attitude or methods. He could not care about what might transpire outside this postage stamp of a world, from which he would continue fighting for his country. Jim Stockdale was at war. With his ten soldiers, he commanded a willing and able force of brothers-in-arms.

  The eleven subversives—the Alcatraz Eleven, as they would be known—were cut off from Hanoi’s other detention camps, and at the moment, CAG’s and Mulligan’s cells were cut off from the other nine inmates. They could tap to each other easily enough, but how to reach across the courtyard to the other nine? As he surveyed the yard from the gap beneath his door, CAG noticed movement under the door of Nels Tanner’s Cell Six. He realized that if he and Nels both crouched on their floors and looked out, they could see light reflected off the other’s hand. Within forty-eight hours, CAG had caught Nels’s attention. They began flashing their hands in front of the space beneath their doors, sending tap code visually. The angle between CAG and Nels proved optimal, and Nels soon sent to CAG the suggested name of his new command. “Alcatraz,” Nels flashed. CAG approved.

  The Eleven already knew they would not be able to wage battle across fields or skies, but they did think they’d be fighting in quiz rooms, brazenly facing off against their adversaries. The North Vietnamese had other plans, however. Instead of peppering their new inmates with questions at quiz, the camp administrators simply locked them in their cells and left them there. These diehards had no chance to resist. The Americans found themselves fighting inside concrete boxes, locked in desperate combat with an unrelenting enemy: boredom.

  The hope and pride that had swelled upon first hearing the lineup of hard-liners began to ebb. Days passed indifferently as these warriors surrendered to routine and began to waste away in silence and misery.

  Like all the POWs, George McKnight awoke well before 7:00 A.M. to a gong and Hanoi Hannah’s voice. Until then, he could let himself believe he’d only experienced a nightmare; the new dawn would find him safely in his bed at home. Inevitably, each morning brought him back to Alcatraz. Yet another day locked inside a third-world jail, eight thousand miles from home. Taps from George Coker soon came through the wall, “How you doin’ bud?”

  “Another day in hell,” McKnight often replied. Coker would encourage his friend as best he could; he was barely holding on himself.

  Shortly after reveille, one of the camp’s fifteen assigned staff unlocked Stockdale and Mulligan’s cells to remove their leg irons. Then the guard would visit the other nine prisoners to do the same. Since the cells in the large block all had sizable gaps beneath the doors, the guard would often simply reach under the door to unlock the irons. A perfunctory kick from an inmate was common—as was a retaliatory twisting of the irons by the guard. Simply seeing another person or exchanging words—pleasant or not—had become food for these lonely souls starved for human contact. Guards added one more measure of inhumanity to the Alcatraz experience by denying them the sight of another human even as they unlocked their irons.

  After unfastening all the irons, the guard would return to Jim Mulligan’s cell. At the guard’s direction, the aviator would stumble into the courtyard, blinking at the bright sunshine after passing the night in the dim twilight created by the cell’s single bulb. His now-bony frame wore a flimsy, threadbare shirt that smelled of dirt and sweat six days out of seven. On the seventh day, Mulligan could wash his clothes.

  The guard would escort him to the latrine, which swarmed with black flies. Then Jim would scrub out his bucket with the same filthy brush each day, sending the first message of the morning with his deliberate strokes. J
im Stockdale followed. Guards then worked their way down the nine-cell building. Since guards allotted prisoners only a short time to clean their buckets, the men of Alcatraz became more proficient than ever at using shorthand code. Each man adopted a one-letter name. Jim Mulligan claimed M, Jim Stockdale was S, George Coker was C, Jerry Denton was D, Harry Jenkins was J, and Sam Johnson was L since his seniors had claimed both S and J. George McKnight took G, and Howie Rutledge took H. The letter B represented Bob Shumaker, R stood for Ron Storz, and T identified Nels Tanner.

  Often, the men used their morning speech to recognize important dates and lend moral support to an Alcatraz brother. For example, on November 13, someone would inevitably communicate, “Swish swish—swish swish swish (pause) swish—swish swish (pause) swish swish—swish swish swish.” That translated to “HBH,” which meant “Happy Birthday, Howie Rutledge.” On that same day, the anniversary of Harry Jenkins’s shootdown, another POW would brush out “HAJ.” The three letters meant “Happy Anniversary, Harry Jenkins.” With each shootdown anniversary that passed, the men grew more confounded. How had they been left here for so long? Would they ever go home?

  When the ten others had finished their business, Jerry ended the morning ritual by washing the entire latrine area, which gave him ample time to deliver the closing. Sometimes his messages provided information or instruction. To the irritation of some inmates, often-serious Jerry frequently used his platform to reinforce orders upon which he and CAG had already agreed. Other times, he offered inspiration. Once he brushed out “In Thy gentle hands, we are smiling our thanks.” The men of Alcatraz found comfort in such messages. Their detestable conditions led them to despair, and they needed encouragement to thwart the Camp Authority’s goals; they had to remember their blessings. For all the misery surrounding them, they had each escaped death at least once. Many pilots—many of their friends—had not survived their final flights.

  One day, Jerry Denton gave a particularly lengthy oration as he swept and cleaned. He focused so hard on his work—communicating, not cleaning—that he failed to hear Rat approaching from behind him. When he sensed the commandant’s presence, he turned and saw Rat grinning. “Denton,” he said, “that is a very long message.”

  The administration seemed to know the men communicated with each other—and even seemed to know their methods—but instead of implementing the harsh punishments they had used at the Hilton and the Zoo, the North Vietnamese tacitly allowed some limited communication at Alcatraz as long as it wasn’t too blatant. Rat and his guards seemed to refrain from enforcing the absolute degree of isolation on these caged souls. Quiet tapping became the men’s primary sustenance; their meager daily rations—two bowls of sewer green soup and occasional pieces of animal fat—hardly qualified. The POWs eventually grew too bold, however, and began communicating too overtly. As a warning to follow the camp regulations, Rat, Alcatraz’s commandant, clamped Harry Jenkins in irons for eighty-six days.

  Once every week, a guard led each prisoner to the cistern and sink next to CAG’s Cell Thirteen. There, the captive would strip and commence a washdown that nobody could equate with anything resembling a real bath. Each POW dipped a bowl into the cistern and poured water on himself. As fall progressed and temperatures dropped, the cold water could become breathtaking. Shivering, the prisoner would try to generate some lather from the stubborn brown soap issued once every six weeks, then use a wash rag to sponge himself as best as he could. After several weeks of the routine, George McKnight became concerned that a guard watched him too intently while he bathed. One day, he’d had enough and began shouting and shaking himself at the guard; guards deemed boxer shorts were appropriate for bathing from then on. While its hygienic value was debatable, the bath provided the men a priceless fifteen minutes outside their breezeless cells.

  Weekly laundry provided the same opportunity. Prisoners slowly scrubbed a week’s dirt and stink from their garments using dirty bath water and hung their clothes—essentially T-shirt, boxers, and pajamas—on a clothesline, savoring each extra second in the open air. Tasks complete, a guard would force them back into their sunless boxes for at least the next twenty-three hours and forty minutes. Occasionally they’d receive the opportunity to pick up their food at the table between Howie Rutledge’s Cell One and the courtyard’s gate, but more often, guards delivered the paltry meals to each cell.

  The guards made sure the eleven Alcatraz inmates never set eyes upon each other. They only slipped once, inexplicably leaving Jim Stockdale’s door unlocked on Christmas. CAG heard a guard march by, leading a prisoner to the bath trough next to his cell. He heard the prisoner stop, and his door suddenly flew open. There stood Harry Jenkins, who’d considered the unlocked door an invitation. Harry looked around bemusedly and grinned. “Gee, CAG,” he quipped, “nice little place you’ve got here!” A flustered guard yanked Harry out of Cell Thirteen, his smile still beaming. The incident cheered CAG for weeks.

  The men received their daily ration of three cigarettes before breakfast. Several of the inmates immediately smoked the first cigarette to stave off the hunger that had grown overnight and conspired with the unremitting lightbulbs to rob them of sleep. Later in the day, a guard would extend a torch through the peephole of each door so smokers could light their next cigarette; many indulged just to pass time, even though they often paid a price of one bow per light.

  The men received their morning meals around 10:30 A.M. At the food table or cell door, they usually found a bowl of thin vegetable soup, perhaps with a piece of stale bread or chunk of fat, that left them no less hungry than they’d been before their meal. Tiny rocks in their soup often caused toothaches; the POWs never determined if the rocks were added intentionally. The eleven Americans received virtually nothing with protein. Their bodies grew thinner, and the pitiful rations often kept them too tired or light-headed for exercise; sometimes they’d need several minutes to gain their balance after standing up. Still, the POWs did their best to stay active, and over time they would pace the equivalent of many miles in their cells. The men picked up or received their second meals around 3:00 P.M. If guards needed dishes cleaned, they often chose Bob Shumaker for the chore.

  Between four and five o’clock, guards distributed leg irons for the night, an indignity to which the prisoners eventually became accustomed. Once, the men nearly rioted when guards issued them the wrong irons. They each loudly demanded their own usual pair until the guards gave in; the men considered it a victory. Around six, Hanoi Hannah delivered a forty-five-minute report, which the speakers would replay the next morning. The broadcasts contained news about the war, ongoing diplomacy, and turmoil in the United States, presented with the expected bias. The POWs rarely found good news or reason to suspect a return home anytime soon. Occasionally, they heard propaganda statements made by peace activists, antiwar American politicians, or fellow POWs in other prisons; the latter variety disheartened the men in Alcatraz more than anything else.

  After the evening’s broadcast ended, each man began his bedtime ritual. Harry Jenkins would repeat the list of prisoner names he’d memorized, alphabetically and to a tune. Jim Mulligan did the same in his cell across the courtyard, and both men recited a scripture verse. Others prayed. Some lay still, thinking of home and being thankful they’d survived another day.

  As the men bedded down for the night, they’d try to hold at bay their disheartening reality. The Eleven had no idea when their time in this wretched prison would end. They might suffer this routine for a year, a decade, or perhaps longer. They could only trust in God, hope their families knew they were still alive, and endure the next day.

  Sunday’s breakfast and worship service provided the only deviation from the daily repetition. As with Shu and Smitty Harris’s piano concerts at the Zoo, the men found solace in imagined luxuries, and on alternating weekends Ron Storz and Bob Shumaker fixed elaborate Sunday breakfasts for each other. The chef would tap menus of eggs Benedict, omelets, and pastries to his partner, who
would extend appropriate compliments as the two men conjured the tastes of home. In Cells Seven and Eight, George Coker and McKnight did the same. After Sunday breakfast, taps went through the walls of the longer cellblock to start and end a half hour of meditation; Nels flashed the cue across the courtyard to CAG, who passed it to Jim Mulligan. All eleven men would quietly recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer in their respective cells. The eight navy men felt a brief connection to their carrier brethren at Yankee Station who were holding their own Sunday services aboard ship. They would reflect and pray, momentarily transporting themselves out of their cells, out of Hanoi. Eventually, each would have to return to the brutal reality of confinement at Alcatraz.

  By January 1968, routine defined the corralled band of incorrigibles. Outdoor tasks occupied a minuscule fraction of the day, and quizzes rarely took place. In fact, the inmates sometimes hoped for a quiz just to break the monotony. They also hoped to glean new information to share with their neighbors. The rare interrogations they did have were routine, consisting of typical questions and what the prisoners considered Communist drivel. In their cells, the men communicated constantly although discreetly. They sent quiet taps from cell to cell, often relaying messages down the entire cellblock; Nels Tanner made sure to maintain communication with Stockdale and Mulligan in their shed across the yard.

  Given the effort required to communicate by tapping, the men frequently tired of it or grew lazy. The two most senior officers, Jim Stockdale and Jerry Denton, engaged in extensive back-and-forth about policies and questions concerning their eventual repatriation. McKnight and Coker would pass communication from Jerry to Nels by tapping through their shared walls. Nels would then flash his hand beneath his door in code to relay the message across the courtyard. When Jerry began to suspect that McKnight abbreviated or skipped some of his messages, he rerouted his communication around McKnight directly to George Coker by banging tap code on the cellblock’s back wall instead of the wall that separated him and McKnight. McKnight commed that the ruckus would get everyone in trouble, so Jerry ordered McKnight to transmit his messages two words at a time. Jerry would tap two words of a message and wait for McKnight to transmit the two words up the cellblock to Coker, who’d pass them to Nels. Then Jerry would send two more words. The practice made McKnight feel like a humiliated schoolboy, and Jerry certainly would have disciplined him like one if he’d seen McKnight rolling his eyes with each two-word transmission.