Off and on the four of us would be together for most of the remainder of our incarceration. Tom Kirk and I, especially, were cellmates for the duration. I briefed the newcomers on the tap code and tried to get an update on what was going on in the outside world during those rare moments when we figured the guards were out of earshot.
Perhaps because of the influence of the French Colonists, the North Vietnamese took a siesta from one to two in the afternoon each day. The camp was eerily quiet then except for our innovative tapping, either by knuckles against stone or wood, the flick of bamboo brooms against the pavement, or the discrete sequence of coughing that could be heard from twenty feet away. One or two coughs signaled the first and second lines of the matrix; a clearing of the throat meant the third line; a deep hack was for the fourth line, and a distasteful but significant spitting sound stood for the fifth line. To keep the guards confused, we orchestrated almost constant sneezing and coughing. We actually badgered the guards into letting us use the brooms to keep our cells neat and orderly. The guards came to believe we Americans were absolute cleanliness nuts.
One of our most familiar and reassuring phrases, passed on liberally throughout imprisonment, was G - B - U. God Bless You. It helped.
Still, the state of confrontation did not abate. The North Vietnamese constantly tried to pressure POWs into making propaganda statements. Two among the prison population eventually acceded to the pressure. I noticed one of the two. He had stopped communicating, a behavioral trait that sent up a red flag. I implored him as best I could through the tap code to stay the course, but he did not. He was removed from our presence and collaborated with the enemy, gaining better treatment for himself. This was obviously disappointing, but in retrospect, none of us knows if and when we would give up under the unrelenting pressure. Fortunately, very few of our number went over to the other side.
While the first sign that a man’s resolve was disintegrating was the failure to communicate, the second was the failure to eat. After meals, our bowls were stacked on a table. If we saw that a man’s bowl still contained food, we knew he was endangering himself. We used whatever persuasive lingo we could contrive to urge him to eat, to hang in there. In most cases, this group “therapy” worked, and the prisoner got back on track. Yet, some POWs caused their demise through failure to eat.
Chapter Fifteen
VISIT TO CALCUTTA
For example, we could tap on one wall for fifteen minutes, acquiring a poem and then go to the opposite wall and repeat the message for the next guy, having rapidly committed the newly received item to memory.
IN THE FALL OF 1967, I relieved Jim Stockdale as the senior officer in Camp Vegas. Jim and some others had been transferred to another section called Alcatraz. In that capacity, my biggest challenge was keeping everybody on line, communicating, getting the word out. The North Vietnamese knew we valued this capability and were determined to stop it. They also continuously tried to identify individual POWs who might be lured into making a propaganda statement. Fortunately, no one under my command agreed to be seen by any of the various “peace” delegations who came to Hanoi. One of my directives was, “No one is to go out and see a delegation,” such as Jane Fonda.
We prided ourselves on our tough resistance posture, and, in my view, the North Vietnamese figured Camp Vegas wasn’t a promising source for their propaganda purposes. I did not totally originate the policy on POW behavior at Camp Vegas. Instead, it was in part an extension of Jim Stockdale’s initiatives, with some amplification by yours truly.
One dictum I authored had to do with withstanding pain. If it came to torture, I conveyed to the POWs, “Don’t hang in there until you lose your rationality. Have a cover story, but before you start using that cover story, endure as much pain as you can stand.” If a man’s rationality deteriorated, he would not be able to maintain his planned cover story, and the North Vietnamese would know he was lying and make life even more miserable for him, and for the rest of us.
Sadly, we did lose one of our POWs in my group, Air Force First Lieutenant (later Captain) Lance Sijan. He had evaded capture for a long time after being shot down but suffered from extreme exposure, a broken leg, gangrene, and other maladies. He was with us in Camp Vegas for about two weeks of great suffering. After hearing his painful moaning for several days, I exhorted the camp authorities to give him urgent medical attention, but to no avail. I never did get face to face with him, but we realized that, because of his condition, his days were numbered. He was removed from his cell still alive, but he was not returned when we were released. It was determined he died in captivity. He was given the Medal of Honor for his bravery and perseverance in avoiding capture. A hall at the Air Force Academy is named in his honor.
Each person had his own threshold for pain. One of my cell mates had an absolute fear of any pain whatsoever, for example. As the senior officer, I was, in practical terms, a cheerleader, trying to boost spirits whenever necessary. My cell mate, Tom Kirk, ultimately persevered.
I was a fan of the poet Sir Walter Scott. His lines, “The Stag at Eve had drunk his fill, / Where danced the moon on Mona’s rill, / And deep his midnight lair had made / In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade,” were favorites of mine, especially because they were written in the rhythmic phrasing of iambic pentameter. One of the mind games I played in an attempt to distance myself from the pain and physical misery I was experiencing was to compose poems in my head. I was no Sir Walter Scott. He was a genius. But I had time. One of my earliest efforts was, “Oh Tennessee, My Tennessee,” an ode to my home state, which I composed over a three-week period while in solitary confinement. After my release, I was asked to address the Tennessee state legislature and took the opportunity to recite the poem to the lawmakers. I didn’t garner great applause, but two weeks later I learned the poem had become the state poem of Tennessee. Tennessee doesn’t produce many poets, and the state did not have an official state poem, so it’s not as if “Oh Tennessee, My Tennessee” was going to earn me a Pulitzer. Besides, country music reigns in that part of the country. I felt honored by the gesture nonetheless and was happy I could enhance the image of my state, if only in a small way.
It was amazing how sharp our memories became in captivity. Three of us in Camp Vegas were designated to memorize the names of every POW we were certain was in the camp. I developed my list gradually and every third day would repeat the names to myself over and over. I maintained the list in groups of five, alphabetically. We got so skillful at this that, when a new name came to our attention, we could insert it in place and regroup the list, in “fives” again, in a flash.
Memorization was a big help in keeping us mentally sharp. When a POW passed on a new poem or some other writing, we would grab onto it eagerly and commit it to memory. I memorized Rudyard Kipling’s “Gunga Din” in its entirety along with other works by that great writer. Keep the mind working, that was the key.
I designed houses, replayed football games, reflew flights I had made, anything to keep the brain cells mobilized. For example, we could tap on one wall for fifteen minutes acquiring a poem and then go the opposite wall and repeat the message for the next guy, having rapidly committed the newly received item to memory.
Obviously, the average person in an everyday, normal environment simply doesn’t exercise his or her mind as we did in the prison camp. There is no need to. In the prisons cells of North Vietnam, it was a dire necessity.
One day I was caught placing a note in a special spot in a common area where POWs occasionally moved about—the outside bath stalls. The guards had suspected I might be a leader in promoting communication among prisoners, and placing the note was proof. Furious, they transferred me to a six-foot-square cell that was unventilated, unlighted, and had a tin roof. Temperatures were soaring to a hundred or more degrees during this time. Jim Stockdale had been sequestered there and later described it as a “torture pit.” We called it Calcutta, and I was there for two eternal months.
The pain
, solitude, oppressive heat, and loneliness took their toll on me. I forced myself to continue playing my mind games, creating poetry, building houses, remembering names and faces from my earlier years, and so forth. This helped get me through the ordeal. It was with a significant measure of relief that I was sent back to Camp Vegas. I found out later that I had been moved from Calcutta because they had another candidate they wanted to install in the black hole, Cdr. John McCain. McCain had gotten in some sort of trouble and had to be punished. It sounds like black humor, but I felt indebted to John who, at this writing, is an esteemed United States senator from Arizona, for relieving me in the torture pit. At Camp Vegas I was placed in a cell with my old roommate, Tom Kirk. It turned out that Tom’s earlier cell mate had been John McCain.
You had to fight the tendency to lapse into self-pity. The worst question you could ask yourself was, “Why me?” Moreover, you had to take it one day at a time. Each morning when I woke up I told myself, “Today is umpty-ump, in the month of umpty-ump, in the year of umpty-ump.” I was in my middle thirties and had enough experience to be a senior in the camp. Yet I was young enough to be healthy and vigorous, commodities that helped me withstand the poor diet, bad sanitation, and terrible treatment.
There’s no doubt my Naval Academy training helped me live up to my responsibilities as a senior officer.
Chapter Sixteen
PERSEVERING
We hope you are well. We are fine and have escaped the flu so far. We are beginning to have some spring like weather. Everyone is praying for you. Much Love, Mother & Dad
A NAGGING DEFICIENCY during our captivity was the absence of knowledge of what was happening in the world beyond ours. We didn’t learn about the first landing on the moon in 1969 until well after this historic milestone. We were, however, witness to the antiwar demonstrations that were plaguing America, which I considered a case of bad news being better than no news at all. One night in 1970, we were taken from our cells and seated apart from one another to view a movie of a demonstration in San Francisco. We read the placards people held up. One of them read, “Hey Dick, you can put a man on the moon, but you can’t stop the Vietnam War.” In subsequent communication we wondered what this meant. Dick, we figured, was Pres. Richard Nixon.
I said, “God, you think we really put a man on the moon?” I remembered that in 1967, before I was shot down, this was a goal; we wanted to have a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. I considered this too much of a technological feat within that time frame. We queried each other about this for months.
There had been a bombing halt as a result of peace talks in 1968, but when the bombing started up again in the spring of 1972, more flyers were shot down, and from them we confirmed that, indeed, the United States had put Neil Armstrong and his crew on the moon in July 1969. That’s nearly three years from the event to our learning about it.
Using amplifiers of very poor quality, the North Vietnamese blared propaganda speeches from the Voice of Vietnam for a half hour each morning and a half hour each afternoon. Hanoi Hannah was a featured performer for the network. She spoke in good English with a slight Asian accent, always emphasizing the discord that was raging in the United States. I learned about all the calamities and adverse events in America from Hanoi Hannah and the Voice of Vietnam. To me, though, I savored every word of it. Taking into account the source, I could derive a sense of how the war was progressing. The casualty counts were so outrageous, however, that we decided to divide the number provided by four.
We were issued a propaganda newspaper that described ongoing battles throughout the country. This, coupled with the broadcasts, and with our concerned doubts considered, helped us learn the course of the conflict. In effect, after two to three years, the North Vietnamese recognized that our resistance to torture and the concomitant pressures of captivity weren’t doing them much good in the brainwashing war. The propaganda briefings and the newspaper, they felt, would have to take up that cause.
I did not receive a letter from home until I’d been imprisoned for three years. Mail call was a haphazard affair, but it usually came once about every three months. I was able to write letters early on but not receive them. I was uncertain where Anne and the kids might be, so I addressed their letters to my mother and father in Nashville, hoping they would relay information to Anne. When I did get a letter, it was from my mother. I was exhilarated to hear from her, but her message was so bland and uninformative, the only satisfaction I derived from it was knowing they realized I was still alive. I’d been listed as missing in action (MIA) until late 1969, when, at the urging of Sen. Ted Kennedy and others, the North Vietnamese issued a list of our names.
In all my time in the Hanoi Hilton, I never heard from Anne, but I did learn in a letter from my parents that she had moved to California. The letters were brief and written in a proscribed form, with the content of the letter limited to a four- by five-inch block of lined space. My address was:
William Porter Lawrence 543032
Camp of Detention of U.S. Pilots
Captured in the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam
c/o Hanoi Post Office
Hanoi, D.R.V.
Inscribed to the left of the address my mother had written:
Air Mail
Via Moscow
U.S.S.R.
Here’s an example of one of the letters, written in script with a blue ball point pen, from my mother.
Dear Bill: We are all well. Hope and pray you are. We have had our first frost and cold weather past weekend. Bobby [my brother] & Brad [his son] came down Friday for V.U. [Vanderbilt]—KY [Kentucky] game on Saturday. KY won 14-7 in last 36 seconds on intercepted pass. V.U. has a 2-7 record. They are adding an Athletic Dept. next year. All send love, Dad and Mother.
Another letter from mom was carefully printed in capital letters. She wrote:
WE ENJOYED SO MUCH YOUR FINE LETTER OF JULY 23. WE IMMEDIATELY CALLED ANNE TO READ TO HER. WE ARE ALL WELL AND ACTIVE. AUNTIE WALLIS WAS BURIED LAST WEEK AFTER A LONG ILLNESS. 90 YRS. TOM MARRIED NEIGHBOR GIRL JUNE 6. TERRY STEELE WHO LIVES ACROSS HI-WAY. TOM GOT HIS DEGREE & WKS FOR 1ST AM. BANK. LOVE FROM ALL. MOM AND DAD. [September 25, 1970]
One more, in script:
We hope you are well. We are fine and have escaped the flu so far. We are beginning to have some spring like weather. Everyone is praying for you. Much Love. Mother & Dad.
Following is a sample of one of my letters to the folks. I made sure my handwriting was neat and legible to convey to them that my physical and mental status was OK:
Dear Mom and Dad: I’m fine and hope you are active and well. Have enjoyed very much your letters and Christmas color pictures. Tom’s wife is very charming and pretty. Await your news on where Bill’s [my son, Bill] in school now and what study fields he is in. Did Anne buy the house she lives in now in Solana Beach. I also would like to thank you for such tasty gift items. I surely hope that on Christmas most of your family is with you. Please send more pictures. Dad, enjoy your retirement. You earned it. Love to all. Bill
One more from me to them, this time in printed letters:
Don’t worry about me for I’m in fine shape in all respects. I hope you are in very good health and spirits, are enjoying life, and are able to travel much both in and out of USA. If Dad is retired now, an interesting project would be to write a family history. Dad, I would highly value your analysis and advice in helping Bill to make a decision on his college. I also thank you for the help I know you are giving Anne and the children. I wish you both late happy birthdays and many pleasant years ahead. Give all the family my love. Bill
The North Vietnamese delighted in giving us bad news collectively and individually. Navy lieutenant Edward Alvarez, who was imprisoned longer than any of us, had the terrible misfortune of being divorced by his wife and the enemy knowing it. With satisfaction, they informed Ev, a debilitating blow to any person in a position helpless to do anything about it. (Ev prevailed, however, and subsequently
became very successful as a consultant in medical qualifications for military retirement, remarried, and has been a dear friend over the years.)
Despite our miserable conditions and the sheer awfulness of being confined, we held up, determined to one day return home. We continued communicating, fighting torture, and caring for each other. And as the months and years passed, I believe that our captors developed a grudging respect for our toughness and resolve. Gradually, around 1969, when Ho Chi Min died, our treatment improved. A sailor, Doug Hegdahl, was released in a propaganda event in the summer of the same year, and he gave the U.S. government a nearly comprehensive list of all POWs as well as conditions of treatment.
One guard, however, never changed his coarse mind-set toward us. We called him “Big Ugh.” He had a vicious streak, which manifested itself when he struck us on the head with his keys. He never changed. But the others did. I came to believe that, under any other circumstances, the Vietnamese are an inherently gentle people.
As I mentioned earlier, we did have two American prisoners who opted to cooperate with the enemy in exchange for better treatment: Col. Ed Miller, USMC, and Capt. Gene Wilbur, U.S. Navy. In addition, three other POWs were inclined to follow Miller and Wilbur. No one knows how he or she would respond to the adverse conditions inherent in being a prisoner of war. I hold no animosity toward these men. We tried very hard to keep them in the fold, but they refused. We did succeed in getting the other three to stay.
I’ve been asked about the usefulness of the Code of Conduct that outlines behavior expected of captives. We were “bound” to provide name, rank, serial number, and date of birth, with the understanding we would resist giving any other information to the utmost of our ability. However, following an evaluation of the code after the war, the word “bound” was eliminated from the text, easing somewhat the rule of disclosure. It gives a prisoner just a little more leeway in his resistance posture. The code still works, but I would have preferred keeping the word “bound” in the text.
Tennessee Patriot Page 17
