He added, “I was imprisoned nearly seven and [a] half years. I never had any doubt that someday I would return home again. With a philosophy of living for today and let tomorrow take care of itself, plus the kind and encouraging words of other POWs, long days were turned into short weeks and short years. My faith in God never wavered and His will was that I return home again.”
The prisoners exploited for Vietnamese propaganda included Thanh Hoa Bridge survivor Jim Stockdale, who broke a window pane and disfigured his face to avoid being paraded before an international press corps to demonstrate “the lenient and humane treatment” the Communists claimed.
A few prisoners found more public methods of resistance. Commander Jerry Denton, whose Intruder was blown out of the sky by its own bombs near Thanh Hoa in 1965, was dragged before socialist film crews. He was told what to say: “I get adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate medical care.” He did, then added, “Whatever the position of my government is, I support it.” All the while he was blinking his eyes in the Morse Code pattern T-O-R-T-U-R-E, confirming for US Naval Intelligence for the first time that American POWs were in fact being tortured.11
The guards moved the prisoners frequently, some as many as six times in seven years. Often the Americans did not know their actual location, so they gave the dozen or so prisons names of their own. Most common was the “Hanoi Hilton,” which was actually the old colonial Maison Central, with integral compounds called “Heartbreak Hotel” and “New Guy Village.” Other locales were “The Zoo,” “Dogpatch,” “The Briar Patch,” and “The Plantation.” Some were more than a hundred miles from Hanoi.
The Vietnamese were especially attentive to senior men and hard-core juniors. Eleven of the blackest criminals—dedicated communicators and resisters—fetched up at the Zoo, a separate compound near the Hilton. Seven had been captured in 1965, so their reputation as recalcitrants was well established. These eleven were kept in solitary confinement from 1967 to 1969, the boredom broken only by repeated torture sessions. In time the “Alcatraz Gang” defined the nature of torture. The prisoners distinguished between mistreatment—merely being kept in solitary in leg irons—and genuine torture. Being hung from the ceiling with ropes, with their arms nearly pulled from their sockets, made the torture list.
Air Force Captain George McKnight and Navy Lieutenant (Junior Grade) George Coker staged an extremely rare escape in October 1967, swimming downstream in the Red River one night until they were recaptured. Severely beaten, they went to Alcatraz for two and a half years.
Eight of the “gang” were Navy, and some knew each other. Jim Stockdale and Harry Jenkins were friends from Oriskany’s Air Wing 16. Stockdale and Jerry Denton had both been test pilots. Bob Shumaker and Nels Tanner were from the same Coral Sea fighter squadron, although they had been shot down nineteen months apart, in 1965 and 1966. Commander James Mulligan, an Enterprise Skyhawk pilot, had been captured in 1966. Rounding out the Thanh Hoa connection, Howie Rutledge had ejected from his crippled Bon Homme Richard Crusader west of the city in late 1965.
Ten of the eleven “gang” members survived the ordeal, including Air Force F-4 pilot Sam Johnson, a future Texas congressman, Skyraider pilot George McKnight, and George Coker. Major Ron Storz, an Air Force forward air controller (FAC), died in captivity in 1970.
As the first Navy pilot downed over the Thanh Hoa Bridge, for a time Commander Bill Franke was the senior prisoner at “Heartbreak Hotel.” A SAM had shot down his Phantom in August 1965. A “new guy” in the “Thunderbird” prison (named for the Vegas casino) related an eerie experience to Franke. “I went to your memorial service on the Midway flight deck a few days after you were killed in action. I want you to know the chaplain prayed you right into heaven.”12
At “Heartbreak” torture was rare, but the pressure was ever present. To alleviate the tension, Franke entertained his men at the expense of a guard dubbed “Dipstick.” The Phantom skipper would say, “Good morning, Dipstick. It looks like a beautiful day for a bombing.” Besides the massive changes involving loss of freedom, like many POWs Franke missed the little things, like simply being able to turn a doorknob or having a milkshake.13
Among the blackest offenses a POW could commit was communicating with another American. The guards glimpsed Risner tearing up a note but could not prove it. When he refused to produce the remains, he was taken to “quiz,” as the prisoners called interrogation. When he refused to admit he had been communicating, he was accused of “an aggressive attitude” as “an active combatant.”
A guard forced Risner onto the floor, turned him on his stomach, and expertly applied the ropes. “In a matter of minutes one arm was completely wrapped and the same incredible pain had begun. When he started on the other arm, it triggered all the agony of that night in the past.”14
At Hoa Lo, Risner was tortured for thirty-two days before his strength failed him. He was coerced into signing a “confession” of war crimes. But he returned to his leadership position among the POWs despite three years in solitary, maintaining contact via the tap code.
A pillar of the POW community was Oriskany’s CAG, Commander Jim Stockdale, downed on a weather-aborted strike briefed against the Dragon’s Jaw in 1965. Bill Franke, who followed Stockdale into captivity a month later, was encouraged to learn that his fellow test pilot was in the same prison. He considered Stockdale “the smartest human being I have ever known.” Some effective leaders led largely by example; Jim Stockdale was a tough customer who led by both example and intellect.15
As the only wing commander to survive a combat ejection, Stockdale was selected for special treatment. “I got handled roughly because they knew I was putting out instructions on how to resist.” He spent about four years in solitary but maintained leadership via the tap code. He was tortured fifteen times and learned the nuances of “the rope trick.”
“They had a trained guard who put you through it,” he recalled. “No American ever beat the ropes.” Some died in the torture room, and some were simply murdered by a Cuban sadist.
The torturers broke Stockdale’s left leg, but he charitably wrote it off as unintentional. With rare objectivity he wrote, “‘Pigeye’ was a good reliable worker who had common sense, the sort of guy you would like to share heavy work on the farm with. He was even that way as a torture guard, seldom erratic. I always thought he felt sorry for breaking my leg.”16
Stockdale added, “The main thing was to shut off blood circulation in your upper body. They’d weave manila ropes around your arms until you were smitten with pain, your shoulders distended. In time they’d proceed to bend you double as they pulled the ropes up. You realized you wouldn’t be able to tie your pajama strings for a month because of the nerve damage in your arms. There’s the pain and the mental problem of knowing that, if you want to save the use of your arms, you have to give up at some point. And finally, he puts his foot on the back of your head with your face down on the concrete so you have claustrophobia and you’re puking. So somewhere you say, ‘I submit.’”17
Through it all Jim Stockdale lived with the persistent dread of discovery: the Vietnamese might learn of his role in the second, imaginary Tonkin Gulf incident. “If my captors had read my name in almost any American newspaper… after the Tonkin Gulf episodes, the simple confession they might be able to torture out of me would be the biggest Communist propaganda scoop of the decade: ‘American Congress Commits to War in Vietnam on the Basis of an Event That Did Not Happen.’”18
As Stockdale capsulized, “L. B. Johnson hoodwinked the United States people and Congress into passing a joint resolution giving him war-making powers in Southeast Asia on the basis of an event that never took place.”19
In September 1969, four years after his shoot-down, Stockdale, the Stanford philosopher, realized that no matter how dire the situation, there was always an option. He opted out.
Previously Stockdale had disfigured himself to prevent the Viets from parading him for propaganda purposes. He suffere
d terribly for his rebellion. But now, with another senior officer purge pending, he felt he could resist no more. He broke a window, grasped a shard of glass, and began cutting his veins. As the blood flowed, he collapsed.
The guards found Stockdale bleeding out onto the filthy floor. Rather than let the senior air pirate die, which would have caused them much grief from their political masters, they took him to the dispensary, where he recovered. Jim Stockdale’s attempted self-sacrifice may have convinced the Communists that brutality had its limits.
Ho Chi Minh died that month, and the torture ended shortly thereafter. One wonders whether Ho had been the driving force behind the torture. We shall probably never know.
The prisoners faced more than three additional years in Hanoi, but they had the tempered emotional steel to survive. Their mantra was “unity over self.” Among them were men like Air Force Captain Guy Gruters, a FAC shot down twice in two months. He was captured in December 1967. Gruters told his fellow POWs, “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”20
While the US government tried to ignore or minimize the POW issue, their brothers in arms always remembered the prisoners. VA-56 adopted one unique method during Midway’s 1972–1973 cruise: every pilot’s name on an A-7 Corsair II was matched with the name of a POW stenciled below, starting with the skipper’s jet. On Commander Lew Chatham’s NF-401 was the name of Lieutenant Paul Galanti, a former Hancock A-4 squadron-mate of Chatham’s shot down in June 1966.
Galanti, Stockdale, Risner, Franke, Gruters, and the other surviving POWs returned from North Vietnamese captivity in February 1973 and gradually got on with their lives when their physical and emotional injuries had healed into scars.
At the same time the Chinese released Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Robert J. Flynn, an A-6 BN shot down in northern North Vietnam on August 21, 1967. Three of the four A-6 Intruders VA-196 launched from USS Constellation that day were shot down during an Alpha strike into the Hanoi area, two by flak and one by a MiG. Flynn was one of the three crewmen to survive.* He was marched into China and imprisoned in Beijing. Tortured and alone, he spent five and a half years in solitary confinement.
“Of the 2,032 days he spent in captivity, 2,030 were in solitary confinement, longer than any US military service member in history, according to the POW network. It was his faith that kept him sane and courageous in dire, painful circumstances, he told the Pensacola News Journal in 2008.… Three times, Flynn endured extended handcuff torture—periods of seven, 30, and 60 days with his hands twisted behind his back.
“‘I figured out what I had to do my job,’ he said. ‘I had to remember God, duty, honor, country, family and self. Without God, there’s nothing. And if I couldn’t face my country, then I’m no good to my family or myself. So I worried about God, and the rest fell into place.’”21 Although he suffered severe emotional problems for years, Flynn stayed in the Navy, retired as a commander, and died in May 2014 at the age of seventy-six.
The POWs’ shipmates, brothers in arms, and their families were absolutely delighted to have them back. Their valor amidst the most trying circumstances and physical degradation was one of the few bright and shining moments of the entire American Vietnam experience.
* The squadron CO, Commander Leo T. Profilet, and his BN, Lieutenant Commander William M. Hardman, were captured and imprisoned by the North Vietnamese. They were released in 1973. Killed were Lieutenant Commander Forrest G. Trembley and his BN, Lieutenant (junior grade) Dain V. Scott, and Flynn’s pilot, Lieutenant Commander Jimmy D. Buckley.
Two Air Force F-105s were also shot down about the same time that day over Hanoi and the pilots were killed: Major Merwin L. Morrill and First Lieutenant Lynn K. Powell.
CHAPTER 16
NIXON AND KISSINGER
The Dragon’s Jaw was still standing when Richard M. Nixon was inaugurated president of the United States in January 1969. Nixon’s goal was to gradually pull America out of Vietnam. In effect, he wanted to perform a military maneuver known as an “armed withdrawal.” To do so effectively, the Americans needed to keep applying military pressure to keep the forces that remained from being overrun.
Nixon had built his political career as a staunch anti-Communist, so his focus was foreign affairs. He brought with him into office in 1969 as his national security adviser a Harvard political scientist, Dr. Henry Kissinger, who was a believer in realpolitik. Nixon and Kissinger saw opportunities to improve relations with the Soviets and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). With Kissinger’s help, “he would play China against the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union against China, and both against North Vietnam.”1
Nixon and Kissinger took personal control of American foreign policy, largely cutting Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird out of policy discussions. “So closely did the two work together that they are sometimes referred to as ‘Nixinger.’ Together, they used the National Security Council staff to concentrate power in the White House—that is to say, within themselves.”2
Kissinger knew something about Vietnam. He had toured South Vietnam for two weeks in October and November 1965 and spent ten days there in July 1966 and a few days in October 1966 as a guest of US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who was an old friend. Kissinger came away convinced that military victories in Vietnam were meaningless “unless they brought about a political reality that could survive our ultimate withdrawal.” In 1967 he mediated a peace initiative between Washington and Hanoi. Nothing came of it, of course, but Kissinger was learning the players.3
Kissinger was a naturalized American citizen. With his family, he fled Nazi Germany at the age of fifteen in 1938. He learned English—all the rest of his life he spoke with a serious German accent—and grew up in Upper Manhattan. After high school Kissinger enrolled in the City College of New York, studying accounting and working part time to pay the tuition and support himself. He excelled as a part-time student but was drafted into the US Army in 1943 at the age of twenty. On June 19, apparently while still in basic training in South Carolina, he became a naturalized citizen. Recognizing brains when it saw them, the Army sent Private Kissinger to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania to study engineering. The program was canceled, and he was assigned to the 84th Infantry Division, where his fluency in his native German got him into military intelligence. He saw combat during the Battle of the Bulge.
As the American army advanced into Germany, Private Kissinger was put in charge of the administration of the city of Krefeld. Within eight days he established a civilian administration.4
Promoted to sergeant, he was assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) and put in charge of a team in Hanover to track down Gestapo officers and other saboteurs. He performed so well that he was awarded a Bronze Star. Still a sergeant, Kissinger was made commandant of the Bensheim metro CIC detachment responsible for the de-Nazification of the district, with absolute authority and powers of arrest. He was just twenty-two years old.5
After his discharge from the Army in 1946 Kissinger went to Harvard, earning an AB, an MA, and a PhD. As a faculty member, he consulted on foreign policy with various government agencies, including the Johnson administration.
As Kissinger saw it, America’s foreign policy problems were Russia, China, and Vietnam. Strategic disarmament talks had been scheduled under the Johnson administration, but the United States pulled out to protest the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
In February 1969 Kissinger entered into secret negotiations with North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho, the fifth-ranking member of the Hanoi politburo, at a villa outside Paris. Negotiations revealed how far apart the two sides were. The North’s position was that the United States must unconditionally withdraw on a fixed date and abandon the South Vietnamese government of President Thieu as a precondition for further negotiations. The United States proposed a mutual withdrawal of military forces, the neutralization of Cambodia, and a mixed electoral commission to supervise elections in South Viet
nam. The sides were so far apart that the weekly meetings came to nothing. “We did not yet understand that Hanoi’s leaders were interested in victory, not a cease-fire, and in guaranteed political control, not a role in free elections.”6
In the hope that the Soviets could somehow be induced to help influence the North Vietnamese, Kissinger suggested to Nixon that an approach be made to Moscow “on a broad front. But the Vietnam War was a major obstacle.” It turned out that the Soviets were very interested in beginning negotiations with the United States regardless of what happened in Vietnam, but this approach led nowhere. Kissinger summed up, “The aborted Vance mission showed that Moscow would not risk its relation with Hanoi—and the leadership of global Communism—to engage itself in ending the war. And, in truth, its influence was limited. Hanoi would not circumscribe its freedom of action by negotiating under Soviet tutelage with the risk that Moscow might sacrifice some of its interests for superpower relations.”7
The truth was that Hanoi felt it had a winning hand. On August 11, 1969, Communist forces attacked more than a hundred cities, towns, and bases across South Vietnam. There was a war on and no diplomatic exit looming in the shadows. Nixon stopped the troop withdrawals and met with American domestic outrage. This played to Hanoi’s sense that eventually America’s military efforts in Vietnam would become politically impossible… in the United States.8
At the time the United States didn’t even have diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. The Communists under Mao Zedong had won the Chinese Civil War in 1949, driven the Nationalists to the island of Taiwan, and proclaimed a People’s Republic. But the United States continued to recognize Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan as the legitimate ruler of China.
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