Project Homecoming - Part 4

Life in the Hanoi Hilton

As I listened to Alex Bowman (not his real name) tell of the unending loneliness and isolation, I was floored by the resourcefulness and initiative used by our men in captivity.  Faced with limited space for exercise (many times not enough ceiling height to stand and a room not long enough to even stretch out in, they used an infinite variety of isotonic exercises to keep a degree of muscle tone.  In spite of overwhelming odds and the improbability of a successful escape, they were determined to keep up their body strength to enable an escape if an opportunity, however slight, presented itself.  Alex told of many who DID escape their captors for brief times... Some did so repeatedly, though beaten unmercifully with each recapture.  A number of those were never seen again.  They undoubtedly died at the hands of their captors.  With the weakened condition of every single prisoner because of malnutrition and daily beatings, it is incredible that they had the will to escape, much less the physical ability.  But it was part of the Fighting Man's Code and it gave each man an inner strength to outlast and outwit his enemy.

In those long, endless hours of solitary confinement, each occupied himself in different ways.  Faith in God played a huge part in the lives of each man.  You've heard it said that, "There are no fox hole atheists!" It was very much true there.  To a man, they were helpless to do anything but put their survival in the hands of a merciful God.  A small mark of that is that their messages, tapped quietly in the night, ended in the three letter code, "PTL."  That stood for, "PRAISE THE LORD!"  Even now, after all those years, that still brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.  It was a desperate time and only the grace of God would get them through it.

One of the remarkable ways men overcame the isolation and boredom of solitary confinement was to use their mind.  Men who had loved carpentry in the "real world", now carefully drew detailed blueprints in their mind of some pet building project, then lovingly built it in their mind, right down to the last nail and coat of paint.  Whatever had been their professions and hobbies in freedom, these now continued unfettered in their minds.  The North Vietnamese could do whatever they wanted with these men's frail and emaciated bodies, but they could not bend their minds.  Alex told me that they all used this same technique when undergoing the daily beatings by their interrogators.  When the pain began, they would just "tune out" of this physical world and enter a mental world of their own making.  It was one of the reasons that they were able to  hold out under unimaginable physical and psychic pressures.

Surprisingly, the endless interrogations and beatings were NOT aimed at gaining military secrets (which these brave men were simply NOT going to provide), but propaganda material.  They sought "confessions" of guilt for military actions agains the NVA and Vietcong.  This was in a time when public opinion back in the "real world" was turning against U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.  Jane Fonda made sympathy trips to Hanoi.  Other well-known U.S. citizens spoke out against the war and branded U.S. servicemen as war criminals.  The psychological war waged against our POWs by the North Vietnamese was aimed at getting our men to agree with this line of thinking.  It was all part of their effort to bring enough pressure on the U.S. government from within to end the war successfully for North Vietnam.  Though we now know that the North Vietnamese were successful in bringing enough pressure in the U.S. to end the war, they didn't succeed in breaking American POWs to do it.  They endured torture, terror, ridicule and shame from the enemy.  Worst of all, they had to endure the daily hurtful words of their own people as those U.S. press reports, TV and radio messages were painstakingly presented and played back to unbelieving American POWs by their captors.  It was a terrible, miserable time for our men in captivity.  But though they were stooped and broken physically by the Vietnamese, they stood very tall in the annals of American fighting men.  They never betrayed their country.  They never gave the enemy any useful military information.  When they were faced with certain death from an enemy who had the knowledge, ability and willingness to end life a millimeter at a time, they held out until they had reached the point of losing all control.  Then, and only then, did they give them some small tidbit of meaningless information that was enough to give them a moment's reprieve.  It was a daily battle and they were winning it mentally!

As the POWs were herded into the single facility at the Hanoi Hilton, the beatings and severe mistreatment continued, but at least they had companionship in their misery.  (The Hanoi Hilton was an evil old French colonial prison known to the Vietnamese as "Hao Lo", but to the Americans who suffered there it was known at "the Hanoi Hilton."

As I debriefed Alex Bowman to this point, I turned to one of my specific tasks as a debriefer... to learn as much as possible about other POWs, especially those who were now missing.  When I first asked Alex to give me names of those he remembered, he just passed off the request with the remark that, "Major ______ had all of that information."  I didn't catch the significance of that statement and in a moment or two, I asked again for information on others.  That's when Alex told me just how sophisticated the 4th Allied POW Wing had become.  They had actually designated several individuals to act as "memory banks" for all such important information.  Recognizing that there would be an exhaustive search for all missing men, they had given this specific duty to several men with above average memories.  They painstakingly memorized and rehearsed daily the names, serials numbers, aircraft, date and events of shootdown, and other known  information that were gleaned from every single POW in the Hanoi Hilton.  During the debriefing process, these memory bank men had simply "dumped" their data for the debriefing team.  It contained the name of every single downed airman that anyone had known about from the time they were themselves downed in combat.  There were dozens of names of men that didn't make it to the Hanoi Hilton, but in every case, the details of their story gave circumstances that resulted in their probable death, either in the ejection itself or at the hands of their captors.  Several who had been known to make multiple escape attempts fell into this category.  In a few moments, by the use of these "memory banks", the men of the 4th Allied POW Wing made certain that no one would be left behind.  Though much uncertainty has been expressed by families of the MIAs and by various people in the news media since that day, it is my opinion that not one of the missing is alive today.

Next time... "Wine tasting" at the Hanoi Hilton

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