Two Souls Indivisible (2 page)

Of course, some of the captured Americans did not return. At least eighty-four died in Southeast Asian prisons and jungle camps, usually from torture, untreated wounds, or execution. But the survival rate was high, given the abject living conditions and the sheer length of their confinement. Unlike common criminals in civilian prisons, the POWs were not serving a defined sentence. Their confinement was unknown and indefinite. Until Vietnam, no U.S. military prisoner had been held in captivity for more than four years, but the Vietnam War saw more than three hundred Americans incarcerated for five or more years; two men were held for nine years. Their experience had no precedent in American history.

The prisoners in Hanoi had a very different profile from those of the grunts fighting in South Vietnam. They were professional soldiers and tended to be older college graduates whose maturity and experience sustained them through the lowest moments of their ordeal. These officers found unity and strength by developing an elaborate military command structure, a secret communications network, and a rigorous code of conduct, and many returned with extraordinary tales of survival, overcoming years of abuse and privation while finding value in their own suffering.

But in the many personal narratives of courage and defiance, the story of Porter Halyburton and Fred Cherry stands apart. They were locked in the same cell because the Vietnamese believed their racial differences would torment them—a not entirely naive assumption. While the two officers were separated by age, rank, and military service, each man's race had produced a dramatically different life experience. Cherry, descended from a Virginia slave, was a pioneer in the integration of the armed services; though sustaining many racist slights along the way, he became one of the Air Force's best combat pilots. Halyburton, whose forefathers fought for the Confederacy, was raised in the segregated South, where blacks were poor, deferential, and inferior; his was not the virulent racism of the demagogue but the more insidious bigotry of condescension and paternalism.

Each man, ultimately, carved a distinctive legacy in Vietnam during a confinement of seven and a half years. Cherry was renowned for his resolve against the Vietnamese, who showed no mercy in trying to convince him that he should repudiate "the American imperialists" and support the colored people of Asia. Cherry suffered as much physical pain as any prisoner who survived, yet he appears to be the only tortured POW who never made concessions to the enemy. Halyburton was respected as a creative scholar, who invented such games as invisible bridge—played without cards—and whose imagination allowed him to find a meaningful life in the bleakest of settings.

Halyburton and Cherry returned home to very different circumstances, which mirrored the range of experience for all the POWs on their repatriation. Halyburton's wife, Marty, was initially told that he had been killed in action, and a memorial service was held to honor his memory. Sixteen months later, learning he was alive, she remained loyal to him, speaking out on his behalf and becoming stronger and more independent from the adversity. But Cherry's marriage, already on shaky ground when he was captured, did not survive. His wife quickly turned on him, spent his money, and splintered the family. Both the Halyburton and Cherry families learned, through years of estrangement, fear, and hope, that the inmates in Hanoi were not the only prisoners. "We were all POWs," said Cherry's son, Fred Jr.

Halyburton and Cherry were in the same cell for less than eight months. They were grateful to have a roommate, though each was initially wary of the other. Cherry thought Halyburton was a French spy, while Halyburton doubted that a black could be a pilot. But they overcame their misgivings and preconceptions and found common ground in this uncommon environment—a friendship in extremis that inspired many of their fellow prisoners. As Giles Norrington, a Navy pilot shot down in 1968, recalled, "By the time I arrived, Porter and Fred had already achieved legendary status ... The respect, mutual support, and affection that had developed between them were the stuff of sagas. Their stories, both as individuals and as a team, were a great source of inspiration."

Many of the POWs had to cross racial, cultural, or social boundaries to exist in such close confines. But Halyburton and Cherry did more than coexist—they rescued each other. Each man credits the other with saving his life. One needed to be saved physically; the other, emotionally. In doing so, they forged a brotherhood that no enemy could shatter.

Fred Vann Cherry was a five-foot-seven flying ace, built like a whip, whose calm demeanor and steady nerves were required in and out of the cockpit. Entering the Air Force in 1951, he was a pioneer in the military's integration, a black officer who performed with distinction in the Korean War, manned critical posts at the height of the Cold War, and now, in 1965, was leading bombing raids in Southeast Asia. Yet he was still an anomaly—the Air Force had only twenty-one hundred black officers, 1.6 percent of the total—and over the years he had faced many racial snubs, some overt, some subtle. His response was always the same: to turn the other way, to ignore them, to never jeopardize his standing in the Air Force. In short, to keep quiet.

He had been in Japan since 1961, serving with the 35th Tactical Fighter Squadron, and had spent three years rotating into South Korea, where he had week-long assignments sitting on "nuclear alert." If ordered, he could be airborne in less than four minutes, his job to fly over enemy territory and drop a nuclear weapon. Despite the high stakes, the assignment was insufferably dull, forcing Cherry to sit in a room wearing his flight suit for days at a time, playing Ping-Pong or poker, watching movies, and waiting. When his week in Korea was over, he would return to an air base in Japan, where he continued training until he was sent back on alert.

Cherry was supposed to return to the United States in 1963, but he asked for an extension because he wanted to fly a new jet fighter, the F-105 Thunderchief, the fastest tactical plane in the Air Force and able to fly nearly 1,800 miles without refueling. The 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, which consisted of three squadrons, including Cherry's, was grateful that Fred remained in japan. He became an expert on the Thunderchief's weapons; he was selected to write the plane's guidebook for the wing, and he also wrote a favorably reviewed article about the F-105 for a military publication,
Pacaf Flyer.

Staying in Japan suited Cherry's wife and their four children. While they often faced bigotry in America—they moved overseas before the landmark civil rights legislation of 1964—they now lived in relative harmony on American air bases. The family had a beloved
mama-san,
who cooked for them, washed and ironed their clothes, and bathed the children. Cherry rode his kids on a motor scooter, taking them to baseball practice and judo, karate, and swimming lessons. (The last was particularly important to Fred, who couldn't swim a stroke, even though he often flew over water.) The military's schools had excellent American teachers, and on Christmas Eve a helicopter would land in the American compound and drop off Santa Claus, bearing gifts for all the children.

There were other benefits in Japan, whose citizens appreciated America's role in rebuilding the country after it had been conquered in World War II. Other countries, they believed, would have treated them harshly, whereas U.S. servicemen now protected them. Of course, the servicemen's money also made them popular.

The combat pilots themselves had a cultlike following, their aerial bravado inspiring respect, even awe. Who else flew high-powered, multimillion-dollar jets through the dark skies, only to encounter Soviet MiGs or antiaircraft fire or surface-to-air missiles, before dropping their own bombs in the name of freedom and democracy. American aviators were considered "the tip of the spear" for the entire fighting force, and when they swaggered through the doors of a club or restaurant, crowds parted and eyes widened. Their uniforms alone projected a kind of macho authority: olive jumpsuits zipped up the front gripped every muscle and were creased at the crotch from parachute straps, while zippered pockets lined the legs, arms, and chests. Unshaven, their faces and hands streaked with grime and sweat from their latest mission, the airmen spoke loudly, caroused freely, and reveled in their own glory. They had a saying, most often uttered after several rounds of drinks: "A good fighter pilot can outfight, outfly, and outfuck anyone else in the world."

Cherry enjoyed this sybaritic life. In the Korean War, he discovered that prostitution was legal there, though some "cathouses" didn't allow blacks. By 1965, prostitution had been nominally outlawed in Korea, but brothels continued to flourish. Japan had plenty of attractions as well. Bachelors in the military lived in rented mansions that accommodated raucous, glass-shattering parties, complete with drinking contests, fistfights, and attractive women.

The womanizing was part of a military subculture, particularly in Asia, where mistresses were common and infidelity the norm; the men who risked their lives were considered entitled. As Ellsworth Bunker, a US. ambassador in Saigon during the Vietnam War, observed, "There's a lot of plain and fancy screwing going on around here, but I suppose it's all in the interest of the war effort."

The military wives, of course, believed otherwise, and Cherry's philandering contributed to the tensions in his own marriage. But for a man whose race made him an outsider, his embrace of the military's bacchanalian customs contributed to his acceptance among his peers.

Cherry's greatest passion was piloting jet fighters, and in this sense his decision to stay in Japan was vindicated. In 1964 the Johnson administration, seeking to thwart the Communist insurgents in Indochina, increased its military personnel in South Vietnam from 10,000 to 23,000. It also called for air raids into North Vietnam and Laos, inching America into a full-scale but undeclared war.

Cherry had not seen combat since the Korean War, where he flew fifty-two sorties, received two air medals, and was part of the 58th Fighter Bomber Group, which received a Distinguished Unit Citation for "extraordinary heroism." He passed the succeeding years training, instructing, and simulating attacks, earning top marks for gunnery and bombing, and receiving promotions and praise. In the middle 1950s, at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, the wing commander was a broad-shouldered colonel named Murray Bywater. When he flew himself to air bases across country, he had to be accompanied by a second aircraft, its pilot responsible for the flight plan. Bywater chose Fred Cherry, surprising many that he would pick a black man for such a highly visible job. But as he recalled years later, Cherry "was the best pilot in the wing."

By 1964 Cherry was a flight leader, who exercised significant control on a mission. A single flight consists of four aircraft in staggered formation, with two leads followed by two wingmen. This synchronization provides maximum support and protection for the entire flight, but it also places the power in the hands of the lead pilots: where they go, their wingmen go.

Cherry's race increased his pressures to perform. Before 1948, the military had segregated blacks for many reasons; not least was the belief that they were unfit to lead whites into battle. In 1964 the dearth of black officers ensured that it rarely happened. Cherry was an exception, and he gladly defied the racist stereotypes of black commanders. Not only did he lead whites into bat tie, whites pleaded to be in his flight, just as white students asked to be in his gunnery classes. Cherry's nickname, Chief, connoted his authority and respect. He also dazzled his commanders—one said he moved through the air "like an eel." Major Bobby J. Mead, in an evaluation, wrote on March 6, 1964: "I consider Captain Cherry one of the most effective officers of his rank that I have worked with during my entire Air Force career." As Ed Kenny, one of his early gunnery instructors, said, "Fred always had that little man in him that kept wanting him to do better."

For Cherry's part, social statements were incidental to his ambition. What motivated him was the excitement of airborne combat, in which do-or-die engagements were the ultimate test of skill, daring, and courage. Like all great fighter pilots, he never had any qualms about his work. He believed that if a pilot couldn't pull the trigger, he should fly cargo planes. Cherry otherwise had few hobbies, pastimes, or interests. Flying combat missions was what he did best, and Vietnam gave him one more chance.

While the U.S. Navy could send jets from carriers off the coast of Vietnam, the Air Force could not do the same from distant Japan. It needed cooperation from Thailand, where in 1964 the Americans turned primitive air fields in Korat and Takhli into crude bases. Air Force personnel built wooden hooches on stilts to avoid the cobras, waded through six-inch puddles that formed in minutes from fierce downpours, brought in air-conditioned trailer homes for senior officers, and cut through the thick vegetation that covered the runway lights. The work was difficult and sometimes hazardous, but it put American aircraft within striking distance of Vietnam.

The initial bombing runs sought to destroy supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Then, in February 1965, after an attack on an American compound and helicopter base in South Vietnam, the targets moved to North Vietnam. The next month, the Johnson administration launched the bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder, its name derived from a hymn; it would continue, with incremental expansions and occasional pauses, for three years. By April, the Air Force and Navy were flying 1,500 sorties a month against the North, which increased to 4,000 in September. In June, the United States had 75,000 combat troops in South Vietnam. By the end of the next month, that number had increased to 125,000.

Cherry knew little about the conflict except that he was fighting the Communists, that the South Vietnamese had a right to choose their own form of government, and that initially everything was very secret. The bombings were categorized as "classified missions," so classified that he didn't tell his wife, Shirley, who assumed he was still sitting on alert in Korea. (He eventually told her the truth.)