Two Souls Indivisible (22 page)

Lilly wasn't surprised. When Cherry roomed with Halyburton, Lilly had heard Fred struggling to breathe while Porter tapped updates on his condition. But now Cherry's resilience and resourcefulness—his ability to endure unimaginable pain, defy his captors, and still assist fellow prisoners—took on a mythic, superhuman quality.

"The V were demanding all would write a biography which would lead to confessions of crimes," Lilly recalled. "All eventually wrote something, except Fred. To my knowledge, he never gave in and wrote what the V wanted. [When] the V finally realized he was going to die before he would write, they let him off the hook. This is the only time that I know of that anyone outlasted the V ... Fred did not comply and he did not die or lose his mind. In so doing, he became a legend to the POWs."

After leaving Cherry, Halyburton was blindfolded and driven to a mountainous region near the town of Xom Ap Lo, thirty-five miles west of Hanoi. He thought he had already seen the worst Vietnamese prisons, but he was about to discover a new standard of primitive living. The compound was configured like a tic-tac-toe grid, with high concrete walls enclosing nine different brick buildings, each with four tiny cells, about eight feet square. A built-in bed board and a narrow foxhole, dug out in case of an air raid, left little open floor space. There was no electricity, no plumbing, no place to walk around, and no medic. Meals consisted of rice, the summer heat turned the cells into steam baths, and the prison's remote location attracted the surliest guards, who could punish inmates without restraint. The Americans had a fitting name for this slice of hell: the Briarpatch.

Halyburton was often handcuffed, given just enough slack to relieve himself. The dark cell obscured alien matter in his food, including the cockroach he once bit. The foxhole bred mosquitoes. At one point he developed a bad cold and used a small towel as a handkerchief. Unable to wash it, he hung up the mucus-covered cloth at night so the ants would clean it off.

Hygiene, however, was the least of his problems. The Vietnamese introduced a Make Your Choice program; the Americans could "choose" cooperation or defiance. One would lead to good treatment and possibly early release; the other, to torture and possibly death. This style of interrogation had already been used on Halyburton; his answers would determine if he were sent to "a better place or worse place." The main differences now were that the Vietnamese wanted damning statements that could be used against America in a public forum, and they were willing to inflict far greater punishment to extort them.

The Briarpatch commander, whose accent earned him the nickname Frenchy, carried out the program with gusto. He was assisted by certain guards, such as McGoo and Slugger, who would force prisoners to run barefoot and blindfolded through the compound or would drag them with a noose around their neck. Even a "chow girl" nicknamed Flower demanded bows from the Americans. But the most notorious interrogator was Bug, also called Mr. Blue for the color of his uniform. Mr. Blue was short and fat, his wandering right eye—clouded white by a cataract—evoking scorn and terror. He was also emotionally combustible, constantly jabbing his right index finger and harping, "You have murder my mother."

He began his torture sessions with Air Force Captain Paul Kari and proceeded through the ranks. J. B. McKamey. Everett Alvarez. Tom Barrett. Scotty Morgan. All were brutalized, their screams heard day and night. Halyburton heard the cries, and when he was called, he was terrified.

Sitting behind a felt-covered table, Bug was waiting for him when he entered. The American sat on a stool as two guards stood nearby. Bug placed a piece of paper in front of Halyburton and demanded that he write his confession of war crimes as well as his biography. "It's time for you to choose," he said.

Halyburton had been given instructions on how to respond to such a threat. Lieutenant Colonel Risner had issued an order that the Americans should resist to the utmost, give as little as possible, and then recover to resist again—a variation on the Code that acknowledged the Americans' dire circumstances. Halyburton was determined to follow these instructions, and he prayed for the strength to endure.

His training, his background, and his sense of honor gave him his own code of conduct: he would rather die than give in. He believed that resistance, however painful, was fundamental to the morale and unity of the group, and that failure to resist was equivalent to collaboration with the enemy. If you didn't accept torture, you were a disgrace to all the POWs.

He also remembered his experience with Fred Cherry. He had seen how much Fred had suffered without complaint, and he would never want to fall short of that example or feel that he had given less than his friend.

"It's time for you to choose," Bug repeated.

"I'm not going to work against my government," Halyburton said.

Bug made his demand again and received the same response. His anger rose and one eye went "buggy," moving out of sync with the other. Sometimes interrogators would pretend to be outraged, but not Bug. Halyburton knew that he may have been a psychopath, but at least he was sincere. "Life will be very different for you now," Bug said. He signaled to the guards and left the room.

The guards knocked Halyburton off the stool and, sitting on the ground, forced him to lean forward with his legs straight out. They pulled his arms behind his back, tied his wrists together with rope, and lifted them straight up. At first he tried to deflect the pain by recalling soothing moments, like running on the beach or dancing with Marty. But the stretching felt as if his body were being torn apart. Pain shot through his shoulders, elbows, wrists, and back. At one point, he could see his fingertips over his head. He screamed.

With his arms still behind his back, the guards slapped a pair of "ratchet cuffs" on his wrists and slid them down his forearms. Normally, the short chain linking the cuffs would fall between the wrists, but the guards attached the cuffs so that the chain wrapped around the outside, a technique designed to intensify the pain by putting extreme pressure on his twisted forearms. Then the guards placed him in leg irons and draped a rope around his neck, which was used to tie his head to the irons. Pulling the rope forced Halyburton to bend even farther, inflicting greater stress on his body and further tightening the cuffs around his forearms. His body was being torn apart, the cuffs seeming to cut through to the bone. The guards then released the first rope around his wrists, but the movement of his contorted arms returning to their normal position caused the rigid cuffs to twist more deeply into his skin and bone. He groaned, screamed, saw white. He prayed and held out for several hours, his assailants manipulating the ropes and cuffs, the pain coming in waves and sunbursts. It was the torturer's ultimate cunning: the victim could neither die nor stop the pain. Halyburton could take no more.

"
Bow cow! Bow cow!
" he yelled, indicating he was ready to talk to an English-speaking guard. Bug came in but was not ready to stop.

"You have not been punished enough," he said.

He tipped Halyburton over, stomped on his cuffs, and left. Hatred for Bug welled up inside Halyburton. His wrists were now numb except for nerves that ran along the side of each arm. The nerves felt as if hot lead were coursing through them. In fact, he swore he could see the molten lead flowing from his arms to his fingers, each drop creating more traumas. He feared that he would lose the use of his hands.

He was surrounded by anguish. He heard Navy Commander James Bell being tortured a few cells away, yelling for God to kill him. As Halyburton's own suffering intensified, he began to have the same feeling—he wanted to die. At one point, he wanted to knock himself out by banging his head against the cement floor, but he didn't have the strength or mobility.

Those reactions were typical among the Briarpatch victims. Both Navy Lieutenant Phil Butler and Navy Lieutenant Commander Robert Shumaker, finding their "hell cuffs" intolerable, tried to commit suicide by bashing their heads against the stone wall, while Ralph Gaither, who suffered lasting nerve damage in his hands, described his torture as "unspeakable agony of the soul."

Several hours after Halyburton had been knocked over, Bug returned and asked if he was ready to write, and the American said yes. His cuffs were taken off around dawn, but he couldn't move his hands until the afternoon. Even when he was ready to write, he wasn't ready to give in. He is left-handed, but he wrote with his right hand so someone reading it might conclude it was a forgery. He wasn't concerned about the biography; the Vietnamese already knew a good deal about him, probably from a news article. So he disclosed information they already had—that he had gone to Davidson College and that he was in VF 84 Squadron. The interrogators made him rewrite his draft several times, and Halyburton realized that what he wrote didn't matter—they just wanted to assert their authority. In fact, most POWs recognized that the Vietnamese would accept virtually any story, however ridiculous, as legitimate. One Briarpatch captive, Air Force Captain Kile Berg, spoke so convincingly of Batman and Robin that his captors asked where the crimefighters lived and what political party they belonged to.

Halyburton was more concerned about his confession. He knew the Vietnamese were considering charging the Americans with war crimes, and he feared that a statement could be used against him. Halyburton rewrote his confession four or five times, believing he found a way to give his adversaries what they wanted while still protecting himself: "If my country has committed war crimes and this is an illegal war, then as part of the armed forces I am guilty as well." He believed that his use of the word "if" indicated that he himself did not accept that America had committed any such crimes.

While he may have won a rhetorical victory, he was still devastated by his capitulation. He knew he had done his best, and he knew that the U.S. military would not hold him accountable for his statements. But he believed he had let down the other prisoners, and so his resistance, however determined, had fallen short. This psychological blow was far greater than the physical injury. "It was about the worst time of my whole life," he said years later, "because I knew I had failed."

He felt somewhat better after tapping to Howie Dunn, who assured him that he was not a traitor and that he had tried his best. Moreover, he learned that most of the senior officers, including Jerry Denton, Robinson Risner, and James Stockdale, all men he deeply admired, had also given statements. That helped him begin to come to terms with his own sense of defeat. But for all the tortured prisoners who ultimately complied, the feeling of loss never completely faded. John McCain, the Navy lieutenant commander who became a U.S. senator, wrote of his own experience:

I couldn't rationalize away my confession. 1 was ashamed. I felt faithless, and couldn't control my despair. I shook, as if my disgrace were a fever ... Many guys broke at one time or another. I doubt if anyone ever gets over it entirely. There is never enough time or distance between the past or the present to allow one to forget his shame. I am recovered now from that period of intense despair. But I can summon up its feeling in an instant whenever I let myself remember the day.

Halyburton was tortured twice more, though he withheld compliance for shorter periods of time. Once he gave a statement about his missions, the other time an apology to the Vietnamese people that began: "If I have caused any damage..." After two months his torture was over; the Vietnamese probably decided they had extracted as much as they could from a junior officer.

Ironically, the experience fortified Halyburton. His torture intensified his hostility toward the Vietnamese, his anger becoming a survival mechanism—what he called "an armor of hatred." As the years passed, his armor protected him from abuse, privation, and loneliness. Nothing could defeat his rage; survival was his ultimate revenge.

After ninety-three days in chains, Cherry was put back in a cell with Ron Byrne, who had fared no better. Locked in cuffs and irons and beaten daily, Byrne had lost thirty pounds, had welts on his face, and looked like "death warmed over." Actually, it was Cherry who was soon flirting with death. He began coughing and spitting up wet, sticky lumps. The cell was too dark to see what they were; at Byrne's suggestion, Cherry filled the white pot used for bathing and coughed into it. The water turned crimson.

"Damn, it's blood," Cherry said.

Byrne said he would call a camp official, but Cherry, having been beaten for the past three months, balked.

"If I ask them for something, they're going to ask me for something," he said. "I ain't going to give them anything."

Cherry didn't want to show any signs of weakness to anyone; despite his record, he felt he had to constantly prove himself to friend and foe alike. But Byrne, fearing for his safety, demanded to see the medic, who eventually arrived and saw the bloody water. Cherry was taken to a hospital, x-rayed, and returned to the prison, but heard nothing for three months. Then, in January 1968, an official came to the cell and delivered the startling news: a bone chip had floated into his lung and was close to his heart; he could kill himself with any sudden movements. He would have to undergo surgery to remove the chip, but until then he had to stay calm and restrict his head movements; he was even excused from bowing.

Cherry's shoulder had fused together by now, so he assumed the chip came from a rib during a beating. Having already experienced Hanoi's medical care, he feared another operation, particularly one so risky. Sedation scared him. He put his chances of survival at less than fifty-fifty, but he seemed to have no choice.

However, in a totally unexpected move, the camp's vice commander, named Lump for a tumorlike growth on his forehead, said he could receive an early release if he showed "a good attitude," declared that he had been treated humanely, and apologized for America's crimes against his country. The release would have been the first from the North; Cherry could have agreed to comply, watered down his propaganda statements, and gone home. Given his perilous condition, he could have said he accepted his release to save his own life, and doctors would have confirmed the botched surgeries and multiple infections and crushed shoulder and body cast and leg irons and the floating bone fragment that was literally a dagger pointed at his heart. Had he gone home, few would have marked him a coward or a turncoat.