Faith of My Fathers (26 page)

Of all the activities I devised to survive solitary confinement with my wits and strength intact, nothing was more beneficial than communicating with other prisoners. It was, simply, a matter of life and death.

Fortunately, the Vietnamese—although they went to extraordinary lengths to prevent it—couldn't stop all communication among prisoners. Through flashed hand signals when we were moved about, tap codes on the wall, notes hidden in washroom drains, and holding our enamel drinking cups up to the wall with our shirts wrapped around them and speaking through them, we were able to communicate with each other. The whole prison system became a complex information network, POWs busily trafficking in details about each other's circumstances and news from home that would arrive with every new addition to our ranks.

The tap code was a simple device. The signal to communicate was the old rhythm “shave and a haircut,” and the response, “two bits,” was given if the coast was clear. We divided the alphabet into five columns of five letters each. The letter K was dropped. A, F, L, Q, and V were the key letters. Tap once for the five letters in the A column, twice for F, three times for L, and so on. After indicating the column, pause for a beat, then tap one through five times to indicate the right letter. My name would be tapped 3-2, 1-3, 1-3, 1-1, 2-4, 3-3.

It was an easy system to teach the uninitiated, and new guys would usually be communicating like veterans within a few days. We became so proficient at it that in time we could communicate as efficiently by tapping as we could by speaking through our drinking cups. But I preferred, whenever circumstances allowed, to speak to my neighbors. The sound of the human voice, unappreciated in an open society's noisy clutter of spoken words, was an emblem of humanity to a man held at length in solitary confinement, an elegant and poignant affirmation that we possessed a divine spark that our enemies could not extinguish.

The punishment for communicating could be severe, and a few POWs, having been caught and beaten for their efforts, had their spirits broken as their bodies were battered. Terrified of a return trip to the punishment room, they would lie still in their cells when their comrades tried to tap them up on the wall. Very few would remain uncommunicative for long. To suffer all this alone was less tolerable than torture. Withdrawing in silence from the fellowship of other Americans and the doggedly preserved cohesion of an American military unit was to us the approach of death. Almost all would recover their strength in a few days and answer the summons to rejoin the living.

In October 1968, I heard the guards bring a new prisoner into the camp and lock him into the cell behind mine. Ernie Brace was a decorated former Marine who had flown over a hundred combat missions in the Korean War. He had been accused of deserting the scene of an aircraft accident, court-martialed, and discharged dishonorably from the service. Determined to restore his good name, he had volunteered as a civilian pilot to fly supply missions in Laos for the United States Agency for International Development, and, when asked, to secretly supply CIA-supported military units in the Laotian jungle.

During one such operation, Communist insurgents, the Pathet Lao, overran the small airstrip where he had just landed and captured him. His captors handed him over to soldiers in the North Vietnamese Army, who marched him to a remote outpost near Dien Bien Phu. He was imprisoned for three years in a bamboo cage with his arms and legs bound. He attempted three escapes. He was brutally tortured, held in leg stocks, and tethered to a stake by a rope around his neck. After his last failed escape attempt, the Vietnamese buried him in a pit up to his neck and left him there for a week.

In 1968, he was brought to Hanoi. Uncertain whether the United States government was aware he had been captured alive, he was greatly relieved to realize that he was now in the company of American POWs whose captivity was known to our government.

When the commotion in the cell behind me died down as the guards left Ernie alone in his new home, I tried to tap him up on the wall. In terrible shape, and fearful that the knocks he heard in the cell next door were made by Vietnamese trying to entrap him in an attempted violation of the prohibition against communicating, he made no response. For days I tried in vain to talk to him.

Finally, he tapped back, a faint but audible “two bits.” I put my drinking cup to the wall and spoke directly to my new neighbor.

“Do you have a drinking cup?”

No response.

“Tap twice if you have a drinking cup and once if you don't.”

No response.

“I'm talking through my cup. Do you have a drinking cup? If you have a cup, wrap your shirt around it, hold it up to the wall, and talk to me.”

No response.

“You want to communicate, don't you?”

No response.

I continued at some length, vainly trying to get him to talk to me. But as he had just been given a drinking cup, his suspicion that he was being set up by the Vietnamese intensified as I urged him to make illicit use of it.

A few days later, the possibility that he could talk with another American for the first time in three years overrode his understandable caution. When I asked him if he had a cup, he tapped twice for yes.

“I'm Lieutenant Commander John McCain. I was shot down over Hanoi in 1967. Who are you?”

“My name is Ernie Brace,” came the response.

“Are you Air Force? Navy? Marine?”

“My name is Ernie Brace.”

“Where were you shot down?”

“My name is Ernie Brace.”

To my every query, Ernie could only manage to say his name before he broke down. I could hear him crying. After his long, awful years in the jungle, the sound of an American voice, carrying with it the promise of fraternity with men who would share his struggle, had overwhelmed him.

It took some time before Ernie could keep his composure long enough to engage in informative conversation. But once he did, he became a tireless talker, hungry for all information about his new circumstances and eager to provide me with all the details of his capture and captivity.

I was somewhat surprised to learn he was a civilian. I assumed he was CIA, but refrained from asking him. As a civilian, Ernie was under no obligation to adhere to the Code of Conduct. The United States expected him not to betray any highly sensitive information, the disclosure of which would endanger the lives of other Americans. But other than that, he was not required to show any fidelity to his country and her cause beyond the demands of his own conscience.

But Ernie's conscience demanded much from him. He kept our code faithfully. When the Vietnamese offered to release him, he declined, insisting that others captured before him be released first. No one I knew in prison, Army, Navy, Marine, or Air Force officer, had greater loyalty to his country or derived more courage from his sense of honor. It was an honor to serve with him.

Incongruous though it must seem, early on, POWs could be better informed about the circumstances of other prisons and the men held there than we were about the population of our own camp. Many cells at the Plantation were uninhabited when I first came there, and we had a hard time establishing a camp-wide communications network. Some prisoners were located in other buildings or in cells some distance away and separated by empty rooms from mine. Most of our senior officers at the Plantation were kept in isolated cells. They were out of reach of our tapping, and we did not walk by their cells when we were taken to the washroom and the interrogation room.

New arrivals who had been placed in cells within my communications bloc brought us information about the men held at Hoa Lo, the Zoo, and other prisons in and around Hanoi. But we often puzzled over the identity of men held a short distance from us in different parts of the camp. A tough resister, Ted Guy, an Air Force colonel, was living in a different building. Unable to communicate with him, the men in my block assumed for several months that the senior officer nearest to us, Dick Stratton, a Navy commander, was the senior ranking officer for the whole camp. Ernie Brace informed us of our error. He had learned about Colonel Guy's presence in our ranks in a conversation with another POW.

There were about eighty Americans held at the Plantation during my first years in prison. Eventually I would come to know many of the men at the Plantation. Keeping an ever-lengthening account of the men we learned were prisoners was the solemn responsibility of every POW. We would fall asleep at night while silently chanting the names on the list. Knowing the men in my prison and being known by them was my best assurance of returning home. Communicating not only affirmed our humanity. It kept us alive.

         
CHAPTER
18
         

The Plantation

The walls of the Plantation enclosed what had once been a lovely estate. Numerous trees were all that remained of the gardens, but the large mansion that had formerly housed Hanoi's mayor when Vietnam was a French colony still stood in reasonably good repair. We called it “the Big House,” and we were taken there for initial interrogation. It also provided receiving rooms for American peace delegations, who arrived with great fanfare to affirm how well we were being treated despite the terrible crimes we had committed against the Vietnamese people.

Several warehouses surrounded the mansion. They were divided into cells and housed the POW population. Various other smaller buildings dotted the estate and served as quarters for the guards and other prison workers. After Bud Day and I were separated, I was kept alone in Room 13 West at the south end of the Warehouse. Directly across the courtyard from my cell was the interrogation room, where I would often reside during periods of attitude adjustment.

The cells in the Plantation were large compared to those at other prisons. Mine was approximately fifteen by fifteen feet. Each cell had a wooden board for a bed and a naked lightbulb dangling on a cord in the center of the ceiling. The light was kept on twenty-four hours a day. I got used to it after a while. It didn't bother me much in the winter, but in the summer heat, when most prisoners were suffering miserably from heat rash and boils, the extra warmth from the light made our discomfort all the harder to bear. Adding to the intensity of our discomfort was the building's tin roof, which must have increased the summer heat by ten or more degrees.

The cell windows were boarded up to prevent us from seeing out and from communicating with one another, blocking all ventilation except for some small holes near the top of wall. Every door had a peephole that turnkeys used to look in on us. Every door also had cracks in it through which we could observe our turnkeys and the daily activities of camp personnel.

The daily routine was simple and excruciatingly dull. The guards struck a gong at six in the morning, signaling the start of a new day. We rose, folded our gear, and listened from the loudspeakers in our cells to Hanoi Hannah, the “Voice of Vietnam,” a half hour of witless propaganda, rebroadcast from the night before. For most POWs, Hannah was a pretty good source of entertainment.

“American GIs, don't fight in this illegal and immoral war,” Hannah pleaded, before reporting the latest victories of the heroic people's liberation forces. She brought us the news from home, which was, of course, limited to updates on antiwar activities and incidents of civil strife. She often played recordings of speeches by prominent American opponents of the war. In 1972, she unwittingly informed us that an American had landed on the moon by playing a portion of a campaign speech by George McGovern chastising Nixon for putting a man on the moon but failing to end the war. The musical interlude was a mix of Vietnamese patriotic songs and a few American songs, usually some scratchy old Louis Armstrong records that some fleeing Frenchman had left behind when France relinquished its Indochinese colony.

During the Tet Offensive, in 1968, Hannah couldn't restrain her patriotic ardor as she gleefully regaled us with news of “many heroic victories” over the American imperialists and their puppet regime in the South. The guards shared her enthusiasm. On the night Tet began, they were all fired up, racing around the camp, yelling and shooting their rifles into the night air. The POWs were clueless about the cause of the commotion until Hannah brought us the news the next evening.

Hannah was especially excited about the siege of the American Marine base at Khe San, confidently predicting, night after night, its imminent surrender. Six weeks after she first alerted us to the siege, Hannah stopped updating us on the progress of the people's heroic liberation of Khe San. Evidently the Marines defending Khe San had proved heroic as well.

About an hour after Hannah's morning rebroadcast, the turnkeys opened each cell door, and, one at a time, each prisoner brought his waste bucket out, set it down, and stepped back into his cell. After all the waste buckets were placed outside and the guards had locked the prisoners back in their cells, two POWs were assigned the task of collecting the buckets, dumping their contents into a large hole in the back of the camp, washing them out, and returning them to their owners. For a brief while, the prisoners used this daily chore to pass notes on cigarette paper and other scraps of paper. The Vietnamese soon discovered our treachery and kept a closer eye on the unfortunate POWs who drew this duty.

After the buckets were returned, the guards filled our teapots. If it was a wash day, they would then take us to bathe. In winters, when water was plentiful, we would often bathe twice a week. In summer, when water was scarce, we would sometimes go weeks without bathing. After we had hung our wet clothes and washrag out to dry and returned to our cells, each prisoner was taken back out, one at a time, to pick up his breakfast, usually a piece of bread and a bowl of soup made by boiling something that vaguely resembled a pumpkin. Each prisoner was then returned to his cell and locked in before the next prisoner was allowed to collect his morning meal.

The food at the Plantation was notoriously bad, and, as the old joke goes, the portions were too small. Discipline among the Plantation's guards was poor, and we suffered from a high rate of food thievery. The pots in which our meals were prepared were never washed, and the guards who served us were only slightly cleaner. I never enjoyed a reputation for cleanliness, but my frequent bouts of dysentery brought on by my filthy living conditions greatly increased my appreciation of the virtue, and I cringed whenever I watched our food being prepared.

After we finished eating, the process was repeated in reverse as we returned our empty bowls. There were no other activities after breakfast until we were brought out for the afternoon meal. On wash days we collected our dry clothes with the afternoon meal.

Shortly after lunch, around noon, they rang the gong again to signal the afternoon nap, which lasted until two. Until the gong sounded we weren't allowed to lie down unless we were ill. On some afternoons they piped in additional propaganda broadcasts over the loudspeakers, occasionally playing them all afternoon. Other times we went for weeks without afternoon tributes to the great patriotic struggle, although Hannah never missed an evening or morning broadcast.

Our boredom was periodically alleviated by the provision of reading materials. The camp literature offered little in the way of a rewarding read. Most often, I was given a copy of the
Vietnam Courier,
a propaganda rag full of decidedly tendentious news accounts of the war and current events.

Reading the
Courier,
I was always amused by its descriptions of Ho Chi Minh's many remarkable attributes, powers normally associated with the Divinity. If a certain province reported a poor rice harvest one year, Uncle Ho would arrive on the scene, and, bingo, next year's harvest set a record. Got a problem with your tractor, call Uncle Ho for an illuminating lecture on tractor maintenance. If air pirates were bombing your village, Uncle Ho would teach the village idiot how to target a surface-to-air missile and in no time at all he would be destroying whole squadrons. No task was too small for Ho. He would always take a few minutes from his busy administration of the war to cure whatever ailed you.

Other times, I received awkwardly written books boasting of extraordinary Vietnamese war victories, whole battalions of American infantry annihilated by a few determined peasants, grandmothers shooting down American aircraft. Of course, all our literary diversions required us to endure a fulminating condemnation of American war crimes.

We were also read aloud to quite often. Works by prominent American authors who were opposed to the war and by other, less distinguished pamphleteers were haltingly, and some times unintelligibly, broadcast throughout the camp. Dr. Spock's works, sadly not his texts on child care, were a popular form of political enlightenment.

Sometimes we were made to watch movies in which Vietnamese nationalism was accorded even greater supernatural powers than it was in books and newspapers. A tank division or several American battalions were never a match for one lightly armed, gallant, kind-to-women-and-children Vietnamese fighting man. Of course, the Vietnamese took elaborate precautions when taking us to the movies, lest we hopelessly inferior Americans pull some kind of trick on our virtuous, all-knowing guards. Each prisoner watched the movies from a separate cubicle made with blankets or mosquito netting hung over a line.

Although I suppose I should have been insulted by such heavy-handed propaganda, it was so clumsy and so absurd that it seldom failed to amuse me. I came to welcome most of it as a reliably entertaining diversion, but it also exacerbated my yearning for a world in which all information was not portioned out sparingly and in disguise to advance someone's military or political objectives.

We were deprived of even the most basic comforts. It would be too time-consuming a task to list all the things I missed in prison. I missed the staples of life, of course, good and plentiful food, a comfortable bed, being out of doors. But the thing I missed most was information—free, uncensored, undistorted, abundant information.

When we were released from prison in 1973, the first thing most of us did after arriving at Clark Air Base in the Philippines was order a steak dinner or an ice cream sundae or some other food we had longed for in prison. But I was as hungry for information as I was for a decent meal, and when I placed my dinner order I asked also for newspapers and magazines. I wanted to know what was going on in the world, and I grasped anything I could find that might offer a little enlightenment.

Every night at the Plantation, except Saturday night, all the camp personnel would attend what we derisively referred to as “revival” meetings. We would lie on our hard bunks and listen to the Vietnamese fervently cheer, clap, and shout expressions of nationalism and simplistic slogans epitomizing their national ideology. Each one would take a turn reading from a tract of anti-American propaganda.

At nine o'clock every evening, the guards rang the evening gong instructing us to go to sleep, and, shivering in the cold or sweating in the stifling heat, beset by mosquitoes, and in the glare of a naked lightbulb, we tried to escape to our dreams. That was our day.

The only thing that changed my daily regimen was an interrogation. Interrogations were irregular events. Three or four weeks could pass before I was subjected to one. Other times I was interrogated twice in one day, sometimes by senior officers, sometimes by lower-ranking officers or enlisted personnel whom we called “quiz kids.” The sound of jangling keys and fumbling with locks at night or at other irregular times had the effect of unexpected gunfire. I shot bolt upright the moment I heard it, gripped by terror, my heart beating so loud I thought it would be audible to the approaching guard. In the years after I came home, I never suffered from flashbacks or posttraumatic stress syndrome, as it is clinically termed. But for a long time after coming home, I would tense up whenever I heard keys rattle, and for an instant I would feel the onset of an old fear come back to haunt me.

They never interrogated or tortured us in our cells. They always took us to the interrogation rooms, spartan cells with bare walls, furnished with just a wooden table, a chair behind the table, and a stool in front of it, lower than the chair, for the prisoner to sit on.

Some interrogations were comparatively benign. Sometimes they were little more than training sessions for a new interrogator who was trying to learn English. The interrogators would demand information, or order me to confess my crimes into a tape recorder. When I refused, they would make a perfunctory threat to persuade me to reconsider. When I refused again, they just sent me back to my cell, the threatened beating forgotten.