Faith of My Fathers (37 page)

The next day, I was taken to “Calcutta,” a filthy punishment room, six feet by three feet, with only a tiny louvered window for ventilation. I would be confined there for three months.

Prior to my arrival, Bill Lawrence had been languishing in Calcutta for weeks. He had been shot down four months before me, taken to Hoa Lo, and locked in a torture room, known only by its number, Room 18. There he suffered five days of beatings and rope torture. From his cell he could hear the screams of his backseater, Lieutenant j.g. Jim Bailey, who was being tortured in a nearby room.

Bill Lawrence was a natural leader. He had already had a remarkable Navy career. He had been brigade commander at the Naval Academy, a four-letter man, and president of the Class of 1951. After graduation, he was asked to remain at the Academy to rewrite the honor code. He was sent to test pilot school, where he graduated first in his class, and went on to fly the new F-4 Phantom. He had been one of the first members of his class, if not the first, to be selected early for lieutenant commander.

While commanding a squadron in Vietnam, Bill received word that Admiral Tom Moorer, the Chief of Naval Operations, wanted him to serve as his aide, the most prestigious assignment that a young officer could be offered. Bill asked that he be allowed to remain in Vietnam to finish his squadron command tour.

When I was moved to Little Vegas, many of our most senior officers were kept isolated from the rest of us. Bill was my immediate superior. He was a model commander, steady as a rock, always in control of his emotions, never excited, never despairing or self-consumed. Several guys in Vegas had been Bill's classmates. Because he had been promoted early, he outranked them. Thus, Bill had to provide leadership not only to junior guys like me, but to his peers. He had to tell his classmates what to do. That is a challenging assignment, but I never heard a single man reject, dispute, or resent Bill's commands. He was universally respected.

I used to tap him up on the wall for guidance all the time. I shared with Bill every question or concern I had. He had a way about him, very calm and reassuring, that put you at ease and inspired confidence in his judgment.

Some guys, burdened with despair, needed to be fired up. Bill would do it, convincing them that they were more than a match for their antagonists. Rambunctious and impatient, I needed a commander with quiet resolve who could help rein in my impulsiveness.

“Take it easy, John. Do the best you can, John. Resist as much as you can. Don't let them break you completely,” Bill would caution me, gently warning me not to be so reckless that I plunged headlong into trouble. He was a remarkable commander.

Calcutta had space enough for only one prisoner. My dread of being confined in squalid, isolated Calcutta was alleviated a bit by the knowledge that my bad luck would liberate Bill. When I returned from Calcutta, considerably the worse for wear, Bill cheerfully thanked me for going to so much trouble to get him out.

I was a fairly skillful communicator, adept at tapping and better than average at recognizing and seizing unexpected opportunities for passing messages. I was not, I'm sorry to say, a very cautious one, and I often had reason to regret it. As was the case at the Plantation, the guards frequently apprehended me in the act.

Most of the punishments I received from 1969 on, some tolerable, others less so, were a result of my repeated indiscretions. Calcutta was one of the less tolerable punishments. I had been roughed up a few times, but not severely. Nor was the prospect of a few months' solitary confinement particularly terrifying to me. I certainly didn't welcome it, but I had survived worse before.

What made Calcutta so miserable was its location, at least fifty feet from the next occupied cell. It was impossible to communicate with anyone. Communicating was the indispensable key to resistance. Without that, it was hard to derive strength from others. Absent the counsel of fellow prisoners, I would begin to doubt my own judgment, whether I was resisting effectively and appropriately. If I was in communication only for a brief moment once a day, I would be okay. When I was deprived of any contact with my comrades, I was in serious trouble.

Calcutta was the first time since I had been released from the hospital that I was unable to communicate with anyone for an extended period of time. My isolation was awful, worse than the beatings I had been sentenced to for communicating. Compounding my misery was the cell's poor ventilation, and I suffered severe heat prostration in the extreme warmth of a Vietnamese summer, one of the effects of which was a constant buzzing in my ears that nearly drove me crazy. I was seldom allowed to bathe or shave. The quality of my food rations worsened. I became ill with dysentery again, and started to lose weight.

During my confinement in Calcutta, I was periodically taken to an interrogation room for quizzes. Unlike the bad old days, quizzes were now comparatively benign events. We were seldom beaten for information. My Calcutta quizzes were usually pro forma attempts to persuade me to meet with delegations. Mindful of Jerry Denton's order, I refused them.

On one occasion, an interrogator we called “Staff Officer” told me, “Everybody wants to see Mac Kane. They all ask about Mac Kane. You can see anybody you want.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint them,” I replied, “but I have to.”

I had become very accustomed to close contact with my fellow prisoners since I had been released from solitary confinement. My state of mind had become so dependent on communicating with them that I worried my spell in isolation would fill me with such despair that I might break again. Blessedly, my fears were unfounded.

I had been greatly strengthened by the company of the good men of Little Vegas, and my resolve was firmer than it had ever been. I was sustained by the knowledge that the others knew where I was and were concerned about me. I knew they were demanding my release. And, most important, I knew they would be proud of me when I returned if I successfully resisted this latest tribulation. This was especially comforting to me because I suffered still from the knowledge that I had usually been better treated by the Vietnamese than had most of my comrades.

I was finally released from Calcutta in September and moved with John Finley to a cell in the Riviera, two doors down from Air Force Colonel Larry Guarino, with whom we immediately established good communications. I also managed to cut a small hole in the louvers above our cell door. Standing on my upended waste bucket, I could talk to a great many prisoners from different parts of the camp who were, by this time, allowed outside for a few moments to exercise. In retaliation for my various offenses, I was denied this privilege and allowed outside only once a week to bathe.

In what had now become a routine occurrence, I was again caught communicating, and once more confined for a period in an interrogation room. There I encountered the only two prisoners of my acquaintance who had lost their faith completely. They had not only stopped resisting but apparently crossed a line no other prisoner I knew had even approached. They were collaborators, actively aiding the enemy.

I do not know what caused these men to forsake their country and their fellow prisoners. Maybe they had despaired of ever being released, fearing the war wouldn't end before they were old men. They might have eventually fallen for routine Vietnamese denouncements of the “criminal American government,” and grown to resent their civilian commanders for leaving them in this godforsaken place. Maybe they bought the whole nine yards of Vietnamese propaganda, that the war was unjust, their leaders warmongers, and their country a craven, imperial force for evil. Or maybe they were that rarest breed of American prisoners in Vietnam, POWs who, in exchange for certain comforts and privileges, had surrendered their dignity voluntarily and agreed to be the camp rats.

Whatever the cause, it cannot excuse their shameful conduct. I cannot say I ever observed any trace of shame in them as they whiled away the months and years in their unique circumstances. Indeed, during the time I closely observed them, they seemed to thrive, apparently undisturbed by the contempt of the rest of us.

When I encountered them, they had been kept away from the other POWs for some time. The interrogation room I had been taken to was located close to their cells. To pass the time until I was returned to the Thunderbird, I would stand on my waste bucket and look out through the louvered window at the top of my cell door. From my vantage point I could watch the two spend what in Hoa Lo amounted to fairly pleasant days.

The guards would bring them eggs, bananas, and other delicacies to eat. They were on quite friendly terms with the guards, who spoke to them politely and seemed almost solicitous about their comfort. They spent most of every day in a small courtyard back of the washroom where bamboo mats had been erected to screen them from observation by the rest of us. But from my elevated position standing on top of my bucket, I could see over the mats, and I watched them as they sunned themselves, read their mail, and talked to each other, apparently entirely at ease.

I had a nearly devout belief in the restorative power of communicating, as my recurring detentions for violating the camp rule indicate. I assumed, wrongly in this instance, that any American who was in regular communication with his superiors and other prisoners would, by and large, adhere to the Code of Conduct. Even when broken, a man could recover his dignity if he was able to contact his friends for support. Certainly that had been my experience when, my defenses shattered, I had relied on Bob Craner to bring me back from the dead.

But my two new neighbors waged the first assault on my until-then unassailable regard for communications as the force that bound us together and gave us the courage and strength to resist.

One morning as I set my bowl outside my cell after finishing breakfast, the guard walked away from me for some reason without locking me back in and was briefly out of sight. For a moment, I was at liberty. I decided to make good use of the unexpected privilege to establish contact with the two men, who were in their usual place of recreation.

I hustled over to the courtyard and pulled down the bamboo mat. “Hey, guys, my name's McCain. Who are you?”

I did not intend to chastise them for their disloyalty or even encourage them to start acting like officers and recover their dignity. I only hoped that I could briefly establish contact, and by taking that risk motivate them to try to keep in communication with me, reasoning that a few days' contact with another prisoner might bring them back to their senses. I was wrong.

Startled by my greeting, they looked at me for a second as I grinned back at them, and then, to my intense disappointment, they began shouting
“Bao cao”
to summon the guard. I was stunned, and the few blows I received for my audacity from the annoyed turnkey were insignificant compared to the melancholy I felt after discovering that there were at least two men who were indifferent to my evangelical zeal for communicating.

The two men who had betrayed my concern by ratting me out to the guard remained segregated from the rest of us for the duration of the war. They never attempted, as far as I know, to atone for their disloyalty and regain their self-respect. When we were all released, the two were brought up on charges. The charges were dropped, but they were dismissed from the service. Their superiors, like the rest of the country, wanted to put the war and all its bitter memories behind them. I wasn't disappointed in the decision. The two have to live with the memory of their treachery. I suspect that is punishment enough.

Not long after that discouraging experience, in early December, I was moved to another cell next door to my dear friend Bob Craner. A couple of weeks later, I was allowed outside half of each day. Prison life was improving, and it was about to get a whole lot better.

         
CHAPTER
24
         

Camp Unity

Christmas, 1970. The most welcome event of my imprisonment. I was transferred with a great many other prisoners to large rooms in an area we called “Camp Unity.” Camp Unity had seven cellblocks with, initially, thirty to forty prisoners held in each. Ultimately, after captured B-52 pilots and crewmen began to arrive and more prisoners from other camps were brought in, our total number would reach over 350.

In the center of each room was a concrete pedestal on which we all slept. A few of the badly injured POWs and our senior ranking officers were kept in different cells. The Vietnamese refused to recognize rank and never allowed our seniors to speak for us. This angered us greatly and worked to the disadvantage of our captors. Had they worked through our SROs, they would have found it a little easier to deal with us.

At Camp Unity I was reunited with many old friends, including Bob Craner and my first roommate, Bud Day. I was moved there when many of the toughest men in prison were moved into the camp. Jerry Denton, Jim Stockdale, Robbie Risner, Dick Stratton, George Coker, Jack Fellowes, John Dramesi, Bill Lawrence, Jim Kasler, Larry Guarino, Sam Johnson, Howie Dunn, George McKnight, Jerry Coffee, and Howie Rutledge, all legendary resisters, were relocated in Unity's cellblocks. We were overjoyed to be in one another's company, and a festival atmosphere prevailed.

If you have never been deprived of liberty in solitude, you cannot know what ineffable joy you experience in the open company of other human beings, free to talk and joke without fear. The strength you acquire in fraternity with others who share your fate is immeasurable.

That first night, when so many of us were unexpectedly allowed one another's company, not a single man slept. We talked all night, and well into the next day. We talked about everything. What might this change in our fortunes mean? Were we going home soon? Had the Vietnamese some public relations reason for putting us together? Had they been embarrassed by some new disclosure of their abusive treatment of us? We talked about what we had endured at the hands of the enemy; about the escapes some men had attempted and the consequences they suffered as a result. We talked about news from home. We talked about our families, and the lives we hoped to return to soon.

No other experience in my life could ever replicate my first night in Camp Unity, and the feeling of relief that overcame me to be living among my friends. I have lived many happy years since, and am a blessed and contented man. But I will never experience again the supreme happiness I felt my fourth Christmas in Hanoi.

POWs who had been lately held at camps outside Hanoi had learned of a recent, nearly successful American rescue attempt at a camp twenty miles outside Hanoi called Son Tay. The attempt had scared the hell out of the Vietnamese, and they had begun to bring prisoners from all outlying camps into prisons in Hanoi. Many of the Son Tay prisoners had been moved into Camp Unity a couple of weeks before the rest of us were.

In Camp Unity our SROs ordered us to form into a cohesive military unit—the Fourth Allied POW Wing. The wing's motto was “Return with Honor.” Colonel Flynn would soon end his long years of isolation when he was moved into a room with the other Air Force colonels and assumed command of the wing.

Each room served as a squadron, with the senior ranking officer in each room in command. Each squadron was broken into flights of about six men, each with a flight commander. We were organized to continue resisting. It was a lot easier to defy your enemy when you are surrounded by fellow resisters.

Among my closest friends was Orson Swindle, one of the Son Tay prisoners, a tough, good-natured Marine pilot from Georgia. In our first months in Unity, he lived in the room next to mine, and we first met by tapping through the wall that separated our rooms. Orson had been shot down near the DMZ on November 11, 1966. He had been beaten and rope-tortured repeatedly during the thirty-nine days it took his captors to reach Hanoi. From the beginning of his captivity, Orson had impressed the Vietnamese as a hard man to crack.

In August 1967, Orson was held at “the Desert Inn” with three other determined resisters, George McKnight, Wes Schierman, and Ron Storz. One night an enraged Vietnamese officer accompanied by several guards burst into their cell accusing the Americans of various infractions of camp regulations. They locked Ron Storz in leg stocks, roped his arms behind him, and stuffed a towel down his throat. When George McKnight screamed at them to stop, they did the same to him.

Orson and Wes were also put in the stocks and rope-tortured, but not gagged. When the guards began savagely beating McKnight and Storz, the two ungagged men screamed, “Torture!” The guards turned to Orson and Wes and began beating them, trying to force gags into their mouths. Twisting their heads to avoid the gags, the two kept shouting, “Torture, torture,” until all the prisoners in Little Vegas began screaming with them.

The beatings continued mercilessly until the men were an unrecognizable bloody mess. McKnight had nearly suffocated to death before his gag was removed. Eventually the four were led through a crowd of cursing, spitting, striking Vietnamese to separate stalls in the washroom. There they were beaten all night long.

The next morning, shortly after several American planes had flown over the city, the guards rushed at Orson, kicking him repeatedly in retaliation for the appearance of American airpower. The four spent the rest of the day in separate interrogation rooms, enduring long hours of continued torture until they were all forced to make a confession.

Later that day, Orson, George, and Wes were transferred to a prison they called “Dirty Bird,” for its exceptionally filthy conditions, and kept, shackled, in solitary confinement. The prison was nothing more than a single building. The Vietnamese had decided to convert it into a jail because of its advantageous location. It was adjacent to an important target for American bombers, and the Vietnamese hoped that the presence of American prisoners in the vicinity would dissuade American military commanders from ordering any air strikes on it. The target was a thermal power plant—the target I had attempted to bomb in my last moment of freedom. Orson would joke later that “as scared as I was when they bombed the power plant, I would have really been scared had I known John was on the way, knowing he'd hit everything around the target except the power plant itself.”

McKnight, along with another inmate, George Coker, eventually managed to free themselves from their leg irons and make a daring escape from Dirty Bird. They were recaptured the next day.

Ron Storz had not been taken with his cellmates to Dirty Bird. After they tortured him to the point of submission, the Vietnamese intended to use Ron to inform on his SRO, Jim Stockdale. Attempting to kill himself, Ron used an ink pen to cut his wrists and chest. He was eventually taken to a place its inhabitants called “Alcatraz,” located behind the defense ministry a short distance from Hoa Lo. He was one of eleven men kept there, among them several high-ranking Americans including Jim Stockdale and Jerry Denton, and McKnight and Coker, who had been taken there after their failed escape.

The Alcatraz Eleven had distinguished themselves as die-hard resisters. Their new prison, situated across the courtyard from an open cesspool, reflected their distinction as special cases. The cells were tomblike, windowless, and measuring four feet across. They were locked in leg irons at night.

Ten of the men kept there, most of them for over two years, would remember the place as the worst of many difficult experiences. The eleventh, Ron Storz, would never leave Alcatraz. He had been physically and mentally abused for so long that he had lost either the will or the ability to eat, and had slowly wasted away. The Vietnamese kept Ron behind when they released the others from Alcatraz, claiming he was too sick to move. He died there, alone.

Orson had been spared the deprivations of Alcatraz. He had been taken from Dirty Bird to Little Vegas shortly after we bombed the power plant. In November 1968, he was transferred to the prison at Son Tay, where his captors ordered him to write approvingly to prominent American politicians who opposed the war. He refused.

His steadfastness earned Orson a trip to the punishment room, where he was seated on a low stool and locked in leg irons. The guards were ordered to prevent him from sleeping. Whenever he nodded off, a guard slapped him awake. After several days and nights, Orson began to suffer from hallucinations. Still he would not write. During one particularly vivid hallucination, Orson became violent. After subduing him, the guards relented and let him sleep. He was given food and allowed to rest for three days.

On the third day, he was again ordered to write. Refusing, he was subjected to further mistreatment. Chained to his stool and denied sleep for another ten days and nights, he finally relented.

After Orson's ordeal, another prisoner who had refused to write was given the same punishment. He broke after a day. The guards told him, “You're not like Swindle.”

Although I did not meet Orson Swindle until I was moved into Unity, I, like most other prisoners, had heard of him. His reputation for being as stouthearted as they come was a camp legend by the time I met him.

As a resistance leader, Jim Stockdale had few peers. He was a constant inspiration to the men under his command. Many of his captors hated him for his fierce and unyielding spirit. The Rabbit hated him the most. One day, the Rabbit ordered Jim cleaned up so that he could be filmed for a propaganda movie in which he would play a visiting American businessman. He was given a razor to shave. Jim used it to hack off his hair, severely cutting his scalp in the process and spoiling his appearance, in the hope that this would render him unsuitable for his enemies' purpose. But the Rabbit was not so easily dissuaded. He left to find a hat to place on Jim's bleeding head. In the intervening moments, Jim picked up a wooden stool and repeatedly bashed his face with it. Disfigured, Jim succeeded in frustrating the Rabbit's plans for him that evening.

On a later occasion, after being whipped and tied in ropes at the hands of the demented Bug, Jim was forced to confess that he had defied camp regulations. But Bug was not through with him. He informed Jim that he would be back tomorrow to torture him for more information. Jim feared he would be forced to give up the names of the men he had been communicating with. In an effort to impress his enemies with his determination not to betray his comrades, he broke a window and slashed his wrist with a shard of glass. For his extraordinary heroism, Jim Stockdale received the Medal of Honor when he returned home, a decoration he had earned a dozen times over.

Robbie Risner was another of my Camp Unity cellmates whose reputation preceded him. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robinson Risner commanded a squadron in Vietnam. He had also been a much-decorated pilot in the Korean War. Early in 1965,
Time
magazine had featured the air ace on its cover, praising Robbie as one of America's greatest combat pilots.

Several months later, on September 16, 1965, Robbie was shot down ninety miles south of Hanoi. When he arrived at Hoa Lo two days later, he was taken to an interrogation room. There the Rabbit, seated at a table with a copy of the aforementioned issue of
Time
in full view, greeted him: “Ah, Colonel Risner, we've been waiting for you.”

I can only imagine the sinking feeling Robbie must have had as he discovered the Vietnamese were regular readers of American periodicals. Nevertheless, from the first moment of his imprisonment to the last, Robbie Risner was an exemplary senior officer, an inveterate communicator, an inspiration to the men he commanded, and a source of considerable annoyance to his captors. Among the longest-held prisoners, he suffered the appalling mistreatment regularly inflicted on POWs during the brutal early years of imprisonment. Throughout his trials, he gave the Vietnamese good cause to appreciate the physical courage and strength of character that had landed him on the cover of
Time.