Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam (10 page)

CHAPTER 14

Byrnes thought he had been a POW for about two years, probably late in 1969, when the men guarding him dragged the severely injured air force pilot into camp. “Con co, you fix,” An said, when they dropped the unconscious pilot at Byrnes’s feet in the tunnel.

“I am not a doctor,” Byrnes protested, although he knew there were no doctors or medics attached to the unit. The nearest hospital battalion was many miles away. Few seriously wounded Vietnamese soldiers lived long enough to receive medical care. The North Vietnamese were not going to waste manpower trying to transport an injured American pilot there.

“I kill then,” An said. He reached for the pistol he kept in a worn, cracked, brown leather holster strapped to his belt. The pistol and a leather shoulder bag were the only evidence that An was the commanding officer of the company holding Byrnes captive. The Vietnamese wore no insignia, were lucky to have boots, shoes, or hats. In fact, that was how Byrnes distinguished newcomer replacements. They arrived with clothing. After months of jungle warfare, they either died, or wore out their clothing and boots. Re-supply, except for ammunition, rice, occasional canned food, and rare mail did not exist.

“Khong!” Byrnes said and stepped between the pilot and An. “I will try to help him.”

An turned to leave the tunnel burrowed into the side of a cliff. “Lanh will bring medicine,” he said as he left.

Byrnes removed the pilot’s boots and flight suit. The lieutenant had soiled his underwear. The smell permeated the tunnel. One of the guards took the pilot’s boots, trading his rubber sandals for them. Another searched the pockets of the flight suit, opening each zippered pocket. He removed pictures, a watch, and other trinkets before wadding the garment up and stuffing it into his pack. Comatose and lying on his back in a bloodied white T-shirt and soiled white boxer shorts, the pilot appeared dead, except for the shallow breathing. His right arm bent unnaturally above the wrist, as did his left lower leg between knee and ankle. Byrnes pulled up the man’s shirt. His entire chest was one huge deep bruise. Both collarbones appeared broken. His face was so swollen, Byrnes could not pry open his eyes or see into his mouth. Air wheezed into and out of his badly flattened bloody nose.

Carefully, Byrnes straightened the fractures of arm and leg, splinting with sticks and strips of cloth torn from his own thin blanket. After washing the man’s trunk as best he could with a rag and water from a wooden bucket, he laid the pilot on his back on the reed mat he used for a bed. Carefully he positioned the man’s arms so that the collarbones looked straighter. He then bound a long piece of cloth around the pilot’s armpits, chest, and back of his neck to hold them that way. One of Byrnes’s high school football teammates had suffered a separated shoulder. He modeled the bandage after the splint his teammate had worn for that injury. It was the only bandage Byrnes thought might splint the fractures.

Soaking another piece of blanket in the bucket filled that morning in a stream where he bathed and washed his clothing, he placed it on the pilot’s face. Gently, he washed the man’s face and chest. Being careful not to cut the pilot, Byrnes stuck the blunt end of the handle to his cup in each of the man’s nostrils and elevated the flattened nasal bones. The pilot never winced.

None of the fractured bones had torn through the skin, cutting down chances of a severe infection. Byrnes had watched a Vietnamese soldier die from tetanus only a month before. The North Vietnamese Army had no vaccines. Another soldier had died from a massive infection following a minor gunshot wound. They had no antibiotics, either.

Lanh, a corporal and unofficial medic, showed up with an herbal drink about an hour later. He had grown up in a remote village in North Vietnam, and had learned from the village healer which herbs and plants were useful as medications. After forcing the liquid down the unconscious pilot’s throat, Lanh reached into his pouch and withdrew a leather bag of roots, mushrooms, and plant scrapings. He took a piece of Byrnes’s blanket and soaked it in the wooden bucket of water. Dumping a ground-up portion of the concoction onto the rag, he wrung it over the pilot’s chest. The solution dribbled onto the man’s bruised ribs. Lahn then laid the rag onto his chest and pulled the bloody T-shirt down to hold it in place. He did the same for the man’s face with a smaller rag. Byrnes’s blanket existed no longer.

Byrnes dribbled water into the pilot’s mouth hourly for three days. He cleaned the airman’s new NVA, North Vietnamese Army, donated POW clothing and redressed him after sponge baths. Lanh replaced the bandages daily. On the fourth day, the pilot opened his eyes, but said nothing. The fifth morning, Byrnes said, “Good morning,” to the pilot.

“You speak English,” the pilot said. “I wish you had been around when the villagers beat the shit out of me. Oh, shit, that hurts.”

“What hurts?” Byrnes asked.

“Everything. What does a guy have to do to get some pain medication around here? My wrist is killing me.”

“The NVA don’t have medics with their units. No medical supplies other than herbal stuff they find in the forest,” Byrnes said. “Sorry. Lanh may have something you can chew on that has some pain-relieving properties. I’ll see if he’ll give it up for you. Don’t get your hopes up. They don’t like Americans much.”

“They?” the pilot said, turning his head to get a better look at Byrnes. “Why didn’t you say, ‘We don’t like Americans,’?” He examined Byrnes carefully, moving only his eyes to keep from increasing his pain. “Your English is excellent. Not even an accent. Go to school in the States?”

Piqued that the first American he had seen in two years didn’t believe he was an American, Byrnes exploded. “Just because I have an Asian face doesn’t mean I’m the enemy, asshole. My name is James T. Byrnes. Aviation boatswains mate third-class. I fell off a carrier, the USS
Oriskany.
I’ve been a prisoner here for about two years.”

“Whatever,” the pilot said, and became silent. He refused to talk to Byrnes any more that day.

An returned that night to see the pilot. Lanh had told his commander the American had been revived. “Does he talk?” An asked Byrnes.

“Not to Vietnamese,” Byrnes said. “To him, I’m Vietnamese,” he explained.

“Tell him an officer comes tomorrow. Will ask many questions,” An said.

Byrnes had seen the pilot’s flight suit. He knew the man’s last name was Rhodes and he was a first lieutenant. “Lt. Rhodes, this is An, commanding officer for this company. He says an officer will ask you questions tomorrow. I assume he means an intelligence officer.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Rhodes said. Byrnes laughed, for the first time in many months. “What’s so funny?” Rhodes asked.

“I don’t know how to say that. My Vietnamese is limited to food items, bathroom words, and some military stuff. I’m sure I know some cuss words, but not so sure what they mean. For instance Lanh frequently says,
di tieu
, when irritated, but I don’t know what it means, yet. I’ll say Khong and see how An reacts.”

“What does Khong mean?”

“No.”

“How do you say speak?”

“Noi.”

“Let me say it.” Rhodes turned his head toward An. “Noi khong,” he said.

An’s eyes widened. He looked at Byrnes. “Noi tieng viet?” he said. Byrnes shook his head.

Not one but two officers appeared in camp the next day. Both had reasonably new, clean uniforms and leather boots. They both spoke English better than Byrnes spoke Vietnamese. Almost too politely the first officer introduced himself as an intelligence officer and the second man as cadre.

“What’s a cadre?” Rhodes asked.

“Those chosen to make certain we do not stray from the true path of enlightened communism,” the first man said.

“We need to remain true to Marxist ideals,” the second man said.

“Okay,” Rhodes said. “Whatever. I’ll save you some time. I’m only giving you my name, rank, and serial number.”

“You might want to rethink that, Lieutenant,” Byrnes said. “These guys can be brutal. I personally gave them my captain’s name, Commander Donald D. Duck, and many other secrets. What good it does them I have no idea.”

“All information goes to headquarters,” the cadre officer said.

“Communications are unhurried –” Byrnes said. The first officer flicked his wrist in Byrnes’s direction. One of the guards swung his rifle butt, hitting him in the chest and knocking the wind out of him. Another gesture led to Byrnes being marched from the tunnel at gunpoint.

By the time the interrogation ended the Vietnamese knew Rhodes flew an F-100D from the American airbase at Tuy Hoa, the name of his commanding officer, and that personnel from New York and New Mexico staffed the 355th TAC Fighter Squadron.

“I didn’t hold up very well,” Rhodes admitted when they returned Byrnes to the tunnel. “That guy kept pushing on the foot of my broken leg.”

“They don’t mess around,” Byrnes said. “Don’t worry about it. The best you can hope for is to pass on some false information, too.”

Rhodes eventually accepted that Byrnes was an American. The bruises and two broken ribs from the rifle butt helped prove the point. That and his reaction on hearing that Joe Namath and the AFL Jets had beaten the NFL Baltimore Colts in the championship football game. “No fucking way!” Byrnes said. He tried to fill Rhodes in on his life over the previous two years.

The Vietnamese had moved Byrnes multiple times. At his first camp, in the cave near the fishing camp, they held him in the bamboo cage, only allowed out twice a day to use a nearby latrine. Meals were rice, pumpkin slices, and a liquid he dubbed grog. On rare occasions, usually when a water buffalo had been killed in an American bombing raid, his captors shared small pieces of meat with him. He guessed his weight to be about 130 pounds, down thirty from what he weighed on the carrier.

“Looks more like 120,” Rhodes said. “With your Japanese heritage, you look similar to our NVA friends. Underfed. It would be faster to kill us than starve us, you know.”

“I assume if they wanted us dead, we’d be dead already,” Byrnes said. “Maybe they’re worried about being on the losing side of a war and being labeled war criminals. They did mention something about using Europeans and Americans as hostages for trade.”

“You seem to have survived well enough,” Rhodes said.

“The beginning was scary. They tortured and killed several village province chiefs in front of me. ‘A lesson for the South Vietnamese traitors who collaborate with you Americans,’ they said. For about six months, they let anyone who felt like it hit me, poke me with a stick, or torture me with sharp objects. After an NVA officer told them I might be useful as a hostage, they stopped. Six months later they put me on work details with a guard. A month after that, they let me go without a guard. They believe I’m too weak to cause them serious trouble.”

“Why didn’t you take off?” Rhodes asked.

“Where would I go? I don’t have a clue where I am.”

Disgusted, certain he dealt with a coward, Rhodes said, “South. Or east to the South China Sea and then south. Steal a boat.”

“When you’re ready to travel, I’ll let you lead the way,” Byrnes said, knowing that would be a long while. By then Rhodes might understand the obstacles in his way.

The more weight Byrnes lost, the less of a threat he was to escape or make trouble. Eventually, they let him out of the tunnels during the day. They sent him to collect bamboo shoots in the forest to supplement their vegetables. Every night they again locked him in the cage.

The Vietnamese never saw Rhodes as a threat. The man could hardly walk until his fractures healed. And when they had, he still needed one of his crutches to hobble around the tunnel.

After such a long time in captivity and immersed in the Vietnamese language, Byrnes could communicate on a simple level with his guards. He had eventually learned what happened within days of his capture. The Viet Cong had staged a bloody offensive timed with a ceasefire on the Lunar New Year. The men who made up the fishing village of Xomh Canh joined the VC, many against their will to save family members from rape or torture.

Byrnes had recognized many of the village men as they gathered near the cave where the Vietnamese held him prisoner. One of the younger men who had been on the sampan with him toted an American M-16. No longer did he celebrate the American’s help in saving his life. The sneer he showed Byrnes seemed real. Over three or four days, hundreds of soldiers streamed through the camp, armed with AK-47s, M-16s, rocket launchers, even M-1s and rifle types Byrnes didn’t recognize, probably Japanese or French weapons left over from World War II.

He learned later that the men had marched some fifty miles south to the city of Hue, then the provincial capital, previously the Vietnamese national capital until 1945, and once the Imperial walled capital of the Nguyen Dynasty emperors.

“They surprised us,” Rhodes said. “I was in the States then. I’ll bet few of the enemy returned. The Tet Offensive started battles in over 100 towns and cities. The South Vietnamese Army and Americans rallied to destroy the Viet Cong, decimating their ranks. The defeat was total. Essentially the Viet Cong have ceased to exist as a fighting force.”