Surviving Hell (13 page)

What started as a series of informal contacts quickly became an unofficial network of POW wives and families. With the floodgates opened, a POW organization burst upon the scene: the National League of POW/MIA Families.

Sybil was the league's first president. She was as organized and outgoing as her POW husband, Jim, was tough. How tough was Jim Stockdale? Stories about his resistance in prison are legendary, including the incident in which he smashed his face with a piece of wood and deeply cut his scalp with a broken shard of glass when he was about to be paraded before a delegation of fellow traveling foreign journalists and politicians. Sybil became so dedicated to the organization that she rented out their home in California and moved to the D.C. area so she could lobby government leaders on POW issues.

We had no idea that our families were trying to rally the American public behind us, or that the National League of POW/MIA Families had demanded that the North Vietnamese treat the American POWs according to the Geneva Convention and give a full accounting of all known POWs and KIAs (Killed in Action). We did not know that the small improvements we began to experience in our lives had been caused by our families' actions. I myself knew just one thing: It was indescribably difficult surviving the first three
years of prison, and, if treatment had not improved, I would not have made it through the next three years.

Never once in all that time did I see any sign of the Red Cross. But I did begin to see evidence of the league's activism and its focus on our brutal treatment. Gradually we got to send and receive letters. The Vietnamese restricted all letters to six lines, and a letter got through only every four to six months. A rare six-line letter, however, was infinitely better than no letter. A second benefit of the pressure that POW families put on Vietnam for better treatment was that families were also allowed to send to us a 3-kilogram (6.6 pounds) package every two months.

With great love, thought, and hope, Gaylee and Dawn prepared my packages. The rules set by the Vietnamese allowed clothing, non-perishable food items, medicine, and a few pictures. According to government instructions, the package was to be sealed at the post office. Gaylee bought a special scale to make sure I would get the full 6.6 pounds. She always took a few pieces of hard candy to the post office to add if the package was even an ounce short.

Most packages never arrived in our cells. They were lost, stolen, discarded, evaporated, or whatever, in the international and Vietnamese postal systems. The packages I actually received at the prison would weigh a pound, two at the most. Generally the Vietnamese gave us the box it was shipped in; I recognized Gaylee's handwriting. But the box was always much bigger than the contents. Sometimes there were telltale signs of what had been sent and stolen—freeze-dried coffee grounds, for instance, but no coffee.

In 1970, a POW in our cell received a package with a few items the Vietnamese had not bothered to take. Among them were a half dozen or so tiny sugar packets—the kind with a one-inch square picture that you find in diners and coffee shops. The picture on the sugar packet showed Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon.

We knew that John Kennedy had announced a plan to send a man to the moon “in this decade,” but all of us were in prison well before July 11, 1969, when the event occurred. That picture filled us with excitement, joy, and pride. We had done it! Within minutes of finding the sugar packet, we were on the walls tapping out this message: “AM[erican] ON MOON.” It was the best news
we had since becoming POWs. Neil Armstrong, a year after he landed, made us—a pajama-clad, beat and bent, scruffy group of POWs—the proudest Americans on the planet. His accomplishment validated America, and it validated us too.

 

 

The Vietnamese did allow some of the pictures our families sent us to get through. Oddly, before giving them to us they encased them in loose clear plastic. We studied every detail in every picture. Each of us with children spent hours analyzing how they had changed and grown. It took me a while to recognize my daughter, Dawn, after four years. The pretty little girl I remembered had grown into a beautiful young woman (taking after her mother). Over the last couple of years in prison I received 11 pictures. I'm sure those pictures got 1,100 hours of looking. It wasn't just Dawn or Gaylee that I studied; it was every tree, couch, and detail. In one picture, Dawn was leaning on a car. I wondered if Gaylee had traded in the old Rambler station wagon. Did my brother-in-law Bob help? Each picture generated a thousand thoughts. What a blessing they were, even if they created more questions than answers.

I punched tiny holes in the corner of the plastic that covered the pictures. With thread from my blanket, I made a string of pictures and hung it below the bars on the window. It was as close to home as I could get. As more POWs received pictures, more pictures hung below the bars around the cell. While I was looking at Konnie Trautman's pictures one day, he began explaining all the details. Not long after, while Konnie was looking at my pictures, I said, “Konnie, let's swap families for a week.” He thought a minute and said okay. We made the trade. When others stopped by to look at my new family, I told them all about everyone in the photos, where they lived and what they did. Konnie's slab was not far from mine. He could hear me as I described my new family; if I said something wrong he corrected me. Over time many of us swapped families. We were one large family anyhow.

Just as we shared package items with all POWs in the cell, we also shared letters. During the last three years, the average for all POWs was about two letters a year—six lines each. The best news
was when a POW received a letter from home saying that they had heard that he was alive. I received such a letter about two years after I was shot down. There was no guarantee that I would live until I was released—whenever that might be. But at least my family had definite knowledge about me and knew that I wasn't dead yet.

After the guard came to the cell and gave a POW a letter, we would “give him time and space.” He would find a corner of the cell, and we would all move toward the other end. We tried not to watch him, but we did. His expression was telling: happy, calm, sad, or worried. Families knew our health had deteriorated and our bodies had been tortured. It was obvious in most letters that they had chosen their words carefully. In the main, the six lines were newsy, rather than intimate, seeking to avoid writing anything that would add stress to our situation.

After a POW had read his letter several times and pondered everything in it, then it was our turn. The POW would stand in the middle of the cell, as we huddled around him, and begin to read, “Dear Wayne . . .” Right away we interrupted him, “Who is the letter from, who signed it?” “My wife, Betty,” he'd reply. Of course we all knew Betty; her picture was on his string.

Each item in the letter generated conversation. A reader rarely got through all six lines without interruptions. News of someone else's family was just about as good as news from our own families. Letters were major events.

Ray was a tough POW who'd grown up on a farm in the middle of America. He had been captured in Laos, and very few Americans captured there survived until being turned over to the North Vietnamese. He'd gone four years without word from home when he finally received a letter. If ever a man deserved a good letter, it was Ray.

It began with the usual routine: the guard appearing in the cell with a letter. Who would it go to? Finally it was Ray's turn. We were all happy for him. He went to a back corner, and we sauntered to the front part, made small talk, and sneaked peeks at him. He sat there longer than normal. It was obvious he had reread the letter several times. Between the re-reads, his face was blank. After much too long a time, I said, “Okay, Ray, it's our turn.” Ray slowly
looked around and said without expression, “Sorry, this is not a good letter to share.”

Everyone shared their letters—we would have no part of him keeping it to himself. We began to badger him: “Come on, Ray; we all share.” “It's our turn—we need the news.” Ray finally said, “No, it is not good news, it is only for me.” The more he resisted, the more we insisted. He finally relented. He walked to the middle of the cell, and, as we gathered close, he began to read.

“Dear Raymond,” he hesitated and looked up, but none of us said a word. From what he had said before, and how he looked now, we knew better than to interrupt this one.

If the following is not the exact wording of the letter, it is very close:

There was dead silence for perhaps a minute. Finally someone said, “Ray, read it again, maybe there's a hidden meaning.” He shook his head. After more encouragement, he read it again. When he got to the part “your speedboat sank,” a POW in the back could no longer hold in his muffled laugh. When Ray read, “she died calving,” the snickers had turned into open, uncontrolled laughter.

In six years of prison, there was never more genuine slap-your-thighs, roll-on-your-side laughter. We were in stitches and couldn't stop. Ray, bless him, realized how ridiculous, how totally inappropriate it was for a family to write that letter to someone in prison. He joined in the hilarity.

We were only allowed to keep the letters for a short time before the Vietnamese took them back “for safe keeping.” While Ray had that letter in the cell, every day someone would get it and read it aloud, causing us all to break up again. From then on, every time the guard came with a letter, we each hoped it was ours—but if it wasn't, we all hoped it would be another letter for Ray.

W
hat do 25 adult men talk about when locked in a cell for years on end? Everything.

Sometimes in the big cells the discussions got heated. In one cell, they came up with a rule to prevent things from turning nasty. If a POW wanted to express an opinion without rebuttal or further discussion, he began by saying, “This is an IDV.” (IDV stood for “individual declaration of view.”) Then he had his say and that was that. If he wanted a debate or discussion, which was the case most of the time, he omitted the acronym.

But while all things came within our purview, most of our talk centered on women and wives. We all talked about how we met our spouses and what about them we missed most. Sooner or later the talk came down to the nitty gritty: had they been faithful and would they be there when we got home?

Most POWs began by telling their cellmates how they met their wives. Ned Shuman, who, as I've described, was one of our leaders, had one of the best marriage stories. When we were in the big cells, it was a certainty that every so often someone would say, “Ned, tell us again how you married Sue.”

“I've already told it several times,” he'd reply.

But we'd point out that someone new had just come into the cell and hadn't heard it yet and continue to badger Ned until he gave in. He actually enjoyed telling the story and added details every time.

The essence of it was that on a three-day weekend before the
war, Ned—then a young Naval aviator—had driven from Virginia to South Carolina to be the best man at a friend's wedding. After the wedding, he had somehow hooked up with Sue, one of the bridesmaids. Forty-eight hours later, he awoke with a bad hangover in bed with Sue, who was now his new wife. The marriage tried to find a reason for being after the fact and never succeeded.

By the time Ned finished with side stories about the mother-in-law from hell, etc., we were all in stitches, even those of us who'd heard all this before. Ned was dubious that Sue would be there when he got home. She was, but not for long.

Chuck Tyler's wife was a good-looking, leggy young woman pictured in the miniest of miniskirts. Hers was a very popular photograph in the cell. Chuck talked wistfully about how she was a “free spirit.” He said more than once, “I wouldn't be surprised if a divorce happened soon after we get home.” It did.

Darrel Pyle had not been married long to Nancy before he was shot down. His stories about her were the best of all the wife stories. Nancy was a gourmet cook—any kind of food. Anything he killed or caught, she cleaned and cooked. Her social skills were outstanding. She was beautiful and the greatest sex partner any pilot had ever had.

After all the public relations work Darrel was doing, John Borling, Darrel's long-time cellmate and friend, started feeling insecure about his own wife. He began making up stories about her virtues so that she would be competitive, but he could never quite make her equal to Darrel's Nancy. At the beginning of Darrel's first call to his perfect wife after we were released, she said, “I want a divorce.”

There was a high rate of failure among POW marriages, but surprisingly little rancor. We'd had time to understand in advance what the wives faced, living in a society that had suddenly and almost hysterically embraced immediate gratification of desire. Many wives waited a year, two years, three. But there was no end in sight. Some needed a companion; some simply fell out of love when there was no one there to love. Renunciation of temptation was not part of the temper of the times.

When we came home we were different people and so were our wives, with the six or so years of different experiences standing like a barrier between us. I think many couples tried to make a go of it without acknowledging that at some level they were now strangers who only had in common the fact that they had once known each other well. I was lucky. Gaylee and I picked up where we left off, agreeing to treat the absence as a hiccup in our relationship. Unlike many other POWs and their wives, we didn't dwell on what had happened to us or try to deeply analyze it. We were lucky because we stayed very busy. I jumped into a political race soon after getting home, and Gaylee was a sort of co-candidate. We were so involved with people, schedules, media, and stump speeches that we didn't have time to “adjust.” The only thing Gaylee asked of me was that I stop sending unconscious messages in my sleep by using the tap code on her body.