Surviving Hell (9 page)

There is always an enormous amount of research and documentation behind a nomination for a Medal of Honor. The person who had taken the lead in making the case for me was Bill Sparks, a fellow Wild Weasel who had served with me at Takhli Air Base. Bill was a good pilot; he was a lucky one too, since he completed his 100 missions and was rotated back to the States. Before he left, he told another pilot, Jim Clements, that he was doing the Medal of Honor research on me, although at that time there was no word
whether I was a prisoner or had been killed in action. Some months later, Jim too was shot down and ended up in the Zoo. When he learned that I was there too, he initiated the tap code message that finally got to the wall of my cell.

It is sometimes said that character is doing the right thing when no one is looking. Something similar is true about the Medal of Honor. There have been countless cases of extreme bravery in combat that didn't have the requisite two witnesses to qualify for the Medal of Honor. Receiving it is sometimes a case of ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time and simply having to summon the courage to survive. Sometimes you are the only one who can save another's life and, as Hillel said, it becomes a matter of “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

When it comes down to it, almost every Medal of Honor recipient will say, “Look, I was just doing my job.” That was certainly true with me, as I described in the opening chapter of this book.

As I discovered later on, my Medal of Honor took a twisted path in getting to me. After about a year of research and authentication of the recommendation, the nomination was confirmed and sent to the president in 1969. At that point it was not known whether I was dead or alive. Awarding the Medal of Honor was put on hold until my status was confirmed. (If I had been confirmed as killed it would have been presented posthumously to my wife and family.) When it was discovered that I was a POW, the Air Force decided to keep the award secret for fear that making it public would lead to more torture.

Unlike the Medals of Honor awarded to Jim Stockdale and Bud Day after we were released in 1973, mine was not for actions in prison, but for a mission I flew 11 days before I was shot down. I later discovered that there were “discussions at the highest levels” about my Medal of Honor because during the POW years, seven of the more than 300 American prisoners had collaborated with the enemy. Was I one of them? If I had been one of the collaborators, it would be difficult for the public to separate conduct in combat from conduct in prison and would reflect badly on the Medal of Honor. So a decision was made to investigate my performance as a POW before making the award. After the process was completed, President
Nixon placed the Medal of Honor around my neck at a White House ceremony in 1973. I was humbled not so much because the leader of our country was giving me this honor as because the men I served with had thought me worthy of receiving it. Every time I put it on, I know I'm wearing it for all those who were braver than I but never recognized and for all those who didn't come home.

O
ne night I was hustled out of my cell in the Zoo, blindfolded in the yard, and tossed into the back of a truck. After a bumpy ride of perhaps half an hour, three sharp turns and a quick stop, the tailgate clunked down, and I was pulled out and led by my arm a short distance, around two corners. As we stopped, I heard keys opening a lock. They pushed me in, removed the blindfold, and locked the door. I was alone in the pitch dark. It was solitary confinement—solo, as we called it. I had arrived at Camp Punishment, also known as Skid Row, as a result of my refusal to bow, or bow correctly to my captors and make other signs of obeisance and for generally being (as they said) “non-cooperative.”

I stood in the middle of the tiny cell and stretched out my arms and fingertips to touch the opposite walls. That's about six feet. I reached down and felt a plank bed slab. At least I wouldn't have to sleep on the floor. I carried my worldly possessions with me: a cup, a thin straw mat, another set of pajamas, a threadbare blanket, and my aluminum spoon.

I could hear other cell doors being opened, feet shuffling, and cell doors being locked. At least other POWs were being moved here also.

I was tired and hoped that I could sleep until daylight. I felt around the slab as I rolled out my mat on it. My hand ended up in human feces—some guard had crapped right on the bed slab. I scraped off as much as I could on the slab and cleaned off the rest on my other pajamas.

I prayed hard. “Lord, I need your help and your comfort. I pray
you will provide me the physical and mental strength to endure and to someday be free and with my family. And Lord, I pray for my wife and daughter. Give them peace and comfort, and please let them know they are forever in my mind—Amen.” Prayer would be a big part of my life in solitary.

A few hours later, a little light filtered in through a hole near the ceiling. The feces had mostly dried, and I pushed it into a corner. The plank bed slab of the tiny cell was about two and a half feet wide. That made the remainder—my “living room”—three by six feet. The door had a window about 12 inches square at eye level with six vertical bars about the size of the steel bars used in reinforcing concrete. There was a little swing door over the barred window that blocked most light. The ceiling was high, maybe ten feet. A light bulb hung on a twisted pair of electric wires. It was on.

The keys jingled, the lock turned, and the door opened. The guard made a choppy gesture and said, “Go office.” He pointed to the way: a four-foot wide dirty walkway between the long low prison building and a high gray dirty wall topped by broken glass embedded in concrete. We walked by many more cell doors. As we rounded the corner I saw a dripping faucet feeding a mat of slime on the concrete below it. This was the “bath” area that I would get to use for a few minutes every four or five days. The guard pointed me toward a small low building maybe 20 by 20 feet. It was the “office,” a nasty euphemism for the interrogation room.

Sitting behind the bare wooden table, the interrogator gestured toward a stool and simply said, “Sit.” He started out being the “good cop,” offering me a drink of water and appearing to be pleased that I accepted it. “Do you know the name of this prison camp?” he asked. I shook my head. He continued, “This is Camp Punishment. You are here because you do not follow our humane and lenient camp regulations.” I tried to interject something, but he stepped on my sentence: “In this camp you will follow them or face severe punishment—do you understand?”

Over the years I had learned to say, “I understand your words,” in these situations. Surprisingly, that response ended the interrogation, and I was escorted back to my cell.

As we returned, I caught a glimpse of the front of the prison
building—low and narrow with cell doors just like on the back side. In front and midway down the building were a few cement blocks a couple of rows high in a circle—obviously a well with the bucket and attached rope sitting by the side.

Shortly after I was back in my cell the door opened. I was given a small pitcher, which the guard filled with warm water. He closed the door and, through the barred door window, handed me three cigarettes and the punk to light one. Later I would get a bucket “toilet” and the two standard meals: green weed soup and rice. Life in solitary had begun.

During the siesta between gongs, I lightly tapped the first five beats of “shave and a haircut” on the wall. In a couple of seconds I heard “tap tap.” We quietly and carefully had a lengthy “comm” session tapping information and questions back and forth: names, what we thought was up, whether we knew the other POWs who came last night, and if we thought any of the guards or interrogators who enjoyed torturing us were here. My spirits lifted. I was in solitary but I wasn't alone. I shared walls with three comrades in arms: left, right, and behind.

My first communication session turned out to be with Bud Day, one of the toughest POWs in North Vietnam. Bud was from Sioux City, Iowa, only about 100 miles from where I was raised in Minnesota. We had a lot in common in terms of upbringing and careers in the Air Force. His story had become something of a legend: shot down and captured, a daring escape soon after, and a desperate journey of 11 days subsisting on frogs and roots as he tried to make his way south to safety. He was shot and captured within sight of the American line and brought to Hanoi, where his legend had grown by the maximum resistance he offered as a prisoner. Bud was the hardest of the hard men in the Hanoi Hilton. (He would be awarded the Medal of Honor for the bravery he displayed in captivity.) I felt lucky he was next door to me.

Bud had been shot down a few months after me and was the senior ranking officer (SRO) in most of the cells in which he lived. Being SRO was a bad thing. SROs are understood to be the tip of the POW spear in camps and are thus subjected to more brutality.

 

 

I had been at the Zoo for about a year in two different cells with two different sets of cellmates when I was moved into solo. I ended up spending a year at Camp Punishment. The treatment was less brutal than in my initial 18 days and nights of interrogation in Heartbreak, but the camp was accurately named. The North Vietnamese still wanted us to cough up material they could use in their propaganda efforts to condemn the United States as an evil and aggressive nation attacking a small peace-loving country. You knew it was bad news when you were taken to the “office” and saw a tape recorder or a tablet and pencil on the table. Those of us selected for Camp Punishment were told we were there because of our “non-cooperative” attitude. We were beaten, forced to kneel on concrete, and tortured in other ways. Several times the interrogator told me, “You must learn to suffer.”

This I had already done. I had learned also that suffering was more than physical pain. Time itself was an enemy. Each POW developed his own way of “passing time.” Some mentally solved math problems. Others “wrote” poetry. (We had no pencils or paper, so writing was an act of memory as well as composition.) Several POWs designed houses. One became so enamored of his cerebral structure that he actually built the house he mentally designed in solitary once he got home. When I chatted with him some years later, however, he admitted that this structure, which had seemed so grand in a North Vietnamese prison, was not functional or pleasing to the eye, but he stayed in the house. He loved it because it had helped him defeat time in North Vietnam.

Most of my solo time was spent making plans for the future, reliving and in some cases reconfiguring memories of the past, and learning poetry via tap code from fellow POWs.

My plans always included a lot of family, faith, fun, and friends. (About flying, my fifth F, I was not so sure.) I worked hard that year to get a perspective on myself, the kind of thing you never bother to do when you don't have time on your hands. I was no longer sure of who I was. I knew I was not who I had been—that other self I carried with me through prison like a familiar stranger, someone I had once known well but had grown apart from. I saw
an obvious truth about this fellow: He had been too involved in his work, flying all week and checking out a plane on weekends to increase his chances of promotion. He had forgotten what was really important in life. I think almost all POWs had a similar epiphany in solitary. I had loved being a fighter pilot, but I knew now that if I ever managed to get out of prison, I'd never again be able to put my nose to the grindstone and keep it there. I wasn't sure what type I now was, but I knew it would never again be type A.

Sitting alone in my five-by-six-foot cell, dealing with the time on my hands, I made plans for a future that might never arrive. My plans now all started with the same sentence, “Gaylee, if you think this is a good idea, maybe we should ...” It was not a formulation that the older version of myself with whom I shared this solitary cell would have used.

I had ejected at 600 knots injuring my legs, and my back had been seriously injured under torture, so I knew I would never again follow what had been my bliss: flying ejection-seat fighters. But I saw other possibilities. I had a good military record and was sure I could remain in the military as a non-aviator—maybe becoming the military attaché in a U.S. embassy.

Another option was to become an academic. I had gotten my bachelor's degree and a master of science. I could go back for a PhD. I would enjoy passing on the knowledge I had gained during my career: I had worked with truly outstanding men and women in the military. I understood combat and prison, and I had seen excellent leadership firsthand. Becoming an academic had been in the back of my mind even before I was shot down. I spent many days in solo dreaming about what courses I could teach, working up lesson plans, and imagining the class sessions.

A third option involved politics. Most people who run for office have never been without the freedom Americans are given by birth-right or lived inside the communist system. I had firsthand experience of defending United States national policy in combat and prison. Most of our elected officials had neither. (I eventually tried this course for a time after my release, serving in the Washington state legislature and losing U.S. House of Representatives and Senate races in South Dakota by a few hundred votes.)

But however much you tell yourself that you will defeat solitary by looking forward and through mentally challenging plans and propositions, most of the time there involves memories. During my year in Camp Punishment, I recalled vividly—so vividly, in fact, it was more like reliving than simply remembering—experiences I had more or less forgotten. Like a job I'd had during high school summers working for a building contractor in Walnut Grove, Minnesota. It was hard work wheeling cement, carrying cement blocks, and putting up siding and shingles. Mostly I worked on barns and granaries. In solo, I mentally rebuilt a couple of barns. I remembered the dimensions and where we used two-by-sixs for rafters and joists and lots of one-by-tens as boards for siding and the hay-loft floors. My challenge was to convert the different dimensions of lumber into square feet. I remembered the overhead costs and the cement costs for the foundations and was somewhat familiar with what lumber cost. I knew what the contractor charged the farmer for his barn. Knowing how many men worked on the barn and how long it took, I was able to figure the material and labor costs.