Two Souls Indivisible (23 page)

"I'm not interested," Cherry told Lump.

"You could go home and see your family," Lump said.

"I will go home in turn," he said, meaning the order of shoot-down.

"But you are not well."

"If you want to release me solely on my bad health, without any agreements, then I'll talk to you."

"Maybe you make a big mistake."

On February 16, 1968, Hanoi released three prisoners—Air Force Captain Jon Black, Navy Ensign David Matheny, and Air Force Major Norris Overly—in a red-carpet sendoff to the peace activists Daniel Berrigan and Howard Zinn. Cherry was admitted to the hospital in Hanoi in late March. When he woke up, he learned that the doctor had sliced open his torso and cut out the seventh rib on his left side to remove the bone fragment from his lung. A plastic tube was protruding from his chest and draining fluid (blood and mucus) into a green beer bottle on the floor. The tube stayed in for days, and every time it filled a bottle, someone would dump it and bring back a new bottle. It wasn't painful, just bizarre; forever after, when he drank beer from a green bottle, he'd think about his days in that hospital.

One day in April a political cadre entered his room.

"Did you know Martin Luther King, Jr.?" he asked.

"Not personally."

"Did you know he's been murdered by the American imperialists? The whites have killed him," he declared triumphantly, rattling off the details and weaving political conspiracies into the tragedy.

It was the most pain Cherry had felt in the hospital—perhaps in Vietnam. It even caused him to choke up, a display of emotion that he had always denied his enemies. He said nothing but felt as if the bone fragment that had just been removed had returned to pierce his heart.

The surgery was not entirely successful: Cherry left the hospital with a hole in his side for the tube. The bandage did not adhere to his body, and he had to use drinking water and a dirty cloth to try to keep the opening clean. He also entered a difficult new phase of his captivity: he was placed in solitary confinement in the Office for a staggering fifty-three weeks, the longest consecutive stretch in seven hundred total days of isolation. By now his interrogators recognized that physical abuse would not get Cherry to confess to crimes or criticize his country, so they made their most persistent effort to appeal to Cherry's identity as a black man.

Given the racial violence in America, which was followed closely by the Vietnamese, such an appeal seemed timely. After King's assassination, race riots broke out in more than a hundred cities, with at least 19 people dying and 3,000 arrested. Even that violence paled in comparison to that of the previous summer, when racial hostilities erupted in 128 cities, including Newark, where 26 people died, and Detroit, where 43 perished. In all, 164 disorders resulted in 83 deaths, 1,900 injuries, and property damage totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. With that evidence—and with the rise of groups like the Black Panthers, who preached a new self-consciousness among African Americans—the Vietnamese again urged Cherry to condemn his country.

Interrogations would last four or five hours a day, and sometimes two Vietnamese would play good cop-bad cop. The bad cop was Lump, who would threaten and berate the prisoner. The good cop was nicknamed "Stag," an acronym for Sharper than the Average Gook. He was well read, particularly in black literature, and liked discussing Ralph Ellison's
Invisible Man,
Richard Wright's
Black Boy,
or the play
Raisin in the Sun
by Lorraine Hansberry. He knew more about Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X than Cherry did and enjoyed lecturing him about the struggle of Negroes against their white oppressors.

During one session Stag said, "Xu, we will change your base, your foundation." (The Vietnamese called Cherry "Xu," which meant "little brass coin," perhaps because of his color.)

Cherry said, "You're trying to brainwash me."

"Oh, no," he replied with unintentional irony. "Not brainwash. We have to change your thinking."

He talked about lynching in America, naming specific victims, and he showed news footage of recent urban riots. He often used the word "struggle": the "struggle" of the Vietnamese people was like the "struggle" of the Negroes, and they should be "struggling" together. "You shouldn't be fighting for imperialist America because they're against Negroes," he said. "You can't go to the schools you want to."
^*

Cherry believed he was sincere—Stag genuinely didn't understand why Negroes would support their country.

"Yes, we have problems," Cherry said, "but they're not for you to solve. We'll work them out."

"You're the one who doesn't understand. How can you fight small Vietnamese people like this, kill their women and children?"

"I'm a uniformed soldier and color has nothing to do with it." In time, Cherry just tuned him out, ignored his words, and sat comfortably on the stool.

Resistance also flourished at the Briarpatch, where Halyburton and the other Americans relied on tactics more subtle than confrontational to reclaim their pride and self-respect.

The Vietnamese, for example, demanded that Air Force Captain Bob Lilly read anti-American news items, which would be recorded and broadcast on the loudspeakers in camp. They had made similar demands of POWs in other camps, and some of them had used desperate measures to rebel. At the Hanoi Hilton, Risner pounded his larynx with his hand and then dissolved his soap in a cup of water and gargled, hoping the lye would damage his throat. (It didn't.) Lilly, at the Briarpatch, initially refused but complied after being tortured.

When Lilly's broadcast came into Halyburton's cell, he and his new roommate, Air Force Captain Paul Kari, couldn't believe it. Lilly quoted an American official in an authoritative voice, but when he quoted a Vietnamese official, he used exaggerated accents—French, hillbilly, or effeminate. He also mispronounced names: Ho Chi Minh was "Horseshit Minh," while his close associate Pham Van Dong was "Fan My Dong." Wilfred Burchett, the Communist writer who visited the prisoners, was "Wellfed Bullshit," and Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia was "Prince No Good Schnook."

Halyburton and Kari—indeed, all of the prisoners—laughed hysterically. Lilly's mangled words were inspiring—not because they were clever but because he got away with it. Other acts of insubordination had prompted swift retaliation, but in this case the Vietnamese did nothing. It was one victory, however small, that helped restore the Americans' pride.

The prisoners found more efficient ways of communicating. The tap code was safe and easy, and Halyburton was so proficient that he didn't hear taps so much as he heard "patterns," with words just appearing in his mind. But the code was limited to communication between two people. Then one day Halyburton heard the taps but not from a wall. They came from a prisoner outside who was hacking wood with a machete, but hacking in patterns that made words. Suddenly, everyone in the camp could receive the same message, which would allow senior officers to send orders, enable torture victims to warn of their abuse, or simply permit POWs to announce their presence. The key was getting outside the cell and then being resourceful and creative. So when the prisoners had to wash and hang their clothes, they would snap them dry, and snap them again and again until the snaps, like the taps, delivered a message. Later, Halyburton dryly noted, "We pretended to be very vain about our clothes." When the POWs had to tend a small garden, they used the broom to sweep out messages, such as: "FH ... V MV 6 Last Nite in True." That meant: "Fuck Ho [a common phrase] Vietnamese moved six POWs last night in a truck." These messages had as much psychological as practical benefit, for they gave the Americans hope that there was still room for resistance.

Even maintaining personal hygiene was a way of rejecting the moral and physical squalor. Halyburton and Kari, for example, received two jugs of water each day—barely enough to live on. But they were determined to take a sponge bath, so they resisted drinking until moments before the new jug arrived. Then each man slowly dribbled the remaining water on a body part and scrubbed it with crumbs of soap. The rule was, one body part a day. Any more, and they'd have too little to drink. It took a few weeks, but both men completed their sponge baths.

By the end of the year, Bug had been transferred to Hoa Lo and the torture at Briarpatch had ceased. Conditions improved a bit; inmates were allowed to sing holiday carols, play chess and checkers, decorate a tree, eat a turkey dinner, and even tape songs. Air Force Sergeant Art Black did a drum solo of "Jingle Bells," while Air Force Lieutenant James Ray sang "Puff, the Magic Dragon" and Ralph Gaither, using a Czech guitar provided by the Vietnamese, strummed "The Wabash Cannonball."

The Vietnamese, fearing that the location of Briarpatch made it vulnerable to rescue attempts, shut it down in February 1967, and heroic tales of "the Briarpatch gang" would long set standards for suffering and endurance. Halyburton was grateful to leave but was hardly optimistic. He had now spent two Christmases in captivity, and he began to think that his release would not come for another year or maybe even two. Deprived of mail, he had neither heard from nor written to his wife or his mother. His last weeks on the
Independence,
when he pined for Marty in his letters after being away for five months, now seemed far away, but his longing for her remained the defining force in his life. He also tried to visualize Dabney—how long her hair was, what clothes she was wearing. But he never had a clear fix on his daughter.

By the beginning of 1969, the Vietnamese finally gave up on breaking Cherry's will. They weren't going to make him talk, but they weren't going to kill him either. He remained in isolation, but he was taken to the hospital to have the stitches in his back removed, and his open wound was treated. In April he moved in with Air Force Sergeant Arthur Cormier, a dark-haired medic from New Jersey who had already roomed with him briefly.

In his three and a half years in captivity, Cherry had neither written nor received any letters. He assumed his family had tried contacting him, but only the prisoners who wrote could receive mail. Cherry didn't write because he didn't want to ask for anything. A bigger concern was that the bombing of the North had stopped, and Cherry worried that the Vietnamese would have no incentive to release the POWs. In fact, without the flow of new prisoners to provide information, he couldn't be certain that the war was even going on or whether the POWs might just be forgotten. He realized how naive his initial assessment had been—that the conflict would be over in months—but now he wondered if it could persist for five, ten, or even fifteen more years.

At least his health was better, but there were always surprises. He tried to exercise, primarily by running in place, but he began to cough up blood and mucus. One morning when coughing, he felt something odd in his throat. He spat into some paper.

"Art, you won't believe this," he said.

"What have you got?"

"Look at this."

It was a piece of black fishing cord. Almost a year to the day after his surgery, he had coughed up a piece of stitching. He shook his head in disbelief. He had no idea what purpose it served, but it seemed that his body was trying to purge itself of this entire experience.

Halyburton's return to the Zoo from the Briarpatch was hardly an improvement. The summer of 1967 was miserably hot, with temperatures in the cells routinely over a hundred degrees at night; even the mosquito net became unbearable. Halyburton took his down, preferring insect bites to anything that might restrain the movement of air. He lived in different cells in the Pool Hall with varying roommates, who would use pieces of cardboard or wastebucket lids to fan themselves. But each cell seemed to be in the direct path of the sun. Some prisoners found they couldn't lie on their backs because their eye sockets filled up with sweat, which burned their eyes, so they would sleep on their stomachs.

Halyburton contracted a heat rash, first on his body and then on the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands. Pus formed in some spots, and his skin burned. Water made it worse. Even the guards had heat rashes. About the only ventilation in Halyburton's cells came from two three-inch-square holes in the ceiling. As his only source of relief, he would lie naked on the floor with his head next to the small crack beneath the door. There was not enough water to drink, let alone bathe. He and one of his roommates, Navy Lieutenant Dick Ratzlaff, tried to discuss "cool things," like snow skiing or the beach. They also talked about the Bible and theology, but the heat was so oppressive, they had little energy to converse. Mostly, Halyburton prayed.

In August, looking out of his cell, he noticed a familiar face—A1 Carpenter, the A-4 pilot from the
Independence,
who had been shot down the previous November. He had been on the ill-fated Alpha mission and was one of the pilots to report that no parachute was observed after Halyburton's plane was hit. Halyburton sent Carpenter a message.

"I'm here. I'm sorry to hear that you're here."

Carpenter returned with: "It's great to see you, but I reported you KIA."

Killed in action. The news panicked Halyburton, who had been certain the Navy knew he was alive. He had been told that if his photograph had been taken—and by now it had been taken on the day of his capture and during the Hanoi march—the CIA would know he was a prisoner. His concerns eased a bit after Ratzlaff and others predicted his correct status was probably known by now, but what about Marty? Had she already buried him? Had she already remarried? She had a baby to support and a life to live. Or what if, by the time she learned he was alive, she had already been involved with someone else?

The questions grieved Halyburton. Almost two years had passed since he'd been shot down, and he had not been allowed to write letters. Nor did he want to; he, like Cherry, did not want to ask anything from his enemies. So other prisoners, trying to inform the military as well as Halyburton's family, began sending cryptic messages in their letters. A1 Carpenter wrote to his wife about paying the premiums for an insurance policy, identified as PH-617514—which stood for Halyburton and his serial number. Dick Ratzlaff wrote letters to his wife that mentioned Halyburton's mother's telephone number as well as "Julius," Marty's nickname for him. Air Force Lieutenant Joseph Crecca, in a letter home, used Halyburton's "personal authenticator number"—3363—when describing a radio model.