Two Souls Indivisible (32 page)

He paused and took a deep breath. "I want to thank you for the most memorable day of my life, and I love you."

Cherry did not want to sue the Air Force—the institution to which he had dedicated his entire adult life. But in the late 1970s, the lawyer who handled his divorce persuaded him to sue the service in federal court for failing to safeguard his assets. He was told that the legal action could help him recoup his money, set an important precedent, and even bring cash settlements to other military husbands.

The suit said that the Air Force should reimburse Cherry for the money it gave to his former wife in response to false claims and other unnecessary demands. The military had failed to protect Cherry's interests, the suit alleged, even though it had been told of Shirley's pregnancy and of the neglect of her children. Cherry asked for $122,098.13 of the $147,184 he had earned.

He was hoping for a quick settlement, but the Air Force rigorously defended itself, drawing out the case into an unseemly spectacle between a military service and one of its most loyal officers. Finally, in 1983 the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the Air Force had been remiss in handling Cherry's money and that Shirley had not been entitled to all of her husband's pay. The three-judge panel agreed that the children "were seriously neglected and that this situation, like the pregnancy, would have been obvious upon casual investigation."

Nevertheless, the Court of Claims, which determined the reimbursement, ruled that the Air Force had to pay Cherry only $50,000. The rest of the money, it concluded, had been justifiably distributed. After the lawyer took her fee, Cherry received $35,000 and doubted that the outcome would benefit any other military personnel. "I felt my time had been wasted," he said.

The early shootdowns' years of captivity had coincided with revolutions in music, clothes, sex, hair styles, and morality. They had missed the hippie movement, the race riots, and hot pants; they were unfamiliar with the youth culture, the drug culture, and the counterculture; and they knew little about Neil Armstrong, joe Namath, or Janis Joplin. Before he was captured, one POW recalled, Playboy models still wore clothes, and a "demonstrator" was a test car. The time warp would have been jarring for anyone, but it was particularly difficult for military men, who were trained to respect authority and to spurn those who would undermine it. Many believed that long hair meant hippies, which meant antiwar, which meant the enemy—associations that most discovered were wrong.

Cherry had to face another challenge because of changes in the country's racial climate. Many younger African Americans were more militant and did not accept his message of black progress through education, hard work, and compromise. When he described how well he had been treated by white POWs, an acquaintance said, "Keep that up, and you'll be an Uncle Tom."

Confrontational tactics, Cherry believed, were usually counterproductive. When young blacks rioted in Washington, D.C., he described them as "street niggers." But his biggest disappointment had nothing to do with politics or protests—he could no longer fly. If not for his shoulder, he would have gladly flown combat missions again. Instead, he worked on intelligence assignments for the Air Force until his retirement, as a colonel, in 1981.

Beulah died in 1993, and Fred would soon be the last survivor of eight siblings. He established a government consulting business and worked well into his seventies. He was lucky to remain relatively healthy. One day in the middle 1980s he was searching all over his house for a cigarette and, not finding one, prepared to drive out in the rain to get some. Then he thought, Why should he allow a cigarette to have more control over his life than the Vietnamese ever had? After forty years of smoking, he quit that very day.

Cherry bought a home in Silver Spring, Maryland, and stayed close to Fred Jr. and Cynthia, as well as his grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. He rarely discussed Vietnam unless asked, when he would tell his story. When he speaks to high schools and youth groups, he delivers the same speech he gave fifty years earlier, telling the youngsters that they can achieve whatever they want through hard work, education, and discipline. Asked why he didn't stand up to the bigots, he says he preferred to work within the system, believing his job was not to topple institutions by his protest but to reform them by his example. "I felt the best way to make society better was by being better," he says. "Long term, I think I've done more as a role model for the way I did it than if I had gotten into a fistfight over a hamburger." He also explains that the hardship in his life—the poverty of his youth, the racism of the military, the brutality of his imprisonment—made him a better, stronger person. "It made me what I am today, and I wouldn't trade a day of it," he says.

Cherry has received close to forty medals, including the Air Force Cross, the second highest medal given by the Air Force. In 1981 the service commissioned a portrait of Cherry, depicting him in three different poses: the ace fighter pilot with a scarf blowing around his neck, his hand holding his helmet; the POW in a black smock, his hands crossed, his face showing dignity and resilience; and the freed prisoner, accepting a light for his first cigarette (an image from a wire-service photograph from Clark Air Base). The oil painting, by Harrison Benton, now hangs in the Pentagon.

But no picture could capture his contributions to the military and the country as both a pioneer and a prisoner. After Vietnam, the armed forces adopted many reforms that would help make the military a model of integration on a large scale; but by then blacks had already destroyed the myth that they lacked the skill, courage, or patriotism to serve in combat. Perhaps no one had crushed that myth more emphatically than Fred Cherry.

Senator John McCain said in an interview, "It is people like Fred, because of their capacity to forgive and forget, that have led to a lot of progress in race relations in the military and in America. I don't know how he forgave that kind of treatment ... I never would have. He's a bigger man than I."

It took time for Halyburton to adjust to freedom. For one thing, he couldn't sleep on a soft bed. He would start on a mattress but end up on the floor. He was easily frustrated by picky eaters, who would not finish the food on their plate. He did not easily forgive antiwar activists and was mortified when Dabney became a Bob Dylan fan. In the early years, he depended on Marty to make decisions for him. Even trivial or routine decisions, such as whether to read a book or watch a movie, were difficult. He was simply out of practice.

They initially stayed in the Atlanta area, where Porter taught naval ROTC at Georgia Tech University while earning a master's degree in journalism. But he had few professional options in the private sector. He wasn't a pilot, so he couldn't fly for a commercial airline. Writing interested him, but he wasn't keen about beginning on a small-town newspaper with a family to support.

He did what seemed most sensible: he stayed in the Navy. By the time he returned from Vietnam, he had already spent ten years in the service and saw no reason to leave before qualifying for retirement benefits. He attended the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, initially as a student, then as a professor of strategy. He retired from the Navy as a commander in 1984 but continued to teach as a civilian.

Porter and Marty did not wait long to expand their family. Their second daughter, Emily, was born in 1974, and the son they dreamed about having when Porter was on the
Independence
arrived in 1980—John-Fletcher William, named after Marty's cousin who was killed in Vietnam and Porter's grandfather.

The war lived on. Supporters who had bought "Porter Halyburton" POW bracelets began sending them to him; he ultimately received more than two thousand and hung them from the ceiling like a chandelier. On each February 12 he wears the green sweater that Marty knit for him.

Soon after his release, Porter gave a speech about his captivity, saying, "I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars, but I wouldn't take a million dollars for having done it." He wanted to tell Marty about his imprisonment, as either a catharsis or a search for understanding, but she didn't want to hear it. They had both suffered enough, she believed, and she did not want to relive his pain. "I probably hurt his feelings a couple of times," she said.

Porter found solace in a copy of Viktor Frankl's
Man's Search for Meaning,
the Viennese psychiatrist's account of his survival at Auschwitz. His ordeal had been far worse than Porter's, yet Porter could identify with it, particularly his description of how the prisoners reacted differently to their captivity. Just as some in the concentration camp became "Capos" in serving the Nazis, some POWs accommodated the Vietnamese for special favors. Moreover, Frankl believed that suffering itself had meaning beyond survival. "If there is a meaning in life at all," he wrote, "then there must be meaning in suffering ... Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life."

Halyburton used Frankl's ideas to elucidate his POW experience: men could survive their suffering as long as they found meaning in it. Fred Cherry's suffering represented one more test in a lifetime of crucibles uniquely experienced by a black American, and his ability to meet each challenge, particularly in Vietnam, validated his worth. For Halyburton, his suffering allowed him to live fully a "Christian life," requiring selflessness and sacrifice while elevating the spiritual over the material. He later wrote his "life statement," which he began in prison but revised several times after he was freed.

I wish, at the instant of my death, to be able to look back upon a full and fruitful Christian life, lived as an honest man who has constantly striven to improve himself and the world in which he lives, and to die forgiven by God, with a clear conscience, with the love and respect of my family and friends, and with the Peace of the Lord in my soul.

In the 1980s, Cherry contributed to an oral history of the Vietnam War, which drew attention to his friendship with Halyburton. That led, in 1986, to their joint appearance at Davidson College. The two men had seen each other many times since their release, but on that day they had a chance to address an audience. Both men, sitting in adjacent chairs, talked about the importance of unity and communication to their survival as they recalled their time together affectingly.

"Our friendship grew because of our common bonds," Halyburton said. "We were both Americans, even though he thought I was a French spy, and we were in the armed forces. And we went through some terrible times together."

Halyburton was calm and straightforward and even tried to downplay the emotional ties of the relationship. "It was nothing we ever thought about at the time," he said. "We were just two Americans in a tough situation trying to help each other out. It was as simple as that. If it hadn't been me, it would have been somebody else."

If he had stopped there, the crowd would have believed there had been nothing exceptional about their experience. But he was not quite done. "I must also say that our friendship"—he reached over and touched Cherry's arm—"is one of the most special"—and he suddenly stopped. Memories seemed to flood into his mind, and tears welled up. He couldn't speak. He reached out to pour a glass of water and took a sip. Composed again, he said, "It was one of the most special things in my life, and I better stop now."

Cherry confirmed that their friendship was special, "because without Haly, I wouldn't be here. That's important to me, that's important to my family, and I know that's important to you. It's important to the young people I go and talk to, because without him, I wouldn't be able to do that.

"As Haly said, others in the camp would have done the same thing. But this
was
done. It was only he and I in the cell. Had he not done anything, no one would have ever known. He didn't do it because someone was watching over his shoulder. He did it because he was a decent human being, and I was another human being with him."

Afterward, Halyburton told Cherry that he was glad Fred had finally seen Davidson and visited some of the places and met some of the people he had talked about in prison. Cherry thanked Halyburton for making him part of his life.

Halyburton often saw Cherry on business trips to Washington and stayed at his house on several occasions.

In 1990 Cherry visited Halyburton's own home for the first time, a two-story former summer cottage in Bristol, Rhode Island. Halyburton took him out to the back yard to show him his favorite conversation piece: his gravestone. It sat beneath a trellis entwined by grapevines, surrounded by birch trees, Japanese maples, and magnolias, overlooking a vegetable and flower garden. A bench sat nearby, and Narragansett Bay lay in the distance. The marker was etched with Porter's name, naval aviator wings, and the words
KILLED IN COMBAT OVER NORTH VIETNAM.

"That's eerie," Fred told him.

"Yeah," Porter agreed, "but it's nice to look at it from the top down."

The origins of this book lay in my interest in the military's desegregation. The armed services is the country's premier example of how a large institution successfully integrates, and I believe the seeds of that success were planted in Vietnam, America's first conflict with a truly integrated military.

I had never heard of Fred Cherry or Porter Halyburton until the fall of 2001, when I read Gail Buckley's
American Patriots,
a history of the participation of African Americans in U.S. wars. It had three pages on Cherry, including several paragraphs on his unlikely friendship with Halyburton. I wondered what had happened, why each man credited the other with saving his life, and how these kinds of experiences—multiplied hundreds of times across the armed services—changed the military's culture.