-
- It was a new ball game sitting in solitary confinement
in a Hoa Lo ("Hanoi Hilton") isolation cell. It was far different
than a week previous on the USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) goofing off in the
Ready Room as a newly assigned Lieutenant Commander maintenance officer
of the World Famous Golden Dragons (CAW-19, VA-192). No more A4Es, no more
flight schedules, no more LSO debriefs, no more mission planning, no more
manning of the spare or the ready tanker, no more mail call. It all came
to an abrupt halt on January 5, 1967, when I ate my own 2.75 FFARs (Folding
Fin Aircraft Rockets) on a weather reconnaissance hop.
-
- I was now a tortured, beaten, starving hulk designated
as the "Blackest of Criminals" in the DRV (Democratic Republic
of Vietnam) and an official "Yankee Air Pirate" (eligible to
be hung from the yardarm, having been caught in the act of piracy). I was
alone; separated from all my shipmates. I did not know whom to trust, what
the rules of my new mess happened to be, or what was expected of me in
this new and strange form of warfare I was about to embark upon. The walls
had more banging and knocking than the whole hull of the venerable 27C
that had been my previous home. There was a rhythm and a pattern to the
noise that had all the class of a wall full of woodpeckers.
-
- I remembered enough Morse code to recognize that what
I was hearing was not Morse code; but it sure wasn't the ghosts of French
Foreign Legionnaires having a happy hour. This isolation wing of the prison
had a limited number of cells. Once a day you would put your honey bucket
out and your morning soup bowl. One of the cells would open up and those
prisoners would gather up the gear and proceed to a cell at the end of
the passageway that had some running water piped into it. These guys would
do the dishes, buckets and their armpits taking their sweet old time, making
a hell of a racket and yacking away at each other to beat the band. But
wait a minute, they were not talking to each other, they were talking to
the rest of us as if they were talking to each other.
-
- Each cell had a high barred window open to the air. If
you stood on your cement slab pad you could pick up what they were saying.
"If you read me, cough once for yes; twice for no." Cough. "Are
you Air Force?" Cough. Cough. "Are you Navy?" Cough. "Are
you an O-5?" Cough. Cough. "Are you an O-4?" Cough. "Oh
sh__, another Lieutenant Commander!" "Do you know who won the
Army-Navy game?" Cough. Cough. "Oh hell, a dumb Lieutenant Commander
at that!" "Jim Stockdale and Robbie Risner are the SROs (Senior
Ranking Officers).
-
- Their rules are: communicate at all costs; when they
get around to torturing you, hold out as long as you can, bounce back and
make them do it all over again; don't despair when they break you, they
have broken all of us; pray." Cough. "Two Thais are next to you
and have been trying to communicate with you. They are using the tap code;
it is a box; the first letters are: American Football League Quits Victorious.
Communicate. My name is Galanti — Paul Galanti." BANG. The
universal danger signal, as I found out later. They were hauled out of
the cell block, tortured and I did not see Paul for three years.
-
- The rules of the new ball game were quite simple. To
lead was to be tortured. To communicate with a fellow prisoner was a de
facto sign of leadership resulting in torture. To fail to bow was to be
beaten and tortured. To fail to do exactly what you were told and when
you were told was to be tortured. Medical attention was reserved to those
who might have some propaganda value and then only in respect to the parts
of you that showed. Food and water were rationed out only to the extent
to keep you alive but in a weakened condition. Lenient and humane treatment
were defined as permitting you to live. You were being held as a hostage
and as a propaganda tool; otherwise you had no value. You were a slave
to communist ideology.
-
- Their rank questions made sense — find the SRO
(Senior Ranking Officer). But after all — the Army-Navy game! Doesn't
that beat all! The pampered nephews of Uncle Sam!! The Boat School Boys1
are forever with me! I really don't know if that is a curse or a blessing.
Although I must admit that it took a set of cajones (balls) for Paul to
get the rules of the road and the tap code to me. I had met Stockdale at
Stanford University where I was his numerical relief in the International
Relations Program. He was a Boat School Boy, but I must admit, having already
been tortured, that his rules of the road were a Godsend to my resistance
posture.
-
- You see, I started out in this man's Navy as a Naval
Aviation Cadet having been first a Private in the Massachusetts National
Guard. I knew what it was to be an enlisted man as my father and brother
had been before me. I did not take it to be a sign of second class status
— it was just different. I was a NavCad for the purpose of being
a naval aviator, not of being an officer; if you had to be an officer to
fly from carriers then so be it, no big deal. But these officers were something
else! Here's how the myth built up in my mind. Recognize, that as far as
I was concerned initially, all officers were Boat School Boys. NavCads
ran out to the obstacle course; officers rode out and back in a Cattle
Car. NavCads formed up for church call on Sunday while the officers drove
by, shooting us the Hawaiian Peace Sign, to pick off all the best looking
girls at Pensacola Beach.
-
- The officers got to go to the O'Club and watch pretty
girls at the pool and drink Bloody Marys; the NavCads got to go across
the street to the ACRAC (Aviation Cadet Recreation and Athletic Club) —
a primitive but welcome beer hall. NavCads got to wash SNJs (aircraft)
while the Officers lounged around. NavCads got to man fire bottles while
the Officers started their engines. NavCads took the leftovers while the
officers got the prime flight times and first shots at available aircraft.
Not complaining mind you; just a fact of life registering more because
they were no better or no worse an aviator than you were.
-
- As a plow-back instructor in advanced training, I started
to sort out the Boat School Boys. They hung in there together. They were
adventuresome but over-confident. But they were as a rule unprepared for
hops, careless about academics, and cavalier about performing for grades.
As a plank owner in a new fleet attack squadron forming up, it became obvious
to me that the leadership put the Boat School Boys in desirable positions
of trust. In the wardroom their napkin numbers kept them together at the
formal sittings. They tended to pull liberty together. They had contacts
ashore and afloat that enabled them to get things done and take care of
their troops in a manner I could only aspire to. They got the recommendations
to Test Pilot School and nifty post graduate programs.
-
- Sound green eyed with envy? Jealous? Left out? Angry?
It may sound like it, but it is not so. They were different and I was different.
Someday they would be in command and in the Flag Mess. if the Navy kept
faith with me I'd fly my butt off and aspire to have a shot at Commander
and maybe even get my own squadron. We were different. And how different
the Boat School Boys were! During the six years I spent in prison I had
the good fortune to be in a position to be in the middle of the internal
prisoner communication nets that the VC (Viet Cong — Vietnamese
Communists) never could eliminate. I watched good SROs stand up and be
counted, only to be cut down like firewood. I saw their replacements come
and go. I assisted in building up new communication nets when old ones
were compromised. I got a good feel for those of my shipmates —
the vast majority of who were sterling, outstanding warriors —
who had that something extra to rally the troops, restore faith, charge
the hill one more time, and be there when you needed them. What we as survivors
all had in common was neighborhood, church, school, friends, and family
that made us the people we are today. Our education and training only built
upon, refined, and honed what already was there.
-
- However, it did not take me long in Hanoi to discover
that the BSB (Boat School Boys) were in a class all by themselves. Indeed
my first life saving contact was with Paul Galanti, BSB extraordinaire.
At great risk to life and limb, you would try to communicate. The purposes
of communication were to formulate resistance plans, escape plans, resistance
to enemy propaganda ploys, names of downed and imprisoned Americans and
their allies, set up the chain of command, establish our rules of the road,
build morale, and basically to screw the VC in any way that we could think
of. We had our own war to fight and could not do it without communication.
-
- The last thing you needed when you started to set up
a communication net or pass the word was to have some overly educated jackass
try to debate with you the theology and philosophy of what you were trying
to do, especially when you were tapping. Some guys wanted convincing, others
wanted it to be fair, still others thought it was too something (dangerous,
frivolous, demeaning, childish, hard, soft, etc., etc.). You don't know
what a thrill it was to find that on the other side of the wall you had
a BSB. He would get it right the first time around. You would get no guff.
"Roger WILCO Out." Later on he might come back and ask you if
you or the SRO knew what you were doing, or suggest a better way, or tell
you frankly that he thought it was useless. But he never passed that down
the line.
-
- One of our acting SROs (a BSB) took it into his head
that the POWs would all go on a fast to show the VC that we would not tolerate
the torture and beating of prisoners. We would fast until the VC granted
us the rights of POWs under the Geneva Conventions. He passed the word
down the line to his emaciated, already starving, sickly troopers via a
net made up mostly of BSBs. We went on the fast much to the amazement of
the VC who were only too glad to eat the rations themselves (since we actually
were winning the war about the time LBJ knocked off the bombing). Meanwhile,
the BSBs went back up the net to convince our stalwart but misguided leader,
that the fast was counterproductive and got the order rescinded. Obey —
an easy word — but with critical implications for survival. Innovation
— not always productive, like a fast for the starving; but better
than sitting on your duff.
-
- All of the lessons that Mother Bancroft2 taught her sons,
many of which did not have the approval of the Academic Committee, were
played out on the VC. A BSB during a filmed propaganda session blinked
out "torture" in Morse Code. A BSB is on the cover of Life magazine
showing an inverted Hawaiian Peace Sign (Life airbrushed the fingers out
lest their customers be scandalized). A BSB, seriously injured and on a
stretcher refused the offer of an early release at a time when our own
internal policy for release would have let him go with honor.
-
- The stories of the sons of Mother Bancroft go on and
on. But BSBs were lifesavers through unflinching leadership and inspiration
through example to me. I came out of the prison experience vowing to become
a part of the BSB system, which was certainly a change from all of my earlier
NavCad and JO carping. And indeed, my Navy twilight tour was within the
USNA system. The United States Naval Academy performs a unique service
for the country that other institutions, like my Georgetown and Stanford,
never could or should perform.
-
- The USNA is in the business of forming from the raw material
of society a group of leaders of men and women, a class of warriors, a
cadre of men and women who are willing to sacrifice their treasure, their
bodies, and their very lives for the Constitution, and for the citizens
of the United States of America. The USNA recreates the dedication of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence who gave their all for their
beliefs. The USNA is in the business of developing integrity, honesty,
courage, and stamina through rigorous physical and intellectual conditioning.
-
- The product of the USNA is not an engineer, a political
scientist, a chemist, or a physicist. The product is a citizen, a person
formed in an heroic mold, whom we hope will never have to be a hero, but
who we are confident has the fortitude to go in harm's way to protect the
Republic. The product is a person who will do the right thing for no other
reason than it is the right thing to do. The product is a person who recognizes
excellence and is willing to strive for it. The product is a person dedicated
to caring for the enlisted men and women of the U.S. Navy, those people
who do most of the work and most of the dying in our Navy. The product
is a person who well represents the nation no matter what port he enters
or sea he sails upon.
-
- No other institution does this. The greatest accolade
given the USNA in the Vietnamese Communist prison was the statement the
Camp Commander, Major Bui, made to John Sidney McCain III, BSB, when John,
son of the Commander in Chief Pacific, refused an early propaganda release:
"They have taught you too well, McCain! They have taught you too well."
May we always continue to teach Midshipmen "too well."
-
- *Richard A. Stratton spent six years in seminaries studying
for the Catholic priesthood. He transferred to Georgetown University and
obtained a degree in History. He entered navy pilot training, discovered
he liked it, and decided to make the Navy his career. Stratton was shot
down over North Vietnam in January 1967. In March of '67, he was forced
to attend a press briefing in Hanoi. He pulled his 'Manchurian Candidate'
antics when he appeared drugged and robot-like and with unfocused eyes
made exaggerated bows to the four corners of the room.
-
- This conference focused world attention on the treatment
of POWs in Vietnam and the mind-altering acts imposed on the POWs to secure
their compliance. He retired from the Navy with the rank of Captain. Douglas
Hegdahl, the Navy enlisted man who fell overboard off a combat ship in
the Gulf of Tonkin, ended up as Stratton's roommate. Most POWs memorized
names, shoot-down dates, etc. of other POWs. Hegdahl, blessed with a vast
memory, retained over 300 names. Even though contrary to 'official' policy
on early release (we all go home together), Stratton told Hegdahl to go
home if offered the opportunity, and if it did not exact too great a personal
price. Hegdahl accepted an early release and took home over 300 names of
POWs — to the eternal gratitude of the named POWs and their families.
-
- 1. 'Boat School Boys' refers to graduates of the United
States Naval Academy.
-
- 2. Bancroft Hall is the living quarters for Midshipmen
at the U.S. Naval Academy
|