Captured

by Alvin Townley

  During this period, another aspiration began to percolate among the POWs. Leaders like Jerry Denton wanted their men to have a mental picture, not just rules, to take with them into a quiz. He wanted each man to imagine himself returning home with honor. Every man could then determine what actions would enable him to walk off a plane in America with his head held high, whenever that day came. Each man could determine what he needed to do in Hanoi so he could tell his family and fellow servicemen, “I did my best.”

  The POWs’ motto and driving mission became “return with honor.”

  Two months had passed since Jerry’s foot first became infected while he suffered in leg stocks, but it remained unhealed. The oozing blood and pus repulsed Jerry; he could scarcely look at his own foot. It grew worse, agitated by the slimy floors of latrines and bathhouses, along with the film of dirt covering everything at the Zoo. His foot’s unsightly appearance did not inspire his captors to offer treatment or relief, however. The camp administrator still assigned him latrine duty.

  That fall of 1965, the Zoo held some fifty-six prisoners yet had no sewer system; waste removal became a rotating job for POWs. One evening, guards appeared at Jerry’s door and motioned him outside. They instructed him to collect the latrine pails—“honeybuckets,” as the POWs called them—left beside each cell door. He collected the stinking buckets from his cellblock and dumped their revolting contents into several larger buckets. He took the larger buckets to the edge of a field where POWs had placed buckets from other cellblocks. He’d have to dump them all. Two guards watched as he lifted two full buckets and began walking across the field to an open cesspool. The field had more weeds and debris than grass. Sticks, rocks, and shards of old metal made for an impossible minefield and pained Jerry’s feet. The infection raging in his left foot accentuated the discomfort.

  A twig splintered and cracked beneath his foot. A sharp rock nearly pierced his heel. Fuming, hurting, and humiliated, he labored onward. He eased himself down a nasty slope and emptied the two buckets into the cesspool. He climbed back to the field. He took several steps and another rock jabbed his foot. Pain shot up his leg. He threw down the empty buckets. Using his French, he turned to the guards and shouted, “Fini, fini!” He was done, and he was mad as hell.

  One guard looked at Jerry and patted his pistol: Get back to work. Jerry didn’t care. He yelled, “Bullshit!” In that moment, he’d had it. Enough with North Vietnam. Enough with this lousy prison camp. He walked straight through a second guard. The young soldier was so startled he dropped his rifle and stumbled backward. Jerry stalked fifty yards to his solitary cell. He never looked back. He slammed the door of his cell shut and fumed. Later that night, he heard a guard quietly lock his door.

  The next day, the camp commander had Jerry’s foot treated at last. It began to heal, helped by a surprisingly decent diet of cabbage, pumpkin soup, bread or rice, bananas, and occasional cast-off bits of chicken. The commander also installed two saw-horses in Jerry’s cell to raise his sleeping pallet off the floor. Cockroaches would no longer scurry across his arms and legs at night. Jerry appreciated the care. While treatment was basic and restrictive, it became tolerable. Jerry could fall asleep feeling more human.

  Fortune shifted the week of October 24. Jerry received messages indicating guards had caught POWs Ron Storz and Robbie Risner harboring contraband and drilling holes through walls so they could talk. Storz was thrown into solitary; Risner disappeared. Soon thereafter, angry guards burst into Jerry’s cell for a shakedown. He watched helplessly as they found a bandage he’d been using as a tablet, a running list of known POWs, and a small piece of pencil lead. He watched, unable to stop them as they confiscated the list of names he’d worked so hard to create; now he’d have to start anew. Far worse, however, they discovered his cherished woven cross hidden inside a propaganda pamphlet. At bayonet point, Jerry watched with a sinking heart as a guard stomped on the cross, grinding it into the concrete floor with his boot. He threw away the shredded remnants. Jerry lost his only real possession. Now he had nothing.

  Before guards led him away, Jerry saw a crew of North Vietnamese laborers enter his cell and begin bricking in the open transom above the door; communication would become even more difficult. He returned several hours later and immediately inventoried his cell; no sign of his tablet or scroll of POW names. The guards had left the propaganda pamphlet, and Jerry started to vent his anger by ripping it apart. Then he felt a slight bulge. He opened the pamphlet and found a new cross, woven from bamboo fibers. The gift overwhelmed him. He deduced that someone on the work detail had seen his cross trampled and, at substantial risk, fashioned him a new one. When he next poked out of his cell to pick up his food, several members of the detail were at work down the hallway. Jerry sent them a nod of thanks. He received a smile in return. The show of compassion lifted his spirits and steeled his faith.

  On November 1, conditions grew worse. A guard opened Jerry’s door at mealtime. Instead of the usual platter, Jerry saw a bowl of soup sitting in the dirt. He inspected it; it was cold and watery. Pieces of grit, specks of dirt, and two thin bits of cabbage floated on the surface. Disappointed, he picked out the grit, which he knew had caused cracked teeth among the POWs. Grit removed, he drank his morning meal. That evening, he found the same meager rations awaiting him. The food did not improve in the coming weeks. Jerry quickly withered to 120 pounds; he’d tipped the scales at a healthy 167 pounds on the day he was captured. Then the temperature plunged.

  One late November morning, Jerry huddled in the corner of his chilly cell. He’d wrapped his one thin blanket around himself as he slurped down his rations. He heard voices outside and the door opened. A delegation of North Vietnamese officials peered inside at the caged American leader, reminding Jerry exactly why POWs called this place the Zoo. He wished he could present a better figure than the skinny, dirty, hungry prisoner he’d become. He didn’t look or feel much like a commanding officer.

  “Well, Denton,” one man began. “Do you know that you are eating shit?” The man may have intended the question as a joke, but Jerry had long suspected the dirt in his soup was human-based fertilizer. His own diarrhea, and that of other POWs, made him surmise the Camp Authority rarely washed vegetables before serving them. Starvation being the alternative, POWs ate every meal anyway.

  Jerry didn’t answer the question. The man asked loudly, “So you want to continue eating shit?”

  Fury motivated Jerry to stand up. “Well, I hope there is some protein in it,” he replied, struggling to his feet. The answer displeased the official. “You must condemn the policies of your government,” he warned. “Until you do that, you will continue to eat shit!”

  Food wasn’t the only weapon applied to POWs that November. Jerry’s neighbor, Ed Davis, the young lieutenant who’d originally woven Jerry’s cross, suddenly stopped communicating. Jerry would tap again and again but never received a response. Then Jerry heard faint taps coming through the wall. It was Davis. Guards had cuffed his hands behind his back for refusing to provide any biographical information. He had to learn to tap and listen in his new configuration.

  To support his friend, Jerry spent hours tapping to Davis. He often ended his messages with an imagined sponsorship plug: “Brought to you by the makers of Denton’s Odorless Honeybuckets, the honeybucket with a lid …”

  Ed’s treatment worsened, but he held firm to the Code. Worried about Davis’s well-being, Jerry tapped, “Maybe you should consider giving them some kind of answer, something that doesn’t mean anything but will satisfy them.”

  “I don’t think that way, sir,” Davis replied.

  “I just want you to consider the idea,” tapped Jerry. “We have to find the best way to get you out of this situation.”

  The next time the interrogators came at him, Ed agreed to answer one question. He reported the exchange to Jerry.

  His captors asked him, “When did you start school?”

  “I started school when I was s
ix years old,” Davis confessed. The interrogators began asking him other questions, one after another. Davis didn’t answer any of them. “You bastards,” he fired back, “I told you I would answer one question. That’s all.”

  He explained to Jerry, “I answered a question and it didn’t stop anything. It was like, ‘Now we’ve started and we can go from here.’ Sir, it doesn’t work!”

  Both Jerry and Ed Davis were convinced the POWs needed to adhere to the hard line. They did, and Ed Davis suffered for it. A cadre of camp officials continued to hound Davis, demanding he sign an agreement promising to obey their orders, not those of Jeremiah Denton. They cut his food ration to a piece of bread and a cup of water each day. For a time, they even held back the bread. Davis tapped that he now weighed around 110 pounds. He did not relent, however. He stuck by Jerry’s orders to follow the Code of Conduct. He would not make any disloyal statements.

  One night, Jerry heard guards enter Davis’s cell. He listened to muffled thumps and occasional groans coming through the wall. Jerry heard Ed scream and thrash about in pain. Then came repetitive blows; Jerry guessed guards were beating Ed’s head against his wooden sleeping pallet. Silence fell. Jerry heard a cell door shut and guards walking away. Then he heard scratching; Ed Davis was sending Morse code with a piece of metal. Davis scratched the wall for longs, or “dahs,” and sent quick raps for shorts, or “dits.”

  POWs typically used the tap code, as longs or shorts were often difficult to send—and the North Vietnamese knew Morse code. Here, Davis’s piece of metal made Morse possible, and nobody was listening; the guards were done with him for the night. Jerry engaged Davis with Morse, which he’d learned at the Naval Academy. It came back to him quickly and his ears were soon translating this old universal language of sailors and aviators.

  Davis reported that the guards had roped up his arms behind him, pulling his shoulders and elbows back toward each other. It was his punishment for continuing to stonewall his interrogators. He tapped out one more word later that night as he suffered the aftereffects of torture: “Agony.” Jerry had difficulty falling asleep knowing what his men suffered by following his orders. He’d heard about the ropes, straps, and bars employed by guards on uncooperative prisoners. He’d heard about broken men, devastated that they had been forced to surrender information or sign false statements. He wondered if he was leading these downed aviators wisely. Was his line too hard? Could they hack this brutality? No book, lecture, or quote had prepared him for this precise situation; no American fighting men had experienced something exactly like this. He had to trust his gut.

  The next morning, Jerry heard sobbing through the wall. He tapped to Davis. In response, Davis scratched, “Commander, I’ve been doing some soul-searching. If I had it to do over again, maybe I could have just held out five minutes more.” A sense of pride and validation filled Jerry Denton; tears welled in his eyes. His men believed in his leadership. Maybe he was doing the right thing.

  He responded, “For God’s sake, Ed, you did your best. You have nothing to be ashamed of. We are all proud of you. When they get around to the rest of us, I hope and pray we will do as well as you have.”

  On December 4, Jerry heard guards take Ed Davis away. He did not return.

  Jerry wondered what would happen to the young lieutenant. He wondered if his own status as a senior officer, a full commander, intimidated the Camp Authority. Perhaps his rank kept the most severe torture at bay. He would willingly receive it; he needed to bear the same burdens his men did. He tried to guess when it would come.

  The Camp Authority’s agenda had become clear: They wanted to isolate prisoners, strip them of their pride, physically weaken them, and make them more pliable. If they could accomplish that, they could more easily cajole them for intelligence and information. Longer term, Jerry knew they’d go for confessions, political apologies, and propaganda statements. With every statement they forced, they figured the next statement would be easier to get. Eventually, they’d have a humiliated, guilty, demoralized, and very compliant population of prisoners—exactly what they needed to support North Vietnam’s strategy.

  Jerry knew the outgunned Communists could not beat the United States on the battlefield; he was sure H Ch Minh knew it too. North Vietnam would instead try to swing public opinion against American involvement. If they could turn the American public and citizens in American-allied nations against the war with propaganda and statements from prisoners, they could hold out until America withdrew. The same statements would inspire North Vietnam’s populace. A motivated North could easily conquer a weakened and abandoned South Vietnam. Jerry’s leadership and the Code of Conduct had made the Camp Authority’s relatively gentle approach to extracting propaganda ineffective to date. With no other options, the Camp Authority decided to employ harsher methods. Jerry knew he and his men would all suffer. He rallied POWs to their mission and cause de la résistance: returning home with honor. They were determined not to fail.

  The POWs had nicknamed the commandant of the Zoo “Dog,” and Jerry generally respected him. Dog spoke English well and seemed reasonable. He allowed POWs turkey and an extra blanket at Christmas and played a moving violin version of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” over the speakers placed throughout the camp; the familiar notes offered a welcome break from the propaganda broadcasts the speakers usually carried. Jerry began meeting with Dog more regularly. He hoped speaking commander-to-commander might spark progress. The two men soon became conversational; at some point a body could not just continue reiterating name, rank, service number, and date of birth. Jerry and other POWs found the human need for contact and connection too great to overcome entirely. Jerry at least tried to make his topics and words innocuous. More often than not, he fabricated his responses.

  During one exchange in December, Dog wondered aloud if Jerry would like to write home. Jerry answered, “Yes.” He did not know for certain if Jane knew he’d survived; a letter from him would change that. The prisoners suspected, correctly, that North Vietnam had not told the United States which POWs they’d captured. That dreadful prospect added one more nightmare to their dreams: What if my family doesn’t even know I’m alive? POWs wanted desperately to write home.

  “Well,” Dog countered, “I am not sure that I will allow you to write. You have a bad attitude. What special reason do you have for wanting to write? Only those with special reasons are allowed to write.”

  “There is no special reason to write, but I have a wife and seven children and I want to tell them I am well.”

  “Ah,” Dog said, clearly pleased he’d gained this new information. “We respect a man with seven children.”

  Then Dog presented his prisoner a pen and notepad; he gave Jerry a most unanticipated chance as a Christmas gesture. Jerry was both ecstatic and frightened. He had no time to prepare. What if he wrote the wrong thing? What would he mistakenly leave unwritten? How could he share his honest thoughts but not have his captors disapprove the letter? He had little chance to consider these questions; he just began writing, not knowing how much time he’d be permitted.

  “My dearest wife and children,” he began. “I am allowed to write you for Christmas, for which I am grateful. But it is impossible for me to cram into a book, much less a letter, the pent-up love I want to express to you all. This opportunity came as a surprise so I am not prepared to recall even the essential things I’d like to say.

  “My Christmas gift to you all are the countless prayers I have said and will say for you,” he continued, “and a poem composed since I came here:

  My Jane

  When god made her his mood was the finest

  (Remembering his own Mary’s grace)

  He fashioned her brow for a love-hungry child

  And for fortunate men, her face.

  He created her body for sculpture

  With hands that are gentle as doves

  And eyes the most beautiful mirrors

  Of a heart full of tender loves.

&
nbsp; Yes, he only made one like my Janie

  Which poses a problem for me

  For how can i ever repay him

  For entrusting such treasure to me?

  “Darling, I am well in body, mind, and soul,” the letter continued. “I’ve never been so close to God and I pray all day each day for you and the others dead and alive who have given so much for us.

  “When I return my life will be better lived for Him and for you. This is not a promise but a fact.”

  He went on to share his hopes for his family’s health, his children’s schooling, even his worry that the rope for the backyard swing needed replacing. He poured out his love and his concern for a family unexpectedly left without him. He was grateful for the opportunity, even as remembering home saddened him. He went to sleep that night thinking of his family, what he wrote, and what he forgot to include.

  A short time later a newly arrived POW told Jerry he’d heard about his statement. To Jerry’s surprise and ire, the North Vietnamese had announced over Radio Hanoi that Jeremiah Denton would be glad when the war was over so he could return to his wife and seven children. His letter said nothing of the sort, but his captors had used his biographical information to make an antiwar advertisement! The news incensed Jerry. He was furious with Dog for being duplicitous and with himself for deviating from his own orders. He redoubled his efforts to resist. He’d let his defense down and been burned; from now on, he would stick to the hard line of defiance. He held himself up as an example and implored his men not to make his mistake.

  The path of resistance became more unpleasant. Jerry had several onerous quizzes with his two adversaries from his early days in the Hanoi Hilton; he learned other POWs had nicknamed them “Eagle” and “Owl.” He still refused to cooperate. He became more combative. He adhered tightly to the Code of Conduct, his one steadying touchpoint in this crazy world. He’d decided to follow its letter. Once he’d made that decision, compromise ceased being an option. He’d made his choice, and every action would back it up.