Captured

by Alvin Townley

  In him divine and mortal merged,

  Yet he’s the one the soldiers scourged.

  He praised the humble and the meek,

  The grateful deaf-mute heard him speak,

  His face was love personified,

  Yet he’s the one they crucified.

  Now our tears with doubts combine,

  How could he die yet be divine?

  We must dispel this faithless gloom,

  Let’s pray at dawn beside his tomb.

  The poem’s title, “The Great Sign,” applied to the POWs too. Jerry frantically searched for some indication their situation would change. He thought he received it on April 1. While passing time in his cell that afternoon, he suddenly heard keys jingle. The door opened and Rat stood in his doorway, beaming. “Denton, we have defeated you! There will be no more bombing! Johnson has quit!”

  Rat grinned and left Jerry alone. He immediately relayed the experience via taps. He suggested Rat had spun a major North Vietnamese concession. Jerry assumed H Ch Minh gave in and Johnson stopped bombing North Vietnam in response. He felt lighthearted for once; his miserable sentence would soon end. Homecoming was nigh.

  Later that day, Hanoi Hannah’s broadcast helped explain Rat’s statement. Jerry and his men heard their commander in chief’s voice come through the speakers in their cells: “Tonight, I renew the offer I made last August—to stop the bombardment of North Vietnam. We ask that talks begin promptly, that they be serious talks on the substance of peace.” Every POW in Alcatraz wondered, would a bombing halt and peace talks lead to homecoming? The president continued and Jerry understood what Rat meant when he said Johnson had quit. The president’s Texas accent intoned, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” Not seeking a second term was an effective resignation. The POWs were shocked. Johnson had given up.

  Ever optimistic, Jerry still took the bombing halt as the great sign for which he’d prayed. A halt meant peace. Peace would mean release. Maybe 1968 would see them home.

  As 1968 continued, days in Alcatraz remained unchanged. Hannah made no more mention of peace. The bombing halt seemed less like a prelude to peace and more like a chance for North Vietnam to recover and extend the war. Jerry’s hope for peace and return began to dissipate. Of more immediate concern, his cell began to grow hotter by the day. Hanoi’s summer had arrived in May. On sunny days, he could feel heat pulsing through the unprotected roof. He sweated out every ounce of water he drank. He’d sit quietly, trying not to move, watching drops of sweat drip and trace down his arms and chest. The air above his bunk would grow too thick and hot to breathe. It forced him to the floor, where he spent his afternoons sucking air from beneath his door.

  Jerry heard taps coming through the wall from George McKnight, who was relaying a message from George Coker, who was relaying a message from Nels Tanner. Tanner served as the relay between Jerry’s nine-man cellblock and the two-man block shared by Jim Stockdale and Jim Mulligan. Tanner’s cell had a perfect angle to see Stockdale or Mulligan flash their hands in code beneath their doors. Jerry knew that meant Tanner spent hours curled uncomfortably on his floor being the communication link between the two Alcatraz cellblocks. On this occasion Tanner had relayed a message from Jim Mulligan to Jerry, sending it down the cellblock via George Coker and George McKnight.

  Mulligan reported Cat had visited camp and called him to quiz. Rat and Cat had asked about Mulligan’s condition and his recent refusal to eat. Mulligan had stripped off his shirt and ranted, “My bones are showing, I’m starving, and I can’t eat. I can’t breathe and you ask me why I won’t eat.”

  Jerry realized his men could not survive much longer. He needed to act, and he considered how to approach Rat; a straightforward demand would never work. At his next encounter, Jerry told the commandant, “I want to congratulate you on carrying through on the excruciating treatment and putting us to a slow death by heat.”

  “No, Denton,” Rat responded, with surprise. “I did not know conditions were that bad. Our orders are to keep you isolated and in irons. We have no orders to kill you. We will study.”

  The next day, Tanner relayed that Rat and Cat had visited Mulligan’s cell to assess the temperature. Mulligan reported that one guard nearly burned himself when he touched the sunbaked door. Cat and Rat had promised to address the extreme heat. Soon thereafter, Jerry heard new voices in the courtyard. He dropped to the floor and watched a work detail begin removing the metal plates above the doors to Stockdale’s and Mulligan’s cells. They disappeared from his view as they began, presumably, doing the same for his own nine-man cellblock. Finally, the crew arrived outside Jerry’s cell. They entered and removed the bolts from the plate’s top, then bent it inward, parallel to the ceiling. Light and a breeze flowed into Jerry’s oppressive hovel. The next day, the workers returned. Jerry watched and listened as they added a thatched second roof to shield his cellblock from the sun. They also planted vines outside his door. On his daily visits to the latrine, he watched the vines climb upward all along the cellblock, providing precious leafy shade as they grew. He and his men were still trapped inside tiny cells, but at least they could now survive the summer.

  Summer of 1968 brought a new administrator to Alcatraz; the POWs named him “Slick.” The warden’s first contribution was erecting a screen around the bath area to afford POWs a hint of privacy while they bathed. He also instituted an extra ten minutes of outdoor exercise each day and baths became daily instead of weekly. Otherwise, nothing at Alcatraz changed. The days passed slowly, the hours and minutes seemed to pass even slower. Hope of homecoming was fading with the changing seasons. At least torture had abated, so days passed in a less physically painful manner.

  One morning in mid-December, Jerry Denton heard taps coming from George McKnight. He leaned his cup against the wall to amplify the sound, listened, then responded. Suddenly, he heard McKnight’s door being pulled open. A guard yelled, “You communicate!” Seconds later, Jerry’s door flew open. The same guard shouted, “You communicate!” A chill ran through Jerry’s body. For fourteen months, communication had gone largely ignored by Alcatraz administrators and guards. Now, a sudden change. His door slammed shut.

  Jerry heard guards drag McKnight from his cell; he watched from underneath his door until they moved out of his field of view. He suspected orders had come for confessions and biographies. That would mean torture. Jerry began to pray.

  POWs could hear any sound made inside the Alcatraz courtyard. Five days later, Jerry heard an American walking and looked out to see McKnight being led to the latrine. He looked terrible. As he scraped out his bucket, he broadcast he’d been tortured for a letter of apology to the Vietnamese people. Back in his cell, he tapped to Jerry: “Purge, I say no comm.”

  Knowing the POWs needed communication like they needed water, Jerry responded, “Keep the volume up and if you get caught, you tell them that I ordered you to do it.”

  Just as Jerry finished his message, his door opened and the same guards who’d returned McKnight hauled out Jerry. They took him outside the courtyard and into a quiz room. There he found Mickey Mouse, whom he remembered well from his session with Pigeye at the Hilton. Jerry feared the Mouse’s arrival portended a revival of harsh treatment.

  “You have been caught communicating,” declared the new warden. “You must apologize. You must write letter to President H Ch Minh and apologize for your crimes.”

  Yes, old times had returned. The Camp Authority once again used punishment as an excuse to extract a statement. Jerry refused the request.

  “Okay,” Mickey Mouse replied. “I leave you to think deeply.”

  A guard locked irons around Jerry’s ankles and pushed him against a wall. He received instructions to keep his hands raised over his head. A guard stood nearby to ensure he complied. After three days, Mickey Mouse returned to find Jerry with his hands still raised. He asked if Jerry would write an apology. Jerry still refused.<
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  “We are going to get serious, then, Denton,” said the officer. Jerry knew he meant it.

  Mickey Mouse left and Jerry used a pencil to scratch out a note stating they’d have to torture him to death before he wrote an apology to H Ch Minh or anyone else. Signing the note, he knew pain would come. He also knew he’d once again be fighting for his country and his honor. Purpose had returned.

  As soon as Mickey Mouse came back and read Jerry’s note, he ordered guards to apply rear cuffs and leg irons. One guard dragged the bound and helpless prisoner across the hard floor. As Jerry’s ankles and wrists scraped along, the iron bands dug into his flesh. Eventually, the guard left him on the floor, with no food, water, or bucket. Hours passed. The next time the door opened, Mickey Mouse walked in and appraised his captive. He offered Jerry another chance to write. Jerry said, “No.”

  Three guards entered. One held a rope and a pole. The threesome bound Jerry’s forearms and spread his elbows wide. They pushed his knees through the resulting space, so his chin nearly rested on his kneecaps. His bent back immediately ached. He learned the pole’s purpose when the guards threaded it through the diamonds of space created between his bent knees and elbows. The guards propped him on his spine and placed his feet on a block, about one foot off the floor. Then they left. The rig pressed Jerry’s thighs so tightly against his lungs that he could barely breathe. His neck and spine radiated pain. Yet Jerry hacked it for four hours.

  When Mickey Mouse returned, he ordered Jerry untied and food brought. Jerry still wouldn’t write. “Denton, we will break you now,” Mickey Mouse said.

  A new guard entered and tied Jerry into the rig tighter than ever. His hands turned black. He passed out. A guard loosened the rig and blood streamed back into starved arteries and tissues, causing a terrific pain. The guards kept up the cycle. Mickey Mouse visited during this new session and watched several guards beat Jerry.

  As he approached twelve hours of constant pain, Jerry thought, I would run my own mother down with a truck if the price was freedom from pain. He felt his heart struggle to pump blood through his constricted limbs. He had a strange yet honest thought: He hoped his heart would just wear out so he could die and Mickey Mouse could never make him write that damned apology. Jerry Denton began praying to die. The Lord did not grant the request. When he could stand the pain no longer, he had no choice but to give up. He weakly croaked for a guard. Mickey Mouse looked triumphant when he arrived. Jerry agreed to write. The guards released his bonds and left him on the cold concrete floor.

  The next day, December 23, 1968, he wrote three brief paragraphs apologizing, in the vaguest of ways, to H Ch Minh. He was sure Hanoi Hannah and the Hanoi press would soon broadcast his words for all to hear. He felt humiliated.

  Jerry had just begun to recover in his cell when, the next evening, guards barged in, stood him up, and blindfolded him. With help, he stumbled out of the Alcatraz courtyard and along the street outside. His legs loosened up, and he gradually began walking under his own power. Guards removed the blindfold and he recognized the building where he’d blinked out TORTURE in Morse code during his interview two and a half years ago. He was forty-one years old then. Now he felt at least seventy.

  Jerry entered the big house and walked into a brightly lit room with a decadent table at its center. Trays of food and drink, even champagne, covered the table. Jerry looked for cameras; he suspected the Camp Authority staged the event for propaganda photographs. The commandant of the North Vietnamese prison system walked up and greeted him cheerily. “Ah, Denton, good to see you again,” said Cat. “How are you?”

  Jerry gruffly responded he’d just been tortured.

  Cat paid no mind. “How are conditions?”

  “Terrible,” Jerry said. “Can’t eat because of the torture.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Only if you do it for everyone,” he replied, referencing the Code of Conduct’s prohibition of special favors. Jerry saw Cat begin to simmer, and the two leaders both grew angrier by the word. Cat attempted to salvage the dialogue and offered Jerry a banana. Jerry declined.

  Voice rising, Cat said, “All right, Denton, eat that banana!” He pointed at the table.

  “No.” Jerry was still incensed about the letter he’d had to sign and wasn’t feeling cooperative.

  “It will be good for you.”

  “If everyone gets a banana, I will take it.”

  “Shut mouth!” Cat yelled. “You eat banana! That is an order!”

  Jerry shook his head emphatically. Both men were livid. Cat sent him back to Alcatraz.

  JERRY HAD NEVER BEEN AFRAID to stand up for principle in a fight. The incident with Cat made him recall two instances in Virginia Beach where he’d stood firm. He dove into those memories to help pass time as 1968 became 1969.

  He coached his sons’ sports teams whenever he could, although long deployments made him miss many games. One fall, he was coaching his son Billy’s football team when a young black player tried out. A local Virginia Beach politico would not allow a black player to participate. That rubbed Jerry the wrong way. He drove to the kingpin’s office, barged in, and slammed his fist on the man’s desk. “By God, that young man will be on my team,” he yelled, “and I don’t want to hear anything else about it!” The young man became team captain.

  Another time, his son Billy came home crying. A friend’s father had threatened to spank him. Furious, Jerry called the other father, whom he’d never met. He loosed a tirade and made it exceedingly clear that nobody would spank Billy except him. He hung up the phone and composed himself. He looked at Billy, swallowed hard, and asked, “So, how big is that guy?” Jerry always stood up for his principles and his family, no matter the adversary or cost. In Hanoi, the Code of Conduct was his principle and the POWs were his family.

  On January 8, 1969, guards escorted Jerry to Mickey Mouse’s office. Mickey Mouse calmly asked Jerry what had happened on Christmas Eve. Jerry responded that he had just followed the Code of Conduct, which forbids accepting favors.

  “You were a fool on Christmas Eve, Denton,” Mickey Mouse said. “Now you must pay. You must read on the camp radio.”

  Mickey Mouse had Jerry put straight into the rope-and-pole rig. He purposefully left the room’s windows open so the Alcatraz inmates could hear Jerry’s screams and groans. The men of Alcatraz listened to their fellow POW suffer for two days. When Jerry surrendered, he spasmed on the floor so badly that Mickey Mouse called a doctor.

  As soon as Jerry had stabilized, Mickey Mouse pushed a script into his hands. Jerry tried to recite it, but his mind and body were so wasted from two days of torture that nobody could understand his garbled words. Mickey Mouse tried again the next day. Jerry’s words were still hoarse and slurred, but Mickey Mouse accepted them. Jerry was thankful he seemed not to notice several deliberate and egregious mispronunciations. The Alcatraz POWs certainly did, however. When Jerry’s forced words came over the camp speakers, along with phrases like “Horseshit Minh” instead of H Ch Minh, Jerry heard his men laugh. Mickey Mouse shut off the recording. Guards took Jerry back to his cell, where he recounted the story on the wall. He elaborated, “They want us to write letters asking H Ch Minh for amnesty. If they’re working on some kind of release, they can’t just turn us loose without losing face. They have to have some kind of justification, some kind of admission of guilt. Then Uncle H can forgive us. Don’t make it easy for them. Hold out as long as you can.” Jerry’s resilience and optimism proved boundless. Maybe, he thought, this round of torture meant release was closer.

  The next day, Jerry heard that Jim Mulligan had been hauled out. Mulligan returned within the day and reported via Nels Tanner. Mulligan had refused to read a script and told Mickey Mouse, “You tortured [Denton] badly, and if you want me to read, you’ll have to torture me the same way.” Mickey Mouse had apparently decided the effort was not worth the gain. The camp’s reading campaign ended. Jerry slept that night grateful his
resistance had spared other men.

  The year 1969 began with the brief reading campaign and gambling. The Alcatraz POWs wagered who could pick the date of their homecoming. They aggressively placed bets, payable upon homecoming in food or cash as usual. Optimist Jim Mulligan predicted their release as June 1969—six months distant. Jerry joined him with a sunny bet. Other rosy predictions tapped down the cellblock. Then Stockdale placed his bet from across the courtyard. It landed like a bomb: February 1973. The prediction shocked Jerry. He couldn’t fathom his country leaving POWs in Hanoi for four more years. Besides, he couldn’t survive four more years.

  “After the next [presidential] election,” Stockdale tapped pessimistically. “Then we’ll be going home and not before then.” With no other choice, the POWs settled in to learn who would win the bet. Jerry felt certain it would not be Jim Stockdale. Surely, the new man in the White House, Richard Nixon, would bring them home soon.

  A terrible scream knifed through the predawn quiet on January 23, 1969, three days after Hanoi Hannah reported Nixon’s inauguration. The cry immediately awoke Jerry and every other POW in Alcatraz; the slightest abnormal noise in the courtyard would often rouse every man. Jerry thought it odd that despite being locked safely inside a cell, his body processed even the smallest noises as if they might signal some dire threat. He heard more screaming. “J” came down the wall: Harry Jenkins was having terrible cramps.

  “Bo co, bo co!” cried Jenkins, in between screams. Other POWs joined Jenkins in calling the guards: “Bo co!” Jerry heard a commotion as several guards entered the camp. A cell door opened and the screaming subsided. Then he heard Jenkins bellow, “Go ahead, hit me!” Jerry assumed the guards were beating Jenkins to stifle his screams. Jerry and other POWs began pounding on their doors and yelling through their open vents in protest. Their chorus grew. Jerry felt a swelling pride. He and his men were standing up for a brother POW in need. He felt even better when guards walked down the cellblock, promising the inmates Jenkins would see a doctor.