The League of Wives

by Heath Hardage Lee

  Harriman and his State Department lackeys held to their party line, urging the president not to stir things up by going public with the POW scenario. They could surely solve the problem by diplomatic means. Harriman was old school, following the template of his negotiations in previous wars. He had been encouraged in this line of reasoning by the positive results he and Secretary of State Rusk had seemed to generate regarding the notion of a “war crimes” trial. Their clandestine efforts both before and after the Hanoi March did help to dissuade the North Vietnamese from this approach in the summer of 1966.7 But what the two diplomats seemed not to realize (or perhaps did not want to admit) was that their work was only a secondary factor in halting the trial.

  Silver-tongued diplomacy got you only so far: media coverage of the prisoners’ plight during the Hanoi March was what immediately caught the world’s attention. The embarrassment the footage caused was the primary factor in the Communists’ decision to back off the threat of a war crimes trial. While Rusk, Harriman, and Johnson congratulated themselves on their diplomatic success, they had missed the bigger picture. The media, especially television, would more effectively spotlight diplomatic issues as the war went on. Groups on both sides of the conflict were only just beginning to realize how the international press could be used for message amplification and for outright warfare against the enemy during Vietnam, the “first television war.”

  While diplomacy had seemed to work in the initial stages of the conflict, it would soon prove to be a futile, frustrating, and dangerous approach where the POWs and MIAs were concerned. Though the war crimes threat had passed for the moment, the notion of a trial would continue to hang over the heads of the American government like a sword. “From time to time … the North Vietnamese reasserted their right to try pilots as war criminals.”8 Diplomacy had only provided a flimsy Band-Aid for a wound that would be opened and reopened throughout the war.

  * * *

  Back at Sunset Beach, Sybil finally broke down after the Hanoi March news. She sobbed in her mother’s arms: “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it … What am I going to do?” Her mother advised her to cry it out for her boys’ sake. The emotional release did her good. Sybil could see that, as individuals, the POW and MIA wives’ voices were ineffective and ignored. No one seemed to listen. It was as if the ladies were shouting into a hurricane, their cries for help drowned out by the diplomatic and military machines of their own government.

  Determined to try to change things, Sybil devised a plan, inspired by one of Jim’s favorite sayings: “When in doubt, see a manager.” Sybil added her own axiom to this, one that would serve her well in the coming days: “Nothing can take the place of a personal visit.”9

  A few weeks later, Sybil returned to Washington. She had appointments lined up with Ambassador Harriman; Admiral David McDonald, chief of naval operations; and Admiral Semmes, head of the Bureau of Naval Personnel (BuPers). Boroughs again served as her escort, meeting her at the airplane. On the way to the Pentagon, Sybil told Boroughs that she intended to work with Naval Intelligence to send covert letters to her captured husband. Boroughs grinned broadly—now, he thought, they were really in business.10

  The West Coast POW wife was particularly nervous to see Harriman.11 Long known as one of JFK’s foreign policy Wise Men, Harriman was also hailed as the “Lion of Diplomacy.” Patrician and handsome, Harriman came from Union Pacific Railroad money.12 With his charm and polished manners, he had been a magnet for women in his youth, including (the married) Pamela Churchill, Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law. The two carried on a torrid affair during Harriman’s stint as head of FDR’s lend-lease program in Britain during World War II. (Some thirty years later, Pamela would become Harriman’s second wife.)13

  This venerated diplomat, former governor of New York, and world-class snob possessed a hard edge that those who worked with him came to know all too well. “His episodes of impatient snapping in the genteel atmosphere of the White House caused [fellow Wise Man and LBJ national security adviser] McGeorge Bundy to liken Harriman to an old crocodile arousing from a feigned doze with snapping jaws.” Far from taking offense at this moniker, Harriman embraced the characterization and collected all manner of crocodile figurines, which he kept on his desk in the State Department. He often used “Crocodile” as his code name.14

  One thing Harriman did not possess was on-the-ground combat experience. While most of his college classmates immediately enlisted in the Great War, he chose to stay home and profit from his merchant shipping business, purchased with his mother’s backing. “The fact that Harriman had chosen to profit from World War I, rather than fight in it, was also held against him. Some of his friends from Yale considered his behavior shameful; several would not speak to him for years.”15 Perhaps Harriman’s constant striving to become top diplomat in World War II, and trying to stay relevant in an ambassadorial role in Vietnam, may have been attempts to assuage his guilty conscience over not enlisting. Like McNamara, he found that his skills lay in the business arena: the dirty work of war and military combat was an abstract concept to him.

  The other, even more fatal flaw in Harriman’s makeup? He “was renowned for his lack of a sense of humor, especially about himself.”16

  When Sybil met with the Crocodile that July, she was intimidated but determined. His quarters in the State Department, with their sense of opulence, reinforced his reputation. The office was fit for a king, with its plush carpets and ornate furniture. Harriman’s lair was guarded by a secretary “who postured like a Vogue model,” Sybil remembered.17 Exactly the habitat one would expect a Wise Man—or a Crocodile—to inhabit.

  Although Sybil later described Harriman as an elderly gentleman who wore a hearing aid, she understood that he wielded great power in Washington and in the world of international diplomacy. Sybil realized that she had to play her cards carefully with him—that he could turn out to be a valuable ally if she engaged him correctly. She spoke clearly and deliberately and maintained steady eye contact with the aging diplomat, deferring to most of his opinions.18

  The POW wife immediately noted Harriman’s keen interest in how the Pentagon was treating her. “You would have thought they were all from different countries the way they kept checking up on each other,” she noted of the State Department and the Pentagon. This did not reassure her, and, despite the debacle over her letters from Jim on her last visit to ONI, Sybil resolved not to “air any dirty Navy laundry in public … I told him the Navy treated me like a queen.” Her instinct was to protect her service branch just as all military wives had been trained to do, but Sybil soon realized that the ambassador at large had never even seen a letter from a POW, even though he was head of the entire POW/MIA welfare operation, eroding her confidence even further.19

  Harriman assured Sybil that everything possible was being done for the men but that he could not tell her exactly what those efforts involved. Still, Sybil recalled, “That two-hour visit with Ambassador Harriman meant a lot to me, and afterward I wrote to Jane Denton to the effect that his big points were (1) the things we are trying to do on behalf of the prisoners can’t be discussed publicly but the activities cover a wide range and (2) he was encouraged Hanoi has muted its threats about war crimes trials.”20

  The next day, Sybil visited with Admiral David L. McDonald, chief of naval operations, and Admiral Paul D. Miller, deputy chief of naval operations. Both seemed receptive to her wives’ newsletter idea (Harriman had been also) and to her idea of an anti–North Vietnamese propaganda campaign by the Navy.

  She also talked to Admiral Semmes, the head of BuPers, and urged him to have the Navy write the POW/MIA wives often to keep them updated about their husbands’ status. Sybil’s argument may seem dated today, but it was cunning in its emotional appeal: “You know you’re dealing with the female psyche in this situation and I remind you that it’s somewhat different from your own. For example, if on your wedding day you told your wife you loved her and then considered that job
done, you’d be in for trouble. You have to tell her you love her over and over again. It’s the same with the wives of the men who are prisoners and missing—you need to tell them they’re being remembered and their husbands also.”21

  Sybil left Washington satisfied that she seemed to have made an impact. She wrote the other wives: “I came away from my recent visit feeling that our husbands’ lives are in the hands of master statesmen who will do and are doing everything in their power to assure the safe return of the prisoners and bring the conflict to an early close.”22 Was Sybil trying to reassure not just the other wives but herself about the American government’s efforts in this department? She had seen more than one indication that all was not well. She was aware there were issues, but she had not yet completely absorbed the depths of the Washington political swamp, nor the gaping divide between the State Department and the Pentagon. Only months later would she begin to see things as they truly were: Admiral Semmes’s office would finally send her “newsletter” out to the wives, reworked into unrecognizable gobbledygook, “a say-nothing bureaucratic letter, which satisfied no one.”23 Semmes would soon become the focus of her ire and mistrust.

  Not happy about this feeble attempt to placate the wives, Sybil finally wrote an open letter to the POW wives herself. She eventually got the Navy to distribute the letter for her without releasing the POW families’ names or addresses. The letter was sent not just to Navy POW wives but also to the wives of senior-ranking POWs in other military branches. MIA wives were not included in this initial letter, but Sybil did offer to provide more information to any MIA wives who might be interested.

  Jane Denton was one of the recipients of this first communication from Sybil, as were her friends in Virginia Beach Janie Tschudy and Louise Mulligan, whose husband, Jim, was shot down on March 20, 1966. The letter first apologized for invading the families’ privacy. “If I am invading yours at this point by all means file this in the trash can and let me know you want to hear no more.” For those women who cared to read further, she suggested, “Many of us might benefit from sharing some of the knowledge and experiences which others in our position have had.”24

  The relief of the wives who received this letter in the mail in the late summer of 1966 was palpable. Finally, there were others they could talk to who shared their daily grief, frustration, and lack of information. At last there was a wives’ “grapevine” where the women could help one another and communicate. Initially, the wives’ get-togethers were casual events, sitting around kitchen tables. They might have a potluck supper, share a casserole and wine together, play cards, and vent about feeling like a “fifth wheel” at social gatherings. But at least now they were not so alone.

  * * *

  While the POW/MIA wives received great comfort from connecting with one another, they were all still suffering from their government’s lack of concern regarding their financial support. Many of the women, just like Sybil and Jane, had already experienced major problems getting their husbands’ paychecks and cashing checks. Then came what many wives considered the final blow: the introduction of a savings plan created for the benefit of American servicemen who were fighting in combat zones, whereby their pay would accrue 10 percent interest per year tax-free. On August 14, 1966, Public Law 89–538 established this plan, but it did not include the POWs and MIAs lost in North Vietnam.25

  When POW and MIA wives found out about this glaring exclusion, they were dumbfounded. Their husbands were not only deployed to a combat zone—they were jailed or missing in a combat zone. Why would the men and their dependents not be included automatically in the savings plan? The ladies assumed this was simply an oversight. The matter was quickly brought to the attention of the government by the Navy, only to garner a negative ruling from the comptroller general:

  “This action would not serve the purpose of the Act since amounts credited to the member’s pay account while he is in a missing or captured status would not ordinarily enter the economy of the country in which he last served and therefore would not affect the balance of payments position of the United States in any way.” Furthermore, the serviceman’s dependents would also not be allowed to make any deposits in his name into a 10 percent savings account.26

  Sybil and her fellow San Diego POW and MIA wives, like Debby Burns, as well as the East Coast wives, like Jane Denton and Janie Tschudy, all received this same letter, a further confirmation, in their eyes, that the military could not have cared less about their husbands, and cared still less about the welfare of the men’s families. Public Law 89–538 and the legislators who created it had not even considered the missing men in the first place; upon appeal, these men were still denied access to the 10 percent savings plan.

  POW/MIA wives all across the country were stunned at the sheer cruelty of this pronouncement. Many women already felt socially ostracized from their local military communities when their husbands became POW or MIA. But now their federal government was disowning them, setting them adrift on a choppy financial sea without the 10 percent savings lifejacket that other servicemen in combat zones had received.

  All these variables were adding up for the women. They could see that the numbers were not compounding in their favor. If they continued to cling to their government officials and to toe the party line as they had been doing, what would be their reward? Their husbands’ reward?

  The answer was: nothing.

  The women knew this, just as they knew the men were not being treated humanely. Jane Denton wrote Harriman to this effect, upset by reports she had read from unidentified State and Defense Department officials that the POWs held in Vietnam were being well taken care of. Anyone who had seen her husband’s film on May 8, 1966, could surmise that was not the case. “I am convinced that, on the contrary, they [the POWs] are being badly treated … I feel that we should show indignation and inform people both here and abroad of the violations which are being committed by the government of North Vietnam.”27

  Jane further strengthened her case by referring to a Chilean newspaper report that stated that Jerry was being kept in solitary confinement. Even more chilling was the case of American POW Dieter Dengler, who had escaped from brutal treatment by the Pathet Lao—Laotian resistance fighters backed by the North Vietnamese Communists. Dengler was severely tortured and within twenty-four hours of dying when he was finally rescued in June of 1966.28 (The movie Rescue Dawn is based on Dengler’s story.) After reading the gruesome reports of Dengler’s treatment, Jane wrote to Harriman of her astonishment at the “apathy of the American public on this subject. Where was the compassion for him and his fellow prisoners?”

  Jane boldly urged Harriman to take this information and run with it: “I ask you to consider the wisdom of publishing the injustices which the captured American servicemen are enduring thereby arousing world opinion, and hopefully getting better treatment for them.”29

  Like the appeals regarding the 10 percent savings plan, Jane’s entreaties fell on deaf ears.

  * * *

  On Friday October 7, 1966, a group of thirteen Coronado Navy wives entered the charming 1950 Tudor bungalow, covered in twisting vines of roses, at 547 A Avenue, Sybil’s cozy home base. The women settled in around the massive oak dining room table that had come with the house. Medieval-looking, it was so heavy and long that it could never be moved. Sybil served the ladies lunch—perhaps her famous Tacos à la Casa Stockdale, one of her specialties.30

  East Coast Navy wives were more formal, but here things were as laid-back as they could be in a military community. The women were casually dressed, as they often were in California even in this era. Some women wore pedal pushers with pearls. Athletic Sherry Martin came straight over from her tennis game still wearing a tennis skirt. She hadn’t had time to change before lunch.31

  The women were all 1960s Navy wives at ease with the military dictates that governed their day-to-day lives. They met regularly for squadron wives’ lunches, baby showers, and cocktail parties at the officers’ c
lub. They accepted the prescribed rules and regulations regarding what to do, say, and wear for every occasion without question or protest. Until recently, the military rule book The Navy Wife had been their bible. But today, none of these protocols applied.

  All the ladies who attended the luncheon that day had recently experienced the stomach-churning sight of an official-looking black car in their driveways. As Sybil noted, “The chaplain always came to tell you about death in a black sedan.”32 The sight of that car was what led all these women to Sybil’s rose-covered cottage for lunch. The women who had young children had all gotten babysitters; the discussion was not going to be child friendly. Some wives were so traumatized that they could barely drag themselves out of bed to get their children off to school. A few of the women had received some vague information about their husbands’ whereabouts, but many had no idea where their spouses were.

  In the naval community, a wife’s status mirrored the rank of her husband, and according to this long-standing protocol, Sybil was by default the wives’ leader on the home front. To the younger Navy wives whose husbands went missing, she was also a maternal figure. Sandy Dennison was a twenty-year-old San Diego Navy officer’s wife with two small children when her husband, Terry, was shot down on July 19, 1966. She felt like Sybil became her second mother.33 POW wife Karen Butler described her friend Sybil similarly: “Sybil was many things … She was a natural leader with an indomitable spirit, a loving presence always, especially when you needed it, and a mentor who helped others to cope and stand strong.”34