Defiant: The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned

by Alvin Townley

  Jerry returned his attention to the task at hand. He watched the yellow-shirted catapult officer, known as the shooter, signal him to rev his engines. He felt the plane buck as the turbojets came to life. He checked his control surfaces and, finding them all functioning, snapped a salute to the shooter. The man returned Jerry’s gesture, then pointed his arm forward, down the deck. The catapult engaged at his signal and sent the Intruder thundering off the deck and into the sky.

  The flight of twenty-eight planes from Independence soon crossed into North Vietnam, and Jerry led them toward the heavily defended Thanh Hóa Bridge—the “Dragon’s Jaw”—roughly 75 miles south of Hanoi. Once they arrived over the target, Jerry dove for the bridge first. Just as he released his bombs, his jet suffered a mortal wound; he suspected a bomb had immediately detonated upon release, although he would never know for certain. The plane soon sustained a second hit. The radio failed. The hydraulic controls failed. The Intruder began rolling to the right. Jerry rose out of the seat and jammed his foot onto the left rudder pedal with such force that he snapped a tendon in his leg. When the stricken craft rolled upright, he hit Bill Tschudy’s shoulder and signaled: Time to go. Jerry yanked the ejection loop at the top of his seat. Seconds later, Tschudy did the same. Both men’s parachutes deployed after they rocketed out of the aircraft, and the two flyers floated helplessly down into North Vietnam.

  * * *

  Upon Jerry’s arrival at the Hanoi Hilton, guards escorted him down a dark hallway of four New Guy Village cells just south of the main gate. As did most new arrivals that summer, he heard a soulful “Yankee Doodle” whistled in welcome, courtesy of POW John McKamey. The slamming door of Cell Four ended the serenade. Jerry looked around at the bleak room, which had two concrete bunks with leg stocks attached. Unlike portable leg irons, the stocks had wooden bottoms affixed to the foot of a bunk, with two semicircular indentions carved into the wood. A hinged iron bar with corresponding indentions would close over the prisoner’s ankles, locking him firmly into the stocks and rendering him immobile. Judging by the wear and sweat stains on the bunks and stocks, Jerry surmised that French jailers had put the draconian devices to good use in the past. Surely, he thought, the North Vietnamese wouldn’t place Americans in such dated confinement. He noticed rust had eaten away at one of the steel locking bars, and he began working on the rusted piece of metal, attempting to break it off near the hinges. He hid his work for six days and finally broke off the bar. When he felt safe, he began using it to try to pry open the thin iron bars keeping him from escaping through the cell’s large window. When that proved useless, he started chipping away at the concrete holding the window frame in place. Eventually, he had made a hole and believed he could quickly finish pulling out the frame once he had devised an escape plan.

  As he worked on the window, he whistled “Anchors Aweigh,” hoping for a response. He got one. A New Jersey–accented voice whispered, “Hello, Yank … what’s your name?”

  “This is Jerry Denton, U.S. Navy,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Guarino, major, air force,” said Larry Guarino, a POW who’d arrived in Hanoi that June.

  “Oh … yeah, I’ve heard of you. The Vietnamese released your name as captured.”

  “No kidding? That’s great news, Jerry.” It meant that Guarino’s wife would know he’d survived and that one day the North Vietnamese would have to account for him. With good reason POWs often doubted that Hanoi released their names and wondered if their families knew they were still alive.

  “What kind of airplane were you flying?” Guarino asked.

  Jerry chuckled and said, “That’s what they would like to know!”

  Guarino thought to himself that Jerry would be tough to break. Then he said aloud, “I bet you’re from Canoe U,” meaning the U.S. Naval Academy.

  “That’s right,” Jerry said. “Well, don’t worry, we’ll hack ’er.” Then he asked, “How many men have been repatriated so far?”

  Surprised, Guarino replied, “Never heard of anybody being repatriated.”

  “How’s the mail been coming through?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jerry. We don’t get any mail up here.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it, we’ll hack ’er.”

  For several days, they talked and sang to one another through the open windows until an officer reprimanded them. The two protested: They had to talk. There was nothing else to do.

  “You are absolutely forbidden to speak or make any sounds,” he ordered. “You must only sit and ponder your crimes against the Vietnamese people!”

  The two learned to save much of their conversation for the guards’ usual midday siesta. The postlunch break gave the prisoners precious hours to communicate without harassment.

  Unluckily for Jerry, guards inspected his cell on July 28. When they discovered the loose iron bar and the damage to the window frame, they hauled him to neighboring Cell Three, pushed him onto the sleeping platform, and immobilized his right ankle in the stocks. Since he’d badly injured his left leg upon ejection, the guards left it free. The gesture seemed humane at first but soon led to his free leg rubbing against the rough metal atop the stocks. Within days, his foot had a raging infection. He also confronted the challenge of using his latrine bucket with one leg bound. He called to Guarino, knowing that guards had locked one of his legs in stocks some days earlier. “Larry,” Jerry called. “How do you take a crap in those stocks?”

  “Ah, heck, that’s a long story, Jerry,” Guarino answered. “You don’t want to hear that.”

  “Yeah, I’m interested,” Jerry said. “How the hell do you do it?”

  Guarino shared his trick of rotating his locked leg and standing on his knees while placing the bucket under his rear end. Somewhat irritated, he asked Jerry why he’d wanted to know; he thought Jerry was poking fun at his predicament. He laughed at Jerry’s reply.

  “Because,” Jerry said, “I’ve been in these stocks for three days, and I couldn’t figure it out!”

  By the end of July, Bob Shumaker and his band in Room Nineteen had established contact with Jerry and Guarino via note drops in the latrine. Shu had made certain that his group shared the tap code with them, and for the first time the code successfully passed to other Americans. Jerry soon learned most of the known prisoners’ names and that Guarino ranked senior among the eleven captured air force pilots; Jerry ranked senior among the seven navy men. He convinced Guarino that the situation called for a single commanding officer. Guarino deferred to his higher-ranking fellow captive, and Jerry assumed command of the eighteen Americans in Hỏa Lò and set about organizing their joint unit.

  Guarino had stolen a pencil during a quiz—as all POWs had now taken to calling interrogations—and Jerry asked him to stash it in the latrine. The next day, Jerry found the pencil and used a scavenged razor blade to sharpen it. He began composing policies on toilet paper and hiding them in the latrine’s nook. Thus POWs using the New Guy Village facilities learned his basic operational plan, which would evolve into several main points. Above all, the POWs should follow the Code of Conduct. More specific to their situation, they should communicate by all means, learn the names and locations of all POWs, complain about their food, and gather materials like wire, nails, and paper. They should not attempt escape without outside help, nor should they antagonize the guards. They were always to remain vigilant and faithful. To advance the latter cause, a weekly devotional period was announced by the whistling of “God Bless America.”

  A hierarchy soon formed among the POWs; orders and information replaced jokes and innocuous communication. To combat the camp’s rampant dysentery, Jerry ordered everyone to wash their hands as often as possible. He also asked them to assemble the names of confirmed prisoners so he would know whom the North Vietnamese held and their conditions. Should the jailers kill any of them, Jerry wanted to hold North Vietnam accountable. He always encouraged his troops to follow the Code of Conduct and not give interrogators more than th
eir names, ranks, service numbers, and dates of birth, if they could help it. Firmly under Jerry’s command, the POWs began an organized campaign of resistance against the North Vietnamese Camp Authority.

  * * *

  At home in America’s military communities, the families of aviators flying over Vietnam lived in perpetual worry. Wives feared a dark government sedan pulling into their driveway and a senior officer, his wife, and a chaplain walking to their door. One glimpse of this triumvirate would indicate that something terrible had happened. They might no longer have a husband; their children’s father might never return. Every ring of the telephone, every knock on the door, every car pulling into the driveway sent a chill up the spines of the women who anxiously awaited word from Vietnam. Jane Denton was one such woman.

  The night before Jerry catapulted off the Independence on his final flight, Jane and their three youngest children watched the sun set behind the screen of a Virginia Beach drive-in. Soon, Mary Poppins began playing. Sometime during the movie, in the dark of the car, a dreadful feeling gripped Jane. For the first time since Jerry’s departure two months earlier, she lost her composure. Hoping the film would distract her children, she began to cry silently. Hot tears streamed down her face; she wiped them away surreptitiously. In her nearly twenty years as a navy wife, she’d never experienced dread such as this. She wondered if something had happened to Jerry. The feeling persisted throughout the night.

  The next day, July 18, 1965, Captain Stu Nelson, his wife, Barbara, and the family’s priest drove to the quiet Denton home on Watergate Lane. One of Jane’s five sons answered the door. As the captain waited, he walked upstairs and called, “Mother, Captain Nelson is here.” Jane knew at once why he’d come. Stunned, she walked down the stairs. “He’s all right, he’s all right,” the captain said as soon as he saw Jane. He explained that Jerry had gone down over North Vietnam but had in all likelihood survived and been captured. Jane knew her husband’s job involved risk, but she’d never considered that he could become a prisoner of war. She did her best to accept the news bravely and sought comfort in her seven children, the small devoted army that would defend her against despair. The official Western Union telegram followed shortly thereafter, its yellow paper and black type impersonally conveying the country’s condolences and offering hope that Jerry might survive.

  As it had asked of Lorraine Shumaker, Sandra Storz, and all the wives of missing airmen, in its telegram and subsequent letters the government requested that Jane keep Jerry’s status secret. POWs’ families were urged not to tell anybody except immediate family about the situation. Beyond that, they, too, were to disclose no more than their husbands’ names, ranks, service numbers, and dates of birth to anyone. They were to respond to all press inquires with “No comment for the press at this time.” As navy officials explained to Jane, public statements might agitate the North Vietnamese and lead to their harming Jerry or other POWs. They also worried that the North Vietnamese might use any new personal information against the POWs or against the Denton family itself; wives received instruction to correspond about children in only the most general terms. The military was less concerned about the public simply learning the North Vietnamese held Jerry as a POW. Official navy communiqués told Jane her husband was being well treated, and the navy expected that treatment to continue. “If present conditions do continue,” one navy letter stated, “the prisoner will probably not have to undergo brutal torture.” Jane should not intercede, but rather trust the State Department’s diplomacy and hold on. The “Keep Quiet” directive, as it became known, struck her as odd, but she lived in the order-bound world of the U.S. military, and she, like other POW wives, would abide by the rules.

  Despite the policy, the tight-knit naval aviation community quickly learned of Jerry’s capture and delivered food to sustain the eight Dentons while Jane was preoccupied with worry over Jerry. She called her sister, who arrived the next day. Jane’s youngest, ages six and two, went to stay with friends; the older five stayed at home and tried to help their mother. Other relatives and neighbors arrived to make sure Jane did not endure her troubles alone. She wished the help, comfort, and food could be directed toward her missing husband. He needed the charity far more than she.

  The next day, two letters from Jerry arrived, letters he’d penned from Independence, comforting letters that spoke of his upcoming promotion to squadron commander. Shortly afterward, Jane received the expected news that the navy had ended its search. Four days later, she learned her husband had at least survived: North Vietnam announced his capture, and the national news broadcast his photograph. Jane thought he looked awful and immediately worried his captors had mistreated him. That afternoon, she bought a newspaper that she knew featured Jerry’s photo on the front page, but she kept it folded until she reached St. Nicholas Catholic church. In the back pew of the empty sanctuary, she opened the paper and stared at her husband’s face in black and white. She prayed. Then she returned home to her family, firmly resolved to find a way to help.

  On July 26, Jane arrived in Washington, D.C. She’d mourned for eight days, and it was time to work on bringing Jerry home. In the course of two trips to the capital over the next three weeks, Jane met with officials at the State Department, Department of Defense, White House, and American Red Cross. She asked hard questions about the treatment of POWs in North Vietnam. She asked how—and when—the government would negotiate the prisoners’ returns. President Johnson’s liaison to the House, Henry Wilson, assured her that the most important people in the government were doing all they could for Jerry and the other missing servicemen. “Confidentially, I’ll tell you the president himself is personally concerned about your husband’s care,” he told her. Then he added, “Mrs. Denton, I’ve been in this city four and a half years and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if you try pushing too many buttons, you can mess up the whole switchboard.” He promised to do all he could and encouraged Jane to go home and take care of her family. Jane did as instructed, trusting that the government would keep Jerry safe and bring him home soon.

  Jane Denton with four of her seven children.

  When she arrived back on Watergate Lane, a box of Jerry’s personal items from his stateroom aboard Independence greeted her: letters he’d saved, photographs of her and the children, his wallet, his rosary, his wedding ring—all packed into his worn briefcase. Seeing these items nearly broke Jane's heart, yet they were parts of Jerry coming home, and she treasured them.

  Life continued in Virginia Beach, and Jane fought to remain strong for her seven children. In early September, they returned to school. In Michael’s first-grade classroom, the teacher asked each child about his or her father’s occupation. Michael replied that the Vietnamese had captured his daddy. At home, he warily asked his mother if he’d violated the military’s Keep Quiet policy. That same evening, thirteen-year-old Bill started to cry softly at dinner. Jane asked if something had happened at school to upset him. Nothing had. Knowing the answer already, she asked if he was worried about his father. He began sobbing.

  Later that month, Jane Denton and Janie Tschudy, the wife of Jerry’s bombardier-navigator and fellow POW, attended a briefing by Navy Commander John Thornton, a veteran POW from the Korean War. Thornton did not sugarcoat his description of imprisonment under a Communist regime. For more than two hours, he described a lack of medical treatment, a diet of seaweed and birdseed, and savage beatings. He told a story of a Catholic POW who—like Jerry—wore a St. Christopher’s medal around his neck. The North Koreans singled him out, asking why his god, his saint, didn’t rescue him. They mocked him incessantly and beat him mercilessly. He did not survive.

  Despite the gruesome detail, Jane wanted to hear it all. She needed to know what Jerry might face in Hanoi, even though some had tried to assure her that North Vietnam’s sensitivity to world opinion would keep them from exercising such brutality. Still, Jane had her doubts and thought that by learning about the most brutal treatment th
at might befall her husband, she could somehow share his pain. That night, she wrote in her diary, “I wish I could really know what Jerry’s going thru because in knowing I would share a little more of his suffering. I’m so comfortable and well-cared for and he is not only suffering but I can’t even really fully know how much. But I suspect the worse and pray for the best and I’ll never forget for a minute.”

  The following night at dinner, she dissolved into tears—something she’d avoided doing publically since Jerry’s capture. Her dinner guest, Polly Taylor, said she’d been proud of—and somewhat surprised by—the strength Jane had shown. She confessed that before, she’d thought of Jane as reserved and largely dependent upon Jerry, but as Jane had faced these trials, Polly had seen her as a rock. That night, Jane again opened her diary and wrote, “I like to think that someone thinks of me that way—dependent on Jerry and sort of in his shadow—yet able to take, alone, the blows I must take with some strength and guts … I keep reminding myself that I must take care of everything here at home, in other words, hold up my end.”

  The veteran navy wife resolutely concluded, “And I must do it.”

  * * *

  As unlucky as her circumstances seemed, Jane was far more fortunate than many other wives who received the news that the North Vietnamese had downed their husbands’ planes—she at least knew Jerry was alive. More often than not, Hanoi chose not to release the names of captured aviators, sentencing families to anguish in limbo, wondering about the fate of their beloved pilot. So it was for Sybil Stockdale, who received the dreaded news in her home in Coronado, just across the harbor from San Diego, California.