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

  “This isn’t about me,” the officer responded defensively. “This is about you.” McKnight had made his point.

  Coker’s interrogation progressed much the same. Like the local official who’d first interrogated them, the officers at the Hilton appeared almost in awe of the escape. They believed the story up to the 15-mile swim downriver. They could never fathom how Coker and McKnight—Coc and Nich—had swum so many miles. To produce a different, more plausible answer from Coker, they beat him. They cupped their hands as they cuffed his ears, and the resulting bursts of air ruptured both his eardrums. Still, he never changed his answer. The interrogators never would believe the scenario the Americans offered. Coker had spent a full year lying to his captors, and the one time he gave them a truthful answer, they didn’t believe him. It didn’t really matter; soon Coker and McKnight would no longer be able to cause problems. For the next twelve days, the partners served their time quietly in the Mint, which proved horrible in its confining isolation but much better than the punishment they had expected. Then, on October 25, 1967, the Camp Authority transferred them to a special facility nobody would escape.

  14

  THE BAD CAMP

  Even after three weeks in leg stocks for spitting in the face of Pimples, Jim Mulligan and Jerry Denton could still laugh. One afternoon Jerry rolled over as best he could and said, “Jim, if this place gets any worse, it will be almost as bad as my plebe year at the academy!” Their laughter attracted a guard, who told them to be quiet. They just kept laughing, happy for the companionship that came as more new arrivals crowded into the Hilton, ending solitary confinement for many POWs.

  In September, the Camp Authority resurrected the work-release program, and Bug asked the twosome—who had been freed from the stocks—if they wished to get fresh air by working in the city. Wanting to follow CAG’s order not to work in town, they replied that they didn’t dare leave the camp since they were terrified of the wrath of the Vietnamese people. Since Bug had so often threatened them with that very wrath, he had no response. Their time together in Stardust ended soon thereafter, on October 2. Guards hauled Jim Mulligan into a quiz room where an unknown officer sat behind the table. Three other American POWs crouched on stools before him. Jim looked around, wondering what new manner of harassment the Camp Authority had planned. “Today, I permit you to have roommates,” the officer proclaimed. “Do you know each other?”

  For the first time, Jim met fellow navy flyers Bob Shumaker and Harry Jenkins. He also met Major Lou Makowski, USAF. Trepidation became surprise, which quickly turned into elation. Jerry Denton, on the other hand, felt only depression as guards locked him inside a solitary cell in the Mint. Jim didn’t yet know Jerry’s fate, and he anticipated enjoying more companionship than he’d had since arriving in Hanoi. Shu, Harry, and Makowski, already roommates together, welcomed Jim to their Desert Inn cell, which he judged would pass any military inspection. The pair of bunk beds and personal effects were orderly, and the floors and walls were clear of Hỏa Lò’s pervasive grime. Jim learned his roommates followed a rigid routine of exercise, conversation, and communication. The next morning, Makowski began doing exercises in front of the cell door, strategically blocking the guards’ peephole. Thus shielded, Shu and Harry showed off their current project.

  Before Jim Mulligan had arrived, the three roommates had discovered that an adjacent cell held a new arrival who didn’t know tap code. To make contact, Shu and Harry used a 5-foot-long piece of copper wire, which they’d found and kept hidden in a small fissure along the wall of their cell. During the afternoon siesta, Shu would snake the wire through another crack and maneuver it across 4 feet of corridor. He threaded it between boxes of unknown materials left by the guards until it slipped through a drain hole that opened into the cell of Charlie Plumb, an F-4 Phantom pilot from the Kitty Hawk who had recently arrived in Hanoi. Shu scratched the wire against the metal drain and hoped Plumb noticed. Sure enough, Plumb began hearing what sounded like a cricket, except that it chirped far too regularly. He followed the sound and saw a wire moving rhythmically in the drain. Was it an American? Was it a trick? He debated what to do. Finally, he tugged on the wire.

  Shu, holding the wire gingerly, felt the pull. He tugged back. When he received another tug from Plumb, he quickly recalled the wire. He affixed a sheet of toilet paper to its end. On the thin sheet he had copied the tap code’s five-by-five grid. Above it, he’d written, “Learn this code then eat this note.”

  Shu threaded the wire across the corridor once more, and Plumb received the note with his first assignment. During each afternoon siesta, the two cells would communicate with tugs on the wire equating to taps on the wall. For example, two tugs followed by three tugs would indicate the letter H. The sensitivity of the wire tested their concentration, but the value of bringing Plumb online far outstripped the tedium and risks of communication. If they failed to bring a new POW into their circle of communication, Shu and Harry knew he would become vulnerable to despair and coercion. They wanted to lift their fellow aviator’s spirits, but they also hoped to prevent Plumb from cooperating with the Camp Authority.

  The three old roommates also sought to entertain their new cellmate. Harry Jenkins recited well-rehearsed verses of Robert W. Service’s famous poem “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” which he had committed to memory years ago and had recently practiced by tapping the poem’s 888 words through the walls to fellow POWs. The familiar words brought Mulligan a feeling of warmth quite unlike the Arctic cold typically associated with the poem. He relaxed. United with his fellow Americans he could endure whatever the North Vietnamese had planned. His spirits rose day by day. Perhaps, he allowed himself to think, he had seen the worst.

  In late October, keys rattled in the lock and the door opened. A guard sharply ordered Harry, Shu, and Jim to dress and gather their belongings, which they obediently rolled into their bamboo mats. The guards blindfolded and cuffed the three naval aviators and marched them toward the open gates of Hỏa Lò Prison. Outside the gates, the POWs heard vehicles idling on the street. Guards lifted Jim Mulligan, Bob Shumaker, and Howie Rutledge, who had been pulled from the Mint, into one truck. They hoisted Harry Jenkins into another. Harry heard another POW being stuffed into the truck bed and whispered his name, “Harry Jenkins.”

  “Sam Johnson,” whispered the other prisoner.

  “Shut mouth!” a guard barked.

  Alcatraz (small white buildings at center), looking east.

  The little convoy rumbled north through Hanoi, away from the colonial district and toward the Citadel of Thăng Long, the heart of the government sector and headquarters of the People’s Army of Vietnam. The convoy turned onto Phố Lý Nam Đế and stopped just behind the Ministry of National Defense. From the sounds and distance traveled, the passengers deduced they had not arrived at the Briar Patch, the Zoo, Dirty Bird, or any other camp they knew existed. The trucks must have taken them to a new facility. A collective sense of foreboding grew among the blindfolded captives, and rightly so. They had arrived at Alcatraz.

  * * *

  The French constructed Hỏa Lò Prison to house Vietnamese captives of all types, with special cells for the more dangerous offenders. Yet the colonial administrators had found some political prisoners required more isolation than Hỏa Lò offered, so prior to 1954, they built a small facility a mile north of the main prison, on the grounds of the ancient Citadel. There, in windowless cells, they virtually entombed Vietnamese agitators, leaders, and diehards, keeping them isolated from their countrymen and the outside world. Here, they could neither incite revolution outside nor inspire fellow prisoners inside. With the exception of death, a prisoner could draw no worse fate than being sent to this isolated compound. Unending days and nights in these claustrophobic enclosures could sap the will to live from bold men used to leading others in resistance. The spot became arguably the most dismal prison in North Vietnam.

  The North Vietnamese referred to the small compound by its loca
tion—the Ministry of National Defense—or by its address, Number Four Phố Lý Nam Đế. After ousting the French in 1954, the North Vietnamese had closed this dungeon and allowed it to fall into disrepair. In the spring of 1967, they reopened its thirteen cells and began preparing them for American troublemakers. From across the detention system, the Camp Authority had identified the POWs they considered most dangerous, ungovernable, militant, intransigent, and, most importantly, influential with other prisoners. Then they banished these subversives to their darkest hole, where they could rot away, isolated from the men they’d once led and inspired. Essentially, they picked Jim Stockdale and his leadership team.

  When the guards pulled Jim Mulligan from the truck, he felt like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, aware that more horrors would soon come but resigned to his fate. He quietly walked through the prison yard’s single gate, a heavy wooden door in a concrete wall. With one guard leading him and another following, Jim felt his way down four steps from the street level to the recessed yard. From the bottom edge of his blindfold, he watched his sandaled feet cross packed dirt, patched with weeds. The two guards turned him to the right, then suddenly stuffed him into a cell. Jim heard his cup, mosquito net, and bedroll land on the floor, and then the guards removed his blindfold and cuffs. They stepped back and closed the door. Jim heard the lock slide shut and looked around in horror.

  A dim lightbulb revealed pale, plastered concrete walls that arched 9 or 10 feet overhead and surrounded him. The wooden door, braced with iron, had one of the prison system’s standard peepholes. Above the door, Jim saw a barred transom covered with a metal plate perforated with holes for ventilation. A thin electrical wire snaked through one hole to fuel the dim bulb that he learned would burn all night. A second wire ran through another hole to a small speaker, which would relay the voice of Hanoi Hannah. Through the other holes came a steady flow of insects, led by mosquitoes, attracted by the light and the new human presence. The cell’s width measured less than 4 feet. With his right shoulder against one wall, Jim could touch the other with his left hand. The cell ran 9 or 10 feet in length, with 6 feet occupied by a short bamboo bed frame on an elevated concrete slab. The solid walls had no windows. A rusty latrine bucket waited by the door.

  Jim had just begun pondering his fate when he heard “shave and a haircut” tapped through his wall. He responded with “two bits” and learned that Jim Stockdale, CAG, occupied the adjacent cell. Earlier that day, CAG had been degraded, maimed, and entirely dispirited on the floor of Riviera One. He had been close to a complete breakdown. By moving him to this new camp, the Camp Authority had unknowingly missed their chance to subdue their nemesis permanently. Now reunited, the two senior officers could reach nobody else through the walls, and neither had much energy remaining, so they exchanged “GN GBU” taps and began their evening rituals. CAG lay back on his thin mat, and his mind started working on this new puzzle. He and Mulligan were together in an unknown jail, along with a small number of other prisoners he’d heard shuffling in throughout the evening. Tomorrow he hoped to learn the full lineup. Searching his mind for more clues, he recalled a threat Rabbit made five months prior, as he announced the Fink Release Program. Over the speakers in Little Vegas, Rabbit had warned that the Camp Authority was preparing a place for the worst American criminals—those diehards who refused to cooperate and who incited others. Had Rabbit made good on his threat? CAG found himself anxious to see what dawn would reveal.

  For his part, Jim Mulligan rigged his mosquito net, said his prayers, and reflected on the day. He missed the camaraderie he had enjoyed the previous night in the Desert Inn. Now he had no friends to whom he could speak the simple phrase “Good night.” He couldn’t watch the slow breathing of other Americans at rest and feel the fleeting sense of normalcy provided by the rising and falling of their chests. He recalled how Rabbit had summoned him to quiz at the Zoo in June 1966 and promised small solitary cells to those who led the resistance. Like CAG, Mulligan wondered if he’d been referring to these very cells. The day had drained him; his mind needed rest to digest his new circumstances. For the third time that day, he made himself recite his memory bank of POWs, which now far exceeded 200 names. Then he fell into an emotionally exhausted sleep.

  Suddenly, his ears detected keys rattling and a lock sliding—the most feared sounds in a prisoner’s universe; they often meant that something bad would soon follow. From Jim’s opened doorway, a voice yelled, “Get up!”

  Jim turned to find Louie the Rat glaring at him. Called simply Rat by most Americans, the pointy-faced officer spoke English quite well. At Rat’s appearance, Jim hurried out from beneath his netting and bowed. The terror of what might happen next made him shiver, even in the warm air. His heartbeat quickened and he broke into a sweat. He waited.

  “You are in the bad camp,” Rat announced. “Tonight my guards will put you in the leg shackles as punishment for all your bad deeds.”

  Once Rat had made his pronouncement, a guard entered and placed Jim’s ankles into 15-pound leg irons like those Nels Tanner had worn for 123 days. After the staff left, Jim lifted the irons around each foot as he slowly made his way back to his bed. He’d lift an iron, slide his foot forward, then repeat with the other foot. After making it across the small floor, he had to pull his weighted legs onto the bed and under the mosquito netting. In his weakened state, none of these maneuvers came easily. His body weight had plunged close to 100 pounds, and his formerly strong legs had withered to twigs. When he lay down, he realized the guard had fastened the irons backward. The straight bar rested heavily against his shins all night as he lay on his back—the only position the new rig permitted. The bar had rubbed his ankles raw by morning.

  * * *

  On that night of October 25, 1967, when the Camp Authority had come for the men who threatened them most, guards had walked Sam Johnson through the same gate Jim Stockdale and Mulligan had entered, but they had shoved the Texan into a different cellblock. When guards removed Sam’s blindfold, he found himself in the dark, with only thin streams of light passing through the small holes in the metal plate above the door. He took a step forward and banged his shin into a solid object. Still handcuffed, he toppled facefirst onto the concrete sleeping platform where the guard had tossed his bedroll and other personal effects. The platform rose about 14 inches above the floor and stretched from wall to wall. Sam estimated that the platform covered 6 feet of the cell’s entire length, which he pegged at around 10 feet. Like Jim Mulligan’s cell, the width measured roughly 4 feet—although Sam’s two arms were fairly useless as instruments of measure since his slowly healing shoulders still wouldn’t allow him to lift either very well. (By year’s end, however, he would be able to complete three push-ups.) Torture had crippled his right hand—which, reflecting the POWs’ gallows humor, had earned him the nickname Claw—and he used it to trace the 2-inch-square peephole in the door. He prodded it but found it locked from outside. He noted a 4-inch gap between the door’s bottom and the threshold. Surrounded by concrete, with little light and ventilation, assaulted by a dank odor, he felt as if he’d been sealed in a crypt. He sat quietly, wondering how long this new sentence would last.

  Sam listened to the sounds of more captives arriving—shuffling footsteps, barked commands, the hollow echo of cell doors closing. He heard the clink of irons—leg irons—as guards progressed down the cellblock, clamping them on each prisoner. His door opened. A lightbulb flickered on, and a guard uncuffed him. The same man then locked irons around his ankles.

  Their harsh experiences had conditioned the Americans not to communicate when guards were within earshot, so the walls stayed quiet. When the courtyard outside at last grew silent, the interior walls of the cellblock came alive as men began discreetly tapping to one another. First everyone fumed about the leg irons and windowless cells to which they’d been condemned. Then the captives tapped out their names to one another, cell to cell, and the lineup became clear. Commander Howie Rutledge occupied Cel
l One, closest to the compound’s gate and the Ministry of National Defense. The Ichabod Crane of the group, jocular Commander Harry Jenkins, lived next door in Cell Two. The two commanders had lived within 30 feet of one another during almost all of their internment, which had allowed Harry to rib Howie often about being shot down while substituting for Howie on his birthday.

  CAG’s last cellmate, air force major and former Thunderbird solo pilot Sam Johnson, lived next to Harry in Cell Three. Hanoi’s second American POW, mild-mannered and quietly subversive Lieutenant Commander Bob “Shu” Shumaker, would serve his time in Cell Four. Ever-stubborn air force Captain Ron Storz, who still refused to bow without threats or beatings, would serve in Cell Five, where his hatred of his tormentors would simmer dangerously. The celebrated author of the Clark Kent and Ben Casey fabrication, Lieutenant Commander Nels Tanner, took up residence next to Ron in Cell Six. Bachelors, escape artists, and attitude cases Lieutenant (Junior Grade) George Coker, USN, and Captain George McKnight, USAF, lived next to each other in Cells Seven and Eight, respectively. Cell Nine was left empty to further isolate Commander Jerry Denton in Cell Ten. The former senior officer at the Zoo would soon learn that he’d serve as executive officer to Jim Stockdale here in this smallest Hanoi outpost.

  As each POW memorized the names of his new compatriots, a sense of pride filled his heart. Present among these nine were three of the five most senior active navy commanders in Hanoi; they’d soon learn the other two were just a few yards away. Rounding out the group were six younger men who’d frustrated, embarrassed, and challenged the Camp Authority more than any other prisoners.