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

  At home, families also began pushing boundaries. After six years of waiting, they were plain fed up with their government, even with its Go Public efforts. For all his compassion, President Nixon hadn’t properly returned any POWs or extracted any real promises from North Vietnam. The leaders of the National League of Families demanded a meeting with both the president and Henry Kissinger. They’d last met with Nixon in 1969 and now had been promised a meeting with Kissinger on Saturday, January 23, 1971, shortly before the Church Riot erupted in Camp Unity. Louise, Sybil, and several other board members traveled all the way to Washington, D.C., only to learn that Kissinger couldn’t attend. He sent Deputy National Security Adviser General Alexander Haig in his place. Haig walked into a firestorm.

  Standing before a large White House conference table, he apologized for Kissinger’s absence, then recited rote lines the wives had heard many times from a host of White House, Pentagon, and State Department subordinates. They wanted real answers from Kissinger himself. Louise Mulligan interrupted Haig and told him as much. Before he could respond, another POW wife said her piece. Then another stood up, stamped her foot, and leveled her finger at the general, furious that she couldn’t see Kissinger after flying cross-country for the meeting. Haig fielded hard volleys from all sides of the table.

  He offered a rescheduled meeting in two months. Indignant, Sybil said, “We don’t want to wait two months to see Dr. Kissinger, General Haig. We want to see him in two days. We’ll still be here on Monday.”

  Within twenty-four hours, they were scheduled for Monday. When the wives returned to the White House, Kissinger asked them, “What did you do to my general?”

  Then he joked to the table that General Haig had fled when he heard the National League was returning. The levity ended there, however. The National Security Adviser and lead U.S. negotiator in Paris promised and delivered straight answers. Unfortunately, Kissinger offered no hope for any near-term resolution. The women left the meeting feeling crestfallen. “At least Jim doesn’t know,” Sybil thought to herself.

  * * *

  Both Sybil and Louise’s husbands remained unsure of the future and instead were more concerned about surviving their current stints in stocks. As fallout from Shu’s anniversary celebration, guards had sent new Room Seven leaders Jim Mulligan and Harry Jenkins to Building Zero; now most of the Alcatraz seniors were together. Upon entering the cellblock, Jim coughed an “M” and Harry coughed and sneezed “J,” their old Alcatraz identifiers. They heard a “D” coughed and hawked in response by Jerry Denton. Jim and Harry lay down in a 7-by-7, two-bunk cell while the guard fastened their ankles in separate stocks. They would spend the night—and the coming thirty-seven days—flat on their backs. Once each day, one lucky man could leave to empty their buckets. With rear ends chafing from their fixed positions, the seniors christened Building Zero “Rawhide.”

  In their shared cell, Harry Jenkins kept Jim Mulligan crying with laughter by telling him the plot of a movie almost every night. Using his long arms and unfailing sense of humor, Harry would entertain his cellmate with one-man renditions of Hollywood films. His lone audience member found his monologues uproariously funny; Jim marveled at his wit and memory. Of course, with the exception of the movie titles Harry had made up nearly every word. They tried singing as well. With iron bars firmly immobilizing their ankles, they put new words to Gene Autry’s cowboy tune “Back in the Saddle Again,” singing, “Whoopi-ty-aye-oh, Rockin’ to and fro, we’re back in the irons again…” Nobody ever lacked for laughter while in the company of Harry Jenkins.

  Howie Rutledge and Robbie Risner spent two days in Heartbreak for their role in the Church Riot before guards transferred them to Rawhide, leaving behind George Coker. He would be Heartbreak’s lone resident for six weeks, linked to Camp Unity only by tapping through the wall to Room Seven—and few men in Seven could translate tap code fast enough to understand George, who’d practiced so intensely in Alcatraz.

  * * *

  In Rawhide, Howie was reunited with his Alcatraz neighbor Harry Jenkins, and the communicative pair quickly discovered a group of recently transferred officers known as “the Bulls,” a nickname for full colonels. Since mid-1965, the mantle of POW leadership had passed primarily between Robbie Risner, Jim Stockdale, Jerry Denton, and, recently, Vern Ligon, but they were not always the most senior officers. The Bulls outranked them, but the Camp Authority had kept these colonels in nearly absolute isolation since their arrivals. They did not know tap code, nor did they know much about the experiences of their fellow POWs. While the Alcatraz seniors had heard of the Bulls, they had never managed to contact them until now.

  Harry and Howie immediately began teaching the Bulls tap code and sending them notes by various means. They invented at least one new courier system, crushing toothpaste tubes into marble-sized balls and shooting them under doors between the guard’s regular rounds. The little balls would zing across hallways, trailing long strings with notes attached. When a note-toting marble became marooned in the corridor, Harry passed word along the cellblock. One cell sent several straws of bamboo through the small holes that the men had drilled between their cells. Harry and Howie tied the straws together with strings pulled from their pajamas. They slid their improvised bamboo pole beneath the door, hooked the stray marble, and recovered it just before the guard returned. They had narrowly avoided stocks or irons for communicating; Harry considered their luck yet another good sign.

  With all the seniors now communicating, the ranking officer, Colonel John Flynn, USAF, one of the Bulls, assumed command and the 4th Allied POW Wing entered service. The leaders chose “4th” because they were fighting America’s fourth war of the century. They used “Allied” since a South Vietnamese pilot and three friendly Thai prisoners also lived in Rawhide and had quickly become important assets, as they translated guards’ dialogue and helped pass communications. As flyers, they chose “wing” as their unit designation. The leadership divided the POWs into squadrons according to rooms—Room Seven would be one squadron, Room Six another. The leaders issued policies and created a staff administration led by the senior officers. For their motto, the Wing selected “Return with Honor” because they aspired to do just that.

  In March of 1971, Howie Rutledge, Jim Stockdale, Harry Jenkins, and Jerry Denton were all moved into one of Rawhide’s 7-by-7 cells, where they shared two small bunks. From tight quarters in Rawhide, the senior officers ran the 4th Allied POW Wing like the active-duty unit it was.

  With POWs no longer concerned about day-to-day survival, the command system focused on regulations concerning bedtime, latrine duty, and hygiene—all of which seemed trivial compared to the bold BACK US directives that had united the men against the oppressive regime of the early years. George Coker particularly chafed under rules regarding the direction POWs could walk or run inside their rooms. This wasn’t high school track, he’d fume to anyone who would listen.

  To complicate the leadership structure, the seniors in each room lived with the men they commanded, unable to benefit from the usual distance the military placed between ranking officers and their subordinates. With so much time spent in the same space, coping with boredom, eating together, and sleeping head-to-head, men grew plain tired of one another. Personality differences overlooked during times of danger became sources of bickering and occasional fights. Depression and other emotions long suppressed by the challenge of daily survival surfaced. Men finally had the time to contemplate all that might have transpired in America since their outside lives effectively ended in the mid-1960s. Arguments about every imaginable issue sprouted like weeds; of course, many proved entirely irresolvable in the captives’ present imprisonment. Jerry Denton, one of the Four Wise Men, felt like Moses leading the ever more quarrelsome Israelites as they neared the Promised Land after decades of wandering.

  The five most senior members of the Alcatraz Gang ensured orders reached the entire Wing by finding new ways to communicate across the courtyard from
their quarters in Rawhide and, after September 1971, from their new quarters in the adjacent Building Eight, generally known as Blue. Blue had three small rooms with three beds each, a dining room with a table and nine chairs, and a wooden fence that hid its small courtyard from the rest of Unity. The five Alkies shared the space with four air force colonels. Once in Blue, Harry Jenkins in particular wasted no opportunity to fashion new communication methods. When a rat knocked a rusted pocket knife off a roof and into the 12-by-12 common area, Harry snatched it up. That evening, he worked the blade open using grease from their most recent meal. He honed the knife and soon cut hiding nooks into every piece of wooden furniture he could find—and he also used the knife to fashion a long stick. Blue shared a back alley with Rawhide, and using a shard of mirrored glass affixed to the end of his new stick, Harry constructed a periscope that allowed him to look for guards in the alley. After he saw it was clear, a second conspirator—usually Howie Rutledge—could whisper safely with Robbie Risner and other leaders in Rawhide. The men in Blue would then pass information to Bob Shumaker or Sam Johnson across the courtyard in Room Seven.

  During the guards’ noontime siesta, Howie would sit on the shoulders of Harry Jenkins, the tallest POW in residence, and raise and lower Harry’s stick in and out of a pipe in their roof. Shu would also sit on someone’s shoulders and look through the high barred windows of Room Seven to decipher the code. One day, Shu saw a guard sneaking along the roofline of Rawhide and Blue, stalking the bobbing stick. Helpless, Shu watched him get closer and closer until he grabbed the stick and caught Howie. Howie received several days’ punishment for what he swore had been his first attempt.

  In the eyes of the Camp Authority, passing information still ranked among the gravest sins a prisoner could commit. Yet despite their efforts to stop them, flashes, notes, and taps still sent orders sailing around the courtyard to the Wing’s more than 350 members. The Thai prisoners who served as custodians helped the Americans by literally sweeping notes back and forth across the grounds. The POW network chugged along defiantly, as it had for more than six years, everywhere from New Guy Village to the Zoo to Little Vegas.

  * * *

  A small number of men chose not to participate in the Wing, however. When American POWs were first sent to Camp Unity, the Camp Authority placed seven prisoners by themselves in Blue, where they spent much of 1971. For the previous three years, these first residents of Blue had willingly given propaganda statements to the North Vietnamese. Two of the three senior officers in the group had hosted the “Bob and Ed Show” that had so irked Jim Stockdale in Little Vegas; they still made frequent broadcasts. Under the direction of the three seniors, the four junior officers among them cooperated in giving propaganda.

  By sequestering them in Blue, the Camp Authority hoped to shield these officers from the influence of other cellblocks. Consequently, these collaborators, as many considered them, became known as the “Outer Seven.” The Four Wise Men found their statements highly inappropriate and told them as much. From Rawhide, Jim Stockdale managed to get a message to the Outer Seven, despite their isolation in Blue. “Write nothing for the V,” he sent. “Meet no delegations. Make no tapes. No early releases. Are you with us?” While the POW leadership certainly allowed men their private thoughts—and many had differing opinions about the war—the leaders believed it unacceptable for a senior officer especially to contradict Wing policy by helping the North Vietnamese or making anti-American statements.

  “We actively oppose this war,” two of the seniors responded to Jim. The third senior agreed with Stockdale, and eventually he and the four junior officers began adhering to the policies set by the 4th Allied POW Wing. The Wing leadership stripped the two heretical seniors of military rank and authority. Jim planned a court-martial once they returned home. As guards and interrogators sensed the mounting animosity directed at the collaborators, the Camp Authority sent the Outer Seven to the Zoo and moved nine of the senior POW leaders into Blue. At the Zoo, in the suburbs of Hanoi, five of the Outer Seven continued to abide by the rules set by the POW leadership. The holdouts became known as the “Damned Two.” Many prisoners still resented the “Repentant Five” who’d returned to the fold, but Stockdale reminded the Wing, “It is neither American nor Christian to nag a repentant sinner to the grave.” By 1972, the one repentant senior had been transferred from the Zoo back to Camp Unity, where he assumed command of Room Seven. Even upon their eventual return to the United States, most POWs would never forgive the Damned Two.

  * * *

  To make the most of their idle time, and to put to use the variety of talent and knowledge within the Wing, the POWs created a veritable university in Camp Unity. Bob Shumaker found a broad audience for his math and science lessons. Since engineers abounded among the aviators, Shu’s students would spend hours working like high schoolers to solve complicated equations. They eventually calculated trigonometric tables—sine, tangent, cosine—for every angle between zero and 90 degrees. The teams completed all their calculations without the aid of paper or pencil. As they worked, the time passed less painfully and their minds grew sharper.

  While most POWs parachuted into North Vietnam wearing wristwatches, almost none arrived at Hỏa Lò with one still in his possession. So to substitute, Bob Shumaker and others in Room Seven engineered a pendulum with a two-second period. They calculated that they’d need a piece of string 39 inches long. Since they had no ruler, they used the remembered height of several POWs as a baseline to gauge the proper length. They tied a piece of soap to the precisely measured string, started it swinging back and forth, and began counting off the time in increments of two seconds. They used their jury-rigged clock to time speeches given by the Room Seven public speaking club.

  * * *

  Sam Johnson taught aerobatics, drawing upon his time as an air force Thunderbird pilot; even the navy flyers listened intently as he described four-point rolls, Immelmanns, and Cuban Eights. In the tradition of his tinkering father, who had a reputation for fixing anything, Nels Tanner taught car repair. Tough George McKnight taught the Charleston, a popular class for which the men in his room cleared the floors. Flyboys would kick up their heels to George’s counts and instructions, swinging their legs and imagining the American music and women they missed. The men found instructors for just about every subject that could help pass the time. Self-made textbooks and translation dictionaries abounded, written on sheets of brown toilet paper. For ink, they mixed combinations of ashes, ground-up pills, water, and other materials. They found sugar useful as an adhesive agent. The Camp Authority considered all POW writings contraband and often confiscated their laboriously manufactured textbooks. The POWs had plenty of time to make new ones. The men in Unity wanted to return home better men; their improvised university helped them along that path.

  In pursuit of entertainment more than enlightenment, George McKnight and Bob Shumaker learned to juggle and stand on their heads. The POWs in Room Seven also designated Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday as movie nights. Volunteer “movie-tellers” would spend hours recounting and reenacting motion pictures they recalled from home. Once, Harry Jenkins delivered a particularly fine rendition of the Cary Grant classic North by Northwest to his audience in Blue. As he had in Rawhide, locked in irons next to Jim Mulligan, Harry made up most of the story. Years later, he would receive good-natured telephone calls from repatriated POWs who called his bluff after seeing the genuine movie.

  * * *

  As 1971 progressed, the authorities began distributing mail from home more often. Letters usually brought joy, but some brought sadness—death, divorce, hardships at home. Some POWs found that their wives chose not to wait for their return; others learned parents had died. In Bob Shumaker’s case, Rabbit gave him a heavily redacted letter informing him that his mother had died suddenly. The news added to the depression Shu constantly battled; when he later discovered the Camp Authority had withheld the letter for more than a year, he was furious. He also rece
ived letters with photographs of a growing son and a vibrant twenty-eight-year-old wife, without a husband, without a father, without him. Shu hadn’t seen them in more than six years now. He did his best to combat the sadness of that irreplaceable lost time, but ultimately retreated into himself and into science as the depression came on.

  Harry Jenkins flipped through a magazine, one of the luxuries that had begun trickling into camp, and was surprised to find a Green Bay Packer stuffing his long hair inside his helmet. Marj sent Harry a photo of his own sons, their hair not too long, seated with arms out straight to their knees. Between them sat their sister, her arms crossed. Harry saw the four straight arms and realized they corresponded to bars on uniform shoulder boards; Harry had made captain.

  In addition to letters, packages from home became more frequent and bountiful, although POWs suspected the staff pilfered from them. They grew suspicious when they observed guards casually munching on Planters peanuts.

  Not all goods were innocuous or humanitarian, however. In San Diego, Phyllis Rutledge followed government orders and hid military-supplied notes inside care packages. Sometimes, she’d pack toothpaste tubes inside which the government had stashed all manner of contraband. In Virginia Beach, Louise Mulligan did the same. Given the items wives smuggled in—and the encoded letters Alcatraz prisoners sent home—the North Vietnamese did have some legitimate grounds for their accusations that the United States used humanitarian channels illicitly.

  One day, the guards gave Jim Mulligan and Jerry Denton packages from Louise and Jane. Jerry got protein powder, while Jim found instant coffee in plastic baby bottles along with a bag of shriveled prunes. “Prunes and baby bottles?” he remarked. “What the hell is she trying to tell me?” He couldn’t imagine why Louise had sent him prunes. Then he bit into one. He heard a crunch and pulled a small capsule from his mouth. He pried it open and found microfilm. The forty-five-year-old had an officer with younger eyes read it; the government had sent a list of known POWs for confirmation. In his next postcard home, Jim sent an encoded reply. Sam Johnson made a similar discovery in the summer of 1971 when he sucked on a piece of candy and something wedged itself behind his teeth. He picked out a small brown sliver and began rubbing it. It unfolded into a piece of microfilm roughly 16 millimeters wide. “Shu,” he whispered. “Look at this!”