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

  The POWs returned to their rooms, and some began to celebrate away from the eyes of the Camp Authority. Later that afternoon, the Wing’s leaders signaled an official statement from Blue across the yard to Room Seven. “No celebrations, no fraternization or friendliness, and no unnecessary confrontation with the prison guards,” they ordered. “All conduct will be dignified, professional, and on the guarded assumption that release is imminent. We will operate from a position of cautious optimism.”

  In the coming days, the Camp Authority began to reorganize the prisoners according to their dates of capture. Rooms Four, Six, and Seven filled with 116 flyers downed before July 1966—the first batch of POWs scheduled for release. From the Alcatraz Gang, only George Coker and Nels Tanner were held in a different room.

  The Camp Authority could never erase the scars these captives bore as evidence of their mistreatment, but they could at least present them to the world well fed. The North Vietnamese supplied their prisoners with an extra half loaf of fresh bread with each meal. As they counted the days until their release dates, the POWs cooked for themselves in the courtyard and feasted on vegetables as well as canned meat and fish. Some men gained 10 pounds or more during their last month in Hanoi. Ingenious as always, Bob Shumaker worked with others to track prisoners’ weights by submerging them in the courtyard’s water tank. They’d measure the volume of water displaced and then, knowing that a cubic foot of water weighs approximately 62.4 pounds, calculate the man’s body mass. North Vietnam also wanted to send the POWs home well dressed, wearing bright sweaters or suits, but the POWs preferred to wear their prison pajamas. After some wrangling, the two parties decided that their homecoming uniform would be black shoes, a long-sleeved oxford, dark blue trousers, and a khaki windbreaker.

  The Camp Authority held final quizzes for Jim Stockdale and Jerry Denton—two long-serving POW leaders who’d caused them more difficulty than they’d ever imagined possible. Chihuahua presided over Jim’s debriefing, bringing up the blackmail fodder that Rabbit had elicited during those 1969 torture sessions in Room Eighteen. “The former general staff officer has asked me to warn you against saying anything bad about the camp authorities or about the Vietnamese people when you get home,” Chihuahua said. “He reminds you that in the course of your stay here he has had you write many documents that he can acquire.”

  Using Cat’s real name, Jim fired back indignantly, “That sounds to me like more of Major Bài’s blackmail bullshit.”

  Chihuahua corrected him. “Major Bài no longer speaks for the Vietnamese government.” For Jim, that statement confirmed Cat’s fall from power. The guards then herded the commander back to his room without further discussion. When Jerry’s turn came, Mickey Mouse, who had overseen so many interrogations in Alcatraz and the Hilton, asked how he would describe his experience when he returned to America.

  “I haven’t answered your questions this long,” Jerry replied. “Why should I answer you now? Why do you care what I say anyhow? There are hundreds of men who will speak when they get home.”

  “You have credibility, Denton,” Mickey Mouse said.

  “What do you expect? Don’t you know I’ll tell about the torture?”

  “Yes, we expect that.”

  “Why do you want me to tell you what I will say?”

  “We afraid when you get home and make speech, Mr. Nixon will not give us aid he promised,” Mickey Mouse explained. “Public would not allow.”

  “I will say that through 1969 you treated me and the others worse than animals,” Jerry answered.

  “Yes, but is that all?”

  “No,” he said. “That is not all. Late in 1969 you came off the torture. After that, to my knowledge, you did not resort to extreme punishment. You then acted within your conscience, such as it is.”

  “That’s the truth, but other may not tell the truth.”

  “If there is any exaggeration, the senior officers will take care of that,” Jerry concluded. Then, as Jerry rose to leave, the North Vietnamese officer who’d been his hated adversary stood with him and said earnestly, “Denton, you’re a good man.”

  The remark left Jerry speechless.

  On the night of February 11, 1973—the eve of their scheduled departure—Jim Mulligan stayed up late reading newly distributed letters from home. As he read, he recalled that in early 1969, the Alcatraz Eleven had bet on their release date. The optimists chose homecoming dates in 1969 or 1970. The realist, Jim Stockdale, chose February 1973.

  23

  GOD BLESS AMERICA

  A guard awoke Sam Johnson well before dawn on February 12, 1973. The Camp Authority had delivered piles of shirts, jackets, pants, and shoes to Room Seven, and Sam found items that fit him, then discarded his prison rags forever. Like other POWs, he received a black bag that contained a toothbrush and toothpaste and room for what other items he chose to take. He watched some men stow their pajamas; others took mementos of different kinds. Sam packed only the dented metal drinking cup he’d kept for seven long years. Everything else he just wanted to forget.

  The Camp Authority provided a breakfast of warm milk, bread, bananas, and coffee. Then they ordered the Americans to assemble in double columns. By 8:00 A.M., the men idled in formation under overcast skies. POWs scheduled for release in the coming weeks crowded the windows of the surrounding buildings and flashed thumbs-up signs to their homeward-bound friends. George Coker, Nels Tanner, and the others did their best to mask their envy; that day more than three hundred POWs would remain behind in Camp Unity, the Plantation, and the Zoo, scheduled for repatriation in the following weeks.

  Bob Shumaker, the second aviator taken prisoner, stood at the column’s head beside Ev Alvarez, the first. After eight grueling years of captivity, Shu’s face still retained the boyish charm that had captured Lorraine Shaw’s heart ten years prior. They had married just eleven months before he left, and he prayed he could win her heart all over again. Behind Shu, the POWs lined up in order of shootdown: 116 men downed between August 1964 and July 1966. The columns waited in place for more than an hour; men became anxious, then suspicious. Finally Jerry Denton, the senior officer in the first subgroup of the day, received word that departure time had arrived. He called to Ev Alvarez, “Ev, we’re going to march out in formation. You count cadence.” Jerry wanted his men to exit the Hanoi Hilton like soldiers. His voice rang out in the courtyard. “Right face! Cut ’er off, Ev!”

  Ev and Shu led the exodus out of Camp Unity, past Heartbreak Hotel, and through a damp Heartbreak courtyard. Jerry Denton marched five rows behind Shu; had Ron Storz survived, he would have walked between them. They passed the empty cells of Little Vegas to their left and the rooms of New Guy Village to their right. Soon the columns approached the archway of the prison’s main entrance, through which each American had first entered Hỏa Lò, injured, blindfolded, bloody, and bound. As he marched through the tunnel toward the open gates, Bob Shumaker thought of his first night in Room Nineteen, just yards to his right. Twelve men behind Shu, Jim Stockdale remembered almost dying on the floor of Room Eighteen. He recalled the rainy day in 1965 when he’d arrived at this horrible place to begin this 2,714-day trial that only now neared its end. As he stepped toward the prison gates, he thought of Ecclesiastes 9:12, “For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.”

  George McKnight, Harry Jenkins, and Howie Rutledge followed, each having arrived in Hanoi during November of 1965. Jim Mulligan and Sam Johnson were toward the twin columns’ end with other early-1966 shootdowns.

  Shu emerged from the tunnel, exited the gates, and marched onto Phố Hỏa Lò, his first time on Hanoi’s streets without blindfold or handcuffs. The columns turned and marched toward six waiting buses, passing crowds of curious civilians, soldiers, and children along the way. The capital city had not seen so many Americans together since the march
of July 6, 1966. These prisoners had lived within earshot of so many citizens, yet most in Hanoi had never seen the men locked inside the old prison at the heart of their city.

  The Americans boarded the waiting buses, and their drivers started off to Gia Lâm airport on the east bank of the Red River, just across from downtown Hanoi. Since the sidewalks couldn’t contain the crowds of onlookers, children and adults had spilled into the street, blocking the buses. Policemen and soldiers cleared a path through the masses. As the buses inched forward, children waved and smiled. Adults who had borne the cost of war stood by, reserved. Some wore military pith helmets, just as Pigeye always had. Others wore traditional straw nón lá, one last reminder of the differences between these two warring countries. As the buses broke through the crowd and gained speed, small groups of boys chased after them.

  While a light rain fell, the convoy rumbled through North Vietnam’s capital. Some Americans smiled; most simply sat on the worn bench seats, looking out the windows without expression. At least one would casually hold out his arm, middle finger extended to Hanoi in farewell. Despite the hell he’d endured, Jerry Denton came to tears as he thought about the hardships the North Vietnamese people would face while living under a Communist regime. He could leave; they had to stay. From his seat, Sam Johnson recalled the poignant words he’d seen just before he filed out of Hỏa Lò Prison. An American airman had scratched a final message into a plaster wall: “Freedom has a taste to those who fight and almost die that the protected will never know.” Sam would always remember the phrase, and he would recall it with tears of understanding. The buses rolled northeast through the city and approached the Long Biên Bridge. George McKnight remembered slipping into the Red River, now just below, when he and George Coker made their 1967 bid for freedom. That attempt had likely assured their sentence to Alcatraz and their membership in its special fraternity.

  The buses stopped a mile short of the airport at a small building, where Jerry Denton saw Rat waiting to receive them. He remembered Alcatraz’s first commandant sarcastically asking, “How do you like your new home?” as he locked Jerry into Cell Ten five and a half years ago. Now, as the POWs walked off the bus, Rat issued them sandwiches, fudge, and beer—their first suds in years. “We would like this to be a pleasant memory,” he said matter-of-factly.

  The anxious Americans milled about the holding area, awaiting the order that would send them to the airfield and the promised transports. When the North Vietnamese announced a delay, the skeptics thought the worst, but an hour later, the men spied a white cargo plane breaking through the gray clouds. Even on the overcast day, the four-engine C-141 Starlifter seemed to shine. It had the white-and-gray paint scheme of the 63rd Military Airlift Wing, and its prominent tail bore a red cross. Most important of all, the men saw the black letters that spelled out U.S. AIR FORCE painted along the plane’s side.

  Two buses brought the first load of forty POWs from the holding area to the airfield. The men again formed two columns and advanced through a small ocean of North Vietnamese soldiers, civilians, and media. Shu headed the left column and halted just short of a flapping green canvas tarp that shaded a cleared area of the tarmac, bordered on three sides by spectators, most of whom were North Vietnamese. To his left, he saw four government representatives from North Vietnam and three American officers, who had arrived on a transport plane two hours earlier, verifying transfer papers at a table covered with white linen. In the center of the open processing space stood an air force colonel, smartly dressed in a blue uniform.

  As he continued to scan his surroundings, Shu spied Rabbit. The officer who had caused so much suffering stood serenely by a simple podium. In his hands, he held a roll of names. He and the air force colonel, Al Lynn, met the column, and Rabbit, list in hand, motioned Shu toward the colonel. Shu shook the hand of the American officer and stepped into freedom. For Bob Shumaker, the first member of the Alcatraz Eleven to receive his liberty, exactly eight years and one day had passed since he had ejected from his F-8 Crusader.

  An air force escort met him at the far side of the processing area and walked him toward the waiting C-141. They walked beneath the plane’s right wing and the two jet engines hanging beneath it. They negotiated a pack of foreign press at the rear of the plane and proceeded up the ramp through the open doors. Air force flight attendants welcomed him aboard. Shu would never forget catching his first scent of perfume after smelling nothing fresh for so long. Jerry Denton walked up the ramp minutes later. Tears or smiles—and often both—marked every face as the first freed prisoners gathered in the plane. Hidden from their captors, they could finally show their emotions.

  * * *

  Within ten minutes, thirty-seven POWs had come aboard, and medics had loaded three stretchers bearing recently injured B-52 crewmen. Thirty-eight-year-old mission commander Major Jim Marrott, USAF, closed the gate of aircraft 660177—the Freedom Bird or Hanoi Taxi, as it would become known—and started his plane’s four turbofans. He noted a second C-141 behind him, taxiing toward the flight line to accept the next load of POWs. Marrott steered his plane toward the runway, and his navigator flipped a thumbs-up to the Americans still on the ground. The plane taxied to the runway’s end, fired its engines, and rumbled down the strip. The POWs inside grew quiet. As the 340,000-pound behemoth gained lift, Marrott pulled back on the yoke. At 1:36 P.M. local time, the plane rose into the sky. The POWs celebrated so wildly that Bob Shumaker thought they might stomp the bottom right out of the aircraft. They were going home.

  As the transport banked toward the South China Sea, a crew member announced that the Miami Dolphins had won Super Bowl VII one month earlier. “What’s the Super Bowl?” one POW responded; professional football’s first-ever championship game followed the 1966 season, after many POWs had already been imprisoned in Hanoi.

  Thirty minutes later, the second C-141 gave chase, carrying Jim Stockdale, Harry Jenkins, Howie Rutledge, George McKnight, and thirty-six other free men. Then the last two buses left the holding area and arrived at Gia Lâm’s tarmac. When the third C-141 came into his view, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Jerry Coffee turned to U.S. Air Force Major Sam Johnson. “Damn, Sam,” he said. “I never thought I’d call an air force plane beautiful, but that one surely is.” The prisoners put aside any interservice rivalry; on this day they all considered themselves air force men. As the last two buses unloaded and the men formed columns, Jim Mulligan spied Hawk, one of the few guards for whom he ever had any respect, standing nearby. In Jim’s estimation, Hawk had always performed his job efficiently and fairly. When their eyes met, Hawk pulled himself to attention and offered a salute. Jim Mulligan returned it.

  Mulligan turned back to the POWs and barked, “Left face, forward march!” and the men began their final march on North Vietnamese soil. He called, “Platoon halt,” when they arrived at the processing area. He saw Mickey Mouse, Bug, and Softsoap in the gathered crowd; only Cat appeared to be absent. Jim repressed the urge to bolt from the line and strangle his former tormentors. For him, forgiveness would not come easily. He had hated every one of his 2,522 days in North Vietnam, except for this one.

  Jim Mulligan stepping into freedom at Gia Lâm airport, February 12, 1973. Sam Johnson is five men back, head bowed.

  Sam, Jim, and the others listened to Rabbit’s voice one last time. If they heard it again, it would only be in nightmares. One by one, Rabbit called their names and each man stepped forward, saluted Colonel Lynn, and walked to freedom.

  Once inside the third C-141, hard-liner Jim Mulligan sat down and cried. A nurse came to comfort him, “It’s okay, Captain Mulligan,” she said. “It’s all over with, and we are going to take you home.” Then he noticed the bracelet around her delicate wrist. He read the engraving: CAPT. JAMES A. MULLIGAN JR. 3-20-66. Jim, like many other POWs, had received a promotion during his years in prison, although he hadn’t found out until that moment. Along with Jim, Howie, Jerry, Harry, and CAG had also attained captain; the air force had award
ed Sam Johnson the equivalent rank of colonel. On the plane, Sam took a seat several rows behind Captain Mulligan, and his thoughts turned to the friend they’d left behind. As the other men boarded, a State Department representative sat down next to him to verify a list of prisoner names, comparing his list against those Sam had memorized. Sam interrupted him; he needed to know about Ron.

  “Do you show Ron Storz on your list?” he asked. Sam still held on to the faint yet earnest hope that Ron had survived. After all, nobody had ever confirmed his death.

  The official showed Sam his list. One line read, “Ron Storz, U.S.A.F, died in captivity.” Ron had died on April 23, 1970, alone at Alcatraz. The Camp Authority had buried his body outside Hanoi in a simple grave, marked R.E.S. 23.4.70. Now Sam knew for sure. Ron’s wife, son, and daughter would not rush into the arms of their husband and father at a homecoming ceremony. They would only have memories of him as a young, vibrant pilot, promising to return.

  “Why, Ron, why?” Sam wondered silently. “Why couldn’t you hold on just a little bit longer?” He would, of course, never find an answer. He just hoped that Ron’s spirit knew that the rest of the Alcatraz Eleven had made it.

  Soon this third aircraft began its takeoff run. It gathered speed, then rose into the sky, propelled by forty cheering men.

  * * *

  Early on the morning of February 12, 1973, in Virginia Beach, the Mulligans and Dentons—Louise, Jane, and thirteen children—watched their televisions intently; countless other households around the world joined them. Young Jerry, who had returned safely from his tour in South Vietnam, was among them. At her grandmother’s house in New Hampshire, eight-year-old Monica Storz sat alone in a guest bedroom, clutching a picture of her father, Ron. She watched the same images as the other families, still hoping to see her father walk off the plane with the others. Despite having been told of his death, she still hoped he’d somehow come home.