by Robert Coram
The homeland might have been in turmoil, but here in a forgotten hellhole, a small group of men were keeping alive the America they knew and loved.
IN his book 1968: The Year That Rocked the World, Mark Kurlansky says that four events merged to form a tumultuous year: the civil rights movement, an alienated generation that rejected all authority, war hatred around the world, and the coming of age of television. The last turned out to be particularly important to the American military in general and to the POWs specifically.
The POWs were mostly of a generation that knew of World War II journalists such as Edward R. Murrow and Ernie Pyle. Murrow had reported often on the resourcefulness and courage of the British while Pyle wrote of the indomitable nature of the GI. In World War II, the reporting, books, and movies had generally supported America’s war effort. During the Korean War, there were divisions in the press, but usually the reporting was straightforward.
But in Vietnam a fault line developed between the military and the media — with dramatic results.
Virtually every reporter in Vietnam had gotten it wrong about the Tet Offensive — the major dailies, the three networks, the news magazines, radio — they all got it wrong. And the incestuous amplification of their wrongness gave new strength to the antiwar movement and had an enormous impact on American politics. The Tet Offensive was the first time in history that the news media overturned a victory by American troops. Only a few days later, Walter Cronkite, the venerable anchor of CBS News, declared that America had lost the war. He qualified his remarks by saying they were personal comments. Nevertheless, he was what was called the “voice of God,” and his words had enormous impact. President Johnson said that if he had lost Walter Cronkite, he had lost Middle America. It was not long afterward that Johnson announced he would not run for reelection.
Bud Day and John McCain had talked often about the press. McCain told him how, after he survived the famous fire aboard the aircraft carrier Forrestal, a young CBS reporter named Morley Safer had interviewed him. “That guy was antiwar,” McCain said.
It was particularly irksome to military people that brash young television reporters not only were argumentative and cynical but were painting themselves as experts on tactics and strategy when, in fact, few of them knew the difference between a company and a battalion. This low opinion of the press was shared by one of America’s most prominent authors. John Steinbeck had gone to Vietnam in December 1966, representing Newsday. He went into battle with the 1st Cavalry and with Marine assault units. He flew in a Bird Dog over the DMZ. He came under fire several times. In his columns, he said that the media was interested only in “the immediate and the dramatic” and that the real war in Vietnam was not being communicated to people back home. He said that much of what was produced by young reporters was “pure horse manure.”
His columns astonished people back home. Why, when so many people opposed the war, was Steinbeck so “hawkish”? Steinbeck, who had received both a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, was attacked by the American press as an old man who had lost his way.
The POWs did not trust the media in general but were especially wary of television and particularly CBS (even more particularly, Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer, and Dan Rather). To the POWs, Walter Cronkite became “Walter Crankcase.” And they called the camp public-address system “CBS.” The guards asked the prisoners what this meant and were pleased to learn that CBS was a prominent American television network. They never knew that to the POWs, “CBS” meant “camp bullshit system.” And the POWs knew that no other daily newspaper in America gave as much space to the antiwar movement as did the New York Times.
BY late 1968, Doris thought the Keep-Quiet Policy had gone on long enough. She had to do something so people would know about the plight of the POWs. But what? She had heard about a group called the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. The group was organized by Sybil Stockdale, wife of Jim Stockdale, and the membership was comprised of families of MIAs and POWs. The sole purpose of the group was to press for the return of all missing Americans in Southeast Asia. Maybe joining them was the first step.
“If the shoe was on the other foot, if I was the one in jail, what would Bud do?” she asked herself. The answer was simple: he would move heaven and earth to rescue her. But how could she change the Air Force? How could she have an impact on American thought? She was from Sioux City, Iowa, and had no experience in these matters. She had not been to college. She prayed and asked what she could do that would not harm Bud or the other POWs.
Her opportunity came just before Bud’s second Christmas in jail. Air Force officials at Luke AFB did not want the wives of MIAs or POWs to know how many other similar wives were nearby or who they were. Visits of POW/MIA wives to Luke were scheduled so the wives would never meet. But in December the Air Force received a copy of an East German documentary called Pilots in Pyjamas that included footage of a number of the POWs. The Air Force wanted the wives and families to see the documentary and identify as many POWs as possible. The film could stay at Luke only one day before it was sent to California for other POW wives to view. So all the local POW/MIA wives were brought to Luke.
Doris looked around at the women, all sitting silently. This was her opportunity. She was Bud Day’s wife; she was The Viking. She took pen and paper from her purse, stood up, turned to the woman next to her, and said, “Hello, I’m Doris Day and I’m a POW wife.” She wrote down the woman’s name and phone number and said, “I’ll call you later.” Then she moved on and did the same thing with other wives.
When she returned home, she went down her list and invited the women to her house. It was the first time the MIA and POW wives from the Phoenix area met as a group. She was so excited about the gathering that she burned the chicken she had prepared for dinner.
But it did not matter. Doris told the women the purpose of the meeting was to form an organization of local POW/MIA families and make it part of the National League of Families. Doris was elected president of the group and began making speeches about Bud and the POWs. It was very difficult in the beginning. She could get no more than a few minutes into her story when she noticed people in the audience were crying. Then she would begin crying. She talked to almost every Republican club in Arizona. No Democrat clubs invited her to speak. She met newspaper and television reporters and columnists. She met elected officials up to and including the governor. Later, she was elected the Arizona coordinator for the National League of Families.
One of the most important people she met, one who was to become a lifelong friend, was a wealthy Texan named Ross Perot. In the beginning she had no money, no photographs, nothing to help people understand the plight of the POWs. Perot had formed a POW awareness group called “United We Stand” that gave her bumper stickers and invaluable advice in a dozen areas, and put her in touch with people who could help. With the backing that might make a difference, Doris was going to let America know about the POWs.
And she was going to get the North Vietnamese to acknowledge that Bud Day was a prisoner.
11
Another Summer of Love
DURING the late 1960s, some young Americans wore love beads while others wore the uniform of their country.
Some sang “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” while others sang “God Bless America.”
Some young men fled to Canada. Others volunteered to go to Vietnam.
Some stood in the streets of America and clenched their fists in the air. Others huddled in dank cells in North Vietnam and held their hands over their hearts.
Some made speeches and protested about all that was wrong with America. Others maintained their sanity by remembering all that was right with America.
In addition to the physical torture and the primitive living conditions faced by the POWs, they experienced considerable psychological pain. The North Vietnamese withheld letters and packages from home, a move particularly dispiriting to men whose th
oughts often soared toward home and who spent hours wondering how their wives and children were faring.
Through the new shoot-downs and through the ever-present “CBS,” POWs knew what was going on back home. Congressmen and senators speaking out against the war? Young men burning draft cards? It was terribly demoralizing. If they were forced to listen to one more antiwar speech or one more group singing “Give Peace a Chance,” they would pull out their hair. And why were Senator Ted Kennedy, Jane Fonda, former attorney general Ramsey Clark, and others denouncing America’s involvement in Vietnam as “immoral”? The war might be immoral to college students and to some politicians and even to much of America, but the POWs were American men at arms and it was their duty to follow the orders and uphold the policies of their lawfully elected civilian leaders.
POWs thought they had been doing their duty. The catchphrase “immoral war” struck at the sacred heart of the POW: the concept of honor.
The POWs believed they had assumed an unlimited liability, up to and including the loss of life in service to their country. Their lives were dedicated to protecting America, and they were willing to make the supreme sacrifice for the privilege of so doing. They pressed on with their duty as they saw that duty. While the world might think of them as prisoners of war, they thought of themselves as prisoners at war; they were simply fighting on a different front.
Particularly painful to the prisoners was the Bob and Ed Show, a chatty anti-American prison broadcast by Navy commander Robert Schweitzer and Marine lieutenant colonel Edison Miller, two collaborators who were given special treatment and who were kept isolated from other POWs. In North Vietnamese prison camps, there were 458 American officers and 10 enlisted men (plus some 65 men who died in captivity). A fraction of 1 percent of this number became outcasts. Eight enlisted prisoners were so derisive about the Code of Conduct, so anti-American, so antiwar, and so flagrant in their disobedience of orders that a plot was developed to kill one of them. The SRO squelched the plan.
The POWs did not know it, but back home evidence of the first intimations of a change in government policy toward the prisoners could be seen. Richard Nixon had won the presidency, and in May 1969, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird met with Communist negotiators in Paris and waved pictures of emaciated POWs and complained about their condition. It was the first sign that Nixon would be more aggressive than was Lyndon Johnson on the POW issue.
Nixon was familiar with the National League of Families. He also knew about Doris Day because she sent him letters supporting his POW efforts — and he wrote her letters in return. Nixon also knew that Ross Perot was putting his virtually limitless resources into bringing the plight of the POWs to the attention of America. The passion of the wives and the money of Ross Perot were coming together in a great upsurge of emotion from grassroots levels all across America, and Nixon planned to ride that wave.
For Bud Day, the summer of 1969 was a summer of hell.
It began on May 10 when John Dramesi and Ed Atterberry escaped. Even though the Code of Conduct calls for captured American military personnel to make every effort to escape, and even though there were escape committees in every camp, SROs almost universally refused to sanction escape attempts. Aside from the obvious — tall and fair Caucasians did not exactly blend into Hanoi or the North Vietnamese countryside — escapees could not go north, west, or south; geography limited escape routes to getting to the Red River and floating 110 miles to the sea and then hoping to be seen by American aircraft. Chances of finding a Vietnamese to assist in an escape were zero. National pride was high, and in addition, the North Vietnamese government placed a bounty equaling $1,500 on any escaped prisoner. Finally, SROs knew that when escapees were caught — as would inevitably be the case — a terrible retribution would be rendered against all POWs.
There was never a successful escape from a North Vietnamese prison camp. And the unsanctioned effort by Dramesi and Atterberry on a rainy Saturday night before Mother’s Day was no exception. The two men got three miles away and were back in jail before noon.
During intense torture sessions, guards usually forced towels down the mouths of POWs to muffle their cries. But this time the guards did not use towels; they wanted other POWs to hear. The screams of Dramesi and Atterberry were heard two blocks away, and Atterberry was killed during his torture session.
The heart of a fighter pilot is too big for his chest. It must be big to accommodate his fighting spirit, his patriotism, his sense of duty, and his willingness to sacrifice. But it is not big enough to contain his anguish when he hears the cries of brother pilots who are being tortured and he can do nothing.
PEACE talks between America and North Vietnam had begun in Paris back in January 1969. And as a first step in winding down the war, America began withdrawing its troops from Vietnam on July 8. The North Vietnamese said they would discuss the “criminals” — the POWs — only after America withdrew its troops. But students of military history knew that the Vietnamese had made the same offer to the French in 1954. After the French withdrew their troops, fewer than one-third of the known French prisoners were repatriated; the others died in captivity from starvation, disease, and torture. If America unilaterally pulled out of the war without making repatriation of the POWs part of the agreement, American POWs might suffer the same fate. Guards often told Day, “You will be the first man shot when the war is over.” They meant it. In the more immediate term, Day knew there would be more retribution for the Dramesi/Atterberry escape. He told the men under his command to prepare themselves: murderous reprisals were coming and communications soon would be shut down. “Assume the worst,” he tapped out. “They know a lot. Tell them anything obvious. But reveal no classified material.”
The POWs recall the summer of 1969 as the time of the most vicious, systematic, and sustained torture of their long imprisonment. A new camp commander appeared and sealed the light and airholes in each cell. The temperature was well over 100 degrees, and POWs sweltered in a darkness that only increased their apprehension. Day and night the shrill and sustained screams of American pilots echoed through the prisons of North Vietnam. The very jangling of a guard’s keys made strong men tremble. They prayed the guard was coming for someone else, and they were racked with both guilt if another man was taken to torture and dread because next time the guard would come for them.
The harshest reprisals were visited upon senior officers who the guards thought were the brains behind the escape attempt but who in reality, for security reasons, had not been told in advance. (In fact, only Dramesi’s immediate SRO knew of the escape plans.) Until the summer of 1969, putting a prisoner in the ropes was considered the most painful and debilitating of all forms of torture. But this time the torture was different. A four-foot-long rubber strip cut from a tire was used to beat the Americans. They called it the “fan belt.”
Day felt a special apprehension. He was the SRO of a building called the “barn,” and he realized he soon would be facing the greatest trial of his life. Midwesterners know two things for certain. The first is how to reduce complex issues down to the basics. So, in the quiet before the guards came for him, Day made a solemn vow, a simple vow of three parts:
I will not do or say or write anything that will embarrass Doris and the children.
I will not do or say or write anything that will embarrass the Air Force.
I will not do or say or write anything that will embarrass my country.
Day knew that, God willing, someday all this would be over, and if he was still alive, he would go home. On that day he was determined to hold his head high.
Return with Honor.
That would be his creed.
He would die before he dishonored his family, the Air Force, or his country.
If he could not return with honor, he would not return at all.
The second thing Midwesterners know about is fortitude. In his Maxims of War, Napoleon says, “The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and
privation.” Most people think courage should be the first qualification. But without the fortitude to survive the terrible times that sometimes are the lot of the soldier, he may not be able to reach the place where courage is required. From his father, Bud Day had learned all there was to know about fortitude.
Early on Wednesday morning, July 16, Day heard the jangle of the guard’s keys. The door opened and it was his time.
Like every POW, he thought this might be a mistake, that there would be some sort of intervention, that his captors would change their minds. But as the guard marched him out of the room, Day looked over his shoulder and saw a second guard pick up the small towel that every POW had in his cell.
Being marched off in the predawn darkness toward torture does things to a man’s mind. Cold fear knotted Day’s stomach and his knees trembled.
Inside the small blood-splattered quiz room, a guard stood against one wall holding a fan belt. On the opposite wall another guard also held a fan belt.
A guard motioned and said, “Drop pants.”
Hell cuffs were ratcheted deep into his wrists. Almost immediately his hands began to swell. Irons were clamped around his ankles.
July temperatures in Hanoi, even at dawn, are around 80 degrees. Nevertheless, as Day’s pajamas fell to his ankles, he shivered. He was naked before his enemies. And he knew enough about pain to know that eventually he could be made to talk. “If you torture me, I will lie,” he told the guards. “And later I will take it all back. I will withdraw whatever I say.”