by Robert Coram
Several times he returned to his theme of an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, saying it was the “will of the people.”
What the extensive media coverage of that morning’s testimony overlooked was that rarely, if ever, in American history had a military officer so turned military customs and regulations and laws on their heads. America was withdrawing its troops, but 284,000 remained in South Vietnam. The testimony before the Fulbright committee indicted those troops, their commanders, and their civilian leaders in Washington and placed the POWs in great jeopardy by declaring them to be war criminals.
The officer added that America should pay “extensive reparations” to North Vietnam and that President Nixon’s talk of withdrawing from Vietnam with honor was “whitewashing ourselves.” He said he had been to Paris to talk with North Vietnamese delegations to the peace talks. This would mean a junior officer in the Navy was attempting to negotiate foreign policy with the enemy. He supported the North Vietnamese proposal of having America set a date for withdrawal of all troops so that men should not continue “to die for nothing.”
A few days later, in early May, the guards at one building in Hoa Lo called a group of POWs into the courtyard. A sheet was draped over a clothesline, and the guards showed a 16 mm film clip of the officer’s testimony.
A number of POWs would later say that, from that point forward, when they were called to quiz, the guards always mentioned the young man’s testimony. After all, that testimony substantiated the North Vietnamese oft-stated position that the POWs were murderers.
Day was at Skid Row when the film clip was shown. When he returned, he was told of the officer’s testimony.
“Who is he? What’s his name?” Day asked.
“John Kerry.”
Day shrugged. “A no-name dingbat.”
IN April 1972, Norris Overly became deputy commander for operations at Mather AFB in California. He still was making speeches about the POWs, how badly they were treated, how isolated they were, and how he had been freed to offset the bad image North Vietnam had regarding POWs. In May, the Copperhead, a newspaper published by the Air National Guard in Phoenix, quoted Overly as saying the North Vietnamese policy of releasing a few POWs had not gotten them anywhere at the peace talks in Paris, so they had stopped releasing prisoners.
The Air Force looked upon Overly and the other early releases as heroes. And America clasped the early releases to her bosom. (One was given a new car by the people of his hometown. When North Vietnamese guards showed POWs the picture of the man and his car, a POW asked why there was no yellow stripe down the top.) In June, Overly became a wing commander at Mather. Becoming a “Wing King” is one of the best jobs a colonel can have in the Air Force. And commanding a wing opens the way to becoming a general.
A month after Overly became a wing commander, one of the most celebrated and controversial events of the Vietnam War took place in Hanoi. Numerous politicians, including Senator Ted Kennedy and former attorney general Ramsey Clark, had visited Hanoi. Celebrity activists such as Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan, Reverend William Sloane Coffin, and convicted “Chicago Seven” conspirator Tom Hayden were also among those who visited. But in July it was a glamorous and outspoken movie star who was hosted by the Communist leadership.
Jane Fonda.
While near Hanoi, Fonda put on the helmet of a Vietnamese soldier and sang antiwar songs. She sat in the gunner’s seat of a AAA battery to “encourage” North Vietnamese soldiers fighting against “American imperialist air raiders.” She made numerous broadcasts over Radio Hanoi — broadcasts the POWs were forced to listen to over “CBS” as she denounced Richard Nixon as a “true killer” and lamented his “crimes” against the Vietnamese and said he was “lying” when he said the war was winding down. Over “CBS” the guards played a tape of Fonda and a group of women outside an army base in New Jersey singing a song called “Fuck the Army.”
Fonda came to Hoa Lo and met with seven POWs. One of them, Navy lieutenant commander David Hoffman, was tortured until he agreed to appear. (McCain says he was “knocked around” in an unsuccessful effort to make him meet with Fonda.) Among the POWs who showed up voluntarily were Lieutenant Colonel Edison Miller of the Marines and Commander Walter Eugene Wilber of the Navy.
The legal definition of “treason” includes a phrase about providing “aid and comfort to the enemy.” Bud Day and, for that matter, almost all of the POWs say that Fonda had done just that and should have been tried for treason.
They would never forgive her.
NOT long after Fonda left Hanoi, a new shoot-down entered Hoa Lo. P. K. Robinson, who had been a Misty, brought Day up to speed on the unit’s accomplishments and how the Air Force and Marines were using F-4 Phantoms as Fast FACs. He said that until they disbanded, the Mistys had continued to use the tactics Day had developed, tactics that had never been compromised. Day nodded and blinked back the tears.
BACK home, the presidential election was heating up. McGovern said that, if elected, he would go to Hanoi to ask for the release of the POWs. At Hoa Lo, his speech was played over “CBS” and enraged the POWs. They wanted to come out of jail standing tall and proud. They did not want a president of the United States begging for their release. Day was so angry he jumped atop a bed and told the POWs under his command, “If that son of a bitch wins and comes to Hanoi, I will personally kick his ass, then I will step over his prostrate body and lead all of you to Australia.”
The POWs cheered.
But the exodus to Down Under was not necessary. Nixon won in what turned out to be one of the most lopsided presidential elections in history — a clear refutation of the antiwar rhetoric. When Nixon subsequently began bombing North Vietnam, Doris sent a telegram to the White House saying, “Dear Mr. President, you just put a smile on my husband’s face.” She signed it “Wife of POW George E. Day.” She almost immediately received a thank-you note from Nixon.
By late 1972, only 27,000 U.S. troops remained in South Vietnam, not enough to apply military pressure on North Vietnam to end the war. Only airpower remained.
YEARS later a POW would be interviewed by the Historical Office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He told the historians that POW policy was that only the SRO in a room or a building or a camp could speak officially to the guards and that Day was the only SRO who sometimes had to delegate this duty because “when they started bullshitting him,” he knew it was possible he might “punch the guy in the fucking face.” Once, Orson Swindle, a big, badass Marine, looked at Day, stooped over with that rolling gait, his skinny bowed arm pumping in determination, his eyes shining in defiance, and asked him, “Bud, why are you so goddamned tough? How do you do it?”
Day smiled. “Ors, if I’m not, I know that when I get home, Doris will kick my ass.”
Day was as rigid with fellow POWs as he was with the guards.
A few weeks after Day and his posse returned from Skid Row, the guards added several POWs to the room. One was a full colonel named Jim Bean. The guards knew that with a colonel in the room, Day no longer would be SRO. What the guards did not know was that because of his conciliatory ways toward his captors, Bean had been relieved of command authority by the senior American POWs.
That day the guards were harassing the POWs in the courtyard. Bud ordered the men under his command to go back in their cells. Bean refused. Late that night, Day pulled Bean aside for a private chat. He kept his voice down. But the room was small and Swindle and Fellowes and others heard when Day said, “Colonel, you are not in command. And if you try to exercise command, I will throw you and everything you own out in the yard.”
The men in Room 2 lay there in the darkness, eyes wide. They were not surprised when the colonel meekly accepted Day’s leadership.
THEN there was Hubert Flesher, a captain who was very much full of himself. It was Day’s practice to give the men under his command a job. If they had a job, he could later write ERs about their performance. With these ERs they could more easil
y merge into the Air Force once they were repatriated. Day doesn’t remember what Flesher’s job was, only that the captain refused to perform his duties. “This job is to keep you in the system,” Day explained. “This will get you promoted when you go home.” Flesher still refused. Finally, Day went to him and said, “You are on your own. When it gets to be ER time, I’m not looking out for you.”
ON February 13, Doris picked up the telephone and a voice said, “This is Melvin Laird. I’m having a press conference in Phoenix and wondered if you would you like to meet me there.”
She paused. This can’t be the Melvin Laird, the secretary of defense.
But it was. He was coming to Phoenix and he wanted to meet the woman who had become such a leader among the POW wives, the woman who had written numerous letters to the president. Nixon knew who she was. And that was why Laird was calling.
“Will you join me for lunch?” he repeated.
“Yes.”
Dorie and Melvin Laird had a private lunch, and she told him about the obstacles still faced by POW wives. She sat in the front row at Laird’s press conference when he talked of the administration’s commitment to bringing the POWs home.
Then she went home, and for yet another day in a long string of days, Doris was strong for her children.
So much time was passing. The children were growing up and sometimes expressed concern that they could not remember what Dad looked like. She pulled out the old home movies of Bud playing in the yard with the children, made popcorn, and delighted as the children laughed, pointed at their dad on the screen, and said, “I remember when we did that.” Every night she had a family meeting and told the children more about their father. She wanted his memory to stay fresh in their minds. She told them that before they said their prayers they should look at his picture beside their bed. Remember his face. Remember what he looks like. He is coming home.
The calendars she kept showed day-by-day expenditures, every dime she had spent while Bud was away. Since Bud went to Vietnam, she had been on a strict budget. Most of Bud’s salary was being put in the bank. Her diaries recorded everything that happened to her and the children — day by day, month by month, and year by year accounting. She could pick a date, go to a calendar, and see what she and the children had done that day. She kept all of their report cards and all the little toys and pictures and trinkets of childhood. One day Bud would be home, and she wanted him to know everything that had happened, to see everything the children had done, to be aware of everything.
In October she publicly endorsed Richard Nixon in his reelection campaign and said she was “disgusted” with McGovern’s attempt to use the POWs in his “contemptible” Vietnam policy; she said McGovern would leave the POWs to the mercy of the North Vietnamese.
In November 1972 she wrote in her diary how very tired she was of being a POW wife and that she longed “to go back to being a mop squeezer.”
AS Christmas 1972 approached, Swindle organized a group of POWs into what was called the “Hanoi Players” to perform their interpretation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Swindle played Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future. Jack Fellowes was Tiny Tim.
McCain was Scrooge.
It was not the usual solemn performance of this Christmas classic. Tiny Tim had diarrhea and was wearing a diaper. Props were few. The script was ad-libbed and was both crude and profane.
Scrooge wore a cotton lamb-chop beard, pranced about, and contorted his face, and had there been scenery, it would have been said he chewed on it. McCain’s performance was over the top, his cocky, party-animal side in full splendor.
In a scene where Christmas Future told Scrooge that his time was coming, that he would pay for being such an unpleasant fellow, McCain and Swindle were standing over the room’s five-gallon latrine bucket, which was being used to depict a tombstone. The dialogue was interrupted several times when Fellowes needed to use the bucket.
It was the first Christmas in five years that Bud Day had something to laugh about.
ON the night of December 18, the POWs in Hoa Lo were awakened by the shriek of falling bombs. Day knew the sound well. Wave after wave of B-52s dropped stick after stick of bombs. The AAA and SAM defenses around Hanoi fired in salvos, but the bombs kept falling. As the guards cowered in fear, POWs stood and cheered and shouted and laughed.
Some bombs fell so close that the blast pressure could be felt inside Hoa Lo. With dawn came smaller attack aircraft, the A-6s, F-105s, and F-111s. Hanoi was hammered all day long. That night the B-52s returned.
For the first time in the long war, North Vietnam was learning what unleashed American airpower was all about. To the POWs it was the greatest fireworks display they had ever seen.
But not all American aircraft made it home, and almost immediately the captured crews were promptly paraded before reporters. In the past, crewmen met the press only after being beaten and told what to say. Now it was clear the POWs were simply being held as hostages in the peace negotiations. The propaganda ruse was off. Now it was simply a test of will between Nixon and North Vietnam.
Night after night the POWs were circled with bombs, many so close to Hoa Lo that guards realized the B-52 navigators were using the prison as an offset point for bombers. But Hoa Lo was the safest place for miles around. Seen from the air, Hanoi was burning. But in the middle of the city was a dark circle of safety. Suddenly, government bureaucrats and everyday citizens were knocking at the gates of Hoa Lo. Everyone in Hanoi wanted to be inside, close to the trapped Americans.
The emotional bond between the military and the POWs was never more apparent than during those days. Some Navy aircraft had both the pilot’s name and the name of a POW written under the cockpit. Occasionally, Air Force attack aircraft would come off a bombing run, drop down Misty-low, come screaming across Hoa Lo, and light the burner. Inside, POWs were jarred out of their beds, but they came out cheering. Their brothers had not forgotten them.
This was Nixon’s famed “Christmas Bombing,” or as it was officially known, Operation Linebacker II. It continued, with a short break for Christmas, for eleven days. And on the last few days, not a single SAM was fired at American aircraft. Not a single AAA battery was firing. On December 29, some 150 aircraft attacked North Vietnam, and none were lost.
The massive bombing campaign was the last card Nixon had left to play. Congress was threatening to cut off money financing the war. America wanted an end to the fighting. At the same time, the POWs were the last card the North Vietnamese had to play; only Hanoi knew how many Americans were there. It was a poker game with some of the highest stakes in history.
BACK home the antiwar and anti-Nixon mood was still strong. Doris received numerous phone calls from the media asking what she thought about the Christmas Bombing.
“I think it is great,” she said.
“But aren’t you afraid your husband might be killed?”
Doris was exasperated. These people knew so little of the military. And their politics were quite clear. But she controlled herself and said, “The men dropping the bombs are Bud’s brothers. They know what they are doing. I suppose an accident could happen, but even if it did, I support the president one hundred percent.”
At this point there always was a brief silence before the reporter said, “Are you sure that’s how you feel?”
“Absolutely.”
ON December 30, the White House stopped bombing because the North Vietnamese wanted to resume the peace talks. Soon afterward the Paris Peace Accords resumed and moved along quickly. The POW release was a big part of the talks.
The high-stakes poker game was over and Nixon had won.
The newest POWs, those shot down during the Christmas Bombing, were altogether different from those who had been there five years or so. They entered a relative country-club atmosphere and thought they were tough guys when they barked at the guards. But they were humble when they saw the men they had heard so much about during the past few years: Bud Day, Ro
bbie Risner, Jim Stockdale, Larry Guarino, John McCain, Jerry Denton. No one was sure these guys were even alive. And there they were, old and bent and not giving an inch.
Now the American prisoners began receiving three meals a day, more blankets, more clothes. Had the POWs known that back home much of America was castigating Nixon for the bombing, it would not have mattered. They did not care. Because the POWs knew then and will tell you so today that “Nixon bombed us out of jail.”
Then a prisoner who spoke Vietnamese heard guards saying that the war was over and that the “prisoners” and “detainees” — as the guards now called them — soon would be released. Within hours, every POW knew. Senior American officers remembered the propaganda films of French prisoners reacting with jubilation when they were told of their release after years as prisoners of the Vietnamese, and they wanted no such record. The word was passed down: show no emotion.
A few days later, POWs were assembled for the official announcement. Risner called them to attention. And these men who had grown old in prison, these men who had endured unspeakable pain, these men whose friends had died around them, slapped the heels of their rubber sandals together in a big “splat.”
Risner marched the men into the courtyard. This was the first public appearance of the 4th Allied POW Wing, and the members were determined to show the guards a thing or two about the discipline of American men at arms. The cadets at West Point or Annapolis or the Air Force Academy could not have looked sharper than did the POWs when they marched into the courtyard that day. Shoulders back. Eyes forward. Perfect cadence.
The 4th Allied POW Wing was shit hot.
The camp commander stood in front of the solemn group and looked around. A half dozen cameramen were in place to record the joyous reaction to his news. But when he told the Americans they were going home, not a man moved, not a man smiled, not a man showed the slightest tic of emotion.