by Robert Coram
The camp commander frowned. He took a few steps forward and asked Risner, “Don’t you understand? You are going home.”
“Yes, we understand.”
The POWs would leave in three groups. And they would leave as they had always wanted: in order of shoot-down, with an exception made for the sick and injured. Split up by date of shoot-down, Day and McCain and Swindle went to separate buildings.
The camp commander was still frustrated about not getting taped footage of emotional Americans. He ordered a group of POWs to collect brooms, mops, and buckets and to clean the camp. The POWs looked to Day for guidance. He waited as the commander did a slow burn, then he sauntered forth and said, “In some moments.”
Day left on March 12, part of the third group to depart. The gates of Hoa Lo clanged shut behind them. The group rode by bus out to Gia Lam Airport and stepped onto the tarmac and stood in formation, still unblinking, still unsmiling, still showing not one shred of emotion.
People in America would see the film and wonder why the POWs seemed so subdued.
For more years than they wanted to remember, the POWs had held the moral high ground. They were not criminals; they were American fighting men, prisoners at war, and they had won. They knew this. And the North Vietnamese knew it too.
On that March morning, as the POWs awaited the arrival of the transport aircraft that would take them home, the spirits of a hundred battlefields stirred once again. The brothers of the POWs, the men who died at Valley Forge and Gettysburg, the warriors buried under the countless crosses at Normandy and in graves all across the Pacific, the valiant souls who died in Korea and the 58,000 who died in Vietnam, nodded in approval and settled back into the dust of the ages. Now they could truly rest in peace. Because these pampered fighter pilots, these cantankerous prima donnas, had set a new and higher standard of conduct for the American fighting man. And as the continuum of American warriors moved forward, the younger generation and those that followed would know what was expected.
Who would have believed it?
Who would have believed it?
FROM the time he entered Hoa Lo, Bud Day had always hoped he would go home someday. Now someday was here.
He watched the shiny C-141 Starlifter land that morning. She was cleaned and polished and gleamed in the morning sun, and on the fuselage was written UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. An American flag was painted on the tail.
When he saw that flag, Day had to bite his lips to hold back the tears.
The government he served had not forgotten him.
The big silver Freedom Bird was there to take him home.
The Americans remained solemn as they were handed off one by one to American escort officers. They walked up the ramp in the rear of the C-141 and were greeted by nurses who hugged and kissed them. The men smelled the nurses’ perfume and they were homesick as never before. Some of the POWs were afraid the aircraft might be called back to the terminal. Some had great fear of being shot down by the North Vietnamese Air Force. They could not accept that they were free. They strapped into their seats, and when the aircraft taxied onto the active runway, the four powerful engines rose to a crescendo that echoed across the tarmac, the aircraft lifted off, and there was a hesitant cheer. A few minutes later the pilot announced over the PA system, “Gentlemen, we are feet wet. We have cleared North Vietnamese airspace. Next stop, Clark Field in the Philippines.” Now the men laughed and cheered and pumped their fists in the air and slapped each other on the back.
After five years and seven months and thirteen days, Bud Day was going home.
And he was returning with honor.
14
Three’s In . . . With Unfinished Business
WHEN Bud Day and the POWs walked into the hospital at Clark AFB, the doctors and nurses and all the staff stood and applauded. Day had some emergency dental work done to repair the front teeth broken by a guard. Doctors found he was riddled with hookworms, whipworms, and something called “gatamoeba coli.” He was deaf in his right ear from countless blows to his head. His right arm was bowed. And doctors bit their lips when they saw his buttocks and the backs of his legs, still red and inflamed almost three years after his summer of hell.
He underwent a debriefing by an intelligence officer and was fitted for a new uniform. He looked at the jacket, replete with the silver eagles of a full colonel, the wings of a command pilot, and the medals he earned while in jail. He was overcome by emotion as he buttoned the jacket and looked in the mirror. This was what it was all about, this uniform. It was to maintain the honor of this uniform that he had stood fast in the POW years.
He took another look in the mirror. He was quite thin. But he was still a squared-away officer.
The most important thing that happened at Clark was that he was allowed to call Doris. She had sent pictures to Clark showing what she and the children looked like. Bud held the pictures as he called, and as he tells it, when he heard her voice he “almost melted into the telephone.”
“Welcome home,” she said. “The kids are okay. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Everything is healed.”
Already a number of returning POWs were finding that their wives had divorced them or that a divorce would be waiting as soon as they arrived at home. Others would find their marriages falling apart within a few years. But Bud and Doris remained untouched by these swirling marital currents. They were best friends, and their marriage had strengthened in the past six years.
At Clark, Day also made a disturbing discovery about what his years in confinement had done. A pilot friend visited him in the hospital, every pocket of his flight suit bulging with miniatures of scotch, bourbon, and vodka. Day had been a scotch drinker, but at Clark he found he had to force it down. Something had happened to his taste buds while he was in jail. He tried the bourbon and vodka with the same results.
Then the POWs took off for March AFB in California. Aboard the C-141 on the flight to California was a liaison officer who went to Day and said, “You are senior and will be first off the aircraft. You will be expected to make a brief speech.”
The ramp at March was filled with hundreds of spectators, many of whom waved flags and banners. America put aside its internal dissent and embraced the POWs. There was something healing about their return, and the nation welcomed them as no other military people serving in Vietnam had been welcomed.
Brigadier General Robin Olds, former wing commander of a highly aggressive group of Vietnam-era fighter pilots known as the “Wolfpack” and a man who was a living legend in the Air Force, greeted Day when he came down the steps. The two men exchanged crisp salutes, then embraced. Bud Day was back on U.S. soil, back with his own.
Doris was watching from the crowd and remembered what Norris Overly told her about Bud’s arms. She saw the salute and said, “Oh, he’s not crippled.”
Day walked to the microphone and began his remarks by saying he was thankful for the support of all those present and particularly to President Nixon, who “bombed us out of jail.” He continued talking, not knowing that Doris was mumbling, “That’s enough, Bud. That’s enough.” A few sentences later, Day heard the staccato clicking of high heels running across the tarmac. He would know that sound anywhere. It was The Viking, running toward him, arms outstretched, a glorious smile on her face. And behind her were the four children. His speech halted as he moved toward her and then stopped, arms waiting, as Doris flew to him.
Steve now was a strapping blond-haired boy who picked up his father and twirled him around.
The Day family headed to the VIP rooms at March; Bud and Doris had a room, and across the hall were separate quarters for the children. Doris sang “Misty” to Bud, and they turned off the lights. Day was so used to sleeping on concrete that he could not sleep in the bed. During the night he lay down on the floor. Doris looked down at him and said, “Bud, you’ve got to learn to sleep on a bed.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
The most important item on th
e agenda was medical assistance for Bud. He went to see Dave Martyn, a former Air Force doctor he had known at Niagara Falls who was now in a civilian practice at nearby Newport Beach. At Martyn’s office, Day explained what had happened and how John McCain had tried to straighten his right arm. “I’m not sure McCain was a good orthopedic guy,” Day joked.
“Let’s start with X-rays,” the doctor suggested.
Later the doctor said that an operation to break and reset the arm would be relatively easy. But the nerve controlling his biceps was stretched or severed. Another nerve, which controls hand muscles, was only a thread. Breaking and resetting the bones could straighten Day’s arm but probably would destroy the nerve, rendering his right arm immobile. It was not worth the risk. For the rest of his life, Day would be a poster boy for the efficacy of the Bug.
Day began what would become months of physical therapy — a process he called “legalized torture” — that caused his arm to spasm during the night. The spasms brought on a recurring nightmare that the Bug had called him to torture and he was back in the ropes. Day began taking sleeping pills to get through the night. He would take the pills the rest of his life. Sometimes the nightmares were stronger than the pills and he would have to take part of another pill to find a fitful rest.
Back in Phoenix, Doris sat down with Bud and showed him the bankbook. She had saved more than $70,000 and spent only the allotment money he had assigned to her. She showed Bud her diaries, ledgers, and calendars that chronicled every expenditure over the past sixty-seven months. She was apologetic that some $600 could not be accounted for. “Doris, that’s close enough,” he said.
He looked around the house and was pleased with most of what he saw. A notable exception was the bed in the master bedroom. It was covered with white fur and had pink velour pillows.
“Doris, that has to go,” Day said.
When not at home recovering, Day was caught up in a never-ending round of hospital visits, social appearances, and intelligence debriefings. The latter were particularly important for Day, as he was the last man to see Cobeil, Connell, and Cameron alive. He told his debriefer how the three officers had been taken away and probably tortured to death. But most important of all, he told them that the early releases — members of the Fink Release Program — had not been picked at random; that those officers actively competed for the chance to go home early; that they tried to outdo each other in cooperating with the guards and in their criticism of America. The debriefer reeled in shock. Almost every returning POW was telling the same story and had the same explosive anger, the same determination to set things right.
Senior leaders thought that if they did nothing, if the POWs were given some leave, some time to settle down and get back into the mainstream, this anger would dissipate. They were wrong.
JEREMIAH Denton had been SRO in the first aircraft of POWs to leave Hanoi in 1973. When he arrived at Clark, he made two phone calls: the first to his wife, the second to Ross Perot. On behalf of the POWs, he thanked Perot for all he had done.
“I told him that rather than thanking me, he ought to thank the Son Tay Raiders. No one thanked them,” Perot said. The men who had assaulted the POW camp west of Hanoi in November 1970 were ridiculed by the media because they had attacked an empty camp. But they were revered within the military.
The more Perot talked, the more enthusiastic he became about the idea of getting the POWs together with the Raiders. The White House was talking about a big welcome-home party for the POWs in May, but Perot wanted to do something before then. Much to the annoyance of the White House, he began planning a Texas-style welcome-home party.
Hundreds of returning POWs received airline tickets to San Francisco, where Perot had taken over the Fairmont Hotel. For the POWs and the Raiders, everything was free. Perot even put an envelope filled with a generous amount of “bar money” in each room. For good measure, he brought in John Wayne and Red Skelton and Ernest Borgnine to party with the POWs and the Raiders.
When Day arrived, he told Doris the bathroom in his suite was bigger than five or six cells back at the Hilton.
The Raiders, most of whom were in their early twenties, looked on the POWs as avatars of ancient warriors, men who had endured years of torture but had kept the faith. And every time they looked upon a POW, there was respect and awe and the unspoken question: “Could I have endured what this man endured? Could I have held up?”
The POWs, on the other hand, looked on the Raiders as brave and daring young men who had risked their lives to save them, men whose raid scared the hell out of Hanoi and was responsible for the POWs’ being removed from solitary and put in the big rooms.
After a few drinks these barriers were broken down, and the brotherhood of men at arms emerged as the POWs and the Son Tay Raiders began having one hell of a celebration. At some point in the evening, John Wayne took to the podium and growled, “Awright, pilgrims. Send your women to their rooms. We are going to have a party.” He commandeered a large boat, and the POWs and the Raiders got rip-roaring drunk. They rode under the Golden Gate Bridge and sang patriotic songs and howled at the moon. They saw Alcatraz and decided it was nowhere near as scary as its sibling in Hanoi.
The next day there was a parade through Haight-Asbury, where manhole covers were slid aside and hundreds of balloons popped out. There was confetti and ticker tape and a glorious welcome by the people of San Francisco. It was one of the biggest parades in the city’s history.
Meanwhile, stories about the torture of POWs were published in several national publications. Jane Fonda was quoted as saying the POWs were “hypocrites and liars.”
ON May 24, President Nixon welcomed the POWs to the White House. It was then and remains today the largest seated dinner ever thrown at the White House: 1,280 people seated in a tent on the South Lawn. Bob Hope was master of ceremonies. Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Sammy Davis Jr. and Irving Berlin were there. The chief of staff of every branch of the service was there, along with a few active-duty members of each service.
This gathering had the full attention of television networks and major newspapers. But the media — as did much of America — lumped all the POWs (early releases and those repatriated in early 1973) together.
With Day, the reckoning began when he arrived at the Phoenix airport for his departure and saw one of the early releases. “Why are you here?” Day asked.
The man smiled and said he was going to the party at the White House.
“This gathering is for honorable men. You are not welcome.”
The same thing happened at the airport in Washington when Doris recognized an officer and said, “Thank you for your service while you were in Hanoi.” She was amazed when Bud pulled her away and angrily said to the man, “I can’t believe you have the audacity to come here in the company of honorable men.”
Before the dinner at the White House, there was a reception — appropriately enough — at the Washington Hilton. Although there were a number of POWs senior to Day, he was the acknowledged leader and, as such, not only introduced Nixon and thanked him “for bombing us out of jail” but presented the president with a handsome plaque that he commissioned and paid for — a plaque from the POWs inscribed to RICHARD THE LION HEARTED.
After the reception, the POWs boarded buses for the ride to the White House. Day was in the front seat. Leo Thorsness was near the back and witnessed what happened next.
Howie Rutledge, during his POW years, had been a tough resister, a light that could not be extinguished. When he saw Edison Miller, the Marine officer who had been half of the Bob and Ed Show, he exploded with anger. He seized Miller by the lapels of his mess dress uniform and tried to stuff him through the window. The bus driver and the military minder up front were astonished. It was their great honor to accompany to the White House the most revered group of officers in America. And one was trying to stuff another through the window? What was going on?
After a few minutes, someone pulled Rutledge off Miller and th
en pulled Miller from the window.
At the White House, Jack Van Loan looked up from his table and saw a face he dimly recognized but could not place. He stood up, stuck out his hand, and said, “I’m Jack Van Loan.”
“Hi, Jack. I’m Gene Wilber.” Wilber, a collaborator, sat down across the table.
Van Loan stared in disbelief. “You son of a bitch!” he shouted as he lunged across the table. His wife seized his belt and tugged hard, whispering, “Not here. Not here.”
Van Loan straightened his medal-bedecked uniform, sat down, turned to the sergeant in the next seat, and said, “I’m giving you a direct order. You are not to speak to the officer across the table. If he asks you anything, you are not to answer. Do you understand me?”
The sergeant, one of the active-duty personnel attending the party, nodded, his eyes big with astonishment.
The White House party was a glorious time for the POWs, a chance for them all to be together again, to say their proper good-byes before they left for new duty stations.
Larry Guarino found himself sitting next to John Wayne. Being the irrepressible man that he is, the still hollow-eyed Guarino — now up to maybe 120 pounds — turned to Wayne and said, “You know, Duke, I thought of you when I was in jail.”
“You did?” growled Wayne, a smile tugging at his lips. Only his best friends called him “Duke.” He was flattered to be called that by this famous POW.
“Yeah. When the guards came to take me to quiz, I asked myself, ‘What would the Duke do?’ I tried to model myself after what I thought you would do.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
Guarino smiled, put a hand on Wayne’s shoulder, and said, “You know, Duke. They beat the living shit out of me.”
Wayne stared a moment. Then he laughed. But tears were running down his cheeks.
Nixon by then was in the throes of Watergate, and his presidency was in trouble. But in this room he was a hero. They gave him a standing and prolonged ovation.