NEW YEAR’S 1972 CAME and went. Champagne glasses were emptied. Confetti and party hats lay crumpled on the floor. The ball dropped in Times Square. But still the POWs remained POWs. The MIAs stayed unaccounted for. Jane’s wish that this year would be the year the men finally returned home already seemed like wishful thinking.
Although Sybil was no longer the coordinator of the League, she remained on the board and acted as a League watchdog on the POW/MIA issue. Though she was a Nixon supporter, the welfare of Jim and the other American prisoners and missing was her top priority. When Nixon neglected to mention the POW/MIA issue on a national telecast with Dan Rather in January of 1972, it was Sybil who called him out—by sending a telegram directly to Rather, pointing out the omission.
General Hughes, Nixon’s chief military assistant, took Sybil to task for the Rather telegram. He was now going to get the Haig treatment from Sybil. “He didn’t own me, and he better get that straight.”1 When he dared to tell Sybil, “I only have 28 days left on this job, and I’m going to see to it that nothing goes wrong,” Sybil had the perfect comeback. “I said I wished I could know I only had 28 days left as a POW wife!”2 Hughes later called and apologized, even offering Sybil a ride to D.C. on his government plane. She was still so angry with him, she declined the offer and took a commercial flight instead. No one could say the League’s founder was in the pocket of the Nixon government.
After the League’s January board meeting, Bonnie Singleton was given the task of gathering statements from congressional candidates regarding their stand on the POW/MIA issue. Sallie Stratton recalled that, despite POW/MIA “family dissatisfaction with the results of the current Vietnamization policy … the League as a unified body gave a qualified endorsement of our President’s peace plan.”3 Mainstream members were on board with Nixon. But the League’s “radical fringe group,” as Sybil called it, was not on the same wavelength.
In early February, Jack Anderson, a popular Washington Post columnist, reported that President Nixon “has made overtures to Hanoi through every possible channel to find out who is being held and to negotiate for their release.” As he had promised the ladies of the League at their banquet the previous fall, every lead was being followed and the prisoner release was a priority for the president. Henry Kissinger continued his negotiations, both public and private, in Paris, but progress was excruciatingly slow.
The National League was beginning to fracture, despite strong efforts by Carole Hanson and Evie Grubb to keep the group on a unified track. Dallas MIA wife and League board member Sallie Stratton recalled that League “families were just as split” as the country on the war.4 Though many of the women felt that Nixon was doing the best he could, everyone was weary of war and the constant obstacles thrown up by the North Vietnamese negotiators in Paris. As a result, by early February of 1972, “the families at home were … as splintered as a broken windshield.”5
Some of the League’s best-spoken and most dedicated activists had left the League to join a more political group: POW/MIA Families for Immediate Release. Between 350 and 450 POW/MIA family members who had been part of the National League split off from the group and formed their own organization. Like the League, the group established a Washington office.6 POW wife Valerie Kushner, for one, was ready to push harder and yell louder to get her husband, Captain Hal Kushner, an Army flight surgeon, back. After five years of being a single parent and a tireless activist, she was done with the humanitarian approach of the League. Valerie not only joined POW/MIA Families for Immediate Release, but she also switched her political allegiance. The former League member seconded George McGovern’s presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention, then hit the campaign trail to stump for her candidate.7 Highly competent, independent, and articulate, Valerie would be missed by many of the League wives. “She was a spitfire,” Kathleen Johnson recalled fondly.8
Louise Mulligan had left the League the previous May, when the organization refused to poll its members regarding whether or not to pressure the administration for withdrawal from Vietnam. Louise felt strongly at this point that “the leadership was no longer representative of the wishes of its members.”9 She had come close to the end of her rope. Her nerves were frayed, and her physician implored her to take a break. While she did not join POW/MIA Families for Immediate Release or stump for McGovern, she withdrew from League activities at this point. “The phone was ringing twenty hours a day. I had the phone company take the ringers off for my mental health.”10
“After I left the League I did some interviews on my own and that’s when I started using the word ‘expendable.’ Such as, ‘If President Nixon continues to withdraw our troops from Vietnam, with no commitment for the release of our prisoners, he will be the first President who has labeled our men as expendable.’ That’s how frustrated I was!!!”11 She had put her heart and soul into the fight, but, like Sybil, this prominent East Coast organizer and activist had reached the limit of what she could endure in terms of the daily grind of League activities. She desperately needed a break.
Although League members were becoming more divided on the home front, they still rallied together as Americans abroad. The latest group that planned to fly over to Paris in February of 1972 included three POW/MIA wives: Phyllis, Kathleen, and Sharon White. Conrad and Carole Mikulic, a wealthy couple supportive of the group’s efforts, and the League’s lawyer, Charlie Havens, went with them. This time, the group decided, a new approach was required.12 It was time to focus more on individual diplomacy and personal connections. Phyllis was “convinced that the time for the large and dramatic trip is past. In order to enter into substantive talks our delegations must be small and relatively quiet.”13
The POW letter-writing campaigns like Write Hanoi had been formidable weapons and had provided the women with the leverage they needed to gain appointments at the North Vietnamese embassies in Paris and Stockholm, but, as time wore on, the letters began garnering some negative publicity for the Americans. The staff at the suburban post office in Choisy-le-Roi, site of the North Vietnamese delegation’s headquarters, was overwhelmed by the enormous volume of letters that continued to be sent, pleading for the American POWs’ release. U.S. news sources claimed that the North Vietnamese were now routinely rejecting the letters. (The North Vietnamese vehemently denied this.) The embassy spokesman instead accused the Americans of racism because they showed “more concern for a few hundred Americans than for hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese war victims.”14
The League delegation arrived in Paris on February 10. On the eleventh, Phyllis, along with Charlie, Sharon, and Kathleen (now on her third trip to Paris), headed for Versailles, the site of the Paris World Assembly for the Peace and Independence of the Indochinese Peoples, on February 11–13. They hoped to be able to meet personally with representatives of the North Vietnamese government, the Viet Cong, and the Pathet Lao to plead for the men’s release. To their dismay, conference organizers were informed that they could not be seated unless they identified themselves with the antiwar groups. This the League reps were not willing to do. “We said we could not speak for the League that way,” reported Phyllis later. Though the League had been forced to work often with antiwar groups, the still nonpolitical group refused to ally directly with their strange bedfellows of the past.
However, Phyllis, Charlie, Kathleen, Sharon, and the Mikulecs all found out that the side conversations and personal chats they had in the lobby were well worth their time. “In the two and one-half hours of conversation that we had in the lobby we achieved more and had more varied contacts than if we had actually been seated,” Phyllis wrote.15
One on one, some of the North Vietnamese representatives were kind and understanding. Kathleen had warm memories of an empathetic Vietnamese man who had been a teacher before the war. He was one of the delegates representing the Viet Cong. When she explained her situation as an MIA wife seeking any information she could find about her husband, Bruce, he responded that “as one human being to another, I will do everything in my power to learn about your husband.” The delegate understood her pain all too well: he had not seen or heard from his own wife and children for many years.16 Kathleen would never know whether her new friend was able to keep his promise.
The group then returned to Paris and attempted to visit the Vietnamese embassy on the Left Bank. Phyllis was told to call the next week. She did this repeatedly, to no avail. Reporters from UPI explained that the Communist representatives would probably never see Phyllis or anyone in the League entourage, for three reasons: the Tet Offensive, worries about Nixon’s upcoming trip to China, and the cancellation of the Paris peace talks by American diplomats.17
Despite some progress with North Vietnamese individuals, the wall of the larger Communist government had risen yet again between the North Vietnamese and the American wives of the prisoners and missing. Phyllis wrote a letter in French from her home base at the InterContinental Hotel and dropped it in the mail slot of the North Vietnamese delegate general, Xuan Thuy. In this letter, Phyllis clearly tried to separate herself and the League from the Nixon administration. Her attempts to focus on the humanitarian issue—the POWs and MIAs—are clear:
“I am in Paris at the direction of my organization, the National League of Families. I represent all the families with men who are prisoners or missing in your country. No one wants peace more than the prisoners’ families.” Phyllis hoped the emphasis on family and peace, rather than policy, would grab the delegate general’s attention.18
The lesson Sybil Stockdale had learned so early on after Jim’s shoot-down, that there was no substitute for a personal visit, would also serve Phyllis well. On February 18, the night before she was supposed to leave to return home, she finally got the call she had been hoping for.
French Communist reporter Madeleine Riffaud returned Phyllis’s calls from earlier in the week. Could she come over and see Phyllis right now? Phyllis was already in bed, but she immediately agreed, throwing her clothes on and dashing down to the hotel bar for their hastily arranged rendezvous She was not going to miss her chance to meet with Riffaud, who had met with Paul and interviewed him just a few months after his shoot-down in 1966.
Riffaud spoke no English, but Phyllis’s excellent French allowed her to communicate easily with her. Phyllis didn’t let Riffaud’s Communist views stand in the way of obtaining information about Paul, either. She had dealt with many others like her before. Speaking with Riffaud was a breakthrough for Phyllis: the POW wife found that the French Communist reporter was much more open and less dogmatic than the American members of COLIAFAM. Bringing awareness to Paul’s plight and ultimately getting him home was what mattered, and she was determined to speak to anyone who had information about him, no matter their politics.
Kathleen’s photo of Phyllis and Riffaud from their evening chat in Paris shows the two young women seated with their heads close together.19 Phyllis is blond and fair and looks like the all-American cheerleader. Riffaud looks quintessentially French, her dark hair in a long braid, sporting sleek leather pants and a skinny ribbed turtleneck. The women look like chic friends who know each other well. They could be meeting at a café to discuss the latest film by Claude Lelouch, or the futuristic fashions of André Courrèges.
Instead, the women’s conversation was about life and death (and not in the abstract, à la existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre). Phyllis was trying yet again to establish a lifeline of communication to bring Paul home. She had learned that the only way to approach the Communists was as a humanitarian. Any association with the U.S. government was suspect. In her meeting with Riffaud, Phyllis “emphasized that our League was not sponsored by President Nixon and his administration and that we were asking the same questions of everyone who might help our men.” The women on the trip were simply wives who wanted to get their husbands home safely.20 It was the same message Phyllis had conveyed in French to Xuan Thuy earlier in the trip.
Phyllis’s friend Judi Clifford recalled later that although Phyllis had a real rapport and connection with Riffaud, she could not help but be a bit jealous. After all, Riffaud had seen Paul more recently than she had. That fact rankled Phyllis.21 Even so, she felt that meeting with Riffaud was “the most rewarding part of the trip for me. I feel we bridged a huge gap in our three and one-half-hour visit.”22
Even prior to the trip, Phyllis had decided that being less dogmatic in her views and listening to others, even those with views that were opposite her own, was crucial. The personal contacts were what she felt were moving things toward reconciliation.23
March 26 through April 1 marked the National Week of Concern for Americans Who Are Prisoners of War or Missing in Action. The week was fully supported by the government, and the Department of Defense highlighted the week with a program at 10 a.m. on March 29 at the Pentagon. The Marine Corps band played, the chief chaplain for the U.S. Army gave the invocation. All the heavy hitters were present: Admiral Thomas Moorer of the U.S. Navy, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Melvin Laird, the secretary of defense; and Air Force brigadier general Daniel “Chappie” James, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs and the POW/MIA families’ point man.
The U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots jetted overhead in the “missing man formation” flyover. The event displayed every bit of pomp and circumstance the government could muster. The current administration was wooing the women in no uncertain terms. Finally, the government was telling the women they loved them, that they understood their pain. In exchange for this show of devotion, the administration wanted their political support.24
Would the women accept Nixon’s proposal or would they turn away? Pat Nixon had turned her future husband down many times before she accepted his marriage proposal, but his persistent pursuit finally paid off. Would this scenario repeat itself between the Nixon administration and the POW/MIA wives? The women had yet to make their final decision.
In May, the National League held a special meeting for members to discuss the organization’s political position on the war (if any) and the presidential candidates for the 1972 election. Jane and Sybil were bowled over when they were invited to stay at the home of the chief of naval operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, and his wife. This was a huge honor, accorded to them as the wives of two of the highest-ranking naval prisoners of war.25
By now, the government knew that the League was a force to be reckoned with. Back in March, Kissinger had asked the ladies to lend the administration their support.26 MIA wife Sallie Stratton was also present at the Kissinger meeting and was heartened by his conversation with them: “I found Dr. Kissinger to be a charming, soft-spoken, very confident man. He assured us any agreement reached with the Vietnamese would be a package deal, including the men from Laos and Cambodia … I was duly impressed by his demeanor and trusted his promises.”27
But some of the women were beginning to waver in their enthusiasm for the current administration. “Even Jane was torn between Nixon and McGovern at that point.”28 Jane had been particularly incensed by an April 1972 Nixon reelection campaign solicitation letter stating that the president deserved a second term because “he has brought us out of a devastating war and set us on the path to peace.”29
What?! Jane must have thought. Did I miss something here?
The war was not over, the country was not yet on a path to peace. These misstatements (though rapidly corrected by the Nixon campaign office) reinforced an earlier decision Jane had made that surely would have shocked her ultraconservative husband. In an interview with the local newspaper, Jane stated that the letter “reinforced my earlier decision to attempt to become a member of the Virginia delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Miami,”30 which would take place July 10–13, 1972. Jane ultimately would not become a delegate in Miami, but she had made her point and criticized the Nixon administration publicly.
For this reason, Jane must have avidly observed what transpired at the League’s special May meeting. Representatives for both Nixon and McGovern were invited to speak at the League meeting. Neither was very impressive. “Mr. Dolf Droge, Nixon’s rep, was an expert on the history and culture of Vietnam, but he was clearly lacking in terms of his explanations of U.S. military and diplomatic policy in Vietnam.” Sybil recalled, “His representation of the President was a disaster.”31
Sallie Stratton had a different reaction to the young hippie historian, who communicated much of the presentation through songs. She felt his analysis of Vietnamese culture was critical to understanding their foe. Droge explained how “all discussions have been from either a hawk or dove position, both of which are totally irrelevant, he told us. What is needed is the owl position, one based on an understanding of the Vietnamese people and their long history.” Still, Sallie admitted that she was one of the few who enjoyed his talk. The League membership in general was not impressed.32
Jane and Sybil told Admiral Zumwalt at breakfast the next day about what they deemed the Droge fiasco. Zumwalt stormed into the League’s press conference later that day and grabbed the mike. He had concluded that he must “go down and try to speak to the families to give them my own view that the President had remained steadfast in his intention not to ease the pressure on North Vietnam until the prisoners were released and the missing accounted for.” Zumwalt was glad he had done so, later observing that the audience’s questions “were good, hard and tough, and demonstrated that Sybil and Jane had not been amiss in their estimate that these long-suffering families needed some personal attention from the White House.”
Energized by the positive reaction he received, Zumwalt decided to visit the White House and relay their reaction to Kissinger. “It was the only time I had ever dropped in on Henry unannounced. He came into the reception room, obviously perturbed at my arrival. I let him have it in no uncertain terms that I thought the White House had let down these families. Henry was infuriated and an acrimonious exchange took place.”33
The admiral’s appearance saved the day for those in the Nixon camp. Sybil wrote later that “I believe it was his appearance and being willing to lay his job on the line to represent the President and our political persuasions as individuals rather than a group” that allayed the fears of League members about the current administration’s stance.34
The next day, May 8, the U.S. government announced the blockade and mining of Haiphong harbor, in North Vietnam. Known as Operation Linebacker I, the campaign began with the bombing of the harbor from the air, in addition to a honeycomb of mines detonated in the harbor itself. This decisive military action won over many POW/MIA wives, giving them hope that the current administration would do what it took to finally end the war. Many felt that the presence of the mines would give the U.S. military leverage over the North Vietnamese and perhaps force their hand regarding the American POWs and MIAs.35
Louise Mulligan, for one, was thrilled. She felt the offensive was long overdue. “I remember very well that morning. I put in a call to the White House and requested to speak to General [Brent] Scowcroft (who had replaced General Hughes as Nixon’s military aide). I waited some time and the General came on the line. I asked him, ‘Who ordered the bombing?’ There was a pause and he said, ‘Mrs. Mulligan, are you asking me who made the policy?’ I said, ‘I know exactly what I am asking you.’ He said, ‘I can’t tell you that.’ So I said to him, ‘Are you going to continue the bombing?’ He said, ‘Yes, until they sue for peace!’ and I replied, ‘That’s all I want to know!’”36
Roger E. Shields, then the thirty-two-year-old civilian in the Office of the Assistant secretary of defense for International Security affairs spearheaded the DoD task force for POW repatriation was convinced this action is what would ultimately bring the Communists to heel. “We knew we had an agreement, and that the men were going to come home.”37
At the end of that week, Sybil and Phyllis both stayed at the Army and Navy Club, just off Connecticut Avenue and only a few blocks from the White House. The League office, in the American Legion building, was just around the corner. Phyllis and Sybil must have spent some time together plotting strategy. Phyllis’s was surely humming her favorite song at the time, “I Am Woman,” by Australian singer Helen Reddy, released that same month. Phyllis was no feminist, but she loved the song’s line “I am invincible.” She later wrote, “That’s how I felt. I loved confrontation on the” POW/MIA issue. She “knew we couldn’t be licked.” This feeling of confidence and mastery of the issue led her to be more politically active within the parameters of the League. Phyllis was now acting as the Virginia committee chair for the League’s Non-Partisan Political Action Committee and would attend the state and national conventions for both the Republican and Democratic Parties in 1972.38
With the November election rapidly approaching, the Nixon administration knew that if it lost Middle America, as LBJ had after the Tet Offensive, it was sunk. The ladies reflected this constituency. The government’s next move had to reflect support for the POW/MIA issue or the ladies might throw their support to McGovern. Some, like Valerie Kushner, already had. Jane was totally on the fence and upset with the Nixon fundraising letter.
When Sybil, Phyllis, and Maureen Dunn—wife of Navy pilot Lieutenant Joseph P. Dunn, who went missing in 1968—requested a meeting with the president, they got it. The three women had been elected at the League’s May 7 meeting specifically “to meet with President Nixon to reaffirm our extreme distress and our expectations that an immediate policy be adopted that would insure an accounting of our missing men and the release of our POWs, not just the withdrawal of combat troops. We wanted the Paris Peace Talks reconvened simultaneously with inspection of POW camps in South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.”39
On May 15, a press conference was held, with Sybil, Phyllis, and Maureen representing the National League. Sybil served as the spokeswoman for the group. The meeting illustrated the range of different viewpoints within the League membership and debunked the idea that the League was a puppet of the Nixon administration.
Dressed in a red, white, and blue outfit,40 Sybil began by pointing out how critical she and the League had been of Senator J. William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had not held hearings on the POW/MIA issue during the entire eight years that Americans had been held in captivity. Sybil stated, “We consider the committee derelict in its responsibilities, and we said so. The point is, we don’t play favorites, and we are considering what is best for our husbands and sons, their health, and in many cases, no doubt, their lives are at stake.”41
Phyllis was clear that she had been “very very critical of the Administration in recent months, and I wanted to be convinced with all my heart that everything possible was being done. This mining [of the harbor] has given me that assurance, and this meeting has given me that assurance. I hope that the other families in our organization will be heartened by this also.”42 Maureen told the reporters gathered at the White House after the meeting with Nixon that “I am the only MIA wife here. Please be reassured that the President is encompassing all aspects of Southeast Asia. This includes Laos, South Vietnam, and Cambodia.”43
Maureen, Phyllis, and Sybil felt comfortable enough with President Nixon to speak their minds with him and not hold back. Sybil even ventured to give her own tactical advice to the president during their meeting. “I told the President I would land the U.S. Marines in North Vietnam and claim it as U.S. territory.” Her plan once the country was occupied? To keep it until the prisoners were released and accounted for. Nixon apparently laughed at the idea during the meeting. Though Sybil didn’t tell the press this, she had noticed that Kissinger jotted a note down with her suggestion.44
Nixon assured the three ladies that the mining of Haiphong harbor meant the North Vietnamese would be out of oil in four months. He felt strongly that, after that, they would be forced to negotiate.45 When Maureen still had questions toward the end of their time with the president, he invited the ladies to “stay here and ask me all the questions you have. You ladies come first.”46
Maureen wanted assurance from Nixon that the MIAs would not be forgotten at the end of the war. He readily gave it, assuring her that they were on his radar as well.
Over the summer of 1972, movie actress turned political firebrand Jane Fonda would make her infamous visit to North Vietnam, where she was photographed sitting on a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. She had a full schedule while visiting North Vietnam, set up by her Communist hosts. It included tours, live and taped broadcasts to GIs through Radio Hanoi, and meetings with American POWs, sometimes against their will. When she returned to Los Angeles on July 31, she announced that she would be “abandoning her career” until after the November election, “in order to campaign against the Vietnam War.” Over the years, she would receive the derogatory nickname “Hanoi Jane.”
The POWs would never forgive Fonda for supporting the Communists and denying their mistreatment at the hands of the enemy,47 despite the actress’s repeated apologies many years later.
The POW and MIA wives, though, barely gave Jane Fonda a second thought. The women regarded COLIAFAM and Cora Weiss as far more dangerous. But ultimately, most POW/MIA wives believed that Fonda and others like her were simply Communist-leaning pawns in the larger chess game of Vietnam. The League leadership were determined to checkmate their opponents, and they would do so through their own anti-propaganda awareness campaigns.
During the third weekend in September, the League leadership had their regularly scheduled bimonthly meeting with Kissinger. Sybil recalled that “this was the first meeting when he told the group that he hoped that soon he would have an announcement to make which would bring our waiting to an end.”48 Instead of feeling elated, Sybil felt let down and depressed. “Still nothing definite,” she wrote.
But on October 12, just before the League’s 1972 convention, Kissinger returned from Paris extremely hopeful. Sustained U.S. military action had finally brought Le Duc Tho, the former Viet Minh leader negotiating on behalf of the North Vietnamese, back to the table. The two diplomats had “worked out a ceasefire to be followed within sixty days of a withdrawal of all U.S. forces and the release of all American POWs.”49 Though the war was not over yet, it seemed that progress was finally being made.
Just two days later, the League hosted its third annual convention at the Statler Hilton, in Washington. League membership continued to grow: the organization now numbered 2,983, in addition to a “Concerned Citizen” group of more than five hundred non–family members. Both presidential candidates were invited to speak at the gathering. Only Nixon showed up, and he was received warmly by the crowd. Recently released Navy POW Lieutenant Mark Gartley also attended and spoke about the strict censorship of mail and packages to the prisoners. He noted that prisoner treatment had been much improved in the past several years. The publicity generated for the POWs by the League surely had not hurt.50
The excitement over a potential peace agreement was pulsating through the air at the Statler Hilton. Consequently, perhaps the most important agenda item was the discussion of Kissinger’s explanation of the agreements he had worked out with the North Vietnamese regarding the prisoners and the missing. League membership was parsing his every word on the matter carefully:
“There will be a return of all American prisoners, military or civilian, within 60 days after the agreement comes into force. North Vietnam has made itself responsible for an accounting of our prisoners and missing in action throughout Indochina, and for the repatriation of American prisoners throughout Indochina.”51 This clarification was especially important for the MIA families, who lived in constant fear that their loved ones (or their loved ones’ remains) would be left behind when the war ended.
On October 15, Phyllis was nominated for the position of board chair and then elected by secret ballot. Louise Mulligan, who had never run for a League office before and had backed off from League efforts for months, ran for a board seat in a last-ditch effort to set a fire under the League. She did not win, but she was glad she had put her name forth.52 After an interview with the League leadership in D.C., Helene was nominated for national coordinator and elected unanimously.53 Though Evie Grubb would have liked to have stayed on as League coordinator, League leadership wanted new direction and fresh ideas. Helene’s fundraising ability had already been noticed, and she had become friends with board chair Carole Hanson when Carole visited Colorado Springs to receive the $30,000 check generated by the Silent Nights Christmas seals campaign.54
Now the vivacious Colorado Springs MIA wife and the once shy but now fearless Phyllis joined forces. They would make a formidable team. Helene and her children, Cindy and Robbie, moved to D.C. for her one-year term. Phyllis would travel back and forth from her home base in Richmond and be in constant phone contact with Helene and the other League officers and board members. Though the two women were both seasoned Leaguers, they had inherited a frequently fractious group. Together, they deftly steered the League through sometimes treacherous political and emotional tides.
On October 26, not even two weeks after the League convention, Kissinger held a press conference, proclaiming, in his guttural German accent, “We have now heard from both Vietnams, and it is obvious that the war that has been raging for ten years is drawing to a conclusion, and that this is a traumatic experience for all of the participants … We believe that peace is at hand. We believe an agreement is in sight.”55
This declaration would soon be viewed as premature and would later haunt Nixon’s national security adviser and top negotiator. Sybil’s gut reaction was that Kissinger’s declaration was just more of the same old blah-blah. She was sliding down into another depression due to the war and financial issues at home. “The fact that the Peace is at Hand statement didn’t produce anything really was just further evidence to me that the war would probably go on forever.”56
League board member and MIA wife Sallie Stratton was also disappointed. Her feelings were reflected in a statement the League itself had issued expressing its members’ distress:
The Families of Americans who are missing and held captive in Southeast Asia had harbored desperate hopes that a peace treaty could be signed before Christmas and that at least some of our men, particularly the sick and injured and those men held for long years, would be quickly reunited with their families.
We had expected that all other prisoners might be home by March and that identification and accounting would be taking place in the interim. Now we know that we must face another Christmas with no immediate peace in sight. It is a bitter prospect and the disappointments and frustrations are severe.57
There were growing feelings of hopelessness among the League membership. Joan Vinson was the chairwoman of the League’s Non-Partisan Political Action Committee, which sent out a voter appeal made clear on that the organization was not taking political sides in the election.
“We acclaim no one. We endorse no one. We are not on anyone’s bandwagon. We want and need you all on ours.” At the bottom of the appeal was this chilling slogan:
“The POW’s ARE DYING TO VOTE!”58
The president was reelected on November 7 in one of the biggest election landslides in American history.59 Many POW and MIA wives apparently still felt that if McGovern had prevailed, all would be lost for the POWs and MIAs. With Nixon remaining at the helm, Sybil, Phyllis, Sallie, and many others reasoned, perhaps the men still had a fighting chance.
For many of the wives, six or more years had passed since their husbands were shot down. Children born when their fathers left for Vietnam had never met their dads. Holidays, birthdays, weddings, and funerals came and went for these families while the men languished in prison or their whereabouts remained unknown. Many of the women were struggling to be full-time activists as well as both mother and father to their children. It was all becoming too much to bear.
Jim Stockdale Jr. graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, and Sid, a crew star at South Kent Prep School, in Connecticut, was selected to row in the Junior Olympics in Milan. The children were all doing well, but financially Sybil was worried. She had invested in two condos at Mammoth Mountain, California, before realizing she could not afford them. She began to slip back into the fog of depression she had experienced in the fall of 1970 in Washington. She started seeing a civilian therapist and hired an attorney to help her sort out her finances. Jim might never come home, so she needed to prepare for the worst.60
On December 18, Nixon ordered the Air Force B-52s to bomb Hanoi. The offensive, which the government named Operation Linebacker II, soon became better known as the “Christmas bombing.” Naturally, the action was unpopular with the antiwar lobby, both foreign and domestic. “The prime minister of Sweden [Olof Palme] compared the United States to Nazi Germany,” wrote historian Geoffrey Ward. “James Reston, of The New York Times, pronounced the raids ‘war by tantrum.’”61
The bombing was exactly what the prisoners in Hanoi and their families had been hoping for.
In the North Vietnamese prisons, the POWs cheered wildly when they heard the bombs. Prisoner John McCain painted a vivid scene of the reaction of the prisoners held with him in Hanoi: “Despite our proximity to the targets, we were jubilant. We hollered in near euphoria as the ground beneath us shook with the force of the blasts, exulting in our guards’ fear as they scurried for shelter. We clapped each other on the back and joked about packing our bags for home. We shouted ‘Thank you!’ to the night sky.”62 Robbie Risner, one of the group of defiant POWs dubbed the “Alcatraz Eleven,” reinforced McCain’s account: “On the 18th of December—I think that was the first night of the B52 raids—there was never such joy seen in our camp before.”63
The men hoped and prayed that the war might finally be coming to its conclusion. After eleven days of bombing Hanoi, the capital city was in shreds. Kissinger’s take? “I think the Christmas bombing broke their back.”64
After years of stalling subterfuge and fruitless exchanges at the Paris peace talks, the North Vietnamese finally came back to the negotiating table. (Perhaps Chiang Kai-shek had been right all along.) On December 29, the bombing stopped, and the Vietnam War was on its way to its final conclusion.