“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.…”
Victor Frankl
Life for the POW was primitive. Our “possessions” consisted of a one-liter clay water pitcher, a blanket, a mosquito net, two sets of black pajamas and underwear, a toothbrush, a tube of Vietnamese toothpaste to last three months, a tin cup, a bar of lye soap, a small hand towel, and some squares of heavy brown paper to use as toilet tissue. Our “bathroom” was a three-gallon bucket in the corner of the cell.
The wake-up gong rang daily at 6:00 a.m. Our primary turnkey, whom we had nicknamed “Sweet Pea,” escorted one of us down the hall to the sewer opening for the daily bucket dump. To him this duty was offensive, but to us it was a welcomed opportunity to check out the surroundings and try to contact our neighbors when the guards looked the other way.
A few weeks after our arrival, an officer escorted a medic into our cell. He had the demeanor of an absent-minded professor and wore a steel helmet, as if expecting an air raid, so we nicknamed him “Combat Medic.” After inspecting the room, Combat Medic pointed to our bare bed boards and said to the officer, “No mattress?” We all suffered from sore hips from sleeping on the hard lumber, so our spirits soared when the officer promised to correct the deficiency. But our elation was short-lived, because the mattresses that arrived the next day were nothing more than rice-straw mats about an eighth of an inch thick. Even today, many of the former POWs have arthritis in their hip joints, and some have had hip replacements.
Normally, the V let us out of our tiny cell only fifteen minutes a day, five or six days a week, but never on Sunday because that was their day off. We were allowed to spend ten minutes in the washhouse bathing and washing clothes, and about two and a half minutes retrieving each of our two daily meals from the hallway outside our cell. About once a week we were allowed to shave—or rather “torment”—our faces with a 1960s-era blade that had been used previously by ten or twenty other scruffy POWs. Except for a one-hour siesta after lunch, we were not allowed to lie down or sleep during the day. Some of the men became adept at sleeping while seated, leaning against a wall.
For the first two years the feeling of hunger never left us. Food was the most popular topic of conversation, especially when it was cold and our bodies needed more calories just to stay warm. Upon awakening in the winter months, I would realize I had been dreaming about walking down a cafeteria line selecting a breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, orange juice, and coffee. But in reality, our typical meal was a bowl of thin, greasy vegetable soup, accompanied by either a cup of rice or an eight-inch baguette of bread.
We joked that the menu had lots of variety; it changed three times a year. Six months of the year we dined on pumpkin soup, followed by three months of cabbage soup, followed by three months of an aquatic vegetable we called sewer greens. One summer we kept a record: for forty-four straight days, two meals a day, we ate pumpkin soup embellished with a side dish (two tablespoons) of stewed pumpkins. We called this meal “pumpkin squared.”
It required a sense of humor to eat this “ghoulish” goulash. Often it contained a small chunk of pork fat, complete with the pig’s skin and hair, or a small amount of dog meat that tasted somewhat like Italian sausage. Occasionally, unexpected “delicacies” would appear. For instance, a fellow in the adjoining cell found a pig’s eye in his soup one day, and another POW found a monkey’s hand.
Since the V cooked outside in big pots, small bugs and white worms would regularly drop into the soup from overhanging trees. Every August weevils would hatch in the flour, so the bread would be peppered with the black buggers. Having nothing better to do one afternoon, I counted forty-four in one cubic inch of bread. There were too many to pick out, so we just ate them, figuring they were a good source of protein.
I was thankful that the primary meals came as soup dishes. They were boiled, which meant they were relatively free from germs, and they contained sufficient nutrients to keep us alive. They also provided much-needed fluids to supplement our one liter of water per day. The bread with each meal provided most of the protein in our diet, and the baked-in bugs were a bonus.
When the sun went down, the rats came out in droves. You could see them scurrying back and forth along walls and up and down tree limbs, not unlike columns of ants. One night when I was sleeping on the floor, an eight-inch rat (they typically were six to eight inches in length, not including the tail) came through a drainage vent and became trapped between my mosquito net and the cell wall. As it wildly thrashed about, I felt as if I were battling a medium-sized cat. I’m not sure which of us was more scared. My personal rat experience was far from the worst in the camps, though. One POW who had been severely injured during ejection from his aircraft awoke in the middle of the night to find rats chewing on his mangled, infected leg. He fought them off, but they came back. There was always an ongoing rat skirmish of some sort.
Winters in Hanoi are surprisingly cold, with temperatures often in the low forties Fahrenheit, and sometimes lower. The chilly air blowing in through our barred open window, covered only with a rattan mat, made our unheated cell feel like an icebox. It was also cold because our meager rations provided insufficient energy to stay warm through the long nights. We survived by putting on every bit of clothing we owned—two pairs of thin pajamas and a cotton sweater—and wrapping ourselves in our blanket. For the first two years we had no socks, so our feet never got warm in winter.1
Fat in the Fire opened our peephole one day and asked how we were doing. We told him we were cold at night and needed more blankets and food. He snapped, “This is prison, not hotel!” Did he know that in our gallows humor we called the prison “The Hanoi Hilton”? We never found out.
The POW experience produced severe mental and emotional stress. Hour after hour we found ourselves battling an army of oppressive feelings—from fear about what might happen to us, to anger at our captors for the way they treated us, to disappointment for being shot down, to guilt for leaving our families in the lurch and in the dark. Maintaining a positive mental outlook was crucial to survival.
Military leaders expect life to be difficult, yet they tend to be optimistic about their capability to succeed. They are trained to make the best of the situation by solving problems instead of stewing about them, and they place a high value on cohesive teamwork. Fortunately, that’s the kind of leadership we had in Hanoi.
A few of our buddies who had more pessimistic temperaments occasionally needed extra measures of encouragement from the rest of us. In return, they frequently contributed a healthy dose of realism that balanced our optimism with objectivity and discipline. Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale insightfully captured the importance of this dynamic tension in what Jim Collins called the “Stockdale Paradox”:
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”2
When you are at the mercy of an enemy who has the power to force you to do things against your will, the psychological impact can be unimaginably depressing and debilitating. His goal is to break you, and you must constantly fight to maintain your self-respect and optimism. Most of us did this in two primary ways.
First, we fought to maintain our belief in ourselves and our competency by resisting the enemy and exercising our autonomy at every opportunity. In order to demonstrate that our lives still had worth and that we were not helpless, we had to find ways to get our licks in, often using tricks and subtle acts of rebellion as weapons. Every time a POW outsmarted the V, no matter how trivial the incident, other POWs were encouraged and emboldened.
When forced to make propaganda statements, we would often use a hoax or subtleties of the English language to undermine the enemy. For example, after extensive torture, a Navy crew “confessed” that two men in their squadron were being court-martialed for refusing to fly combat missions over North Vietnam. The names of the two men, they said, were LT Clark Kent (familiar to Americans as Superman) and LCDR Ben Casey (from the Dr. Ben Casey TV show). One Air Force pilot wrote in his forced “confession” that he was “sorry for the miserable Vietnamese people.” Another wrote “… that he regretted coming to Vietnam because the people had been ‘truly revolting for four thousand years.’”3 (To compare military ranks see Appendix F.)
We were not allowed to yell out or even talk loudly, but one POW would routinely hurl a disguised in-your-face insult to the V by belting out a gigantic sneeze: “horsssss-shit.” It was so loud that it echoed up and down the hallways of Thunderbird, lifting our morale and giving us a much-needed laugh. Not to be outdone, another POW who had been tortured to read propaganda on the camp radio, pronounced the name of their esteemed leader “Horse-shit-minh.” I still don’t know who did that, but he should have been given a medal—maybe an Oscar—for that performance.
When the V tried to exploit Navy LT Paul Galanti by photographing him in a spacious, airy room specially prepared for propaganda purposes, he “flipped them the finger”—literally. As the photo was taken, Paul subtly rested both hands on the end of the bed with his middle fingers pointing down. At the time, the V did not realize that Paul had outwitted them, and some socialist country journalists unknowingly used the photo as it was. Others caught it and completely airbrushed out his fingers. Fortunately, an original copy made it back to the U.S., where Paul’s intended message came through loud and clear: “This is a big propaganda lie.”4
Another way we fought to maintain our dignity was to carry on guerrilla warfare with the guards and lower-level interrogators who often stopped by our cells to harass us or practice their English. Our efforts varied from showing a disrespectful attitude through harsh words and belligerent body language, to devious tricks to make them uncomfortable.
To keep the guards who most irritated us from opening our peephole and yelling insults, we would move the toilet bucket up next to the door of our cell and remove the lid. When the belligerent guard came by and snatched open the peephole to look in, he would inhale a stench much worse than the foulest porta potty. After the guard slammed the door and skedaddled, we would burst into muffled laughter. Even the smallest victories were important in this war of wills.
At other times we would refuse to bow to guards, turnkeys, and officers. They responded with slaps, interrogations, threats of torture, and other punishments. Once when we refused to bow, the V closed all of our air vents and kept us locked in our cell without an outside bath for several weeks. The sweltering conditions—100°F heat and high humidity—gave us heat rash and boils, but it was worth it.
Faith was also a primary source of strength, dignity, and hope. We had faith in each other, in our leaders, in our country, in our families, and especially in God. The old saying that “there are no atheists in foxholes” was certainly true in the POW camps. As I mentioned earlier, I knew God loved me unconditionally, and that He had a plan for my life. Although I didn’t have a Bible in the early years, the POW environment seemed to significantly sharpen my memory, and I could recall many of my favorite scripture verses. Romans 8:28—“In all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose”—and other passages, like Psalms 1, 23, and 100, gave me an inner strength and a sense of peace that kept me going.
In his book Before Honor, here’s how former POW CAPT Eugene (Red) McDaniel, USN, described his battle for survival and the attitude that many of us held:
“… If there was something to be lived in this sordid atmosphere of pain, then I had to live it. To abandon hope, the possibility of survival, meant I would lose possession of myself, my own worth, my own self-identity. In that case, the North Vietnamese had won—their intent was to destroy finally that sense of worth we all needed to hang on to. …. So every day was a battle to stay alive in a hopeless situation and resist my captor’s attempts to exploit my weaknesses and break me. I sensed that to give in to them was to surrender a big chunk of what God was trying to instill in me.… All I had was tomorrow, and maybe that was the height of optimism. Well then, I would make tomorrow count for something—and on that, I finally found sleep.”5
In addition to the living conditions and threats, there was the continual stress of being in a strange environment apart from our loved ones. But gradually, as we settled into this new life, we gained confidence that we would survive. We learned to live one day at a time. The consistently positive attitude of our leaders set the tone, giving us hope that someday we would go home to our families and country.
POWs are not alone in facing hardships. All leaders face difficulties and challenges every day. None of us can control what the next day will bring, but there is one thing we all can control: our attitude. Attitude is crucial for success in any endeavor, and no one influences organizational and individual attitudes more than the leader.
Although it’s not easy to turn lemons into lemonade, leaders must strive to do just that by maintaining a positive attitude. We have to expect that we’re going to be handed lemons, sour grapes, rotten deals, and unfair decisions. How we deal with them is the true test of our leadership. Because leaders have such a powerful influence on others, they don’t have the luxury of wallowing in negativity and self-pity.
Attitude was not a problem for me as a POW. I believed that some day we would return and things would be okay. Actually, I had more difficulty with attitude after I returned home to the “real world,” because I expected everything to run smoothly all the time. Of course, that was not the case, and I had to learn to adjust.
As a young flying squadron commander, I had the privilege of leading a select group of T-38 instructor pilots (IPs), all of whom had one thousand or more hours of instructor time in the aircraft. They were mostly the cream of the crop, and they helped us garner a reputation of excellence. One day in the midst of our normal flying operations, two officers from the Inspector General (IG) team arrived and set up shop in one of our offices.
It turned out that they were conducting a follow-up investigation on an accident that had occurred at another base. The instructors responsible for the accident had been trained in our squadron three years prior. They were flying an unauthorized maneuver at the time of the accident, so the investigators were looking for a thread of deviancy that might trace back to our unit, even though their training had occurred before any of my guys had arrived on station.
Because the IG was involved, as opposed to the accident board, the investigation had the feel of a hunting expedition that was looking for a scapegoat. Moreover, I felt that their approach of interrogating our instructor pilots under oath would hurt morale and interfere with our focus on flight operations. (It didn’t occur to me at the time, but in retrospect I can see that my anger might have been aroused by my emotional memory of abuses in interrogations I experienced as a POW.)
When I complained to my boss, he gave me a frustrated look and said, “Lee, anyone can steer the ship through the calm waters. The real captains take it through the storms.” His powerful statement hit me like a sledgehammer. It was a great lesson that inspires me to this day. Leaders take others through the difficult times, and to do that they must engage even negative and “unfair” situations with a positive attitude. On the way back to the squadron, I revamped my attitude and accepted the challenge. We sailed through that little storm with ease.
Most of us have heard the jocular expression, “If the boss (or Momma) ain’t happy, then nobody’s happy.” In my experience, that observation has proved to be true time and again. Research in the last twenty years verifies that emotions are contagious.6 A poor attitude is like a disease, and it can spread like an epidemic. Just as a rock splashing in a pond sends out ripples over a wide area, a bad attitude can quickly contaminate an entire organization.
One of my healthcare clients had a doctor on staff whose poor attitude was so adversely affecting the morale of the nurses that I was brought in to help. It turned out that this doctor’s mood set the tone for the entire staff. If he was in a good mood when he walked in the unit in the morning, the atmosphere stayed light and positive all day. But if he was in a foul mood, which was often the case, the air was thick with gloom, cynicism, and criticism. It was a shame this doctor had such a sour personality, because he had great medical skills and exhibited compassion toward his patients. But his negative attitude was creating a near-hostile environment. Eventually, after several unsuccessful attempts to remedy the situation, he was removed.
Most people fear change and tend to resist it. But in today’s workplace, where change is occurring at an increasingly rapid rate, leaders must have a strategy to address the negative emotions it evokes.
Brian Shield, executive vice president and chief information officer at the Weather Channel, is an impressive leader who understands the impact of change on morale. When this privately held company was offered for sale in 2008, Brian proactively began preparing his managers so they could lead their people through a difficult time of uncertainty. Knowing they were likely to be bought by a Fortune 500 company, Brian sensed the fears that were building: potential loss of job, reorganization with a change in manager, change of office, loss of peers, and unpredictable cultural changes that were sure to come. He asked us to help prepare his leaders to lead and to coach their people through the changes that were occurring.
An important part of the “leading in change” curriculum we provided to the Weather Channel focused on emotional intelligence training for Brian’s team of IT leaders. They gained a new understanding of how emotions impact the workplace, and they learned how effective leaders manage their own emotions and recognize and respond appropriately to the emotional needs of others. The company was acquired a few months later, and many changes did indeed take place. However, because of Brian’s foresight, poise, and personal involvement in this preparation, the IT team remained focused and productive during a challenging period of transition.
Motivational speakers and leadership books focus more on attitude than anything else, because it is the most essential element of success. Yes, diligence and dedication are important, but inspiration is the source of power. Commander Stockdale was right: “faith that we would prevail” is the essential “first principle” of successful leadership. It enabled us to resist and survive as POWs and return with honor. This same “possibility thinking” enables poor men to become rich, sick people to become well, last-place teams to become first, and each of us to reach our potential as human beings and leaders.
Foot Stomper: A positive attitude is one of a leader’s greatest assets, and it’s one of the best ways you can influence/lead others. Keep your chin up, because when it goes down, you do too, and many others will follow right behind.
As a leader, you must find a positive way to deal with the negative issues that come your way. Use these insights and questions to reflect on your attitude and its impact on your influence.
1. Engage adversity with a positive attitude.
How do you respond when life is not fair? How could you engage challenges more effectively? In what ways do you respond differently to your manager from how you respond to your direct reports or peers?
2. Manage your emotions as if they’re contagious, because they are.
What situations have you observed where your negative emotions affected others? How could you handle your negative emotions more productively? Where can you start?
3. Engage change with a plan.
Do you intentionally develop plans for dealing with change? What books have you read on the subject of leading through change?7 What other resources do you use in developing strategies for dealing with change?
Note: To download an expanded version of these coaching questions for writing your responses, visit LeadingWithHonor.com.
1 Many of us have nerve damage to our feet from the long periods of exposure to the cold.
2 Jim Collins, Good To Great. (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2001) 86-88.
3 Brig Gen Jon Reynolds, interview by Lee Ellis, “POW Leadership,” September 16, 2007.
4 Unfortunately, the version of the photo on the cover of LIFE Magazine, Oct 20, 1967 was courtesy of a communist East German photographer, and all the fingers had been carefully airbrushed out.
5 Eugene B. McDaniel and James L. Johnson, Before Honor. (Philadelphia, PA: A.J. Holman Company, 1975) 63-64.
6 Daniel Goleman, PhD uses the research on emotional intelligence as the basis for several of his best-selling books on the subject. I often refer to his book Primal Leadership and recommend it to my clients.
7 Consider books like Leading Change and The Heart of Change by John P. Kotter, and Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
Coaching: STAY POSITIVE