MAY 1965
Any time a turnkey guard arrived at our cell door other than at the standard times, we experienced a feeling of dread. One day, I received the command to change from my standard prison shorts to the long pajama-like garb, which indicated I would be taken to the blue room for more interrogation. Thankfully, the interrogation that day included repeated questions and attempts at indoctrination—which I saw right through—and not torture. I repeatedly asked to write a letter home. When my interrogators had left the blue room, Owl, with his bugged-out eyes and emotionless countenance, told me I might be able to write soon.
He seemed receptive, so I told him my wife was expecting a baby, and a letter from me would be most helpful and encouraging. He said he would talk to the authorities. I didn’t hold out much hope that the attitude of the authorities toward me would change enough to permit this. On the following day, I was taken to interrogation once again.
In every camp, there were two arms of camp authority—a political arm and a military arm. All interrogators worked for the political officer in the camp. One of these we had nicknamed Dog. He was the English-speaking political officer I had spoken with about my shoulder.
Dog showed me the wallet of Major Lawrence Guarino and asked me if I knew him. I said, “No, I have never known a Major Guarino.”
As a matter of fact, I did know Larry, and the picture on his ID card was very good. He was in a sister squadron at Kadena and had been with me at Korat.
I asked, “Where did you get this wallet?”
“He was shot down and perished in his burning aircraft. This is his last effects.”
I knew Dog was lying. If Larry had burned with his aircraft, the wallet would not have been in perfect condition.
On June 22, Owl entered my cell while the turnkey waited outside. This was the first time he had come to my cell, and I hoped it was to tell me that I would be permitted to write home. Instead, he said, “I have come to tell you that on May 14, your wife gave birth to a son. Both are doing well.”
I asked, “How do you know?”
He responded, “Guarino told me.”
What great news! I was grateful to Larry for passing the information to me and was convinced my prayers had been answered.
Soon after, new guests arrived at Heartbreak Hotel. Within a few days, Air Force Lts. Bob Peel, Paul Kari, and Ron Storz were moved in. Navy Lts. Bill Tschudy and Hayden Lockhart filled up the remaining available cells. The halls buzzed with conversation. Although we were all in solitary confinement, we became very close. How true is the old cliché—misery loves company. Our morale soared with the increased contact with our new friends.
All of us had found by now that our interrogators were very ignorant and unsophisticated about flying and tactics. We all spent hours in interrogation, most of which was political indoctrination. However, we found it advantageous to answer their questions and give them deliberate misinformation about our aircraft, armament, and tactics. Generally, they did not know what questions to ask and had no concept of how we did our jobs.
For many questions we would reply, “I don’t know.” The interrogators would insist that we did know, and by letting them prod and suggest possible answers, we could find out what they thought the answer should be. In feigned resignation, we would agree with their answers, which they dutifully wrote down—and which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
One technique I used in the interrogation room was very helpful. Lt. Col. Robbie Risner, my squadron commander when I was shot down, was one of the strongest, most capable air leaders I had ever known. Because I had such great respect for this man, in the interrogation room I always pretended to myself that Robbie was on a stool beside me and was observing everything I said or did. Even when I was tired from lack of sleep and both mentally and physically exhausted, his presence beside me helped me keep my mind on the task at hand.
Hayden Lockhart told me of one interrogation he had with Dog. We were continually referred to as criminals, and to make their point, our interrogators accused us of all kinds of atrocities, showing us pictures of mutilated babies, bombed churches, and so on to make us feel personally responsible. In the interrogation room, Dog accused Hayden of killing his aging mother.
Knowing it was all a lie, Hayden asked him, “How did I kill your mother?”
“My mother is very old, and in the village where she lived, I dug a trench about fifteen meters from her hut so she could protect herself when you Yankee dogs bombed and strafed innocent civilians. One day, you [shaking his finger in Hayden’s face] bombed and strafed her village, and she was unable to get into the trench before she was killed.”
Hayden responded, “I didn’t kill your mother; you did.”
Dog slapped the table with both hands, jumped up, and said, “What do you mean I killed my mother?”
Hayden answered, “If you had dug the trench closer to the hut, the old lady would have made it.”
Dog was so angry that he stomped out of the room, unable to speak.
Through our windows facing the courtyard, we could see food being taken to a cell diagonally across from us. We assumed it was an American POW, perhaps Alvarez, but the distance made conversation with him impossible. How could we communicate with him? We enlisted the unwitting help of one of the somewhat-less-than-bright guards in the system.
Rudolph—so named because of his red, bulbous nose—often acted as our turnkey, opening our cell doors when we bathed, picked up our food, or dumped our buckets. He loved to talk to us. He spoke in Vietnamese, and, of course, we used English. But he never realized that our animated conversations with him were actually directed to the other cell occupants, telling them about our latest interrogation or other information—completely free from suspicion or censure.
Scotty Morgan, over several sessions, taught him to count to four—in a Southern accent. We could hear Rudolph walking outside practicing, “One, two, three, fo.” Then, when he delivered food to the man across the courtyard, we heard him proudly say, “One, two, three, fo” as he opened the door.
If it was Alvarez, we wanted him to know there were other Americans here with him, so we taught Rudolph to say, “Hi, wetback.” We used this good-natured ribbing, for we knew Alvarez would recognize this as coming only from his fellow pilots. Rudolph practiced his new linguistic abilities in the yard for two or three days as he walked around, and then one day we heard him say loud and clear as he opened the other cell door, “Hi, wetback.” A year later, I was finally able to communicate with Alvarez and learned that indeed he had received the message.
At the end of our hallway, there was a covered peephole, which I assumed opened into another cell, although there was no door on this side. I felt compelled to look through to see if there were Americans on the other side, but I was always accompanied by a guard in the hall.
Rudolph opened my cell door holding a bucket and short broom. He indicated he wanted me to wash down the cell diagonally across the hall that was temporarily empty. I acted as if I didn’t know how to do it and made motions for Rudolph to show me how. He took the bucket and broom and began sweeping. I stepped out into the hall, walked quickly to the end, and opened the peephole. On the other side was a large cell, approximately twenty by twenty feet, and inside were a large group (perhaps thirty) of dirty, bedraggled-looking Vietnamese prisoners. I closed the peephole and started back to Rudolph when he popped out of the cell, scowling and angry. He was completely ignorant of what I had done and within five minutes had forgotten the incident as I finished sweeping out the cell.
All of these efforts to gather information and to communicate were about to change. And it had all begun when a chance encounter with an instructor collided with my insatiable curiosity.