JUNE 24, 1965
Looking back, I can see it clearly. It was a plan of provision orchestrated by the Supreme Maestro, wrapped in the costume of a chance encounter—insignificant at the time—which, years later, made a difference in my life and in the lives of more than 350 other POWs at the Hanoi Hilton.
It was June 1963. I was in Escape and Evasion school in Nevada. The program involved classwork, followed by hands-on instruction through the rigorous experience of being put out in the mountains all alone, with no provisions whatsoever. If we had learned well, we would return unscathed.
One of the sergeants, Claude Watkins, was my instructor. In class one day, Watkins casually mentioned that a POW in Germany used a Tap Code that, when applied to the water pipe, sent messages throughout the prison to the other POWs. I lingered after class, as my curiosity had produced a question that seemed unimportant at the time.
“How did the POWs handle the dashes?” I asked.
“Oh, I should have clarified. This was not Morse code. Got a minute? I can show you.”
Sergeant Watkins went to the chalkboard and began writing down the Tap Code. It was a five-by-five matrix of the alphabet, excluding the letter K, which was indicated by a slow C.
The whole conversation appeared to be happenstance; the information was received due to my ever-inquisitive nature. But the unfolding of time would reveal a much greater purpose for that casual conversation.
Back in the Hanoi Hilton, I had an unexpected visitor on a hot and humid summer day. Stoneface, whom I had not seen since I had moved to HBH, opened my cell door, indicating for me to roll up my mat for a move. It was now June 24. I was apprehensive about leaving my friends and familiar surroundings—the very cell that had so depressed me two months earlier. We walked back past the blue room into the small courtyard but turned right, away from my first cell. Stoneface opened a cell door, and I entered.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Three grinning Americans greeted me—Phil Butler, Bob Peel, and Bob Shumaker. It was midafternoon, but we were all so excited at being together that we talked, joked, and swapped stories until dawn. All four of us had been in solitary confinement until that day. So far, we had only been able to use voice contact for communicating with other Americans. We were going to have to devise other tactics, as the Vietnamese were making greater efforts to prevent talk, and there was no way to reach HBH by voice.
And then I remembered. The memory came clearly and vividly, and I easily relayed what I had learned from my instructor that day years before. I explained to the others about a Tap Code that used a five-by-five matrix of the alphabet:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 | A | B | C | D | E |
| 2 | F | G | H | I | J |
| 3 | L | M | N | O | P |
| 4 | Q | R | S | T | U |
| 5 | V | W | X | Y | Z |
With two sets of taps, we could identify the column and row that designated any letter of the alphabet. For our purposes, this was superior to the Morse code because of the difficulty of sending a dash.
Although we had no need for the Tap Code at that point, I taught it to my three cellmates for possible future use. From my interrogators, I was able to conclude that the DRV was under some pressure to live up to the Geneva agreements regarding POWs by permitting International Red Cross inspection of our camp, letter exchange, and packages. Several times they mentioned that the Red Cross wanted to meddle in their internal affairs but that we were criminals, not POWs. To relieve some of this pressure, I believe, two days after Peel, Shumaker, Butler, and I moved together, Stoneface brought us paper and ink to write letters home.
We were elated, though dubious that the letters would ever be sent. There was so much I wanted to say, but words were simply not adequate to express my love, care, and concern for Louise, Robin, Carolyn, and my new son. I had no idea where they might be, so I addressed the letter to Tallahassee, Florida, where Louise’s mother lived.
Time passed much more quickly with the four of us together. We scratched a checkerboard into the seat of a stool in our cell and used bits of paper as pieces. We now bathed daily in the same bathroom I had first used. Everyone was following an exercise program. My knee was almost completely well, and my shoulder had healed, though there was still a rough spot in the socket that caused it to bump and catch when I raised my arm high. Food, as always, was brought to us two times a day.
Shumaker was still suffering from a back injury he had received upon ejection from his F-8 fighter. After repeated requests for medical attention, a week or two after he was shot down, he was taken to a hospital and was put on an operating table while a doctor and two nurses posed with him for a cameraman.
When the cameraman finished, an English speaker said it was time to return to the prison. Shumaker said, “How about my back?”
The interpreter said, “The doctor says your back will be better in time.”
Shumaker returned to camp, his back never having been examined—the propaganda of war on full display.
By looking out a crack in our door, we saw two other Americans being taken to the bath. I had to see one of the men twice before I was convinced he was Larry Guarino. He had lost so much weight that I almost did not recognize him.
Partly because he was more senior (a major) but mostly because he had infuriated the senior interrogator, he was on half rations and had one ankle in the stocks. I looked down at myself and realized that I too had lost twenty or more pounds since my capture. Larry must really be hungry, I thought. We established contact with him, and in a few days with Commander Jeremiah Denton as well, by leaving notes in the bath area. Both were being held in the cellblock where I had first been held. Phil Butler suggested that this area of the prison be called New Guy Village or NGV.
As the senior POW, Commander Denton started issuing instructions and gave guidance through our note system. He asked that we draw up escape plans, assigning probabilities for exiting the camp and for escape from the country. We brainstormed for several days, but the probability of success seemed very small. We thought our best chance might be to turn ourselves over to the Swiss embassy for asylum if we could successfully exit the camp. We needed more information before anything could be put into effect. We had developed a simple code so that our captors would not be able to obtain useful information should our notes be intercepted. Our efforts were not wasted. A Vietnamese prisoner found one of our notes in the bath area and turned it over to the guards. Dog was furious with us and put us all back in solitary confinement.
POWs were shuffled between cells. Shumaker and I ended up in cells six and seven of HBH. Conditions had changed. Covers had been nailed over the transoms; the windows were boarded up to a narrow slot at the top; and guards roamed the hall frequently. Voice communication was difficult, so Shu and I tried the Tap Code. We were very slow at first, but our speed picked up quickly. We passed the system to the other men in HBH. We placed an ear to the wall and tapped lightly, making it difficult for a guard to hear what we were doing.
Our solitary confinement lasted only a week until we four were put back together again. I think the pressure of numbers caused this move, for new American POWs were arriving and were invariably placed in solitary confinement. Our captors simply needed the space and were not yet prepared to open up a new camp or even a new area of the Hanoi Hilton.
Our return to HBH had been very beneficial. We had passed the Tap Code to six other POWs and had set up a system of communication between HBH and NGV. Our food was brought into the prison in stacked metal containers held together by a metal strap and handle. We had stolen a pencil from an interrogation room and wrote short messages on the bottom of the strap under the handle.
When our meal containers were taken out of our cells, some of them would be mixed up at the next meal and arrive at the other part of the Hanoi Hilton, thus transporting the messages we wrote. It took about two weeks before the Vietnamese discovered our deception and put a stop to it. By this time, the names of everyone in camp, including some new arrivals, had been passed between the two areas.
Although Stoneface was our regular turnkey, Rudolph came from the HBH area one afternoon to see us. He opened our cell and entered, leaving the key in the lock. He seemed pleased to see us and talked animatedly in Vietnamese. He loved to make a shooting sound and use his hands to act out an aircraft being shot down and a pilot coming down in a parachute.
He would laugh and point to one of us. While he was so engaged, Bob Peel walked out of the open cell door into the courtyard. Seeing the key in the lock, Bob closed the door and locked it from the outside. Rudolph was beside himself. He banged on the cell door and spoke loudly in Vietnamese. Bob, fearing a not-so-simple guard would cause real trouble, reopened the cell door and entered. Rudolph scolded him, shaking his finger in Bob’s face. Within a few minutes, however, we had Rudolph acting out his shoot-down story again. He had completely forgotten the incident.
Our food had been getting worse and worse. We were getting almost no meat or fresh vegetables and fruit. Our captors stopped bringing our food from outside the camp and gave us food from their own kitchen. It usually consisted of a small loaf of bread, some thin, watery soup, and an awful side dish—usually a boiled vegetable, many of which we could not identify. Sometimes it was pumpkin and sometimes sliced boiled cucumbers. How I longed for Louise’s home-cooked meals. As I lay on my cot, I would sometimes eat a meal with my family—course by course, bite by bite—in my imagination.
One day, while lying on my concrete bunk, I held my small tin cup in my hand and felt the smooth metal and the rough twine wrapped around the handle. I had added the twine from a cord I had found on the ground. Though rough, it protected my hands from the uncomfortable heat of the hot water they provided from time to time. I thought of Louise and her effortless way of creating beauty in a family meal. Louise could dress a table like no other. Not one to save the fine china for fine events, Louise could make a special event out of a simple meal. A table complete with china and linen napkins, silver flatware with the various sizes of forks and spoons, each with their assigned designation—these wedding gifts were pleasures to Louise and reminders to both of us of happier days when our two lives had become one life. Now those days seemed a lifetime ago, so far away and yet so precious and so familiar. Homesickness swept in like a furious wind.
“To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance.” Our vows had been spoken with both sincerity and naivete. Now they were being tested like silver in a furnace. And they would come out gleaming and stronger and more valuable—of this I was sure—not like the flimsy tin I held in my hand.
Yet this is what I have for now, I thought with renewed resolve. Gone were the dinners with Louise and friends and family, delicious food, and fulfilling fellowship. For now, I had this tin cup and watery soup that quieted the roaring of my hunger, yet brought the misery of diarrhea and constant nausea.
I rubbed the smooth metal once again and then pulled out the small stick I had picked up as I emptied the contents of my waste bucket weeks ago. With the stick I etched my initials into the thin metal: S. H.
It felt good to make my mark. I was here. This was the hand I had been dealt. This was my lot in life. I prayed I would one day return to the fine china of my beloved Louise, but even more, I prayed for the strength to return with honor. Return with honor. Yes, that was my highest goal. Alone with these thoughts and many others, I once again dipped my tin cup in the murky water bucket in the corner of my windowless, concrete cell. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that my small tin cup would one day be featured in the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.