AUGUST 1965
On August 29, after dark, Shu and I rolled up our mats and were taken to a vehicle in the main courtyard. We were blindfolded and climbed in to join Ron Storz, Scotty Morgan, and a small Asian prisoner we learned later was from Thailand.
Ron started a coughing fit that had me worried until I found it was a signal to other men in HBH that he was leaving camp via auto. Where were we going? Who knew? We could never outguess the Vietnamese—perhaps because they never seemed to have a plan and moved prisoners around for no rational reason.
An interrogator had told me we would be sent to a new camp in the hills, away from the city. Conditions would be very good there. He was right about the hills at least. Briarpatch, as Scotty Morgan named it, was thirty-five to forty miles west of Hanoi. As there was no electricity, it was hard to tell what the camp would be like when we were pushed into tiny cells in the middle of the night. When the guard left with his kerosene lantern, my cell was utterly black. Only with difficulty could I see the single barred window with closed louvered shutters on the outside.
With no visual references, my other senses were sharpened to discover and explore my new environment. I was in a whole new world. There was no evidence of people or civilization—only nature. The smell was fresh and invigorating. I could barely discern the urine odor that had permeated my other cells. It was overpowered by the smell of freshly cut grass and of the outdoors I had loved as a boy.
Mosquitoes buzzed in my ears; a cricket sounded outside; a night bird trilled; a rat or some small animal scurried overhead—sounds that would not even be heard in Hanoi where vehicles, guards walking on a brick walkway, voices, hammering in a nearby shop or plant, and other man-made noises dominated the senses.
I was struck by the contradiction that the absence of sound in this hill camp merely revealed new sounds hitherto unnoticed. I felt stark naked and alone in a wilderness, without the comfort and security of civilization; yet I felt God’s presence. How revealing! At times when I was in pain, rejected, abused by society, or alone, I was always comforted and assured that God cared. When I was most alone, I was most close to an all-just Supreme Being who would someday right all wrongs.
“O God, please help me. Accept my penance . . .” I prayed and then drifted off into a fitful sleep. Those damned mosquitoes! Tomorrow I will be able to string up my mosquito net, I thought, trying to cheer myself. Little did I know that mosquitoes were not the only pest I would be dealing with. The buildings were infested with rats, ants, and roaches as well.
“Hey, Smitty, are you there?” Scotty Morgan’s voice came from somewhere—but where?
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Shu, Ron, you, and I are all in the same building.” I had been the last one removed from the vehicle the previous night and had not known where the rest had been taken. A guard’s voice barked at us from nearby as he banged my shutters with his rifle butt.
We went to the walls. In a short time, by tapping, we found that we were in a brick building divided into four small cells. Each cell was almost identical, with room for two wooden bunks and a narrow aisle. There were no stocks at the end of the beds! What a relief. I hated even looking at those medieval torture machines that were a constant reminder of our sadistic captors.
At midmorning, food and water were brought. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The guard gave me a loaf of bread and a container of scrambled eggs! Real, fresh eggs. There must have been four or five eggs in this one serving. Little did I know that those would be the last eggs and bread we would see at Briarpatch. Our subsequent meals were mostly rice. We also received some watery soup and sometimes fish heads mixed with cooked bananas or a few small pieces of tough chicken. Our captors chopped up a chicken into half-inch pieces with an ax or some other heavy implement. The result was smashed splintery bones with a little bit of tough meat attached. One scrawny chicken could probably be distributed in this manner to twenty or more captives.
The shutters over our windows were generally left open, depending on the mood of the guards. However, when any of us were taken out of our cells to dump our buckets in a large container, the shutters were closed. The enemy went to great lengths to keep one American from seeing another American, but we were allowed to see the Asian prisoner at work outside. Tim, as we called him, used a “chogie pole” on his shoulder from which would be suspended two large, heavy cans of water or two cans of our refuse that he carried off to dump someplace. He kept a two-foot concrete cistern outside each cell filled with water, with which we bathed and washed our eating utensils.
The drinking water was boiled but murky and very greasy due to the pork fat and greasy pumpkin soup residue left in our bowls. The water in our cisterns soon became stagnant and sometimes had water bugs swimming in it, but it was the best we had in this camp without running water or electricity. Usually following two or three days of griping and fussing about the condition of the water, we would be allowed to drain our cistern and scrape the green mold from its sides and bottom.
Diarrhea was a constant problem. There was one poorly trained medic for the camp who passed out some pills that helped a little, but the poor sanitary conditions soon brought on repeated attacks. Had there been a real medical emergency, the medic would have been unable to cope with it.
On the third day I was at Briarpatch, a guard opened my cell to let me bathe. He had a small basin and some rough soap for me to use. I stripped down to the nude and stepped just outside my cell door to bathe. Two guards with rifles and bayonets attached stood in a charge position with the tips of their bayonets less than a yard from my bare body.
I was probably the first American they had seen, and I am sure their superiors had briefed them that we were the most despicable, dangerous criminals alive. Somehow the ridiculousness of the situation touched my funny bone. I could not have been less prepared to harm them or even to attempt to escape. I filled the basin with water and dumped it over my body, trying to control my mirth. As I began to soap my body, I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I broke out laughing, with soap suds sputtering on my wet lips.
The two young soldiers—almost boys—looked a little nonplussed and confused. They saw nothing funny and didn’t know how to react to this obviously deranged criminal. I completed my bath and was locked again in my cell. From then on, when I was allowed to bathe, one soldier would stand discreetly nearby with his rifle slung on his shoulder. The turnkey, who did not usually carry a firearm, would also look away to give me some privacy.
Each POW was taken out of the prison at night and led to the guards’ quarters on the top of the hill. There the camp commander would interrogate us and then spend an hour or more simply practicing his English.
After a few days, I began to hope that our interrogations had ended. Sitting on a hard stool for an hour or more while some Vietnamese practiced his English and heaped verbal abuse on us and our country was no fun. However, compared to what would come later at this camp, this interrogation was mild. We had heard their arguments and distorted version of history so many times that we could finish verbatim many of their government-provided clichés.
Bob Shumaker was the first to be called out to a stool session. A young Vietnamese officer, whom we called “Rabbit,” acted as interrogator. He later became known to almost all American POWs as a sadistic enemy who enjoyed mistreating Americans.
The setting was a small room illuminated with one kerosene lamp. Rabbit spoke at length with the usual drivel but at the end tried to satisfy his own curiosity about Shu. Time magazine had carried a story about Shu when he was shot down. It mentioned the fact that his father was a successful lawyer in Pennsylvania.
Rabbit spoke. “Your father owns a large home, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“He also owns his own car?”
“Yes.”
“He has a radio and electrical appliances?”
“Yes.”
Then Rabbit concluded, “Your father is indeed a very wealthy man.”
It struck Shu how distorted a view of America our captors had. Here in Vietnam, no one owned a private car. Some high officials were provided one by their government, but almost everything was owned by the government. A bicycle, radio, and wristwatch were almost ultimate status symbols of affluence in their society, and it was inconceivable that most American families could possess those very things that so impressed Rabbit about the wealth of Shu’s father.
While we hated to be taken out for interrogations, they did provide a break in the monotony of our daily POW life. But each time a turnkey unlocked our cell door at any but routine times, we immediately tensed up, not knowing what would ensue. Most times, we were taken to an interrogation room and endured the current effort by the North Vietnamese to indoctrinate us and try to get us to provide them with some kind of propaganda statement or other compliance to their demands.
Sometimes this led to brutal beatings or torture when we refused to cooperate. As a prelude to worse torture techniques, we were often tied to stools, unable to defend ourselves as we were beaten with sticks and fists. But more often at this point in captivity, we were just giving our interrogators a chance to practice their English.
As with Rabbit’s distorted view of Shu’s father’s great wealth, in these long sessions we learned a great deal about the North Vietnamese culture and history. We also learned that the North Vietnamese people did not enjoy freedoms like dissenting opinions that accompany free speech—freedoms that Americans are guaranteed by our Constitution.
Our move to the Briarpatch was short-lived, and we learned another facet of their decision making. It was never well thought out. Changes were made for no apparent reason but often resulted in some advantage to POWs. Camps opened and closed. POWs were shifted between camps and often moved to different parts of the same camps. This provided (through our communication ability) the knowledge from new shoot-downs of happenings at home and the names and location of all POWs. But most important, it provided our POW leadership with the ability to set policy and direction for all of us.