CHAPTER 10

FACE TO FACE

FALL 1966

IT TOOK JERRY several days to gain strength back after the debilitating torture session. He mostly slept, getting up only to retrieve his two bowls of soup and to use his toilet bucket. He knew God had been with him through his ordeal. Even when he reached lucidity’s edge, he still continued to sense his presence.

Not long afterward, his cell door suddenly banged open. Anxiety gripped him: a cumulative effect of ongoing abuse. Jerry was learning that in prison life, anything out of the ordinary was cause for concern. If keys rustled outside the door or someone walked stealthily, fear kicked in —there was no way to know what would happen next.

The turnkey motioned Jerry out and down the alleyway to another cell door. His legs were still weak; he felt light-headed. Once the guard unlocked the cell door, he stood back, motioning Jerry inside.

To his amazement, there stood his six-foot-two stocky crew chief who had been with him at Nakhon Phanom and had flown with him during the shoot-down, Airman First Class Bill Robinson. Until the guard left the room, they only shook hands, but as soon as the cell door banged shut, Jerry gave Robbie a hearty slap on the back and received what could only be described as a bear hug from the big, friendly twenty-three-year-old.

“Robbie, man, it is great to see you! How are you? Where have they had you?” Jerry was overjoyed to be talking face-to-face with the first American he had seen in nearly a year —and someone from his own crew at that. Neither man could stop grinning, and both talked over each other for several minutes.

“I’m making it, sir, I guess,” said Robbie. “I think I got hairline fractures in my kneecaps and maybe one in my neck when we crashed down through the trees and landed so hard. I’ve been with Neil Black as a cellmate some, and some in solitary. We weren’t sure where the V had you.”

Robbie’s normally slow North Carolina drawl was quick and fast —he was thrilled to see his captain again. Jerry was thankful to hear Airman Third Class Black —the pararescue jumper who had been on their helicopter when it was shot down —was okay.

“What about Duane Martin —heard anything about him?” Jerry had heard nothing of his copilot who had run into the jungle away from the crash site.

“No, sir, not a word,” said Robbie.

“And Will Forby, the pilot we were trying to rescue?” said Jerry.

Robbie didn’t know any more than Jerry did about Will Forby. They were fairly confident he had been captured because they both thought they had seen him briefly as they all were loaded onto trucks in the jungle. But the guards had blindfolded them immediately and forbidden them to talk, sparing no blows with their rifles to the prisoners’ heads to enforce the rules. Then as they traveled from village to village on the way to Hanoi during their capture, they were separated from each other.

They continued to talk, sharing whatever bits of information each one had about anybody else in captivity. Robbie saw his captain had not changed but continued to exude a quiet yet powerful self-confidence, just as he remembered him back at Nakhon Phanom. Then he asked the one question foremost in his mind: “How long do you think we will be here, sir?”

“I don’t know, Robbie,” said Jerry, “but hopefully not much longer.” He mustered up all the optimism he could to answer the young airman, but he had begun to suspect this might not be the case.

They had to whisper these questions and answers, because as Robbie explained to Jerry, “Even if they give you a cellmate, they don’t want you talkin’.”

However, on this occasion, both men conversed all the rest of the day and all through the night. Several times after dark, guards came and banged at their window or cell door. “Shleep! Shleep!” Yet for the most part, the guards overlooked the whispering. Jerry suspected guards were allowing him this visit, especially with someone he knew, as a reward for writing his biography after his torture session —part of the conditioning of prisoners.

He didn’t care. It was joyous to have conversation again, and Robbie, with his gregarious personality, was balm for his spirit.

As they continued to share and catch up, suddenly Robbie remembered something. “Oh, Capt’n Curtis . . .”

Before Robbie could finish, Jerry interrupted him. “Robbie, why don’t you just call me Tom here in this cell. We are in the same boat for the time being.”

“Okay, sir . . . okay, Tom.” When Robbie grinned, his whole face lit up. “They let me send a letter home.”

“You’re kidding! Really? I have not been allowed to send one —I have no idea whether my family even knows if I’m dead or alive.”

“Yessir —I wrote one, and I told Mom to say hello to Tommy and Lori and to your father-in-law, but I used his nickname. Hopefully when she shares the letter with intelligence sources, they’ll catch the fact that we don’t have any relatives or friends by those names. Then maybe Mom will call your wife, and your wife will know for sure it was legit. ’Course, there’s no way to know if the V sent the letter in the first place, but at least I tried,” said Robbie.

“Robbie, that’s great! We will pray the letter got to your mother. I know she will call my wife and tell her those names were in the letter. At least then Terry will know I’m alive.” It was the best news Jerry could have been given, and he hoped and prayed the letter had made it to its final destination.

Guards allowed Jerry to stay with Robbie about ten days, then put him back into solitary. It had been a joyous time; Jerry was so thankful. But now solitary confinement seemed more oppressive than ever before.

Jerry began to realize he would need additional coping mechanisms if he was to survive a lengthy imprisonment —the poor food, unsanitary living conditions, and physical abuse were all taking a toll.

His strong confidence in God had entered prison with him, and he had been optimistic always, even as a child. He exuded what child psychologists often expect as the birth-order characteristics of the youngest: easygoing, confident, looking on the bright side of everything.

Or maybe his sunny disposition stemmed from a near-fatal accident that happened when he was just a toddler. An older brother, Robert, was chopping wood when Jerry quietly wandered up behind him. When Robert forcibly swung back the ax once more, its blade buried into Jerry’s face, opening a huge gash in his cheek, missing his eye, nose, and mouth by millimeters.

Since they lived in the country and the injury required immediate attention, his mother doused the gaping wound with kerosene and applied a butterfly bandage. As quickly as possible, they rushed him to the doctor, who cleaned out the wound again and applied another bandage.

The resulting scar would mark his cheek for a lifetime. Perhaps his outlook of a half-full cup rather than a half-empty one was, in part, a product of this event. Surely, for someone to survive such a horrific fluke accident, with no harm other than a scar, must indicate living under the watchful eye of a guardian angel. But whatever produced his ever-present optimism, it marked his attitude even in prison. He never doubted he would go home someday.

Now, however, he experienced a fatigue like he had never experienced before, a fatigue of the soul. He strained to adjust to the realization the POWs might be in North Vietnam for a long and indeterminate length of time —that unknown years of imprisonment might stretch ahead. He knew for his own mental health he would need a strong antidote to combat so much misery. Trusting his usual method for handling any crisis situation, he turned to God.

God, I am so lonely . . . Help me endure this. I miss my family. If I am in for the long haul, I will need your strength. You are my rock. Help me find a way.

And God, gracious as ever, began to show him a way.

A few weeks after Jerry’s time with his former crew chief, Bill Robinson, he was pacing back and forth as he did every day. He had begun all the same methods of trying to pass time in solitary by walking several hours, praying, and singing hymns. He pushed himself even though the beriberi in his feet burned as if he were walking barefoot on hot coals.

Suddenly, he heard the distinct rustling of keys turning in the cell lock. He stopped dead still. He turned toward the door. There stood a POW, about five foot nine with a shock of thick wavy hair, now longer than he would have ever worn it under normal military circumstances. Unshaven and dirty, he looked like a vagabond, clutching his mat, thin blanket, tin cup, and mosquito net.

The two looked at each other for a moment. After the guard left, the POW held out his hand and said, “I’m Will Forby —shot down on 20 September last year. And I think you are . . .”

“Yes! Will! I thought I recognized you.” Jerry was elated to see the pilot standing before him. “I’m Tom Curtis, the one who came to rescue you. Man, I sure wish we had been able to complete that mission!” The two men shook hands, united in misfortune by the same horrific circumstances. “How are you? Are you okay?” Jerry asked.

“I’ve been in solitary since I’ve been here. They’ve moved me a couple of times, always blindfolded. How about you?” said Will.

“The same. Took a round of torture when they wanted a biography,” replied Jerry.

“Yeah, I know about that, too,” returned Will, who told him about his months in solitary and then the torture he had endured also.

“What happened when you were shot down?” Jerry asked.

“I was flying out of Takhli, Thailand, and had just bombed a bridge. I was pulling out when I took a hit in the belly of the plane. My F-105 caught fire immediately. I was nose up and doing about 350 knots when I ejected. The wind blast really hurt my legs —caused them to flail around pretty good. As I was coming down, I actually looked over and saw my plane crash.”

“No kidding,” said Jerry.

“Yes, and then the wind took me into that wooded hillside, and I hit hard. When I tried to stand up, I felt gimpy. I heard Vietnamese militia yelling all around me, so I found a place to hide and stayed there until I heard your chopper about an hour later,” Will continued.

It was the first time Jerry had heard the complete story of Will’s shoot-down. “We had you in the hoist,” said Jerry.

“Yes —I already was on. Then your helicopter was shot, and when I looked up, I saw you coming down right above me!”

“I know,” said Jerry. “I kept praying, ‘Lord, don’t let me kill this guy by crashing on top of him.’ I was afraid I was going to squash you like a bug! I can’t tell you what a relief it was to discover you were okay!”

They both laughed, and Will continued. “When you guys took off down that steep ravine to get away from the crash site, I didn’t think my legs would make it down, so I went back to my original hiding place. But they found me fairly quickly. They must have been militia because they seemed as scared of me as I was of getting caught by them. One of them started waving his rifle around and it went off —the bullet ricocheted off something and hit me in the forearm.”

The two pilots exchanged the bits and pieces of information they had about their situation and what little they had learned about other POWs through the walls. As when Jerry had been with Bill Robinson, the overriding question surfaced. “How much longer do you think we’re going to be here?” asked Will.

“I have no idea . . . no idea. Maybe not much longer” was Jerry’s stab at optimism.

As the weeks continued, the guards allowed the two men to remain in the same cell. Since the V had as much difficulty pronouncing Will’s last name as Jerry’s, they had started calling him “Fo,” short for “Forby.”

During their conversations, Jerry and Will shared their backgrounds and, in the process, learned something of tremendous importance. It began with a simple question. Will asked, “Are you a member of a church back home?”

As they talked, they discovered the other’s heart: “I’m a believer —God is my rock, Jesus my Lord,” said Jerry.

Will Forby shared that he, too, was a believer. They both agreed that it was the one thing that had helped them survive the ordeal thus far and that it was an incredible blessing for each to know they had a cellmate who shared the same hope.

One morning after guards had delivered the morning bowl of soup, Jerry felt his lips cracking in several places. Dehydration shaped his existence due to recurring diarrhea and dysentery. Guards gave each prisoner a small, earthen jug that held perhaps a quart of water —he had noticed Will never drank more than half his allotment.

“You don’t drink all of your water?” Jerry asked Will one morning.

“I’ve never drunk much water,” replied Will.

“Man, you must be like a camel,” said Jerry. Will grinned and passed his jug to Jerry, who thanked him. “This is a lifesaver.”

Having Will to talk to was an incredible gift. He was a quiet person, amiable and easygoing like Jerry. They immediately became friends.

But they also made efforts to stay in touch with other prisoners around them. If they heard the familiar “Shave and a Haircut” tap, both would respond, one on one wall, the other on the opposite wall. Sometimes it was hard to determine where the taps were coming from, so each POW would begin tapping.

A few weeks later they had just gotten “on the wall” to communicate when a guard burst in. He immediately was joined by another armed soldier.

“You tap, you tap!” He was furious. He ordered both of them to lie down.

“Put hands behind back! Now, now!” While one held a rifle on them, the other stooped over and forced their hands behind their backs, locking them tightly with metal cuffs.

After the guards left their cell, they each rolled over and sat up, still on the floor. “Well, here we are,” said Jerry.

Will sat silently for a moment. Now instead of wondering how long they would be in prison, there was a more immediate question on his mind. “How long do you think they are going to keep us cuffed like this?”

Later in the day when the guards brought their bowls of thin soup, they unlocked their metal handcuffs. But as soon as they ate, turnkeys immediately rushed back into the cell and cuffed them again.

The first night trying to sleep on the cement with hands secured behind their backs, Jerry could hear Will tossing around, trying to reposition himself. Jerry struggled with the same thing —there was no place that allowed much comfort for any length of time. If he was on his back, the weight of his body on his arms and cuffed hands beneath him caused swelling and numbness. If, however, he rolled over on his chest, eventually his shoulders cramped because of the angle of his arms pulled behind. Partially on his side or partially sitting up were options offering a little relief but only momentarily.

The next morning the guards came in and unlocked their cuffs. “Eat! Eat!” barked the turnkey, then turned and left.

Jerry rubbed his wrists. He squeezed his fingers open and shut trying to get some circulation back. It felt so good to bring his arms back around to the front of his body. He rubbed his shoulders for a few seconds, then gulped down the rice. After about ten minutes, the guards rushed back in. “Down, down!” one of them said.

“Wait! Why again?” asked Jerry.

“You tap!” the guard said. “We punish you.” Both men now found themselves in the cuffs, arms and hands pulled behind their backs once more.

Despite the vocal objections of both POWs, this form of punishment continued. The two cellmates began to feel complete exhaustion. Their wrists were raw and their shoulders and arms lifeless. Each protested when the guards came in. Jerry and Will tried to extend mealtime, the only time their hands were not cuffed, as long as they could. But guards were quick to show that if they tarried, their food simply would be removed.

This had been going on for a few days, when one night Jerry was startled awake. There was somebody standing next to him in the darkness.

“Hey, look at this.” Jerry recognized his cellmate’s whisper. There stood Will with his hands still cuffed but now in front of him.

Jerry’s arms were short and his hips wide, making it impossible to do anything but remain in an uncomfortable position all day and night long. But Will had long arms and a small backside. So frustrated with their plight, he had begun trying to work his hands and arms down behind his back, then lowering them behind his legs until he could bring them beneath his feet and up in front of him. They both began searching for a piece of wire or any object they might find in the small piles of rubble scattered across the floor that could be used to pry open the lock.

At last they scrounged up a small nail, and after many minutes of concentrated effort, working it back and forth inside the rusty lock, Will sprang open his metal handcuffs. Then Jerry turned around and Will worked one side of Jerry’s to free his hands as well. It was such a relief to have arms and hands released.

“You know we are in for it if they catch us,” said Jerry. Will nodded in agreement. They knew they would both be punished severely if guards discovered what they had done, and because periodic checks occurred throughout the night, they were never able to sleep soundly, even though they were more comfortable. To prevent getting caught, they would keep one side of the cuff locked, but the perils were obvious because they would both have to try to recuff themselves before guards noticed they were loose.

The choice was agonizing: to have a respite from the aching discomfort or to risk a severe beating. They usually decided to sleep with one cuff unlocked and one eye open.

The guards kept Will and Jerry in this grossly restricted position for over two months. Jerry knew he would have had a difficult time undergoing such an ordeal alone in solitary. This, plus Christmas drawing near, his second in captivity, made him especially thankful to have a cellmate.

When Christmas Eve arrived, Will and Jerry shared stories of favorite traditions from their past. Jerry told Will about the large family he was from and how much fun they always had during the holidays. Will was from a smaller family, but Christmas was a very important time for them, too. They went to church on Christmas Eve for pageants and lighting candles.

They both sorely missed all the festivities. They went quiet for a long while, lost in their own thoughts of home. It was miserably cold and damp in the cell. Jerry would have given anything to be home with Terry and his children, opening packages and drinking hot chocolate.

Suddenly, noisy scratches on the camp loudspeakers broke through the oppressive silence. Then, the unexpected sound of an American’s voice called over the speaker. The cellmates looked at each other, puzzled, then listened intently.

“Just wanted to wish all of you a merry Christmas and to give you something.”

With that introduction, the beautiful baritone voice began. “O Holy Night” rang out through the entire camp, soft and clear as a bell. How that POW had convinced the guards to let him sing over the loudspeakers was a mystery, but it sounded like the voice of an angel.

Jerry had never heard the song before that night. When the singer reached the melody’s crescendo with words imploring listeners to fall on their knees and hear the heavenly choirs, he was overcome with emotion. The simple yet powerful lyrics stirred him to the very core of his being.

Long after the singing stopped, the music seemed to linger in the darkness. It was a touch of the divine at the most unexpected moment in the most unlikely of places.