CHAPTER 5

HEARTBREAK HOTEL

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1965

THREE DAYS BEFORE Captain Thomas “Jerry” Curtis was shot down in North Vietnam, CBS aired the first episode of a brand-new series depicting life in a German POW camp during World War II. It was an instant success. Hogan’s Heroes amused audiences for years with its bungling guard, Schultz, attempting to manage the antics of his resident captives. Life as a prisoner of war looked playful and mischievously challenging. Reality, on the other hand, was something entirely different.

The initial trauma of capture by enemy soldiers created a sense of intense alertness —Jerry remained calm, yet at the same time every nerve in his body was taut. Though these militia members seemed somewhat disorganized and anxious themselves, their intentions were obvious. The Americans would not be allowed to communicate with one another and would be kept separated at all costs.

Immediately after Jerry’s hands and arms were tied tightly behind his back, a group of a dozen or so men began marching him into the jungle. The other two members of his crew also were bound and, as far as he could determine, were being taken in the same general direction.

Once he began to travel with this armed militia, he had a few moments to gather his thoughts.

Please, Lord, keep us safe. Help us live through this day . . .

After a couple of hours, they reached a small village, and Jerry was placed inside a hut, alone and still bound. He stretched out on the wooden floor to catch his breath. Pain riveted through his back. It was then he realized how badly he was injured.

Suddenly several men burst into the hut and motioned for him to get up. They pushed Jerry outside, and angry villagers began yelling at him. At first their protests were limited to shouting and shaking fists, but soon someone picked up a rock and threw it. Then several others followed suit, and quickly he was being pelted with anything they could find to throw. He tried to keep his head down to protect his eyes.

As the crowd’s fury escalated, several of the Vietnamese soldiers grabbed him by the arms and shoved him back into the hut. Jerry sat down again, exhausted.

It took about a week for the North Vietnamese to transport their American prizes to Hanoi. Traveling at night and sleeping during the day, the militia shoved the captives from one small village to the next. Once, Jerry was fairly certain he caught a glimpse of the fighter pilot they had been trying to rescue, but he couldn’t be sure.

In each village where they stopped, a local commissar incited residents to near rioting, and they attacked Jerry with rocks, sticks, bamboo rods —anything they could use as weapons. Some would dart at him punching and kicking before the guards halfheartedly waved them away.

At this point, Jerry felt more bewildered than anything, though deep fatigue began to set in. It didn’t take long to realize his legs were not in the kind of shape needed to traverse rough, steep terrain all night, especially with hands tied behind his back preventing the use of his arms for balance. His back now produced severe pain with every step. Branches, leaves, and thick jungle foliage continually slapped across his face. By the third day, he was tattered and sticky with cuts and sweat.

Whenever he was loaded onto a truck, he was blindfolded first. If he sensed one of his men might be near him inside the vehicle, he tried to whisper, “Are you okay?” But guards reacted quickly to squash any attempts to communicate with blows to his head or back.

Eventually the militia turned him over to North Vietnamese army regulars. These uniformed, more professional soldiers loaded him onto an open-backed truck that continued northward over dirt roads filled with potholes. One night they crossed a river with Jerry forced to lie flat on the bottom of a small boat, hands and feet both tied. He listened to the sounds of water slapping the side of the boat and prayed he would survive the night.

It was on this night that the helplessness of the situation began to crystallize in his mind. When they reached villages, he was given a little rice during each day, the only time his hands were free. His mouth was completely dry —he was accustomed to drinking lots of water, and right then he would have given anything for a cold jug of it.

After a few days, Jerry’s growing sense of anxiety centered mainly around his inability to determine who of his crew was near or whether the pilot they had been attempting to rescue was in the group. These regular army soldiers did an even better job than the militia of keeping him isolated from his crew. As their commander, he felt responsible for all of them —he hated not knowing their whereabouts. With every passing day, the Communists of North Vietnam reinforced a primary goal: to keep their American prisoners feeling helpless and alone.

The jostling in the back of the truck smoothed out. Jerry surmised they were now traveling on semipaved streets. Even though it was nighttime, he thought he could detect muffled city noises along the way.

He was trying to decide how many days it had been since his capture —he guessed at least a week —when the vehicle came to an abrupt stop. He heard the sound of large, heavy gates creaking open, then the truck rolling forward over what felt from the vibrations like cobblestones. Afterward thick doors slammed shut somewhere behind him.

Guards pulled him down from the truck and marched him across an open area into what seemed like the interior of a building. Before he knew it, he was shoved into a very small cell, and at last his captors removed the blindfold. A short, uniformed guard wearing a pith helmet motioned for him to undress and handed him a pair of thin cotton pajama-style pants with a drawstring waist and a loose-fitting shirt, both pieces red-and-beige striped. So far, not a single person had spoken a word of English.

While he changed clothes, the guards confiscated his flight suit, boots, watch, and dog tags. The only things of his own he was left with were his socks and underwear. As he dressed in his prison clothes, he quickly noticed the tight space contained two narrow concrete slabs. The ceiling seemed exceptionally high, with a bare lightbulb hanging out of reach from the ceiling, which Jerry soon learned burned continuously. The room smelled sour, rank with putrid, acidic odors. All its dark gray surfaces looked dingy and oppressive.

As he handed over his belongings to the guards, he observed iron stocks embedded in the concrete at the foot of both slabs. The rusty manacles with their long, formidable bars appeared too old to be serviceable. Jerry decided they couldn’t possibly be functional anymore, a deduction he would find false in the days to come. The guard spun around, banging the door shut behind him. Jerry heard keys scraping the rusty lock . . . then complete silence.

The world knew this dungeon-like structure as Maison Centrale, the formal name French occupiers used for it. Built over several years and completed in 1898, then added onto later, it occupied an entire city block in the center of Hanoi, North Vietnam. The Vietnamese name, Hoa Lo, meant “Fiery Furnace,” a reference to the street on which the prison was located, a street known for its pottery shops with goods fired in kilns.

But the name also represented the hellish existence of those unfortunate enough to be manacled in its grasp. The prison’s storied past included accounts of torture chambers within dark interiors and ranked high in the annals of brutality and abuse of prisoners. It had earned its reputation as being the Devil’s Island of Southeast Asia. Death and despair seemed to permeate every corner, a “fiery furnace” indeed for the ill-fated souls who entered its gates.

The French had built the compound as a maximum-security prison to allow little, if any, possibility of escape. Fifteen- to twenty-foot-high walls topped with broken-glass fragments and barbed wire surrounded the compound filled with dark, filthy cells, many of them hardly large enough to turn around in. Over the years, most high window openings within the cells, which might have allowed an occasional wisp of outside air to enter, had been covered with woven fiber mats, creating interiors that often topped 110 degrees during the summer months, even at midnight. Because the prison was constructed mostly of concrete, the reverse was true in winter months —the thermometer dropped to cold, even frigid temperatures.

This enormous prison complex in downtown Hanoi contained a series of buildings divided into sections of various configurations. In the area of the prison often used to confine men when they were first captured, tiny cells housed usually a single occupant. Since Jerry had been blindfolded until he was shoved into his cell, he had managed only peeks out from under its edges.

Tired to the bone, partly from physical exhaustion, partly from hunger, the airman lay alone in the stone closet, his six-foot athletic frame completely filling the cement slab. He closed his eyes.

The past week swirled in his mind —an avalanche of thoughts coming one on top of another. The trauma of crashing, of hiding, of being tied up, of angry mobs hitting and yelling, of enemy soldiers beating, jabbing with their rifles, of the pain in his back —he felt numb and hyper at the same time.

What will Terry do when she finds out? Help her, God. Help both of us . . .

Jerry knew it might take months for military authorities to know for sure what had happened to him. Jerry prayed for his family.

Finally, one thought surfaced above all the others, and the event that would forever define his life began to sink in: he was a million miles from home, locked in a North Vietnamese prison, a prisoner of war.

His exhausted mind allowed only a few more coherent thoughts before slipping over the edge into oblivion.

God, I hope my crew made it okay, and the pilot we were trying to rescue.

The bare, glaring lightbulb did nothing more to hinder sleep, which quickly overcame him that first night.

But after several hours, Jerry jerked awake, the nightmare of his situation engulfing him again. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the slab. He was stiff and covered with minor cuts and bruises, but nothing really serious as far as broken bones or deep contusions.

His back, on the other hand, was a different story. He could barely bend, either forward or backward.

For the first time, he scrutinized his cell. He guessed it was approximately seven feet by eight feet with a very high ceiling, maybe twelve or thirteen feet. The height only served to make the walls look even closer, more oppressive.

The concrete slabs with their menacing iron stocks could not have been more than eighteen to twenty inches wide and slightly sloped toward the end where the stocks were embedded in the cement. The narrow wood door with its boarded-up transom filled the width between the ends of the slabs. Walking space was limited to about twenty-four inches by eight feet. The cell reminded Jerry of a small closet.

But more depressing than its claustrophobic size was its soiled interior. Every surface was caked with dirt and grime from years of tortured bodies living in their own urine, excrement, blood, and sweat. There was a small, square drain hole in the middle of the wall at the floor, which Jerry later learned was connected to an open sewer where the camp’s garbage and human waste were deposited. The air was putrid and stale smelling, with no hint of circulation.

Territorial spiders filled every corner, challenging flying cockroaches for ants and other crawling vermin in the tiny space. As Jerry studied these various insects, a rat the size of a small cat slimed out of nowhere, loped over to sniff the concrete slab in front of him, then scurried into a dark corner underneath.

About that time, he heard the sound of keys rattling in the lock. The door banged open, and a guard wearing a rumpled, light-green uniform and a pith helmet shoved in a tin plate holding a scant two cups of rice, a small jug of water with a tin cup, and a smelly bucket, Jerry’s new toilet. The guard said nothing but turned and slammed the door shut behind him.

The new prisoner picked up his plate. The rice was full of grains that were yellow-brown and segmented. He realized these were worms mixed in with the rice. He started to pick them out, but doing so would have greatly diminished what he had to eat, and he was really hungry. At least they were not moving; they were dead, they had been boiled, and they were protein. He held the plate in both hands.

God, at least I have something to eat. Thank you for this meal . . . even if it is filled with worms.

And without another thought, he consumed every grain. He was still hungry when he finished.

Later that same day as he sat in silence, from out of nowhere a voice called out, “Hey, new guy.” At first, Jerry thought he was hearing things. He remained quiet. Then a few seconds later, it came again, “Hey, new guy . . .”

Jerry continued to hesitate. He was still adjusting, still trying to get his mind wrapped around the fact that he was captured —in prison —and he wasn’t sure who this person was. Could the voice be trusted? He didn’t answer.

There was silence for a moment, then it came again. “New guy. I’m Commander Bill Franke, F-4 pilot, shot down on 24 August —I’m a few cells down. Who are you?”

Suddenly, it became one of the most uplifting moments Jerry had ever experienced —now that he felt confident it was a bona fide military person —and just hearing the voice of another American was overwhelming.

“I’m Captain Tom Curtis, sir, shot down on 20 September, near Vinh —HH-43 pilot, during a rescue mission,” said Jerry.

“All right, Captain. Are you okay?” responded Commander Franke.

“Yes, sir, I’m okay,” Jerry said. He didn’t bother to explain his back problems. Pilots assume if you’ve crashed, if you’ve been shot down, there’s probably some kind of injuries. What Franke wanted to know was his general physical condition.

“You are in what we call Heartbreak Hotel.” Commander Franke quickly explained that previous airmen had named this part of Hoa Lo Prison. Somebody evidently was an Elvis fan and remembered words from the number one hit recording, feeling so alone he could die.

“You make shoot-down number thirty, best I can figure,” said Bill Franke. “And listen: we communicate with a tap code,” he continued.

Jerry suddenly thought he heard someone outside in the corridor. He stooped down to look underneath the bottom of his cell door to see if anyone was there. It seemed to be clear —but lightning pain shot through his back, reminding him of his injury.

“It looks clear,” said Jerry.

Franke continued to talk. “We use a five-by-five grid filled with a twenty-five-letter alphabet minus K. Just substitute C when you need to spell with a K. The top row across is ABCDE, second row across is FGHIJ, and so forth. There’s a grid scraped into the walls in your cell somewhere —can you find it?”

“Hang on,” said Jerry, and he began to look. The walls were gray, at one time whitewashed with some kind of stain but now covered in dirt and soot. At first glance, it looked like there were marks everywhere. Suddenly, toward the back of one corner, it appeared there might be something with letters. It was scratchy and unclear, but sure enough, when he scrutinized it closely, Jerry saw a tiny grid, five rows across and five rows down, the spaces filled in with the alphabet, minus K.

“I found it,” Jerry said back.

Commander Franke explained this “tap” method of communicating could be rapped on the walls with knuckles or fists, elbows or cups . . . but it could also be coughed, sniffed, swept with broom strokes, slapped out with wet clothes, waved with hands. The letter B, for example, would be one tap, indicating the first row, then pause; next, two taps, indicating the second letter across.

He also gave Jerry a stern warning. “Communicating is risky business —if you’re caught, you’ll be punished.” He elaborated no further.

Franke went on to tell Jerry that an earlier prisoner, Captain Carlyle S. “Smitty” Harris, had brought the “tap code” into the prison.

In later years, Jerry heard the entire, remarkable story. When Smitty memorized it in survival school, he had no idea what an incredible gift he would be giving hundreds of men in captivity.

Harris had been the fifth prisoner taken by the North Vietnamese after being shot down in his F-105 on April 4, 1965. During survival training, he had heard one of his instructors mention a type of code used in previous POW situations where Morse code was too lengthy or too complicated for easy communication.

After class, Harris asked his instructor more about it. It was then he learned the tap code, used by servicemen as early as World War I. As Commander Franke explained to Jerry, C is used in place of K, since C is used more frequently in spelling. The letters A, F, L, Q, and V form the first letters of each row going down.

Later, Jerry also learned that just a few days before his confinement in cell #1 at Heartbreak Hotel, Colonel Robbie Risner, later Brigadier General Risner, had occupied the same cell. Risner, one of the senior officers imprisoned in Hanoi, would lead and inspire the hundreds of men who would be incarcerated over long years with his personal courage and commitment, as did several other senior-ranking officers.

Using a rusty nail, Risner had scratched into the cell wall this soul-saving grid. And, incidentally, on the same day Jerry was shot down, Risner had issued an order through the camp that all prisoners would be required to memorize and use the tap code.

For Jerry, it was an inexpressible gift to be able to communicate with other Americans, men dedicated to helping one another through all manner of suffering.

Suddenly, Commander Franke gave a loud cough, indicating a guard was nearby. All went silent.

But Jerry had been thrown a lifeline, and as a believer, he recognized the trace of God’s divine hand. He thanked God for the gift of the tap code.

The tap code represented what would become one of the most precious resources the men who endured imprisonment in Vietnam possessed —communication. As God himself had once said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”