CHAPTER 6

CHAIN OF COMMAND

SEPTEMBER–DECEMBER 1965

THE WINTER OF 1965 proved to be one of the coldest on record for the country of North Vietnam. Though there was no snow except up in certain mountain passes, the temperatures plunged —an unfortunate circumstance for those men within prison cells in Hanoi.

Initially the Vietnamese guards ignored their new captive in cell #1 at Heartbreak Hotel. Jerry began taking note of sounds around him, beginning with deep percussion notes reverberating from metal gongs struck decisively at dawn, or earlier. Then several times during the day, this was repeated to mark the hours, the changing of the guards, and other duties within the prison compound. Otherwise, oppressive silence permeated its dark interiors.

One day as he was attempting to determine how many days he had been a POW —he guessed over three weeks —his cell door suddenly burst open. There stood two guards with rifles, using them to motion him forward. Since this was the first time he had been out of his cell after entering Hoa Lo, he had no idea their intentions. What’s this about? he thought.

As he emerged through his door, they pointed across the narrow hall to the cell directly in front of his. He took the opportunity to glance at his surroundings.

Dimly lit masonry walls painted dark gray formed deep shadows all up and down the narrow passageway. This cramped corridor seemed to be lined with cells on either side. From what he could determine, each cell had heavy wood doors about two feet wide like his, with a “Judas opening,” or peephole, about three-fourths of the way up. Jerry wondered how many other prisoners might be there. So far, he only knew of one, Commander Bill Franke, who had told him about the tap code.

When he stepped into the cell across the hall, the guards motioned him toward the back wall. There, a small showerhead mounted about halfway up spewed a narrow stream of water.

One guard motioned with his head, then said, “Go!” It was the first time any of the turnkeys had spoken any English to him. Usually it was “talkey-pointy,” with motions and signs indicating what they wanted him to do.

Jerry wasted no time stripping off his filthy prison pajamas. He hadn’t bathed since the beginning of his ordeal. And even though only a cold trickle limped out of the spigot, it was a welcome relief just to go through the motions of showering.

He stepped into the water, letting it fall on his shoulders and roll down onto his chest. He was so dirty, the rivulets scored the front of his body. He turned around, wet his back, then forward again. He lifted his face up into the water, stepped away, and shook his head.

At this point he opened his eyes looking upward. That’s when he saw it: a message scrawled well above his head, so high a person would have had to be standing on someone else’s shoulders to scratch it into the cement.

But he saw the words clearly —in English —a phrase Americans in the 1960s would have recognized immediately: “Smile, You’re on Candid Camera.” It was the signature line from Allen Funt’s wildly popular television series that introduced the world to reality TV. When Jerry looked up and saw the scribbling, it filled him momentarily with absolute delight. A million miles from home, and yet a touch of Americana hanging over him. Few other short sentences could have buoyed his spirits more. He laughed out loud.

“Stop!” The guard motioned for him to put on his stained pajamas again. Then a few steps across the corridor, and he was back in cell #1, the door banging shut behind him, alone once more.

Jerry sat down on the concrete slab, still chuckling. The effects of that moment of hilarity carried him through the day. He knew it had to be the zany humor of an American located somewhere else within these prison walls.

Later that night, his prayers began as usual. He thought about his son and little daughter, Tommy and Lori, and wondered what Terry would tell them.

Give my family hope and strength. Give us all strength. Please let them know I’m alive.

Then he thought about his first shower again.

God, you knew I needed that today. I needed to laugh.

Jerry wondered who wrote those words on the wall and how they did it. It was so high up. He decided to make a point of finding out.

Solitary confinement stretched on —a monotonous dragging of time, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, without stimulus of any kind. There were no books, no television, no phone, no writing, no objects, no change of light or color, no variation of room or space, no visual contact with other human beings. Jerry wasn’t sure if there were any other prisoners in this section of the prison. Mostly, he was alone with his thoughts.

The rules were printed and posted inside the cells: first and foremost, there was to be absolutely no attempt at communication between prisoners. No talking, whispering, taps, or sounds of any sort.

There were to be no attempts to peer into other cells —no peeking beneath doors or between window slats or through tiny holes bored in the walls. Punishment was promised, swift and brutal, for the least infraction. It appeared a man would need to be really motivated even to attempt communication.

Jerry found this to be painfully true one day after getting caught trying to whisper to Commander Franke. Jerry had not heard from him in a few days and wasn’t sure what had happened to him. When he called out to him as loudly as he dared, two guards rushed into his cell.

One had a rifle and stood close by. The other motioned for him to get on the slab —he slapped his hand down several times, indicating for Jerry to lie down. Neither spoke any English. As soon as Jerry sat, the guard pushed him to his back, then clamped one of the rusty stocks tightly around one ankle, securing it in place. After that, he backed out of the cell and slammed the door shut.

Now, with movement severely restricted, solitary confinement took on an even more oppressive quality. Adding to the lack of any stimulus, physical restriction produced unrelenting discomfort —the inability to relieve pressure on joints, since Jerry could execute only a bare minimum of change in body position.

Minutes and hours passed tediously, a gnawing progression of monotony that ate away at the mind without release. For many POWs, the mental torture of solitary confinement would prove to be their first and most difficult test.

Now that Jerry was in stocks, the days of being alone threatened to strangle him. He had to do something. He turned to God.

Lord, I feel I’m being sucked down. I need you. Help me with this . . .

Within these long moments, hours, and days, he had the time to think —and to think deeply —about himself, his life, his actions, his family, and his faith.

One of the first things Jerry did as he was in stocks on his concrete slab was to review his entire life, beginning with childhood as far back as he could remember. He thought through his earliest recollections of his parents, his eight siblings, and what he had learned and experienced through his growing-up years.

Since he was the youngest child, several older brothers and sisters were out in the world, employed, when he came along. The next to him in age was a sister, Mazine, two years older —they always had been close. He knew she would have taken the news about his being shot down so very hard. Not knowing what had happened to him would be difficult for all his brothers and sisters to cope with, but especially for her.

Mazine, he thought, you still owe me four dollars. He smiled, remembering his sixth birthday, when an older brother had given him five one-dollar bills, a lot of money for most anyone living in the rural areas of the United States in the thirties, but especially for a youngster.

On that evening, when Mazine had found out about her younger brother’s monetary bonanza, she headed toward the pasture, walking quickly, her face contorted in deep thought. She knew Jerry was responsible each afternoon for herding the half-dozen or so cows back to the pen next to the house, one of many tasks relegated to the youngest member of the family. Even at six years old, he shouldered all the tasks with little complaining.

She formulated a plan, one that would rest on two traits Jerry seemed to have been born with —amiability and generosity. As she walked alongside him, she began her sad story with down-turned lips.

“You know, Jerry, I don’t have any money.” She looked over at her six-year-old sibling, swinging his arms, engrossed in moving the cows along. “And there’s something in town I really want to buy.”

As Jerry lay alone in his cell, he could see Mazine in the light of that Texas sunset as clearly as if the moment had happened yesterday. He could see her pouting face, could hear the cows shuffling along.

“If you were a good little brother, you would give me a dollar.” She looked at him again.

After a few moments, Jerry relented. “Okay,” he said, “here’s a dollar.” He reached into his pocket and handed it to her.

But big sister wasn’t satisfied. She made her pitch again . . . then again. By the time they reached the house, she had four dollars, and Jerry was left with one.

He chuckled to himself just thinking about it. Sis, when I come home, I’m going to get those four dollars you owe me.

His large family always had been close. They loved each other, laughed together often, and seldom had cross words, except for Jerry’s father, a cantankerous, outspoken man who had been on his own since he was thirteen years old. His difficult personality often led to outbursts of anger, and at times he was just plain hard to get along with.

Jerry recalled an incident one day as a young teenager when several family members stood around the kitchen table at their farm. His father had begun yelling about something, getting angrier by the minute. Jerry, fourteen years old, crept up behind him and pinned his father’s arms to his sides in a bear hug.

His father broke loose and spun around, cussing at his youngest. Jerry stayed calm and just grinned. The other family members winked at each other with knowing looks. Later they said that was the day they realized Jerry was no longer a boy but a man.

Now in his prison cell, Jerry prayed for his father, who had refused to go to church all his life. His mother, the quiet spiritual leader of the family, had died four years earlier, so his father was alone.

God, I’m no longer there to talk to him about you. Open his heart so he will know who you are, and take care of him while I’m gone. I’m so thankful my mother doesn’t have to know about my imprisonment.

Now, suddenly, his thoughts were consumed with his wife and family —what were they doing, what were they thinking. His mind stayed focused for hours and hours on his family. But his body was growing weary —such restricted movement produced incredible discomfort.

Fortunately, after Jerry had spent about four days in stocks, a turnkey came in and released him. At least he could use his toilet bucket —he understood now why the slab was sloped toward the end embedded with the iron stocks. And there even appeared to be a bonus: lying completely still for several days seemed to have helped his back injury, because he could move around with far less pain when he sat up.

But he continued to journey in his mind back through his life. At some point, he admitted to himself the experience was not altogether unpleasant. In fact, he could see where it could be useful as a means of self-awareness —to contemplate and examine one’s actions, intentions, experiences, in total.

After Jerry reminisced about his earliest years on the farm, he concentrated on those times during his youth when his faith was developing. As a young boy, usually an older brother drove the family’s buckboard pulled by horses, cutting through other farms to reach Crossroads Baptist Church, two miles away. Jerry’s family lived in a tiny country community, literally at a crossroads —simple memories of another time and another place.

He thought about the Sundays that must certainly have had their effect on his young mind —the unadorned sermons in a country church; the old hymns with their gospel messages embedded in the lyrics.

Once after one of the services, an older brother, eight at the time, turned up missing, and they found him asleep behind the church piano after the service. Church in those days was serious and relaxed, all at the same time —and everybody knew each other.

Later, when Jerry was about ten years old, the family moved to the Houston area with a Houston address, though their farm was actually in a small country community. Their new church was Cloverleaf Baptist, meeting in a wooden structure that quickly became too small for the growing congregation.

For transportation to church, Jerry rode his horse, Son, a big, muscular steed his father had bought from an Army depot established after the Battle of San Jacinto, a key engagement in Texas history. The dark-chestnut horse probably had been used to pull supply wagons, but at this point, Son was eager and willing to carry his young mount to a little church, content to stay roped to a tree until Jerry returned to ride him home again.

Whether Jerry rode saddle or bareback depended on how early he woke up on Sunday morning. But even at this young age, Jerry went to church, whether anyone else in his family attended or not.

Jerry squirmed on the concrete slab in cell #1 of Heartbreak Hotel in North Vietnam, trying to find a comfortable spot. It reminded him of the wooden church pews back at Cloverleaf Baptist Church when he was a youngster, which sometimes seemed equally as uncomfortable.

Two of his brothers who attended Cloverleaf Baptist had both been deacons. Four sisters were also active within the congregation. Jerry began to attend Sunday school regularly, but he had one major hurdle to overcome —his deep-rooted shyness. He simply could not make himself get out of the pew and go to the front of the church, signaling that he had become a Christian, while everyone was watching, even though he felt a consistent inner prompting to do just that as early as eleven years old.

When he was twelve, he could no longer resist. After a sermon one morning, he got up and walked to the front of the church before everyone in attendance. His heart was pounding, and no one else came forward that day —he was the only one.

It was so quiet in his cell just now, alone in Hanoi, quiet like it had been on that Sunday morning as he left his pew. He remembered distinctly that momentous occasion and the sweet relief he felt when he publicly professed his need for Jesus Christ to be his Savior in a little country church located on the outskirts of Houston.

His commitment to the church flourished. When he was fourteen, the congregation voted to erect a brick building, keeping the older wooden structure for Sunday school classes. But volunteers were needed to complete the project. Jerry, along with many other teenagers, pitched in. They spent hours after school and on weekends hauling bricks from the brickyard to the new church site to supply building material for the project. Jerry thought back to the meals the preacher’s wife had prepared for them —primarily shrimp and speckled trout, since their preacher loved to fish.

How I would love to have one of her meals right now . . .

His thoughts once more turned to Terry. When she came into his life, it helped seal his commitment to faith. After they were engaged and married, they worked together as a couple in churches wherever he was stationed. She continued to use her gifts of singing and playing the piano while he found classes to teach and ways to mentor youth. He had always loved teaching.

Lord, maybe I should have been a teacher instead of a pilot.

He smiled. After he joined the Air Force, he had been chosen to be an instructor in every airplane he trained in.

Now, however, reality had taken a completely unimagined turn, and being a prisoner of war was a different situation altogether. As Jerry lay locked in a cell in an enemy land, every commitment and every belief he had in an unseen God would be tested.

After several days, Jerry reached an end of thinking about his life. And so began the hard-core boredom of hours and hours without any stimulation. Solitary confinement required an enormous adjustment —he languished in his cell.

Since Jerry had grown up in such a large family with constant interaction, activity, and companionship, the loneliness crashed down upon him. With the mental cataloguing of his life completed, he suddenly realized that the sameness of day after day with nothing to do and no one to talk with produced a tedium so intense, it threatened to engulf him in complete internal panic.

Which is why when he began to feel his throat tightening after being in Heartbreak for about three weeks, the distraction actually offered a relief from the boredom. But the sore throat soon resulted in its own source of obsession —quickly becoming an issue of life and death.

Jerry had noticed it after he awoke one morning. His throat was slightly scratchy, just like the usual symptom at the start of a cold. But unlike the next step in the States, which was to go to a drugstore or to schedule a visit to the doctor, there was no option here in the damp, tiny cell. Jerry figured it was probably a combination of things —the stress of the past few weeks, the lack of good nutrition, and the increasingly cold nights with no covering except his thin pajamas. He hoped it would clear, but it didn’t.

That night his throat was really sore, and the next morning, it was noticeably tightening. By the following evening, he could barely swallow, and by the third day, he knew he was in serious trouble. His throat had closed up to the point that when he tried to take in water it came out his nose. So he began to consider what he could use to perform a tracheotomy on himself, because he knew within a few short hours he would need to make this decision —or stop breathing.

God, please help me. Please help me . . . He repeated his pleas over and over.

Though guards acted as if they didn’t really notice their prisoners’ conditions, they actually kept a close eye on them, but not out of compassion. They knew full well what the poor sanitary conditions at Hoa Lo could produce: dysentery, typhus, skin diseases, and bacterial infections of all sorts. Normally, anyone suspected of even a slight fever —which might indicate typhus —was removed, never to be seen again. As the years wore on, this became more the norm than not.

But early on in the midsixties, with a relatively small prisoner population, the Communists were more intent on keeping each prisoner alive, if only just barely. In Jerry’s case, his guard must have deduced this captive had a life-threatening throat infection, because on the third day the door banged open.

In walked a woman whom Jerry guessed to be in her midforties. She wore a white lab coat and held one of the largest syringes he had ever seen —as large as what they had used for cows during his childhood on the farm. Without any words, she motioned for him to hold out his arm. The effects of whatever she injected him with couldn’t be discerned immediately, but in about three days the sore throat subsided. This incident emphatically underscored Jerry’s growing awareness of the absolute helplessness of his situation.

Just a few days afterward, in late October or early November 1965, the door of Jerry’s cell unexpectedly opened once more, and the guards blindfolded him and cuffed his hands behind his back, then marched him to the rear of a truck. After a drive of about thirty minutes, North Vietnamese soldiers pulled him out and directed him to a new cell at a new location.

During the next few weeks, Jerry learned other prisoners had dubbed this camp the “Zoo.” The section he was in became known as the Pigsty. Jerry’s new room seemed enormous compared to what he had been living in. This cell was approximately fifteen feet by fifteen feet, yet the walls and floor, as in Heartbreak, remained the same —charcoal gray and filthy, covered by decades of caked dirt from neglect. Vermin, insects, and any number of crawling critters scurried across the blackened surfaces. In this space, there were no concrete slabs slightly raised above the filth. Sleeping was on the grimy cement floor with only a paper-thin bamboo mat separating him from its cold and varmint-infested surface.

In reality, the Zoo was located only a few miles from Hoa Lo Prison, near the village of Cu Loc. This compound of deteriorating buildings possibly served several purposes in previous decades, ranging from a French film studio to some type of resort or recreation center. The grounds were littered with remnants of old posters, film canisters, and damaged reels. In the center of the compound was a fetid pool of stagnant water containing carp.

The general condition of disuse for the site could be observed most vividly in an old abandoned auditorium whose black interiors were completely overrun by varmints of all sorts and sizes. It was an empty, creepy place, pitch dark, with an overwhelming putrid smell. One isolated and completely sealed interior room off to the side was considered particularly onerous. Airless and totally black, it became the unfortunate place of isolation and torture for several POWs as tensions and brutality rose by late 1965.

On the first day of his arrival at the Pigsty, Jerry began adjusting to his new cell. He discovered quickly he was in a row of back-to-back cells with a thick, common wall down the middle. This meant there were three other prisoners sharing a wall with his cell, one on either side and one at the back. He also realized he was on the backside of the cellblock.

As he looked around, he noticed a tiny pinpoint of bright light close to the floor —the only ray of sunshine he had seen for several months now. Jerry crouched down and put his eye against the hole. It was too small to see much, so he looked around for something to enlarge the tiny opening. He found a small piece of metal and began chipping. He knew he couldn’t make it too big lest guards discovered his handiwork, so he quickly gathered debris for a plug.

Once he had enlarged the hole slightly, he peeked through. Acres of swampy fields spread behind the prison, where Vietnamese women were bent over, harvesting what looked like greens growing in shallow water. As he watched, a younger girl waded into the water to help a woman he guessed was her mother. He thought of his own daughter, Lori, and wondered what she and her mother were doing together just then. Maybe Terry was teaching her to cook or play the piano.

He lay down on his flimsy mat thinking about his family and drifted to sleep. Suddenly, he saw Tommy and Lori drowning in deep, rushing torrents beside a road in Louisiana. They were submerged in a water bar, a large ditch-like structure meant to divert rainwater during heavy rainstorms. Often these culverts filled up quickly and could be extremely hazardous. He yelled to his children to hold on; he was on his way. He had jumped into the swirling current, struggling as hard as he could, holding his breath as he dived under the water trying to find them . . . He jerked awake from the nightmare, drenched in sweat.

Oh, God, be with my children. Take care of them until I return home.

These weeks since his capture had made him more reflective than at any other time in his life. But now, within this totally isolated and gloomy environment, he zeroed in on one specific aspect of his faith —his prayer life.

As he began to pray with a greater sense of urgency than ever before, he noticed most of his prayers were always more or less similar: framed the same way, focusing on the same issues, and really, using the same words. So he began to seek out the exact word that most clearly expressed his thought for each and every situation. He made the most concentrated effort he had ever made to express to God precisely what he meant.

After several days of this, he noticed he was right back to where he had started —with a more-or-less memorized prayer again, just with more precise words. When Jerry realized this, it frightened him. He made a commitment to pray as precisely as he could yet to pray exactly what was on his heart at any given moment. He committed to make prayer a genuine conversation as with a trusted, dear friend.

Whether it was because his isolation and loneliness were magnified in the Pigsty or because his discomfort was quickly increasing —the winter of 1965 in North Vietnam was the coldest of the century —Jerry’s general sense of anguish seemed to be deepening.

There were no warm blankets or heat sources and only thin cotton pajamas to wear: he struggled with being cold soaked, especially at night on the cement floor. He hadn’t had a bath now in several weeks, and the two scant meals a day were being reduced even more. He was hungry, tired, lonely —and it was Christmas.

As long as he could remember, this had been his favorite time of the year. He adored his family and looked forward to every part of the celebration surrounding the birth of Christ. He thought back to the eight Christmases he and Terry had enjoyed since they had been married, precious times full of activities, both at home and at church. And nothing pleased him more than to see his son and little daughter opening presents and getting up early to see what Santa had left under the tree.

His prayers on that first Christmas Eve in captivity began slowly at first. Jerry had always thanked God for the safety of his family back in the States. He knew Terry and the children would face difficulties but would be all right —they had a home and would be supported by a close family and many, many church friends.

God, on this Christmas Eve, thank you for your Son, who came to earth for us.

His mind rested on that thought for many minutes.

And, God . . . be with all of us now, in this prison. Keep us safe in these cold cells. Thank you that we at least have something to eat. Thank you for a free land to live in . . . As Jerry continued to pray, he asked God on this Christmas Eve to allow all the POWs to go home, to do whatever was necessary to bring the war to a conclusion. And as he prayed, he became more and more insistent.

God . . . this place is not where I want to be. I want to be with my family . . .

Jerry could sense his emotions welling up inside him.

I know you can do something, God. You are God! I know you can do something!

And then, suddenly overwhelmed with his situation, he began demanding, his inner voice now nearly screaming at God to change his circumstances.

Come on, God —do something! Get me out of this hellhole! Get me out of this mess! Do it now!

No sooner had Jerry prayed these words than he realized what he had done. Never in all his life had he crossed over such a line. It became crystal clear to him that his prayers, rather than petitioning God, had degenerated into demands. A deep silence fell upon him.

Immediately, Jerry knew the wrongness of what he had been saying. Of course he knew he had every right to bring his requests before God. But he had no right whatsoever to demand anything of God. For God was God, and he was not.

This revelation was so profound that it took several minutes for Jerry to comprehend what was happening. Suddenly, he understood the authority of God in ways he had never understood it before. God does not just have authority —he is the Authority, the Author himself. Only God can make the final decision about the hows and whys of things —and God owes no explanation to anyone about anything . . . not even to a suffering believer in a prison cell in Vietnam.

This could have been a depressing revelation. But for Jerry, it was the most liberating thought that had ever entered his mind. Peace flooded every crevice of his mind and heart. A complete sense of trust came upon him, and he wept. He knew he might continue to face horrific situations, but God had been in control all along and would continue to be in control, no matter what Jerry’s circumstances were. The Lord of hosts seemed to fill his entire cell that first Christmas Eve in captivity, and Jerry rested in the light of his presence.