CHAPTER 9

BREAKING POINT

SUMMER 1966

WHEN THE UNITED STATES government removed the “2-S” provision of the military code, which exempted college students from the draft in late spring 1966, outrage spread on campuses across the nation. The action prompted hundreds of University of Wisconsin students to seize and occupy the newly completed A. W. Peterson Administrative Building in Madison on May 16. The peaceful protest lasted several days. Students filled the lobby area, which gave access to bathrooms, vending machines, and additional food brought in by sympathetic friends and family. The Peterson sit-in became the first of many protesting the war in Vietnam.

At the same time on the other side of the world, the V invented a form of “sit-in” all their own, using it with great effectiveness on their military prisoners to elicit information.

To fully understand and appreciate the war of wills that took place within Hanoi’s prison walls requires at least a passing knowledge of two documents: the Geneva Conventions and the Code of Conduct. These official papers heavily influenced behavior and attitudes of both captor and captive in North Vietnam from 1965 to 1973.

The first, the Geneva Conventions, traces its roots to Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, who witnessed deplorable situations after the Battle of Solferino in 1859. His concern for the dead and wounded helped establish sweeping reforms in 1864 and also led to the birth of the International Red Cross. In 1901, Dunant became the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Later conventions, in 1906 and 1929, addressed treatment of wounded and sick in armies at sea and treatment of prisoners of war. In the latter case, provisions stipulated humane treatment of all POWs. Subsequently, in 1949, a series of conferences upheld and expanded the three previous conventions and are referred to collectively as the Geneva Conventions. One hundred ninety-six countries are signatories, including the United States and Vietnam.

The second document, the Code of Conduct, played an even greater role for American military men who were taken as prisoners. Originally outlined by Colonel Franklin Brooke Nihart, USMC, and signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on August 17, 1955, the Code of Conduct contains six tenets to be followed by all members of the military. This set of policies governs behavior and attitudes, primarily as regards prisoner of war situations. Among these are what military members may reveal when captured: only their name, rank, service number, and date of birth. In addition, captured personnel will not give assistance of any kind to the enemy. The same stipulations are outlined in the Geneva Conventions.

For American military service personnel, both documents worked in tandem, providing a matrix to govern wartime activities. However, following these protocols required both captor and captive to adhere to the provisions within the agreements. As it became evident, interpretation of each varied greatly.

Besides these iconic documents, an unusual series of events led to a foundation of superior leadership, courage, and inspiration within the prison system of Hanoi, without which many POWs possibly would have succumbed to despair. A triumvirate of 05s, seasoned ranking officers, were shot down within just a few weeks of one another, very close to the start of the war and the taking of prisoners. These three senior-ranking officers, shortened to SROs within prison communications, defined much of the structure for survival in the eight-plus years of imprisonment. Their raw courage and faith in God and country kept POWs bound together as much as humanly possible.

These SROs were Navy Commander Jeremiah A. Denton Jr., shot down on July 18, 1965 (after release he was promoted to rear admiral and eventually elected US senator from Alabama); Navy Commander James Bond Stockdale, commander of a carrier wing, shot down on September 9, 1965 (later promoted to vice admiral); and Lieutenant Colonel James Robinson Risner, a Korean War ace, shot down on September 16, 1965, who was promoted to colonel shortly after his capture (after the war he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general).

As time went on, others entered into the prison system, including Air Force Colonel John Flynn, who was the SRO from the time he was shot down in 1967 until the POWs’ release in 1973 (later he was promoted to lieutenant general). Flynn, however, was kept nearly completely isolated during captivity, which hindered him from being able to communicate fully as SRO. His courage in the face of prolonged punishment, however, inspired and motivated the entire prison population. Others stepped in to continue to lead as necessary, and through the years, many SROs in various camps continued what was established earlier by the three senior officers.

But in the beginning, even these committed, career servicemen had no idea what would transpire until the insanity of their new life began to unfold. As Risner himself, one of the staunchest of men, said later, when he first entered Hoa Lo, he had heard prisoners were being interrogated frequently and often experienced severe mistreatment during their capture and subsequent journey to Hanoi. He knew things were not rosy, but he “was still laboring under the misconceptions that we were going to be treated as prisoners of war.” Once things settled down, he believed they would all begin to live a fairly predictable life as prisoners of war, lonely and spartan, yes, but within reason.

Within the year, the North Vietnamese had tortured all three of these men unmercifully, and all three had capitulated to one extent or another, along with dozens of their junior comrades. For those who were captured during the early years, the odds of holding out were long, even though these men represented some of the most courageous resisters. No matter how strong willed or brave, once the captors turned the screws, no one could last indefinitely. Though thresholds varied, they learned one thing: every man has a breaking point.

Spring and summer of 1966 witnessed the ramping up of brutality across all prisoner of war camps in North Vietnam. No POW escaped the ferocity. The only question was how much pain a man would or could endure before submitting. Though it depended on the individual, later prisoner testimony recorded most of them seeing prostrate comrades, unable to walk, being delivered back into their cells.

After Commander Jeremiah Denton Jr., one of the senior ranking officers, had been beaten into compliance, he consented to film a message testifying to the “humane treatment” given to all POWs by the V. The powerful floodlights used in filming the interview with Japanese journalists on May 17, 1966, made him blink. He discerned an opportunity.

With his heart pounding and hands sweating, he slowly “blinked” out a message he hoped Americans back home would eventually see. As he gazed into the cameras, pretending to be overwhelmed by the lights, he blinked over and over in Morse code the letters “T-O-R-T-U-R-E.” This was the first real confirmation of rumors that American prisoners of war were being subjected routinely to horrific bouts of sustained physical brutality. Later, when the Vietnamese realized what had happened, Denton, in his own words, “paid for it with blood.”

After his return home, Admiral Denton would call the month of July 1966 perhaps the most torture-filled month of North Vietnam POW history.

One of the methods the V used to force many POWs, including Denton, into compliance with their demands involved sitting on low stools or small cement blocks. The punishment seemed innocuous at first; however, the severity depended on its duration. Guards monitored the prisoner, forcing him to sit without getting up, stretching, or lying down, and usually without food, perhaps without water as well: a North Vietnamese version of a sit-in.

During interrogations, everyone knew the less said the better. Each prisoner also knew to give as much misinformation as possible, especially when it concerned personal family details. One of the fears was that North Vietnamese sympathizers living in the States might seek out a family member for harassment, or worse. But the prisoners had to use extreme caution because if they were caught giving erroneous information, the V would double down on the physical abuse from which, over the years, several POWs did not survive.

The Briarpatch camp commandant, whom the Americans called Frenchy, constantly advised prisoners that handlers were particularly irritated with them and their attitudes. The POWs would need to comply and do exactly as they were told.

And here in this remote location, things could turn brutal quickly. “In terms of prolonged misery, no prisoners suffered more than the men confined at Briarpatch.” POW treatment always seemed more vicious there than anywhere else among the numerous camps sprawled in and around Hanoi. Perhaps its isolated location caused guards, who needed no excuse, to feel even less restricted in handling prisoners.

In the summer of 1966, it became evident that a program of intense torture had begun. The purpose: to obtain complete biographies. The guards progressed methodically from cell to cell, removing men one at a time, and the V were determined to conquer their captives. How long they tortured the captive depended on how long he could last before capitulating to their demands.

Jerry’s cell door at Briarpatch swung open with force. The guard, pointing his rifle toward him, motioned with the muzzle for him to stand up and come out. With a guard on each side, they shoved the prisoner to another small room not far away. When he entered, the interrogator called “Rat” sat behind the desk. Sometimes referred to as Louie the Rat, he was sneaky and shrewd. One moment he would be looking at his prisoner, then suddenly he would look from one side to another as if checking to see whether someone might be watching him.

The armed guards motioned for Jerry to sit on a small concrete block made from bricks. Cement covered the fifteen-inch-high seat and attached it to the floor. Jerry would come to know this room as a place of torture.

It all began subtly. Rat spoke, demanding Jerry write a complete biography. “Cuh!” he said. (“Curtis” was shortened to “Cuh.” The V often used nicknames for their prisoners simply because their last names were difficult to pronounce.) “Cuh, you Yankee pirate. You war criminal! You come from United States . . . warmongers. You write and tell us all about your family. You give names and when born. You write everything.”

Jerry sat, listening. He loved his large family —eight brothers and sisters, cousins by the score, his wife and precious children. This was something he told himself they could never make him do. “I will not write that,” he said quietly.

Rat seemed nonplussed. “Yes, you will write, Cuh, you will do this. All about your family.”

“I will not write.” Jerry’s voice remained steady.

Visibly twitching, Rat looked at his prisoner. “You not have help here. You alone. We punish you bad, Cuh. We try you for war crimes. You blackest of criminal.” His voice elevated. “Do you want me to punish you?”

The minutes dragged. Something about Rat’s questioning and demeanor this time was different from all the other hours of interrogations and indoctrination sessions. He seemed more intense somehow, less likely to be appeased.

Rat stared at Jerry. The prisoner slowly shook his head once more. “I will not write.”

“Okay, Cuh. You leave me no choice. I punish you. You sit here on block until you write. You not get up, you not lie down, Cuh. Nothing on floor. We watch you.”

Rat got up and exited the cell along with the guard. Jerry sat alone in silence to contemplate his situation. Since nothing quite like this had happened before, he wasn’t sure what to expect. He supposed they meant for him to stay on the block until he relented —which he didn’t plan to do.

After about three hours of perching on the low, cement stump, he thought how stupid it was to punish himself any longer. So he rolled off and lay down.

No sooner had he stretched out his body than he was jabbed full force in the back several times. He bolted up and looked toward the window located just a few feet away. There stood a guard wielding a long, heavy rod through the bars. Jerry jumped to one side, but the jailer prodded him over and over, landing blows anywhere he could —into his prisoner’s stomach, legs, torso —all the while yelling, “Back! Back! Sit! Sit!”

The pokes were hard and swift. Jerry reluctantly sat back down while the guard gave one more stab for good measure, fortunately off the mark and hitting the floor. But Jerry felt the consequences of leaving the block —painful stinging sensations all over his body.

Day slipped into night. A guard brought a cup of water and a few spoonfuls of rice, but no mosquito net. After Jerry ate, he thought about his plight. At least they’re giving me some food.

With darkness came plague: maddening mosquitoes by the thousands. He could hear them buzzing all around him and could feel them covering his arms, neck, face —anywhere they found exposed skin. He was thankful his hands weren’t cuffed. At least he could swat a few of them away. Several times during the night, guards used flashlights to check on their victim.

Jerry continued to sit on the low, concrete seat. Every muscle and joint ached, and “bloodsuckers” continued their biting. At times, he managed to doze off for a few seconds. Once he actually fell over but quickly righted himself on the block, not wishing to experience the long pole again. Jerry’s prayers remained simple.

God, be with me. Stay with me. Give me strength. I don’t want to expose my family.

The night crawled by.

Finally, the next day dawned, and before long Rat entered the cell once more. “You write now, Cuh. You no have to sit anymore if you write.”

Jerry took a deep breath. “I will not write,” he said.

“You blackest of criminal! You sit! You no move. We not give you bucket to use. We punish you bad, Cuh. We catch you move, we punish.” Rat left the room.

Guards brought Jerry a bite or two of rice and a swallow of water. Jerry felt fatigued; the rice stuck in the roof of his mouth. Guards reminded him again that he was being watched and not to move off the block. Jerry realized they were intent on a full-throttled program of unrelenting abuse.

About noon, diarrhea set in, something he battled from day one of his imprisonment. Like most of the POWs, intestinal problems were a constant: dysentery, diarrhea, bacteria, intestinal worms, and parasites. All these ailments evolved from appallingly unsanitary living conditions, poor diet, stress, and trauma. At least in cells, prisoners had pails. He now sat in his own putrid mess.

By afternoon of the second day, he couldn’t hear anyone outside his window. Inside, temperatures soared, turning the torture chamber into an oven. He was exhausted. His back ached, his shoulders were stiff, his legs cramping. But nothing hurt like his buttocks —forced to remain crouched on a low seat placed extra weight on his hip joints. It felt like sitting on bare bone. He’d had it. He would take his chances.

Jerry had been standing only a few seconds when the long pole came lunging through the bars. Two guards jabbed as hard as they could. Jerry decided to see if he could get somewhere in the small pen where he couldn’t be reached, but there was no such spot. In the corners, next to the wall, by the window —the room was tiny; there was simply no place to go.

With every vicious strike of the weapon, Jerry felt bruised. He wondered how much more of that he could take, especially in his intestines and groin.

The two handlers screamed at him. “Back! Back! Sit down! You sit!”

Finally, he realized it was no use. “I’m sitting, I’m sitting.” Winded and with pulse racing, he collapsed back down on the block. At least he had been able to stand for a few minutes.

Nighttime came again, and along with it the insanity of gnawing insects. He had bites all over, some swollen to the size of a quarter. Now mosquitoes bore into previously bitten places.

Deep into the night, Jerry prayed with increasing intensity. Even now, he continued prayers of thanksgiving for his family.

Thank you, Lord, for keeping my family safe, for letting them live in a free country, for our church family . . .

He knew their friends back home would be taking care of them, supporting them. God would see to that; he was confident. These thoughts brought comfort.

The words of Psalm 62, which had always been one of his favorites, floated in and out of his mind.

My rock . . . my strength . . . Lord, help me endure . . .

Protecting his brothers and sisters, cousins and other family members from possible harm kept his resolve going through the second night. Heavy exhaustion, however, began to set in.

The next morning guards gave him only a few sips of water. They withdrew food. Jerry knew it wouldn’t take long now for generalized weakness to take hold. He prayed for strength.

By noon of the third day, he drifted in and out —not hallucinating exactly, but drifting. His body hurt all over, particularly his tailbone. Welts where mosquitoes had had their fill were now red and swollen. He had no control of either his bowels or his bladder; excrement and bloody urine drenched his pajamas, causing them to stick to his skin.

Still he sat, determined not to write a biography that might jeopardize his family.

On the third day —with no food, only a few sips of water, and loss of bodily fluids —total dehydration set in. Had he not been in so much pain, he would have collapsed. He tried shuffling his legs in as many different positions as he could. No adjustment brought relief. This was slow torture meant to bring submission.

Rat came into his cell just once on the third day and glared at him. Jerry shook his head no. The frustrated interrogator turned on his heel and went back out.

Somehow Jerry made it through the third night, now without water or food. His mouth was cotton dry; he could barely make a sound. Yet he remained unyielding.

The fourth morning, Rat entered the cell once more. He stood slightly away from Jerry, who was a complete mess —dazed, hunched over, and reeking of acrid odors.

“Cuh, you will write now. You will write!” Rat’s face hardened, and his voice revealed the total exasperation brought on by this uncooperative prisoner. When Jerry slowly repeated his intention of not acquiescing, Rat looked as if he was going to lose it. Jerry thought he must be under pressure from higher-ups to elicit as many biographies as possible from the prisoners.

“You leave me no choice. I punish you, Cuh! You blackest of criminals!” Rat was fuming but did nothing. He left his prisoner to suffer through the day.

That night, however, Rat returned. He motioned the guards into the pen, who immediately set about to secure Jerry’s hands behind his back with metal handcuffs. They then shoved him, bent over and limping, down a dirt alleyway between the buildings, out beyond the compound into an open field. When they reached a black pit about five feet deep dug into the earth with a sloping entrance, they stopped at its edge.

Here they bound Jerry’s feet together and blindfolded him. After knocking him to the ground, they pushed him into the hole. The last thing Jerry heard Rat say was “You will write, Cuh!” The interrogator spun on his heels and walked away.

Jerry had been a prisoner of war now about ten months. He had been struck many times, butted with rifles, and clamped into stocks. He had battled loose bowels, dysentery, rashes, blisters, and near suffocation from a closed throat. He had experienced loneliness and hunger he never knew existed. But he had not been tortured. This time he knew guards had no intention of stopping until they achieved their goal.

Jerry’s knees buckled when his bare feet hit the bottom of the pit. Straining upward, he raised his torso as much as his trussed hands and legs allowed. As soon as guards moved away from the edge, Jerry tried to nudge the blindfold off by rubbing his face against the ground and his shoulder.

He finally managed to peek out from under one edge. At the bottom of the pit on the left side, he saw an opening into a small space completely underground. Jerry surmised it was probably a bunker or foxhole, perhaps used for shelter during air raids. Another possibility floated across his mind —if he died here, all they would need to do would be to throw some dirt over his body.

By morning, his shoulders and arms throbbed incessantly. He bent forward, nose nearly touching his knees, trying to avoid sliding through the hole on the left. He didn’t want to be completely underground.

Jerry felt miserable, but he continued to resist. Another reason POWs fought so hard to hold out was because of the next guy: if torturers were occupied with them, their fellow prisoners were still in their cells, relatively unharmed. Nearly every thought now was directed to God.

Strength . . . God . . . Give me strength . . . to keep going . . . Oh, God . . .

Over and over he prayed for endurance.

The effects of dehydration and lack of food made Jerry light-headed and weak. One time he thought he heard someone cry out in the distance. He lay bound through the following morning and into the evening.

During his second night in the pit, mosquitoes once again covered his head and neck, though now, with hands bound, he had to endure their bites; he felt bugs crawling over his feet. By the next morning in the pit, he could breathe only through his mouth; his throat was so parched, he managed only partial swallows. His hands, badly swollen, bore marks where metal cuffs scraped away flesh.

A few weeks before, he had developed beriberi, a condition resulting from a lack of vitamin B, which, once established, lasts for life. For some POWs, the disease settled in their eyes, limiting peripheral vision; Jerry’s settled in his feet, causing them to burn like hot coals continually. In this time of extended immobility, they felt distended and fiery.

As he entered the darkness of a third night in the pit, he couldn’t think clearly, fitfully dozing, always with God’s name on his lips but no longer able to articulate specific prayers. Exhaustion and pain had taken their toll. He maintained just enough of his faculties to know he was close to the edge mentally.

Then deep into the night, it happened. He felt a slight nudging on his upper back. Once again, several small pokes . . . then he felt the weight of something dropping across his shoulders.

During survival training, military attendees had been schooled in what they might encounter in the fields and jungles of Southeast Asia. There was a wide assortment of dangerous creatures, but none as lethal as the banded krait, a relatively small snake whose venom was deadly within seconds.

Jerry lay perfectly still. Maybe it was a guard kicking a few clods of dirt onto his back or rolling a few pebbles to trick him. But Jerry felt panicky and helpless. Once more, he sensed pressure and thought he detected movement again, this time toward his neck . . .

Raising his head, he croaked out, “Bao Cao,” the required signal for permission to speak to someone in authority. “Bao Cao!” he repeated. His tongue made clacking sounds as he tried to speak. Within moments, guards reached down and pulled him up from the pit. Whatever was on his back fell off. They cut the ropes from his ankles. Jerry barely could stand and stumbled his way between two guards to the interrogation room. They splashed him with water —he was caked from head to toe with dirt stuck by dried bodily fluids —and unlocked the metal cuffs. His hands and feet were swollen tight, wrists and ankles bloody raw. Then they brought him some water and a little rice.

At daybreak, Rat walked in with pencil and paper. The prisoner slumped over to write a biography.

Jerry purposefully dragged out the recording process as long as he could. He mixed names and juggled birthdays, trying in every way imaginable to provide some factual information but, he hoped, not enough to identify correctly anyone in his family.

As he sat and wrote, he also learned yet another thing: remorse after breaking under torture was nearly as excruciating as the torture itself. He felt like a complete failure. All POWs experienced deep regret when they succumbed, no matter how long or how much pain they had endured. The Code of Conduct was their “guiding star,” as Admiral Stockdale would express later, but a man could uphold it just so far.

Once back in his cell, Jerry considered the great questions in Romans 8: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” Jerry had experienced, personally, all these things.

A thought suddenly jolted across his mind. The question is not, as he had typically heard it formulated, Does God give people more than they can bear? Each person has a different capacity for bearing. The real question is this: Is whatever we are bearing capable of bearing us away from Christ?

Jerry had been separated from nearly everything: in the humiliation of pain and fear and what it did to his flesh, he had been separated from any inkling of pride or ego; he had been separated from his sense of well-being, separated from a healthy body, separated from loved ones and family, and in a couple of instances nearly separated from his mental faculties.

Jerry learned in reality the truth from Romans 8: no thing and no one would ever be able to separate him from the love of Jesus Christ. Even at the bottom of the deepest pit on the blackest night, Jerry would reach a point beyond which no amount of torture could take him. When he could bear no more, his soul came to rest on something impenetrable, like a rock beneath him, like solid light.