Empowered by captivity: Stockdale, honored today, and other POWs left Vietnam resilient

San Diego UnionTribune ^ | 16 July 2005 | Rick Rogers

[A.A. Cunningham]

Empowered by captivity
Stockdale, honored today, and other POWs left Vietnam resilient

By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 16, 2005

The words trigger images of haggard, pajama-clad men being herded before cameras by their captors. Of accounts detailing torture at the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison. Of joyous family reunions on tarmacs across the United States.

Although the scenes are 32 years old, they never have been updated in the American public's psyche and remain suspended like a half-finished bridge or a ghostly image on a TV set.

What became of the 566 U.S. military POWs released during Operation Homecoming in early 1973? What kind of lives did they go on to build while no one was watching? How are they now?

Some, such as Coronado's late Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, a Medal of Honor recipient, became military legends.

Stockdale, who died last week at age 81, will be memorialized today with a service on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan in San Diego. Several former Vietnam War POWs from San Diego County plan to join the tribute, which is expected to draw 5,000 to the North Island Naval Air Station.

Other prisoners of war such as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., entered politics and rose to prominence.

But most of the POWs went on to lead quieter lives often defined by their months and years in Vietnam's prison camps.

While none of the POWs interviewed for this story wants to relive that hardship, they also can't imagine what their lives would be like if they did not possess the inner strength and peace that those years of privation and torture have fostered.

"I was lucky. I still say that someone is looking out for me," said Cole Black of Escondido, president of the national group Vietnam POWs – or NAMPOWS – which has about 30 members in San Diego County.

Courtesy of Cole Black
Cole Black was shot down in his F-8E Crusader on June 21, 1966.
By his calculation, he spent 2,428 days, 18 hours and 35 minutes in captivity.

Black, 72, was captured when his single-seat, F-8E Crusader got shot down June 21, 1966. According to his figures, he spent 2,428 days, 18 hours and 35 minutes in captivity before being released Feb. 12, 1973. He spent a few years in the Hanoi Hilton.

His keepsakes include a green porcelain drinking cup, a bar of soap, toilet paper and a brick taken from that prison, which was notorious for its brutal treatment of POWs.

Black picked up the Hanoi Hilton brick in 1994 during a trip back to Vietnam – a vacation that his wife arranged and compelled him to take. The prison was being torn down at the time of his visit.

Black neither considers his POW time a blight on his life nor begrudges the fact that his plane's downing happened just days before his combat tour was slated to end.

"In 10 days, my cruise was supposed to be over, and I was probably going to be an instructor pilot at Naval Air Station Miramar (now Miramar Marine Corps Air Station)," said Black, who retired from the Navy as a captain in 1986 after 36 years in the service. "I don't know what would've happened to me if I had come back on that cruise. My commanding officer and executive officer came back and ended up dying young from hard living."

He added: "Not one among us would wish to get shot down again, but I think it changed my life for the better. I came back with a real zest to live. I wanted to do some things." Black, now retired, became a successful real estate agent in Escondido after leaving the Navy.

Not that Black's postwar life was all rosy.

He described his marriage, which dissolved shortly after his return to San Diego County, as a "war loss."

From 1965 to 1967, Black lived in the Vietnamese prison next to Raymond Merritt from Marysville in Northern California. Merritt had been shot down in his F-105 Thunder Chief over North Vietnam on Sept. 16, 1965.

"In one way, (being a POW) was a positive," said Merritt, 76. "You know that you can survive. You can dig down deep to find whatever is necessary to keep going, whether it is military training or schooling or your god."

Merritt and Black said covert communications among the inmates, the military Code of Conduct – the idea of offering only name, rank and serial number to the enemy – and the leadership provided by fellow prisoners Stockdale and others couldn't be overstated.

"Stockdale took hits that would have come to us," Black said. "He was the leader. If they were going to try to get information, they would try to get it from him."

Merritt said Stockdale, as the senior POW officer, kept up the men's morale and fighting spirit.

"We knew that even if we were shot down, our job was not done," Merritt said. "We knew that if we could tie up the enemy's assets that they would have to deal with us instead of shooting at our planes."

Bob Hain, director of the Robert E. Mitchell Center for POW Studies in Pensacola, Fla., has tracked Vietnam War POWs since the early 1990s for the Naval Operational Medicine Institute.

"As a group, Vietnam POWs have turned out quite well and have been quite successful," said Hain, who linked this outcome to their ability to "not to sweat the small stuff."

"My unscientific theory from following this unique group for years is that they are very gregarious and goal-oriented and have a great, great sense of humor," he said. "If you have people with those qualities, they just tend to do better in the world. . . . There is a small number who are still struggling, but as a group, they have not spent their lives feeling bitter."

Hain said the POWs are still using their hard-won combat experience today.

"A former POW recently faced a life problem that would have devastated you or me," Hain recalled. "He said, 'Look, I went through six years in a POW camp. This is nothing.' This is their attitude."

It's an attitude that POWs cherish.

James "Duffy" Hutton, 73, lives near Mount Soledad. He was a navigator aboard a reconnaissance plane shot down Oct. 16, 1965. He was also Stockdale's neighbor in a section of the Hanoi Hilton dubbed "The Heartbreak Hotel" by the POWs tortured there.

"I had always been kind of an impatient person before my Vietnam experience, which gave me the chance to look at the big picture of life," said Hutton, who recalled that the North Vietnamese were particularly effective at torturing prisoners with ropes and that he was once nearly hung to death. "If you have your family and friends, that's pretty much all you need."

Had it not been for his mistreatment in North Vietnam, Hutton said, it is likely he would never have met his wife.

"The biggest positive was that I was a bachelor when I came back from Vietnam and met a Navy nurse at Balboa (naval hospital) and we got married and we are still married. She is the most positive person I have ever met in my life."

Looking ahead to today's service, Sid Stockdale – one of the vice admiral's sons and a history teacher at a private high school in Albuquerque, N.M. – said his father valued his POW experience, especially the four years spent in solitary confinement.

"He was always very upfront that he was very thankful to have had the prison experience," said Sid Stockdale, 50. "The level of camaraderie in the those difficult circumstances was just incredibly meaningful to him and the other POWs. I think they came away from the experience much stronger than they thought they were."

Stockdale said that being a POW allowed his father to embrace "the practical value of philosophy. It gave him a greater appreciation of the value of ideas and moral beliefs and how powerful they are. They became these jewels to him."

Black and Hutton planned to attend today's memorial service alongside 50 or so other former Vietnam War POWs from across the country. They'll be joined by Medal of Honor recipients and political dignitaries at the invitation-only gathering.

After the service, the former POWs will gather at North Island to renew old ties. It's something they try to do every year near the anniversary of their release.

One of the out-of-towners slated to be at the service and reunion is Paul Galanti, who flew in from Virginia.

Galanti tried to explain how glad the POWs would be to see one another, to focus on all the good that emerged from their harrowing circumstances.

"Our conditions were so rotten and despicable that we came out the most optimistic people in the whole world," said Galanti, 66, whose A-4 Skyhawk was shot down June 17, 1966. "We don't complain about anything. Our reunions are the most joyous events in the world."

[sine_nomine]

Very moving. We owe these people a lot.

Even though we gave up on a war we won, our military kept on serving us and protecting the entire world, as much as it was allowed by the politicians.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

"We owe these people a lot."

I agree. But they probably don't.

These are special people, and we should all feel humble before them.