I've read his book. He really was a wonderful man. Sad to hear of his passing. :-(
Rest In Peace Sir.
Posted on 04/01/2014 2:50:52 PM PDT by Kaslin
n goods.
When Jerry Denton died the other day, at age 89, the obituaries led with graphic accounts of how he defied his North Vietnamese captors in a TV interview intended as anti-U.S. propaganda. He blinked his eyes: each blink a Morse Code signal. The message: "T-O-R-T-U-R-E." The enemies were torturing their American prisoners. The world needed to know. Denton reckoned correctly the price for spilling the beans so publicly: torture, beatings, more of the same.
In his postwar memoir of captivity, "When Hell Was in Session," Jerry Denton described one Vietnamese technique of persuasion. He would sit on a pallet, hands cuffed behind his back and feet against the wall. "Shackles were put on my ankles, with open ends down, and an iron bar was pushed through the eyelets of the shackles. The iron bar was tied to the pallet and the shackles in such a way that when the rope was drawn over a pulley arrangement, the bar would cut into the backs of my legs, gradually turning them into a swollen, bloody mess. The pulley was used daily to increase the pressure, and the iron bar began to eat through the Achilles tendons on the backs of my ankles. For five more days and nights I remained in the rig."
The point, from Jerry Denton's angle of vision was -- what? What could it have been but to do the right thing in a tough place? To keep faith with his country, his government, his comrades. What would have been easy for him -- compliance with his jailers' orders -- he shunned. What was hard and painful and degrading, he accepted willingly. He had character. It made all the difference in the world.
I met him once in my newspaper office. In a book review, I had praised his memoir as inspiring and important. I was privileged, when he dropped by, to tell him as much to his face.
The Denton experience and the comparable experiences of brother P.O.W.'s such as John McCain and Sam Johnson (the latter now a Dallas-area congressman) provided inspiration and pride during a morally debilitating time. All these years later, their stories imprint on minds and hearts the narrative that stock portfolios and sports contracts count for nothing as against virtues of the sort that Jerry Denton held up for our notice.
We gaze, or should, into the future. What contemporary America teaches its up-and-coming about the ingredients of character -- honor, obligation to others, veneration for truth -- will matter in the end more than how many technological wonders they bring forth, how many prizes and awards they pile up. A Jerry Denton on the torture rack is worth 100 Wall Street wizards or 500 sports heroes with no more important mission than that of heaping the moolah higher, ever higher.
My personal, semi-fearful observation is that we don't worry half as much as we once did about the teaching of character in all possible forums and outlets -- schools, homes, churches, sports, business, books, movies. I could be wrong; but if I am right, it wouldn't hurt a thing for "When Hell Was in Session," duly reprinted, to come pouring anew from the presses: a beneficent tide of knowledge and moral encouragement.
I've read his book. He really was a wonderful man. Sad to hear of his passing. :-(
Rest In Peace Sir.
“These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”
We used to have a lot of these kind of men
(and yeah don’t ping me I know that those are Reagan’s words about WWII...I am thinking kindred spirits )
And now we have traitors holding office, like Kerry.
Exactly
Thought you would find this article interesting. There are still some youth that have character. But Obama is breaking those in the Military with the budget cuts and the social engineering. This article is from Britain.
Chris Kyle, Marcus Lutrell, Mike Murphy to name a few. We still have em. We just need them ( the ones still alive) to ALL gather inside the Oval Office for a meeting and dare the SS and JC’s to stop em. I think things are THAT bad!
General McInerney, Terry Lakin, Corporal James Dunham (MOH), PFC Ross McGinnis (MOH), Navy Seal Michael Monsoor (MOH), Seargeant First Class Paul R. Smith (MOH).
I’ve named only a handful of recent heros. There are thousands of them.
I hope at some point they lead us out of this darkness that has fallen on our country. Oh, and I left out General Vallehy, he’s trying!
I am ready and willing...
Thanks for the read...very nice indeed.
And don’t forget that O is busy gutting the military of any one who won’t follow his insanity
In the Clinton era, we learned that character and virtue in our President was irrelevant. A man known as a particularly good liar, someone with the morals of a tomcat, set the stage for lawless Obama. Our republic cannot long stand Presidents with anti-American values.
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