Posted on 02/14/2007 3:46:21 AM PST by mware
-- About 10 days after being
shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese in April
1966, Sam Johnson's captors blindfolded him, put him on
trial, accused him of being a criminal and sentenced him to
death.
They marched him out into the woods and put him in front of
a five-man firing squad. As he prayed harder than he ever
had before in his life, Johnson said, the North Vietnamese
officer told the firing squad to shoot.
"They all went Click! Click! Chick! Click! Click!" said
Johnson, now a congressman from Texas. He was the keynote
speaker at the Pentagon's POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremony
on Sept. 20. "I praised the Lord and laughed at them, and
they kicked me into a slit trench and left me there for a
while."
That was the beginning of nearly seven years of hell in a
prisoner of war camp for the Dallas native. He was shot
down over North Vietnam during his 25th combat mission on
April 16, 1966, and not released until Feb. 12, 1973.
Forty-two months of that time was spent in solitary
confinement.
Johnson was shot down during his second tour of duty in the
Vietnam War. His first tour was in 1965, when he worked at
MACV headquarters in Saigon where he helped set up the
first B-52 strikes. The former Thunderbirds flight
demonstration team pilot and director of the Air Force
Fighter Weapons School returned to Southeast Asia in 1966
and flew F-4 Phantom combat missions with the 8th Tactical
Fighter Wing in Thailand.
Johnson had flown 62 combat missions in F-86s during the
Korean War and recalled scoring one MiG fighter kill, one
probable and one damaged. Though he took his share of
enemy gunfire and flak, he emerged from the war unscathed.
He wasn't so lucky over North Vietnam.
"When I was captured I had a broken right arm, dislocated
left shoulder and a broken back," the 72-year-old
congressman said. "They took me to a house, kicked the
people out and put me in there with two guards. They took
another house over for my back seater, Larry Chesley. He
lives in Tucson, Ariz." Johnson used to be right-handed but
is left-handed now, he said, because his right arm never
totally healed -- his captors kept breaking it.
"Some of the guards made like they were doctors and put my
arm in a cast," he said. A couple of days later, people
beat them with sticks and stones as they walked through a
town headed to trucks bound for Hanoi.
"One of the guards got mad at me and threw me up against
the front of the truck and broke my arm again," he said.
Once the prisoners were on the truck, two guards separated
them so they couldn't talk to each other.
In Hanoi, he spent about a week in a room by himself with
little food and water. "Every day, they came in with a
table and tried to get military information out of you,"
Johnson said. "Fortunately, they never knew I was running
the fighter weapons school and had flown all those planes
and fired all those weapons. They never found out. Thank
God.
"They broke my arm again," he said. "They just took it and
twisted it all the way around to the front. I guess that
makes three times. It hurt so much that I really didn't
care what I did. So I didn't say anything. They spent a
week doing that without food or water. They did bring a
glass of water when they came in to interrogate you.
"I didn't tell them much, and after about a week they gave
up," Johnson noted. "A different group came in and said,
'We're going to let you go to your room,' which was a jail
cell in the Hanoi 'New Guy Village,' we called it. There
were two other guys there when I went in." Johnson said the
prisoners were fed mostly pumpkin soup.
"They used to pull grass out of the river and boil it and
feed it to us," he recalled. "Rice was a staple that they
fed us on occasion. They didn't mess that up. Fortunately I
never lost my appetite for rice, even back here."
The six-foot, two-inch former POW said he weighed about 195
pounds when he was captured and went down to about 120.
"When I was released, I weighed about 150 because they fed
us better and bumped our weight back up," he said.
Johnson said he coped with the ill treatment because the
Air Force trained him well. "Of course, they can't prepare
you for what you're actually going to encounter with an
enemy like that," he noted. "I just praised the Lord that I
was able to talk to him. I feel like without God on my
side, I would have never made it."
The whole ordeal was bad, but some days were worse than
others, the congressman said. "Eleven of us were moved to a
place we called 'Alcatraz' and they put us in leg irons for
two and a half years," he said. "We were all by ourselves
in separate cells and getting out, at the most, five
minutes a day just to get food and bring it back in -- if
you want to call it food."
But those really weren't the worst times, Johnson said. He
said they were in deep trouble one time when a prisoner hit
a guard.
"They put me in leg stocks for 72 days," he said. "I was
completely alone. There were no other Americans around I
could even tap on the wall to. There were just bugs,
spiders, flies, mosquitoes and me.
"Seventy-two days in leg stocks is no fun," he continued.
"I knew the Lord was with me because on the 72nd day, a
typhoon came through and blew the covers off the windows.
That very day they came in and took me out of those stocks
and said 'We're going to take you to interrogation.' I
couldn't walk, so two guards carried me over and stuck me
on a stool and this officer said, 'Now we're going to kill
you!'
"I said, yeah, yeah, be my guest," he said. "After that, it
kind of eased off a little bit. Ho Chi-Minh's death caused
a change in their policy. It changed from bad to not quite
so bad for a while. Then, finally, ... we knew release was
imminent. You could tell by the food they started feeding
us -- sugar and stuff like that."
Asked if he ever suffered flashbacks, Johnson said, "People
tell me that we were not normal when we got back. I accused
them of being wrong for a long time. But looking back on
it, I think it took about a year to assimilate back into
society -- for some of the guys, more than that.
"You learn a lot about yourself and how to survive in a POW
camp," the congressman said. "Fortunately, we were able to
communicate a little bit by tapping on the wall using a
special tap code. So you knew other Americans were around,
even though you didn't see them.
"I committed, originally, about 374 names to memory just
from tapping on the wall. We were all trying to memorize
names in case anybody got out. So you knew the names, but
you didn't have any idea of what they looked like. Most of
the time, you never saw another American, except
occasionally through a crack in a door."
He said knowing other Americans were there "gave you a
backbone, and you knew you weren't there by yourself, even
though I was by myself."
He said he thought of his family all the time and hoped
they were all right. "My wife didn't know for two and a
half years that I was anything but MIA -- missing in
action," said Johnson. "Finally they told her that I was a
POW. Even then she didn't get any correspondence. Nor did
they let me write to her for about four years."
Johnson said he always felt he'd see his wife, Shirley, and
children again. The Johnsons today have three children, 10
grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
But back then, he said, there were guys who'd given up
hope. The other prisoners had a hard time keeping them
pumped up.
"We said our government would never leave us there,
although the Vietnamese tried to persuade us of that every
day," Johnson said. "That's why I've been fighting ever
since I've been in Congress as part of the POW/MIA
commission to make sure we never leave anybody behind."
He spoke briefly yesterday about what it was like as a POW, when Congress defunded the troops in Nam. This is going to be required listening. In the brief comments from yesterday, people were weeping openly behind him.
Those sitting in the House listening to him are not fit to shine this mans shoes.
Bless this man and his entire family. He is the epitome of patriotism and heroism.
Had to do a search to confirm my thoughts that he was indeed a Republican. Not mentioned of course in the article.
As much as I cannot stand McCain, the leadership he demonstrated while a POW was, in fact, quite heroic.
A more correct comment would be, "Johnson is a war hero, too."
Notice no mention that it is Sam Johnson (R)!
And to think there are folks here who want to now "normalize" relations with those people...
I don't know how to do links, but you might want to do a little checking as to just how much a "hero" McCain wasn't.
Three days in captivity, and he was ready to sell the US out. This was after only two missions. No hero to this Navy family!
I saw a clip of him speaking yesteday (segment on F&FR this morning)I sure hope the R's make sure it is primetime when he speaks. He will shame them into not voting for defunding.
Sre wish he would join us at The Gathering of Eagles on March 17th.
LOL!
What an impressive American. Its a shame, the congress critters could'nt learn a thing or two from this fine man.
He is my Congressman and lives in Plano Tx. I did some work on his house while he was away in Washington. I even spoke about an issue we were having with China with his wife. I believe it had to do with special trade status or something. She was very nice and explained Mr.Johnsons vote to me, very respectful. Their house is a very normal home built in the 70's or early 80's.
Since McC acknowledged giving ship positions in exchange for medical treatment I can not fault him, nor can I put him in the same hero category as this man.
The MSM medai doesnt even know who he is. They sure as hell know who John Murtha is. Murtha gets all the TV time he wants and this man is never on TV. Gee, I wonder why.
This man was quite active in the defeat of jon carry.
You can't fault who for giving up our ship's positions? McCain or Johnson?
I agree.
McCAIN gave up ship positions .....Johnson gave up no information despite horrific treatment.
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