Replies

GOD BLESS AMERICA
Tomorrow is POW/MIA DAY

Headline—March 3- 1973:

U. S. Forces Out of Vietnam;

Hanoi Frees the Last P.O.W.

JULY1973

The Secret of Our Survival by Capt. James E. Ray, former POW

Pssst, I struggled upright on the damp pallet in my solitary cell to hear better. It had sounded like a whisper.

No, I must have been hallucinating. I slumped back, wondering how long it had been since my 105 Thunderchief had been shot down as we bombed a railroad bridge on the Hanoi—China supply line.

That was May 8,1966. I tried to forget the weeks since, the endless interrogations, the torture that left me screaming in agony

Now I wish I had gone down with the plane. Anything would be better than the desolation, the awful sense of guilt at writing a confession under torture, the aloneness.

There! I heard it again. Now an unmistakable, “Hey, buddy?”

I scrambled flat on the floor and peered through the crack under the door. I was in one of the many cells facing a walled courtyard. The whisper had come from the next cell. I whispered back. He introduced himself as Bob Purcell, another Air Force man. We waited as the guard passed and then began to converse.

Soon all the prisoners on that yard were whispering. We started by learning about each other, where we were from, our families. One day I asked Bob what church he went to.

“Catholic,” he said. “And you?”
“Baptist.”

Bob was quiet for a moment, as if my mention of church evoked deep memories. Then he asked, “Do you know any Bible verses?”
“Well, the Lord’s Prayer,” I answered.
“Everyone knows that.”
“How about the twenty-third psalm?”
“Only a little.”

I began whispering it. He’d repeat each line after me. A little later he whispered the entire psalm back to me.

Other prisoners joined in, sharing verses they knew. Through these contacts a fellowship grew among us. The others said that I shouldn’t feel bad about “confessing” under torture. “We’ve all done it,” they assured me. I didn’t feel so alone anymore.

As the number of prisoners grew, two of us shared a cell. My first roommate was Larry Chesley, a Mormon from Idaho. Though we had a few differences of belief, our common denominators were the Bible and Jesus Christ, and we were able to share much Scripture.

For by now it had become vital to our daily existence. Often racked with dysentery weakened by the diet of rice and thin soups, our physical lives had shrunk within the prison walls. We spent 20 hours a day locked in our cells. And those Bible verses became rays of light, constant assurances of His love and care.

We made ink from brick dust and water or drops of medicine. We’d write verses on bits of toilet paper and pass them behind a loose brick at the toilets.

It was dangerous to pass these on. Communication between cells was forbidden and a man unlucky enough to be caught passing a note would be forced to stand with his arms up against a wall for several days, without sleep.

But the urge to share developed inventiveness. One night I lay with my ear pressed against the wooden wall of my cell to hear Thump... thump as somewhere on the wall, cells away, a fellow POW tapped out in Morse code: “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” (Psalm 121:1)

He tapped out his name—Russ Temperly—and passed on the seven other verses in that psalm, which I scratched on the concrete floor with a piece of broken tile.

By 1968, more of us were squeezed together and for two years four of us lived in an eight-by-eight-foot cell. In this close proximity, even minor personality rubs could flare into violent explosions. For instance, one guy liked to whistle. Talk about getting on your nerves! Some of the verses that helped us bear with one another were from Romans: “Every man among you is not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think....” (12:3—5)

Only by following Christ’s teachings in constant forgiveness, patience and understanding were we able to get along together. The whistler? We recommended a schedule for when he should whistle.

Two and a half years went by before I could write my parents. A year later, I was allowed to receive my first letter. In the meantime, we subsisted on letters written 2,000 years ago.

By late 1970, almost all of the American POWs had been moved to Ha Lo, the main prison in downtown Hanoi. Newspapers later called this the Hanoi Hilton; we called it Heartbreak Hotel.

Some 50 of us lived, ate and slept together in one large room. Thanksgiving came shortly after we moved in and we held a brief service. We all were surprised to find how many of the men knew Scripture, learned from those verses passed along in whispers, bits of paper and wall thumpings. We immediately made plans for a Christmas service. A committee was formed and started to work.

Bits of green and red thread decorated the walls, a piece of green cloth was draped like a tree. Our crèche was made of figures carved from soap rations or molded from papier-mâché of moistened toilet paper.

We pooled the verses we knew and we now had a “consensus Bible,” written covertly on bits of paper. It was the only Bible we had. As we sat in silence, the reader began: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled....” A six-man choir sang Oh Little Town ofBethlehem.

He went on: “And she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes....” “Away in the manger no crib for His bed, our Little Lord Jesus lay down His sweet head....” sang the choir.

Once again, I was a youngster in Sunday school at the First Baptist Church. Time had rolled back for all of us grizzled men in prison pajamas as, with eyes shining and tears trickling through beards, we joined in the singing. Glinting in the light from the kerosene lamp was a cross made of silver foil.

Occasionally, the guards would knock on the door, ordering us not to sing; but they finally gave up. Our program continued into a communion service led by Air Force Lt. Tom Moe. A Lutheran, he sang his church’s chants as Episcopalians, Methodists and men of other denominations bowed their heads together.

Later that night, after many months of our asking, the commander brought us a real Bible, the first any of us had seen in prison. He said we could keep it for one hour. We made the best of it. One of us read aloud the favorite passages called out by the others. We also checked some of our handwritten Scripture. Amazingly, we weren’t far off.

We didn’t see that King James version again for several months. Finally, after continual requests, one of us was allowed to go out and copy from it for “one hour” each week.

But when we’d start to copy, the interrogator would plant his elbow on the Bible for 15 minutes. Then, after he’d let us start, he’d ask mundane questions to distract us. I’d just ignore him and write as fast as I could. The next week, we’d have to return the previous week’s copy work. They seemed to be afraid for us to keep the Scriptures, as if they sensed the spiritual help kept us from breaking.

From that, we learned a most important lesson. Bible verses on paper aren’t one iota as useful as Scriptures burned into your mind where you can draw on them for comfort.

After five weeks, we didn’t see the Bible again. But that had been enough time for us to memorize collectively the Sermon on the Mount, Romans 12, First Corinthians 13, and many of the psalms. Now we had our own “living Bible,” walking around the room. By this time, too, we held Sunday worship services and Sunday school classes. Some of the “eat, drink and be merry” type fighter pilots took part; some of them contributing as much to the services as the guys who had always professed to be Christians.

We learned to rise above our surroundings, to overcome the material with the spiritual. In constantly exercising our minds, we developed teaching seminars in which we studied special subjects led by men experienced in various fields. These included learning Spanish, French, German, Russian. I particularly enjoy music and will never forget the music course.

Bill Butler, the leader of this program, drew a giant-sized piano keyboard on the floor with brick dust. Then, standing on a “key,” one assistant would hum its note. Other assistants, up the keyboard, hummed each note of the chord which was being demonstrated, while Bill explained how chord progression works.

Two years passed this way at Heartbreak Hotel, years of continuing degradation, sickness, endless hunger and never knowing whether we’d see home again. But instead of going mad or becoming animals, we continued to grow as a community of men, sustaining one another in compassion and understanding.

For as one of the. verses I heard thumped out on the wall one night said: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)

His Word became our rock.