Two Souls Indivisible Read online

  "What type of blood do you need?" his captor asked.

  "A positive," Halyburton said.

  Wrong! Halyburton was reprimanded for revealing his blood type; it was outside the code.

  Halyburton thought this hard-line approach was silly. His blood type, for example, was no secret—it was already noted on his dog tags, his military identification card, and his Geneva Convention card. He agreed that no prisoner should make statements disloyal to his country or reveal relevant military information. But why shouldn't a prisoner disclose, say, his medical needs or agree to write a letter home if its contents conveyed information about his status? Halyburton believed such communications were acceptable. The real issue was how strictly should one follow the code in light of threats or torture? How much pain should one endure before cooperating with the enemy, and would such compromises constitute treason? What was more important—honor to country or to life itself?

  For Halyburton as well as Cherry, these questions were no longer hypothetical.

  Torture had previously been applied to punish only the most recalcitrant prisoners; but now, for at least a year beginning in the summer of 1966, it would be used indiscriminately. The Vietnamese, embarrassed by the Hanoi march but still determined to press criminal charges, wanted to wring out "confessions" that would confirm the aviators' illegal actions while acknowledging their captors' humane treatment. Even if the Vietnamese recognized the obvious—that coerced statements would be ignored by any legitimate court and discounted by world opinion—they still had propaganda value for the Communists' efforts to rally their own people to their revolutionary cause.

  Immediately after the Hanoi march, North Vietnam broadcast over the radio several "confessions" or "apologies" allegedly issued by Americans. In one, Navy Commander James Mulligan was quoted as saying:

  This war in Vietnam has no appeal for me for it was an unjust war against a people who never did anything to the detriment of the U.S. interests. My military obligation forces me to participate in this war; many other military men share this same attitude ... For my own crime I beg your forgiveness and request that you treat me humanely and allow me to have some part in ending this dirty war waged by our government.

  The Communists would go on to seek similar statements from almost all POWs.

  After Halyburton departed, Cherry remained at the Zoo and was eventually moved into a building called the Barn. His roommates were two experienced Air Force majors: Lawrence Guarino, a firebrand from New Jersey who was forty-three when he was shot down in 1965 and who spearheaded much of the prisoner resistance with his hard-line opposition; and Ronald Byrne, a Korean War veteran from New York who combined a strong religious faith with a sense of duty. The three men lived together during the early days of another campwide purge, fueled by U.S. bombings. The crackdown included twice-daily room searches, beatings over such infractions as improperly folding one's bedding, and bare-knuckle quizzes.

  Cherry did not appear to be in bad shape until he took off his shirt and shoulder bandage. Then he revealed a quarter-size hole oozing fluid—the color of "pale strawberries," Byrne said—and, beneath that, muscle tissue. According to Guarino, the shoulder "had no muscle tissue left and looked like a wire clothes hanger." Cherry explained the history of the injury; Byrne, incredulous, asked how he had survived.

  With his typical stoicism, Cherry initially said, "This is the way things are, and that's the way things have to be." But he also talked about Halyburton's contributions in sustaining him throughout his near-death drama—demanding medical help, dragging him around the floor to keep him alive, feeding and bathing him. "I was down to eighty-five pounds," Cherry said. "If it wasn't for Porter, I wouldn't be here."

  On August 15, Guarino was taken in for interrogation, and when he returned he said, "We're going into torture."

  Cherry was then taken into interrogation. "You have a bad attitude, and you disobey camp regulations," Dum Dum said. "You communicate with other criminals. You must be punished. You must have 'iron discipline.'"

  He was returned to a small building called the Gym, where Guarino and Byrne had already been taken, and the guards dragged in manacles and leg irons for each man. When they tried to clasp Cherry's wrists behind his back, his left arm could not be twisted up and back. He screamed while Byrne yelled, "No! No! No! You'll break it!" The guards, agreeing, used nylon rope instead, still tying his wrists behind his back but without twisting them. Because the rope could be untied by a cellmate, Cherry was returned to his previous cell, where the leg irons were slapped on.

  He was alone, released twice a day to eat and wash but otherwise tied up and locked in. When he refused to confess his crimes or condemn his government, he suffered the "fan belt treatment," in which a guard beat him with bamboo or strips of rubber, raising welts on his back.

  He had no place to go and no one to speak with. He wouldn't cooperate with the Vietnamese but treated them as he did the bigots at home. He was firm but not antagonistic, using humility as a defensive maneuver. When an interrogator demanded that he write something, Cherry said, "I wouldn't ask you to do this. Why are you asking me?" He told them they were both military men and that this was not the way soldiers treat each other. His strategy was to avoid writing that first word, which could lead to a stream of regrettable statements. The Vietnamese, of course, did all they could to prompt that first word by asking innocuous questions.

  "What do you do for Easter?" the interrogator asked.

  Cherry picked up the pen and drew eggs and children, but he never wrote any words.

  Cherry used his race to his advantage, playing ignorant, agreeing that black Americans received poor educations, and saying that he simply didn't know enough to answer questions about his government or the war. "I've been out of the limelight of things," he said.

  For ninety-three days, Cherry mostly sat on his bed board, chained and tied like an animal. In his frail condition, any mistreatment constituted torture. Guarino wrote in his official report: "Taking advantage of his disabilities ... the Vietnamese put Major Cherry in leg irons and then tied his arms together. This comparatively low-key method of coercion nearly cost Major Cherry his life because it aggravated his wound considerably."

  During the ordeal, American prisoners in an adjacent room heard soft bumps through the wall and recognized the tap code. The noise came from Cherry's cell, but how could he tap with his legs and arms bound? They figured it out: Cherry was knocking his head against the cement wall, and his message was not idle chatter but important information about enemy tactics. As Air Force Captain Bob Lilly, in a nearby cell, later wrote: Cherry's words described "what the V wanted and how he was avoiding giving it to them. It was important to the rest of us to know what was working and what was not. Any insight into what they were after helped prepare a defense."

  Lilly wasn't surprised. When Cherry roomed with Halyburton, Lilly had heard Fred struggling to breathe while Porter tapped updates on his condition. But now Cherry's resilience and resourcefulness—his ability to endure unimaginable pain, defy his captors, and still assist fellow prisoners—took on a mythic, superhuman quality.

  "The V were demanding all would write a biography which would lead to confessions of crimes," Lilly recalled. "All eventually wrote something, except Fred. To my knowledge, he never gave in and wrote what the V wanted. [When] the V finally realized he was going to die before he would write, they let him off the hook. This is the only time that I know of that anyone outlasted the V ... Fred did not comply and he did not die or lose his mind. In so doing, he became a legend to the POWs."

  After leaving Cherry, Halyburton was blindfolded and driven to a mountainous region near the town of Xom Ap Lo, thirty-five miles west of Hanoi. He thought he had already seen the worst Vietnamese prisons, but he was about to discover a new standard of primitive living. The compound was configured like a tic-tac-toe grid, with high concrete walls enclosing nine different brick buildings, each with four tiny cells, about eight feet s
quare. A built-in bed board and a narrow foxhole, dug out in case of an air raid, left little open floor space. There was no electricity, no plumbing, no place to walk around, and no medic. Meals consisted of rice, the summer heat turned the cells into steam baths, and the prison's remote location attracted the surliest guards, who could punish inmates without restraint. The Americans had a fitting name for this slice of hell: the Briarpatch.

  Halyburton was often handcuffed, given just enough slack to relieve himself. The dark cell obscured alien matter in his food, including the cockroach he once bit. The foxhole bred mosquitoes. At one point he developed a bad cold and used a small towel as a handkerchief. Unable to wash it, he hung up the mucus-covered cloth at night so the ants would clean it off.

  Hygiene, however, was the least of his problems. The Vietnamese introduced a Make Your Choice program; the Americans could "choose" cooperation or defiance. One would lead to good treatment and possibly early release; the other, to torture and possibly death. This style of interrogation had already been used on Halyburton; his answers would determine if he were sent to "a better place or worse place." The main differences now were that the Vietnamese wanted damning statements that could be used against America in a public forum, and they were willing to inflict far greater punishment to extort them.

  The Briarpatch commander, whose accent earned him the nickname Frenchy, carried out the program with gusto. He was assisted by certain guards, such as McGoo and Slugger, who would force prisoners to run barefoot and blindfolded through the compound or would drag them with a noose around their neck. Even a "chow girl" nicknamed Flower demanded bows from the Americans. But the most notorious interrogator was Bug, also called Mr. Blue for the color of his uniform. Mr. Blue was short and fat, his wandering right eye—clouded white by a cataract—evoking scorn and terror. He was also emotionally combustible, constantly jabbing his right index finger and harping, "You have murder my mother."

  He began his torture sessions with Air Force Captain Paul Kari and proceeded through the ranks. J. B. McKamey. Everett Alvarez. Tom Barrett. Scotty Morgan. All were brutalized, their screams heard day and night. Halyburton heard the cries, and when he was called, he was terrified.

  Sitting behind a felt-covered table, Bug was waiting for him when he entered. The American sat on a stool as two guards stood nearby. Bug placed a piece of paper in front of Halyburton and demanded that he write his confession of war crimes as well as his biography. "It's time for you to choose," he said.

  Halyburton had been given instructions on how to respond to such a threat. Lieutenant Colonel Risner had issued an order that the Americans should resist to the utmost, give as little as possible, and then recover to resist again—a variation on the Code that acknowledged the Americans' dire circumstances. Halyburton was determined to follow these instructions, and he prayed for the strength to endure.

  His training, his background, and his sense of honor gave him his own code of conduct: he would rather die than give in. He believed that resistance, however painful, was fundamental to the morale and unity of the group, and that failure to resist was equivalent to collaboration with the enemy. If you didn't accept torture, you were a disgrace to all the POWs.

  He also remembered his experience with Fred Cherry. He had seen how much Fred had suffered without complaint, and he would never want to fall short of that example or feel that he had given less than his friend.

  "It's time for you to choose," Bug repeated.

  "I'm not going to work against my government," Halyburton said.

  Bug made his demand again and received the same response. His anger rose and one eye went "buggy," moving out of sync with the other. Sometimes interrogators would pretend to be outraged, but not Bug. Halyburton knew that he may have been a psychopath, but at least he was sincere. "Life will be very different for you now," Bug said. He signaled to the guards and left the room.

  The guards knocked Halyburton off the stool and, sitting on the ground, forced him to lean forward with his legs straight out. They pulled his arms behind his back, tied his wrists together with rope, and lifted them straight up. At first he tried to deflect the pain by recalling soothing moments, like running on the beach or dancing with Marty. But the stretching felt as if his body were being torn apart. Pain shot through his shoulders, elbows, wrists, and back. At one point, he could see his fingertips over his head. He screamed.

  With his arms still behind his back, the guards slapped a pair of "ratchet cuffs" on his wrists and slid them down his forearms. Normally, the short chain linking the cuffs would fall between the wrists, but the guards attached the cuffs so that the chain wrapped around the outside, a technique designed to intensify the pain by putting extreme pressure on his twisted forearms. Then the guards placed him in leg irons and draped a rope around his neck, which was used to tie his head to the irons. Pulling the rope forced Halyburton to bend even farther, inflicting greater stress on his body and further tightening the cuffs around his forearms. His body was being torn apart, the cuffs seeming to cut through to the bone. The guards then released the first rope around his wrists, but the movement of his contorted arms returning to their normal position caused the rigid cuffs to twist more deeply into his skin and bone. He groaned, screamed, saw white. He prayed and held out for several hours, his assailants manipulating the ropes and cuffs, the pain coming in waves and sunbursts. It was the torturer's ultimate cunning: the victim could neither die nor stop the pain. Halyburton could take no more.

  "Bow cow! Bow cow!" he yelled, indicating he was ready to talk to an English-speaking guard. Bug came in but was not ready to stop.

  "You have not been punished enough," he said.

  He tipped Halyburton over, stomped on his cuffs, and left. Hatred for Bug welled up inside Halyburton. His wrists were now numb except for nerves that ran along the side of each arm. The nerves felt as if hot lead were coursing through them. In fact, he swore he could see the molten lead flowing from his arms to his fingers, each drop creating more traumas. He feared that he would lose the use of his hands.

  He was surrounded by anguish. He heard Navy Commander James Bell being tortured a few cells away, yelling for God to kill him. As Halyburton's own suffering intensified, he began to have the same feeling—he wanted to die. At one point, he wanted to knock himself out by banging his head against the cement floor, but he didn't have the strength or mobility.

  Those reactions were typical among the Briarpatch victims. Both Navy Lieutenant Phil Butler and Navy Lieutenant Commander Robert Shumaker, finding their "hell cuffs" intolerable, tried to commit suicide by bashing their heads against the stone wall, while Ralph Gaither, who suffered lasting nerve damage in his hands, described his torture as "unspeakable agony of the soul."

  Several hours after Halyburton had been knocked over, Bug returned and asked if he was ready to write, and the American said yes. His cuffs were taken off around dawn, but he couldn't move his hands until the afternoon. Even when he was ready to write, he wasn't ready to give in. He is left-handed, but he wrote with his right hand so someone reading it might conclude it was a forgery. He wasn't concerned about the biography; the Vietnamese already knew a good deal about him, probably from a news article. So he disclosed information they already had—that he had gone to Davidson College and that he was in VF 84 Squadron. The interrogators made him rewrite his draft several times, and Halyburton realized that what he wrote didn't matter—they just wanted to assert their authority. In fact, most POWs recognized that the Vietnamese would accept virtually any story, however ridiculous, as legitimate. One Briarpatch captive, Air Force Captain Kile Berg, spoke so convincingly of Batman and Robin that his captors asked where the crimefighters lived and what political party they belonged to.

  Halyburton was more concerned about his confession. He knew the Vietnamese were considering charging the Americans with war crimes, and he feared that a statement could be used against him. Halyburton rewrote his confession four or five times, believing he found a w
ay to give his adversaries what they wanted while still protecting himself: "If my country has committed war crimes and this is an illegal war, then as part of the armed forces I am guilty as well." He believed that his use of the word "if" indicated that he himself did not accept that America had committed any such crimes.

  While he may have won a rhetorical victory, he was still devastated by his capitulation. He knew he had done his best, and he knew that the U.S. military would not hold him accountable for his statements. But he believed he had let down the other prisoners, and so his resistance, however determined, had fallen short. This psychological blow was far greater than the physical injury. "It was about the worst time of my whole life," he said years later, "because I knew I had failed."

  He felt somewhat better after tapping to Howie Dunn, who assured him that he was not a traitor and that he had tried his best. Moreover, he learned that most of the senior officers, including Jerry Denton, Robinson Risner, and James Stockdale, all men he deeply admired, had also given statements. That helped him begin to come to terms with his own sense of defeat. But for all the tortured prisoners who ultimately complied, the feeling of loss never completely faded. John McCain, the Navy lieutenant commander who became a U.S. senator, wrote of his own experience:

  I couldn't rationalize away my confession. 1 was ashamed. I felt faithless, and couldn't control my despair. I shook, as if my disgrace were a fever ... Many guys broke at one time or another. I doubt if anyone ever gets over it entirely. There is never enough time or distance between the past or the present to allow one to forget his shame. I am recovered now from that period of intense despair. But I can summon up its feeling in an instant whenever I let myself remember the day.

  Halyburton was tortured twice more, though he withheld compliance for shorter periods of time. Once he gave a statement about his missions, the other time an apology to the Vietnamese people that began: "If I have caused any damage..." After two months his torture was over; the Vietnamese probably decided they had extracted as much as they could from a junior officer.