this is a must read or re-read.
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Word from another POW to KERRY.....
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I RETURNED FROM Vietnam on March 7, 1973, my 40th birthday. I tape-recorded my entire experience. It was a way of putting the events of the past behind me. I had long since realized that each POW's experience was unique. The only description that seemed to fit the group as a whole was "absolute boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror."
I was never tortured in the presence of another POW; however, I was tortured numerous times. I was never interrogated in the presence of another POW, but I was interrogated many times. My position--to stick to the facts only as I knew them--was right then, and it's right now.
When I was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, I didn't know John Kerry. From my viewpoint he would have been just one of the rabble, one of the Jane Fonda anti-war group whose actions I consider treasonous. My mother had said to me in plain, easily understood terms, "You are known by the company you keep."
While I was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, enduring torture and deprivation, the activities of John Kerry and the groups with whom he associated were jeopardizing my life and my hope of someday returning to my family.
Why do I come forth now to oppose John Kerry? When the Democratic Party chose as their candidate for president and commander in chief of our armed forces an opportunist who, after an unprecedented short tour in Vietnam, associated himself with a group of anti-war activists whose actions bordered on treason, and who personally defiled the name and reputation of the American fighting man, I could no longer remain silent.
I graduated from Annapolis High School in 1951, enlisted in the Air Force and applied for the Aviation Cadet Program in 1952. I completed the training in 1954, earned my wings, and was commissioned a second lieutenant.
Our military family
Near the completion of my advanced training at Nellis Air Force Base, I married my childhood sweetheart, Barbara Ann Truslow, in the base chapel so that we might travel concurrently to my next assignment at Sidi Slimane Air Base, Morocco.
Our daughter Nina was born in Morocco in 1956, daughter Roseleen in France in 1957, daughter Donna in Georgia in 1958, and our sons Ross and Samuel in North Carolina in 1960 and 1962.
Our next overseas assignment was Bitburg Air Base, Germany, in 1963. I volunteered for Vietnam in 1966. I settled my family in Unionville on my way to Southeast Asia.
This is part of my Vietnam experience.
On my 75th mission over North Vietnam I was shot down by anti-aircraft fire. My aircraft was on fire, and I was forced to eject over the Gulf of Tonkin. I was plucked out of the water by a Marine helicopter. The Marines put me down on the aircraft carrier Constellation and, after spending the night, I was flown to Da Nang.
I hitched a ride back to my base, flew three local orientation missions with pilots new to the area, and was shot down again by anti-aircraft fire about 25 miles north of the DMZ on my next combat mission. I was captured about 15 minutes after hitting the ground and so began a 61/2-year ordeal as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.
The trip to Hanoi, tied to the side of a truck, took a total of 10 days. My first introduction to the "irons- and-rope trick" was on the way to Hanoi. The first night, the biggest Vietnamese I had ever seen actually broke the rope applying the torture. Embarrassed, they left and returned the next night with a new rope. (For a detailed description of the "irons-and-rope" methods of torture, go to stolen honor.com.)
When I could no longer stand the pain and feared I would lose the use of my hands, I cried out and then lied when answering their questions.
Heartbreak Hotel
While I was in "Heartbreak Hotel," things happened to me that both lifted and dashed my spirits. I was taken to an interrogation in the knobby room and left alone. Suddenly a voice that sounded like someone in the same room said, "Hello, Air Force, this is Robinson Risner. Don't believe anything you read."
I was tortured when I refused to write a letter saying the war was wrong. I was put in wrist irons behind my back, sat on a stool, and told that I would sit there until I wrote the letter. I lived an eternity between each 15-minute tolling of a clock located somewhere outside the prison.
My irons were removed twice daily so that I could eat and relieve myself. The pain of the circulation returning to my hands and the pain of my swollen wrist being caught in the irons as they were put back on was rivaled only by the pain of not being able to relieve myself for 18 hours.
On the evening of the third day on the stool, I noticed the tiles in the floor had detailed biblical scenes etched in them. The next morning, when I opened my eyes after a cat nap, the floor looked like it was made of peanut brittle. I told the guard that I would write the letter. I had been forced to write something that would probably make me throw up if I read it today.
In the process of writing the letter, I found the instructions for the tap code written in the middle of the table. It had been written there, at great risk, by a fellow POW. I was being kept in solitary confinement and being able to communicate was a great morale boost.
One evening, when I was living in the pig sty at the farm, a guard came to my cell and took me to the headquarters building. The officer there told me that the camp authorities were allowing me to see a delegation.
One of the things that struck fear in my heart was to hear that there was a delegation in town. To me that meant someone was going to get busted up.
Unwelcome delegations
I told the officer that I was his prisoner and that I had no control over where he took me, but that I did not want to see a delegation. He replied, "You are breaking the camp regulations, and you will be severely punished." Breaking the camp regulations was not doing anything you were told to do. I said, "I am not breaking the camp regulations" to no avail.
He ordered me to hold up the wall and said that I would stay there until I decided to obey the camp regulations. Several hours later, a guard came and took me back to my cell.
The next day I was taken to an interrogation with a different interrogator. We went through the same process about seeing a delegation. He, of course, said that I was breaking the camp regulations. He then picked up a letter he had on the table and held it so that I could see that it was from my wife. I had, at that point, not received a letter from my wife. He dropped the letter on the table, ordered me to hold up the wall until I decided to see a delegation and then left me alone in the room with the letter.
I was being set up, and I knew it. Had I tried to read the letter, there would have been a swarm of Vietnamese back in the room, and I would have been severely punished.
After several hours, a guard came and took me back to my cell. Why I lucked out I will never know. Most likely, the delegation had already left town.
NORMAN L. WELLS, who lives in Locust Grove, retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel.
Message 20610106 |
