Bloods (42 page)

And this guy jumps on me, straddling my back. And he puts his automatic weapon right behind my ear with my nose pretty much in the dirt. And I said to myself, you know, this man might even shoot me.

When we got to the vehicle, they had a cameraman there. And he wanted to take pictures of me walkin’ towards him. I wouldn’t do it. I’d frown up and fall on my knees and turn my back. Finally, they quit. They never took any pictures. And they got me in the jeep.

And I’m tired and sleepy. My elbows are still tied, so I can’t lean back. I kept nudging this guard back there with me, tryin’ to tell ’im to loosen the nylon cord. He keep saying, “No. No. No.” I was ornery. I tried to push him out of the jeep with my shoulders. He was sort of hangin’ off the side when he yells somethin’ to the guards up front. They were just constantly talkin’ and gigglin’. Then they told him to loosen my arms. The first place they tried to interrogate me appeared to be a secondary school. And they put me in this hut. I did what I was s’posed to do. Name, rank, serial number, date of birth. And I started talking about the Geneva Convention. And they said forget it. “You a criminal.”

It was about 500 people out in this schoolyard chattin’ Vietnamese. And the interrogator said they said, “Kill the Yankee.” I said, “Well, kill me. You are going to kill me sooner or later.” So we went round and round, and they got tired of it.

When they were taking me back to the jeep, a Vietnamese reached through a little circle of people around me and rubbed my hand, as if I’m s’posed to rub off on him. Well, all the bolts went forward on the rifles. I don’t know if the militia thought he was trying to stab me or what. But he just scooted down and went through the crowd like you see a snake go through the grass, just the top of the grass moving. I think if he’d been in the open, they probably would’ve shot him.

The next place I end up was Hoa Lo Prison, which we
called the Hanoi Hilton. The first place Americans were brought for serious interrogation and torture. They played rough. And they took me to a room with stucco walls. We called it the Knotty Room. It was about ten o’clock, and I still hadn’t eaten since I left the base.

They interrogatin’ me all night. Asking me military questions. “Who was in your squadron?” They brought in my maps, which they found where the airplane crashed. They didn’t have my point of departure. They didn’t have my point of return. I knew what the headings were in my head. They said I killed 30 people. I told them I didn’t hurt anybody. Then I made up stuff. I told them I was flying a RF-105. A reconnaissance plane for taking pictures. We don’t have any such airplane. We had the capability, but they never made it operational.

They said, “You no have RF-105s.”

I said, “We sure do. I had one.”

“How does it work?”

“I have no idea. The pilot push the button. Leave it on to where you s’posed to be. Then turns it off. That’s all the pilot knows. Okay?”

Some time later, I saw in one of their magazines a picture of the tail of a F-105, and it was called a RF-105. I thought it had to be mine. I don’t think anybody else told them that lie.

They would kick the chair out from under me and bang my head on the table. I thought, Damn, that shit really hurts. Then, I’d just relax and think of something pleasant. I would be still flying air-to-air combat. Anything far away from this. But I was totally exhausted, and my head would go down to sleep. And they would just pull it back up and bang it down.

Just before daybreak they took me to this cell. It had the biggest rats you ever saw in your life. They would gnaw through the bottom of the wooden door. And I was sleeping on a concrete floor. No blanket. Just my flight suit. After a few days, they gave me a mosquito net. And that was God’s gift to get that mosquito net.

Every morning they would take me to a place we called Heartbreak. These cells were their torture chambers. Built-in leg irons. And very high security.

At the time, James Stockdale and Duffy Hutton, Navy pilots, and Tom Curtis, an Air Force buddy, were in the camp. They were the first guys I made verbal communication with. They gave me the little bit of information they had acquired and told me to hang in there with the Code of Conduct.

I was taken to Cu Loc Prison—the Zoo—in southwest Hanoi on November 16. A Navy guy, Rodney Knutson, was in the cell next to me. In the morning and in the night one of us would tap one time and the other would answer with two taps. But I didn’t see any Americans until the twenty-seventh, when they brought in Porter Halyburton, a Navy lieutenant jg, who got shot down five days before me. He looked like a scared rabbit, like I did.

Hally was a Southerner, who went to Sewanee Military Academy in Tennessee and Davidson College in North Carolina. The guards knew I was from the South, too. They figured under those pressures we can’t possibly get along. A white man and a black man from the American South. And they got a long-term game to run.

At the time, Hally is a very handsome, young gent. Early twenties. Coal-black hair. And just what you expect a Frenchman would look like. I figured any white I saw in Vietnam other than our guys would be French. I thought he was a French spy put in my cell to bleed me of information.

He didn’t trust me either.

He had a problem believing that I fly. And a major, too. He hadn’t seen any black pilots in the Navy, and he didn’t know anything about the Air Force. They had told him in the Navy that one reason blacks couldn’t fly was ’cause they had a depth-perception problem.

For days we played games with each other. Feelin’ each other out. We would ask each other a question. And we both would lie. He would change the name of the ship he came from. I didn’t tell him much more than I told the Vietnamese, like I had flown out of South Vietnam. I figured he went back and told them the same lies I told him.

Finally, we got to the place where we could trust each other. It started when he told me about bathing. “When’s
the last time you bathed, washed up?”

I said, “Almost a month, I guess.”

“Well, you should go at least every three or four days. I’ll ask the guard.”

Then he taught me the code. The first series of taps was in a line, and the next series in the column. Well, I learned it in reverse.

Hally said, “What in the hell is that?”

And I got vindictive. “That’s what you told me.”

“You learned it outta phase.”

It didn’t take long to learn it right. It’s amazing how sharp the old mind gets when it doesn’t have a lot to do.

Then he slipped out and kinda whispered it to Knutson next door.

Our cell door opened onto a porch. Then it was left down a hallway. We had peepholes. And if you caught the guard just right, you could slip out. But before long, they did something about the peepholes.

In December my ankle had swollen so big they let somebody come put a cast on it. They didn’t x-ray it. But luckily it turned out okay. Only thing I haven’t had trouble with since. My wrist had healed by itself, but I was in constant pain with my shoulder.

Early in February, when the bombing paused and President Johnson sent his fourteen-point peace plan to President Ho Chi Minh, they decided to schedule those of us still laying around injured for operations in case peace came and we’d be goin’ home. On the ninth they operated on my shoulder and put me in a torso cast down to my hipline. But I didn’t get a penicillin pill or a shot.

Ho Chi Minh gave President Johnson a very definite negative. The U.S. and its lackeys should withdraw all their troops from South Vietnam and allow the Vietnamese people to settle their own affairs. They said that from day one, and they said it when we left. And they got just that.

When they decided that we weren’t going home, you were just left in the state that you were in. No medicine. No treatment. And I was in a bad state with this torso cast.

After a while, the incisions got infected. There are sores all over my body, and the pus is caking up. By early
March, I’m just phasin’ in and out. I’m totally immobile.

Hally was feeding me. And he always made me welcome to any part of his food. If he thought I’d want the greens out of his soup, he’d give them to me. After I got really bad, they gave me sugar for energy. It was really something desired by all of us. Put it on the bread, and it would taste pretty good. Hally had the opportunity to eat the sugar himself, but he didn’t.

I don’t know why, but I would dream then about vanilla wafers and canned peaches. I just felt like it would be the best thing to taste in the world.

I couldn’t stand up. Hally would take me to the wash area, hold me against the wall while he manipulated his towel, wet it, soap it, and wash my whole body. I was an invalid.

I would tell him when I had to go to the bucket. He’d put me on the edge of the bunk. Lean me back so I wouldn’t pass out. And sturdy me over the bucket until I do what I had to do.

He’d take whatever clothes he had to make me a doughnut to sleep on. Naturally it got covered with the drainage he would have to wash out. And the room smelled like hell. Oh, terrible. And Hally had to keep the wounded side of me by the window to try to keep some of the smell out.

I was just lying there dying.

And in the delirium I was having illusions like you can’t believe.

I just would leave my body.

I would go right through the wall.

One time, when I was coherent, I told Hally, “We have B-58s in the war now.” I had been on a mission in a B-58 the night before. “They gave me an air medal, but I told them to give it to Jerry Hopper, another guy in the squadron. I told ’em I have enough.”

Hally says, “That right?”

“Yes. The war’ll be over soon.”

Another time I left my body and went into town. Before then, when they moved you, it was in blindfolds. And if you could peek, you couldn’t tell much ’cause it was at night. But the first time I was able to see anything in daylight in Hanoi, I recognized a stream, bridges, and
other things I saw when I left my body.

Then my temperature really got high. I was just burning. I wasn’t eating anything. My body was eating itself. And I found myself in this little, sorta greasy-spoon restaurant, we would call it. It was in South Vietnam. I was hungry, and this Vietnamese lady was frying pork chops on this vertical grill. I’m just waiting to get my order to eat. And this little fella comes in and says he’s from somewhere just in the middle of North Vietnam. Says he was at a radar site, and he took care of the air conditioning. I told him I’m a prisoner and I have to go back to North Vietnam. And I said I’m having problems with my air conditioning. He said he’d see what he could do for me when he got back to the radar base.

Well, I wake up. Sorta come around. And I think I’m dying. I just can’t stand the heat. I open my eyes, and I see right up on my chest two little men, ’bout a foot high. Big eyes and big heads. They are dark, but I can’t make out their features. Their hands are almost normal size. And I see them working around my chest. To me, it’s my air conditioning. Just every few seconds I say, “Please hurry.” Then my temperature would break. And I would think, Thank God they did it in time.

And I’m scared the guards will see them and take them away. I can’t raise up to look for them, so I call Hally. “Did you see anything off the end of the bunk?”

“Like what?”

“Well, do you see anything?”

“No.”

“ ’Bout time for the guard, isn’t it? You don’t see anything look like little men?”

He looks again. “No. I don’t see anything.”

Hally didn’t say, “Fred, have you gone crazy?” He was really cool. He accepted these little men and pretended they kept my air conditioning going.

Finally, on March 18, they took me to the hospital to take the cast off. I was down from 135 pounds to 80 pounds. When the guys in the camp saw ’em take me on a stretcher, they said, “He’s gone. We’ll never see Fred alive again.”

When they took the cast off, a lot of skin came off with it. Then they washed me down with gasoline out of a beer
bottle. That was ’bout the pits. I passed out from the fumes. I think my pulse stopped, because when I came to, they were slapping my arteries. Then they gave me a blood transfusion, fed me intravenously, and sent my butt right back to Hally.

The cast is off, but I’m still opened up. The flesh is draining away. The bed sores are opened up, 6, 7 inches up my back. Hally keeps my shoulder wrapped, but it’s still smellin’.

On April 10, they finally operated. I was so weak they kept me there 22 days. They put me in a little damp room at the end of a hallway, away from everybody. The guard would bring me food twice a day, but he didn’t particularly wanna feed me. I couldn’t move my hands. I’m all hooked up. But these two teenage girls who cleaned the rooms would bring me fruit and candy. One would watch for the guard, while the other would take a whole banana and just stick it down my mouth. And when they gave me hard candy, they would try to tell me, don’t let it get stuck in your throat.

After a while, I started to get a bad infection again. I mean really bad. It looks like gangrene is settin’ in. So they decide to take me and John Pitchford—I think he got shot in the arm—to the hospital for an operation. It’s the night of July 6, when they took everybody else to march down the streets of Hanoi.

This time there was no anesthetic. They just took a scalpel and cut away the dead flesh, scraped at the infection on the bones. I knew about what they should have to do, so I knew they were makin’ it more painful than necessary, being very sadistic. I couldn’t believe that a human being s’posed to be practicin’ medicine was doing this.

Well, I knew they wanted me to cry out. Like a test of wills. We gon’ break him.

Balls of perspiration was poppin’ off me. Size of your fingertips. I was totally dehydrated. It was the worst straight pain I had yet known.

They had my face covered with a sheet. And they kept raising it to see if I’m going to beg for mercy, going to scream.

And each time they looked down at me, I would look
at them and smile.

They kept at it for three hours. And I kept thinkin’, I can take it.