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JAMES S. HIRSCH is a former reporter for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and he is author of ten books, including biographies of Willie Mays and Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.
 

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Two Souls Indivisible

The Friendship That Saved Two POWs in VietnamBy James S. Hirsch

Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright © 2005 James S. Hirsch
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780618562107
1
"Better Place, Worse Place"

"Better place, worse place."
Eagle slammed the notebook closed and gave the young
American prisoner of war an ultimatum: talk to him and be taken to a camp
where he could be with his buddies or refuse to cooperate and be taken to a
place where he would suffer. Captured only a few days earlier, U.S. Navy
Lieutenant (junior grade) Porter Halyburton didn"t know the consequences if
he continued to withhold military information. He was already locked inside
North Vietnam"s notorious Hoa Lo Prison, dubbed "the Hanoi Hilton" by the
Americans, a forbidding trapezoidal structure with thick outer walls topped by
barbed wire and jagged glass. Years of urine, blood, and vomit permeated the
rotting crevices. The food included chicken feet and bread so moldy that it
had begun to ferment. Even the prison"s name suggested its hellishness —
Hoa Lo (pronounced "wa-low") means "fiery furnace" in Vietnamese.
Whatever was "worse" would certainly be terrible, Halyburton
thought, but still not as abhorrent as assisting the enemy.
At twenty-four, Halyburton was one of the younger American
POWs in Vietnam. His six-foot frame, short brown hair, and wholesome good
looks fit the prototype of the dashing "fighter jock," whose love of danger and
combat had been immortalized in .lm and literature. But Halyburton was also
introspective and artistic, the product of a small college town that had
nurtured his intellectual and creative pursuits. He wrote poems, carved
wooden statues, and read widely on history and culture. He was also a family
man, having married his college sweetheart. The couple"s baby daughter was
born four weeks before he left for Vietnam.
He was lucky to be alive. On October 17, 1965, his F-4 Phantom
jet was shot down forty miles northeast of Hanoi, killing the pilot in a fiery
explosion. Halyburton, the "backseat" navigator, ejected without injury.
Among many combat aviators, it was an article of faith that they would rather
die instantly in a crash than be caught by the enemy. Halyburton believed
otherwise, but he soon realized that the price of survival would be high.
Immediately after his capture he was sent to Hoa Lo, where his
cell, seven feet by six, had a boarded window, a single dim light bulb, and a
concrete bed with leg irons. Cockroaches darted through the cells, and rats,
some over a foot long, prowled the premises, lending evidence to a postwar
POW study that noted, "After sundown, rats and mice literally took over
North Vietnam." Scribbled across the faded whitewashed walls were
Vietnamese letters, but so too was something more comforting — the name
of an American, Ron Storz. Halyburton wasn"t isolated or completely
deprived; he could whisper to Americans in adjoining cells and was allowed
to shower. Interrogations became a part of daily life: he was questioned by
Colonel Nam, a gray-haired Vietnamese commander called Eagle for his
authoritarian manner. Using passable English, he offered Halyburton the
carrot or the stick. It was his choice.
"Better place, worse place," Eagle intoned repeatedly.
Halyburton only disclosed the information prescribed by the Code
of Conduct for captured American servicemen: "Porter Halyburton," he
said. "Lieutenant j.g., 617514, 16 January 1941."
Further "quizzes," as they were called, produced the same
response, so after two weeks a guard went to Halyburton"s cell one night,
blindfolded and handcuffed him, and walked him to a truck, which rumbled a
couple of miles to the outskirts of Hanoi. He was left at the Cu Loc Prison,
believed to be a former French .lm studio where the grounds were still littered
with old film cans, ducks and chickens roamed, and mosquitoes buzzed. A
large putrid swimming pool lay thick with water, dirt, garbage, and fish that
the Vietnamese guards raised for food. When Halyburton was pushed into his
pitch-black cell, he pressed his hands against the walls to discover its
dimensions. The room, though relatively large — each wall was fifteen feet
long — was indeed worse than his previous cell. There was no bed, no light,
its window was bricked up, and it smelled of wet concrete. But at least
Halyburton could still use a tap code to communicate with the POWs in
adjacent cells. He was not alone.
The harassment, however, continued. In the quiz room, Halyburton
sat on a stool that forced him to look up at his new interrogator, a surly, jug-
eared official nicknamed Rabbit, who called the American an "air pirate" and
a "war criminal." He made the same threat — "better place, worse place" — if
Halyburton did not reveal the names of his ship, squadron, and plane, but the
prisoner didn"t give in. The threat was fulfilled: days later, he was moved
across the compound to a remote storage room in the back of an auditorium.
Once again feeling his way in the darkness, he discovered that this space
was only five feet by eight. What"s more, it was isolated, preventing any
communication with other Americans. That scared him. Except for
interrogations, the only time he left the cell was to empty his waste bucket,
and there was no more bathing. The questioning had become more abusive;
Halyburton was repeatedly harangued ("Bad attitude! Bad attitude!") and
slapped across the head.
He sought comfort through prayer. He did not ask for freedom, for
food, or for any material comforts. He asked for strength to survive, for
companionship, and for the safety of his family. He found inspiration, literally,
from above.
One morning he noticed a beam of sunlight filtering through the
shutters in his cell and arcing across his cement wall. The next morning he
saw the light strike the same place. So he tore a piece of coarse brown toilet
paper into the shape of a cross and used rice to stick it on the cement. The
following morning the light slowly passed over the cross — a radiant signal
from God, Halyburton thought. He gratefully whispered the Lord"s Prayer.
But the solace didn"t last. Halyburton continued to refuse to
provide military information and was again taken to a "worse place," this time
to a nearby shed. It had two rooms, but he was confined to one that was
again five feet by eight. The place had once stored coal and was later
designated by the Americans as the "outhouse" or "shithouse." A few holes in
the ceiling and space beneath the door supplied scant ventilation, and coal
dust covered the floor. Through cracks in the wall, Halyburton could see other
Americans walking together in the compound, and he didn"t understand why
he had been singled out for isolation and mistreatment. Had the other POWs
cooperated with the enemy to receive better treatment? In captivity for a
month, he had lost twenty-five pounds and had developed dysentery. It was
now late November and cold, and his mosquito net provided flimsy refuge
from the insects" nightly...