The Old Revolutionaries of Vietnam

by TOM HAYDEN

[from the March 10, 2008 issue]

During Christmas 2007 I traveled back in time with my family, to Vietnam, for the first time in thirty-two years. I was feeling a deep need to see the place once more, a regret at having withdrawn from a country I had visited four times during the war. I wanted to understand the long-term lessons and, on a personal basis, track down the Vietnamese guides and translators, men and women, who assumed an ideological faith in the American "people" they escorted through ruins inflicted by the American "enemy." They would become important diplomatic bridges between our two countries in the postwar period. Most were survivors of the French and American wars and would be in their 80s by now. Were they still alive? How had they suffered? After the exuberance at their victory and reunification after 1975, how had they adjusted to a Vietnam without war? Vietnam's consul in San Francisco, Chau Do, said many of these old revolutionaries were alive, excited by my return and inquiring whom I wanted to see. I told him that my closest Vietnamese friend was a poet, musician and translator, Do Xuan Oanh, who was perhaps 40 in those days. "I can help you find him," Chau replied with a smile. "He's my dad." My eyes filled with tears. It would be quite a trip.

Before I would reunite with these old friends and contacts, however, I plunged into the shocking contrasts between past and present in Hanoi. Between Christmas 1965 and November 1972, when I made four unauthorized visits to Hanoi, the wartime city was unlit and ghostly. Most people had been evacuated to the countryside. Air-raid sirens and public-safety broadcasts were the only urban sounds. There was no economic development beyond the construction of pontoon bridges to replace bridges bombed by the Americans. The only motorized vehicles were military ones. Most residents rode bicycles or carried their meager wares on bamboo poles across their shoulders. Water buffalo pulled the heavier loads. To outward appearances, Gen. Curtis LeMay's plan to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age was on track.

Finally came the Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong by 200 B-52s, from December 18 to December 28, 1972. The United States says that fifteen of the giant Stratofortresses were shot down and ninety-three American airmen went missing before the bombing ended (Hanoi says thirty-four B-52s and eighty-one fighter planes were put out of action). Estimates of civilian deaths range from 1,600 to 2,368 in those eleven days, and Hanoi listed 5,480 buildings destroyed. In the American narrative, the Christmas bombing forced Hanoi to sign the Paris peace agreement one month later. But under terms agreed to by the Nixon Administration, North Vietnamese units remained positioned in the south, and in 1975 they stormed Saigon. What is beyond dispute is that crowded Hanoi neighborhoods and the Bach Mai hospital were reduced to rubble during the Christmas B-52 raids. The last time I had seen Hanoi was in 1974, when Jane Fonda and I walked through the hospital debris and interviewed still-furious victims of the Christmas 1972 bombs.

Now, suddenly for me, it was Christmas 2007 and Vietnam was ablaze with festive holiday lights, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Though billboards of Ho Chi Minh were pervasive, the most ubiquitous bearded one this Christmas season was Santa Claus, beckoning shoppers from department store doorways, seen incongruously riding motorbikes, waving to little children. Spectacular strings of red and green lights were draped over the streets and stores, blinking at thousands of Vietnamese rolling along on bicycles and motorbikes, parting smoothly like schools of fish around pedestrians crossing the street. Restaurant-goers applauded Christmas carols sung by young Vietnamese women strapped in Heineken Girls sashes. None of this was about Jesus--Christmas is not a tradition in this Buddhist and secular-Marxist country--but all about corporate branding. The fancy Diamond department store next to Independence Palace was filled with shoppers, gawkers and Santas wandering the aisles of Lego, Calvin Klein, Victoria's Secret, Nike, Converse, Estιe Lauder, Ferragamo and Bally. The nearby Saigon Centre bore a billboard proclaiming, More Shops, More Life.

Far be it from me to question the desire of Vietnamese to share our globalized consumer culture like everyone else, or to reject their aspiration to be the next Asian Tiger, or freeze them in memory as icons of selfless revolutionaries. Gentrification and consumerism, after all, have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen. It seems the way of the world. As I walked through the busy Christmas streets, however, I was gripped by the question of why the Vietnam War was necessary in the first place. Why kill, maim and uproot millions of Vietnamese if the outcome was a consumer wonderland approved by the country's still-undefeated Communist Party? The whole wretched American rationale for the war, that Vietnam was a dangerous domino, a pawn in the cold war, seemed so painfully wrong. Was there any connection between destroying so much life and causing the Vietnamese to go Christmas shopping? Would the same outcome--a one-party socialist government leading a market economy--have occurred in any event, without the destruction? Now that US naval ships were paying peaceful visits to Da Nang, this question nagged at me: is it possible that Marxism and nationalism won the war but capitalism and nationalism have won the peace?

Those who still believe Vietnam was a "necessary" war must take pleasure at seeing that country in the camp of corporate neoliberalism. A proud new member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Vietnam is welcoming a $1 billion Intel project to Ho Chi Minh City this year, and has accepted the wholesale privatization of telecommunications and other industries.

Some in Hanoi are dismayed by all this. An American expatriate, Gerry Herman, a former antiwar activist turned businessman and film distributor who has lived in Vietnam for fifteen years, told me the Vietnamese were so desperately eager to normalize relations with the United States that they accepted the most liberal market reforms of any developing country. Having some internal knowledge of the trade negotiations, he says bitterly that Vietnam was blackmailed by the US negotiators. To gain export markets for their textiles, shoes and seafood, they slashed subsidies and opened markets in banking, insurance, services and advertising to private corporations. For Herman, the distressing prospect is that Vietnam will follow the failed model of the Philippines, not the more successful Asian Tigers whose development benefited from government subsidies.

more at: http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20080310&s=hayden

Boy I hate it when the pacifists don't have a cause to promote their anti-American ideology. Can't someone find an enemies' canon to sit on so he can get his picture taken ? Hold on,,, what about Iraq ? Or are things going too good there for him ? And the Asian Tiger way of promoting growth sounds like a plan.

__________________
95 SL500 Smoke Silver, Parchment 64K
07 E350 4matic Station Wagon White 34K
02 E320 4Matic Silver/grey 80K
05 F150 Silver 44K

Writing about Iraq must be boring them.

__________________
1999 SL500
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

THE BOAT SCHOOL BOYS [BSBs]

Written by Dick Stratton, Former POW (extracted from Dick Stratton's POW Sea Stories)

Dick Stratton became an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Family Affairs

"It was a new ball game sitting in solitary confinement in a Hoa Lo [Hanoi Hilton] isolation cell. It was far different than a week previous on the USS Ticonderoga [CVA 14] goofing off in the Ready Room as a newly assigned Lieutenant Commander maintenance officer of the World Famous Golden Dragons [CAW19, VA 192]. No more A4Es, no more flight schedules, no more LSO debriefs, no more mission planning, no more manning of the spare or the ready tanker, no more mail call. It all came to an abrupt halt on January 5, 1967 when I ate my own 2.75 FFARs on a weather recon hop.

I was now a tortured, beaten, starving hulk designated as the Blackest of Criminals in the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] and an official Yankee Air Pirate [eligible to be hung from the yardarm having been caught in the act of piracy].

I was alone; separated from all my shipmates. I did not know whom to trust, what the rules of my new mess happened to be or what was expected of me in this new and strange form of warfare I was about to embark upon.

The walls had more banging and knocking than the whole hull of the venerable 27C that had been my previous home. There was a rhythm and a pattern to the noise that had all the class of a wall full of woodpeckers. I remembered enough Morse code to recognize that what I was hearing was not Morse code; but it sure wasn't the ghosts of French Foreign Legionaries having a happy hour.

This isolation wing of the prison had a limited number of cells. Once a day you would put your honey bucket out and your morning soup bowl. One of the cells would open up and thos e prisoners would gather up the gear and proceed to a cell at the end of the passageway that had some running water piped into it. These guys would do the dishes, buckets and their armpits taking their sweet old time, making a hell of a racket and yacking away at each other to beat the band. But wait a minute, they were not talking to each other, they were talking to the rest of us as if they were talking to each other. Each cell had a high barred window open to the air. If you stood on your cement slab pad you could pick up what they were saying.

If you read me, cough once for yes; twice for no. Cough. Are you Air Force? Cough. Cough. Are you Navy? Cough. Are you a 0-5? Cough. Cough. Are you an O-4? Cough Oh sh__, another Lieutenant Commander! Do you know who won the Army Navy game? Cough. Cough. Oh hell, a dumb Lieutenant Commander at that! Jim Stockdale and Robbie R eisner are the *SROs [Senior Ranking Officers]. * Their rules are: communicate at all costs; when they get around to torturing you, hold out as long as you can, bounce back and make them do it all over again; don't despair when they break you, they have broken all of us; pray. Cough. Two Thai are next to you and have been trying to communicate with you. They are using the tap code; it is a box; the first letters are: American Football League Quits Victorious. Communicate. My name is Galanti - Paul Galanti. BANG. The universal danger signal, as I found out later. They were hauled out of the cell block, tortured and I did not see Paul for three years.

*The rules of the new ball game were quite simple. To lead is to be tortured. To communicate with a fellow prisoner was a de facto sign of leadership resulting in torture. To fail to bow is to be beaten & tortured. To fail to do exactly what you were told and when you were told was to be tortured. Medical attention was reserved to those who might have some propaganda value and then only in respect to the parts of you that showed. Food and water were rationed out only to the extent to keep you alive but in a weakened condition. Lenient and humane treatment were defined as permitting you to live. You were being held as a hostage and as a propaganda tool; otherwise you had no value. You were a slave to communist ideology.** ** ** *

Their rank questions made sense - find the SRO. But after all - the Army Navy Game! Doesn't that beat all! The pampered nephews of Uncle Sam!! The Boat School Boys are forever with me! I really don't know if that is a curse or a blessing. Although I must admit that it took a set of cajones for Paul to get the rules of the road and the tap code to me. I had met Stockdale at Stanford University where I was his numerical relief in the International Relations Program. He was a Boat School Boy, but I must admit, having already been tortured, that his rules of the road were a Godsend to my resistance posture.

You see, I started out in this man's navy as a Naval Aviation Cadet having been first a Private in the Massachusetts National Guard. I knew what it was to be an enlisted man as my father and brother had been before me. I did not take it to be a sign of second class status - it was just different. I was a NavCad for the purpose of being a Naval Aviator not of being an officer; if you had to be an officer to fly from carriers then so be it, no big deal. But these officers were something else! Here's how the myth built up in my mind. Recognize, that as far as I was concerned initially, all officers were Boat School Boys.

NavCads ran out to the obstacle course; officers rode out and back in a Cattle Car. NavCads formed up for church call on Sunday while the officers drove by, shooting us the Hawaiian Peace Sign, to pick off all the best looking girls at Pensacola Beach. The officers got to go to the O Club and watch the pretty girls at the pool and drink Bloody Marys; the NavCads got to go across the street to the ACRAC [Aviation Cadet Recreation and Athletic Club] - a primitive but welcome beer hall. NavCads got to wash SNJs while the Officers lounged around. NavCads got to man fire bottles while the Officers started their engines. NavCads took the leftovers while the officers got the prime flight times and first shots at available aircraft. Not complaining mind you; just a fact of life registering more because they were no better nor no worse an aviator than you were

As a plow back instructor in advanced training, I started to sort out the Boat School Boys. They hung in there together [not bad]. They were adventuresome but over confident [reasonable for aviation]. But they were, as a rule, unprepared for hops, careless about academics and cavalier about performing for grades. As a plank owner in a new fleet attack squadron forming up, it became obvious that the leadership put the Boat School Boys in desirable positions of trust. In the wardroom their napkin numbers kept them together at the formal sittings. They tended to pull liberty together. They had contacts ashore and afloat that enabled them to get things done and take care of their troops in a manner I could only aspire to. They got the recommendations to Test Pilot School and nifty post graduate programs. Sound green eyed with envy? Jealous? Left out? Angry? It may sound like it, but it is not so. They were different and I was different. Someday they would be in command and in the Flag Mess. If the Navy kept faith with me I'd fly my butt off and aspire to have a sh ot at Commander and maybe even get my own squadron. We were different.

more

And how different the Boat School Boys were! During the six years I spent in prison I had the good fortune to be in a position to be in the middle of the internal prisoner communication nets that the VC [Viet Cong-Vietnamese Communists] never could eliminate. I watched good SROs stand up and be counted, only to be cut down like firewood. I saw their replacements come and go. I assisted in building up new communication nets when old ones were compromised. I got a good feel for those of my shipmates - the vast majority of whom were sterling, outstanding warriors - who had that something extra to rally the troops, restore faith, charge the hill one more
time and be there when you needed them.

What we as survivors all had in common was neighborhood, church, school, friends and family that made us the people we are today. Our education and training only built upon, refined and honed what already was there. However, it did not take me long in Hanoi to discover that the Boat School Boys, BSB, were in a class all by themselves. Indeed my first life saving contact was with Paul Galanti, BSB extrodinaire.

At great risk to life and limb, you would try to communicate. The purposes or communication were to formulate resistance plans, escape plans, resistance to enemy propaganda ploys, names of downed and imprisoned Americans and their allies, setting up the chain of command, establishing our rules of the road, build morale and basically to screw the VC over in any way that we could think of. We had our own war to fight and could not do it without communication.

The last thing you needed when you started to set up a communication net or pass the word was to have some overly educated jackass try to debate with you the theology and philosophy of what you were trying to do, especially when you were tapping. Some guys wanted convincing, others wanted it to be fair, still others thought it was too something [dangerous, frivolous, demeaning, childish, hard, soft, etc.]. You don't know what a thrill it was to find that on the other side of the wall you had a BSB. He would get it right the first time around. You would get no guff. Roger WILCO Out. Later on he might come back and ask you if you or the SRO knew what you were doing, or suggest a better way, or tell you frankly that he thought it was useless. But he never passed that down the line.

One of our acting SROs [a BSB] took it into his head that the POWs would all go on a fast to show the VC that we would not tolerate the torture and beating of prisoners. We would fast until the VC granted us the rights of POWs under the Geneva Conventions. He passed the word down the line to his emaciated, already starving, sickly tro opers via a net made up of mostly BSBs. We went on the fast much to the amazement of the VC who were only to glad to eat the rations themselves [since we actually were winning the war about the time LBJ knocked off the bombing]. Meanwhile, the BSBs went back up the net to convince our stalwart but misguided leader, that the fast was counterproductive and got the order rescinded. Obey-an easy word-but with critical implications for survival. Innovation - not always productive, like a fast for the starving; but better than sitting on your duff.

All of the lessons that Mother Bancroft taught her sons, many of which did not have the approval of the Academic Committee, were played out on the VC. A BSB during a filmed propaganda session blinked out torture in Morse code. A BSB is on the cover of Life magazine showing and inverted Hawaiian Peace Sign [Life airbrushed the fingers out lest their customers be scandalized]. A BSB, seriously injured and on a stretcher refused the offer of an early release at a time when our own internal policy for release would have let him go with honor. The stories of the sons of mother Bancroft go on and on. But BSBs were a life saver through unflinching leadership and an inspiration through example to me. I came out of the prison experience vowing to become a part of the BSB system, which was certainly a change from all of my earlier NavCad and JO carping. And indeed, my Navy twilight tour was within the USNA system.

The United States Naval Academy performs a unique service for the country that other institutions, like my Georgetown and Stanford, never could nor should perform. USNA is in the business of forming from the raw material of society a group of leaders of men and women, a class of wa rriors, a cadre of men and women who are willing to sacrifice their treasure, bodies and very lives for the constitution and citizens of the United States of America. USNA recreates the dedication of the signers of the Declaration of Independence who gave their all for their beliefs. USNA is in the business of developing integrity, honesty, courage, stamina through rigorous physical and intellectual conditioning.

The product of USNA is not an engineer, a political scientist, a chemist or a physicist. The product is a citizen, a person formed in a heroic mold, who we hope will never have to be a hero, but who we are confident has the fortitude to go in harm's way to protect the Republic. The product is a person who will do the right thing for no other reason than it is the right thing to do. The product is a person who recognizes excellence and is willing to strive for it. The product is a person dedicated to the caring for the enlisted men and women of the U. S. Navy, those people who do most of the work and most of the dying in our Navy. The product is a person that well represents the nation no matter what port he enters or sea she sails upon. No other institution does this.

The greatest accolade given the USNA in the Vietnamese Communist prison was the statement the Camp Commander, Major Bui, made to John Sidney McCain III, BSB, when John, son of the Commander in Chief Pacific, John, a man born to serve, refused an early propaganda release: *"They have taught you too well, McCain! They have taught you too well ** "** ** *

*May we always continue to teach the Midshipmen too well.** *

END

I was on a boat in the 60's . one reason I vol entered is because I figured we wouldn't be captured. we would go down with all hands.(a submarine)Hard to believe Jimmy Carter was a submariner. A nice guy but poor commander in chief?

I thought this was a Christmas story about getting your first "Red Rider" wagon.

__________________
"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

Messages From John
By ERNEST C. BRACE
May 2, 2008

Under the glaring lights of a circus tent set up on the south lawn of the White House I met John Sidney McCain III face-to-face for the first time. President Richard Nixon had invited the Prisoners of the Vietnam War to dinner.

It was May 24, 1973. Almost five years previously I had met John under harsher circumstances. We had been confined as POWs in solitary confinement in adjacent cells at a camp the prisoners of war had named "The Plantation" in Hanoi, North Vietnam. We talked to each other through a wall for over a year, of family, our capture, girlfriends, troubles we'd been through, and on Sunday we told each other a movie.

John had been shot down over the center of Hanoi by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. Upon ejecting at near the speed of sound from his A4E attack jet, John dislocated his shoulder and broke his arm in several places.

He landed in a lake and would have drowned except that a group of civilians waded into the lake and dragged him ashore. There they proceeded to beat him and at one point stuck him with a bayonet. Soldiers rescued John from the civilian mob and delivered him to Hoa Lo Prison in central Hanoi, where he was thrown into a cell in the part of Hoa Lo the American prisoners had named "Heartbreak Hotel." John had passed in and out of consciousness several times since his capture, and awoke lying on a dirty concrete floor. An American tune was playing over a loudspeaker somewhere. It took a few moments before John realized it was "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley."

When an interrogator entered the cell John would only reply to his demands with name, rank, serial number and date of birth. The interrogator told him he would die in that cell unless he started answering the questions. John lost track of the days he had been in the small cell. One day the interrogator entered the cell with two other guards and asked John why he had not told them his father was Admiral McCain. Without any further questioning they moved John to the local hospital and gave him medical treatment for his broken bones and puncture wounds. John was heavily sedated and awoke in a body cast.

John was now in solitary confinement because he refused to co-operate with the North Vietnamese efforts to exploit his father's position. His father, Admiral John Sidney McCain II, was Commander in Chief of Naval Forces Europe when John was captured. Since John's capture in 1967 his father had become Commander in Chief of Naval Forces Pacific, (CINCPAC), a much more significant posting considering John's captivity. John was considered a valuable prisoner by the Hanoi Government and they occasionally tried to use him to their propaganda advantage. John refused to cooperate. They had even offered John early release, but he refused because he knew it would not only embarrass his father, but he felt there were other prisoners in much worse shape that should be exchanged before him. John was in solitary for punishment.

John had cellmates for a while after his release from the hospital. He was still in a body cast and needed help with his bodily functions. Col. Bud Day, USAF (Medal of Honor) [mentioned in Karl Rove's "Getting to Know John McCain"] was one of John's first cellmates, along with Major Norris Overly USAF. John lost his cellmates because he refused to cooperate with the camp authorities. He would not write or read propaganda for them and refused to see "peace delegations" that asked to see the Admiral's son. As soon as John could function without help the Vietnamese took away his cellmates.

I was in solitary because I was a civilian pilot working under contract to USAID/CIA when captured in Laos. Since I had been captured by North Vietnamese troops in Laos in May 1965 I was kept hidden from other prisoners. I was never listed as a prisoner and never allowed to write home or receive mail or packages. The Vietnamese were not supposed to be in Laos in 1965. The Americans used civilians and Thai Special Forces for counterinsurgency forces in Laos.

My first three years and six months of captivity had been spent in total solitary in a small bamboo cage in a valley near Dien Bien Phu in western Vietnam. The last two years and six months I was confined in stocks, irons and ropes because of four attempted escapes, two from the cage. In August 1966 I made my last attempt to escape. Punishment from that attempt crippled me to the point I could not walk. Two years later, when they took me into Hanoi in October 1968, I was in poor health and could walk only by leaning against a wall or some other support.

I had not seen or heard an American since my capture. I had no idea of what had happened in the war or to what extent the Americans were now involved. During the trip in a Russian truck from Dien Bien Phu into Hanoi I observed road and bridge construction There was no air activity and I was under the impression the war was over. What I did not know was that President Johnson had gone to limited bombing in the autumn of 1968 in an attempt to get the peace talks in Paris moving again.

I was taken to a camp the prisoners had named the "Plantation."

A rice mat and a change of clothing were on the bed. Rubber-tire sandals were on the floor near the bed. The dim light was from a single bulb dropped by its cord from the ceiling. It must have been about 25 watts at the most. The guards did not enter the room. They slammed the shutters closed and dropped the bar into place.I heard a padlock snap closed. Then a very oriental voice came through the louvers, "Sleep."

I crawled over to the bedboard. Pulling myself up onto the bed I sat and looked around. It was the largest cell I had been in since my capture. I picked up the black pajama-like shirt and trousers and saw that I had a set of underwear or shorts of the same black cotton cloth. The rice mat was new and I rolled it out onto the board. I let the mosquito net down around me and tried to get some sleep. It had been a full day and then some.

I woke to someone opening my louvered window. It was the guard from the night before. He pointed at my bucket and grunted for me to set it outside. I hadn't used the bucket yet and indicated so in broken Vietnamese and Thai. He scowled and slammed the shutters closed.

I could hear a radio playing off in the distance and tried to make out what it was saying. It was some oriental woman speaking English and hard to follow. Then I heard what sounded like the Kingston Trio singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" Strange place!

The guard was at the shutters again and handed me a jug of hot water and half a bread roll. I made motions like eating with chopsticks and asked if he had some rice. I was hungry. He scowled and shut the louvers with a bang. I sat on the bed and ate what had been given to me. I could hear other cell doors being opened and closed and then it got quiet in the camp.

I was sitting on the floor with my back against the inside wall when I heard a tapping on the wall behind me. It was the rhythm of "Shave and a haircut" but the "two bits" was missing. The officer had warned me about making noise in the room or tapping on walls. I sat there thinking, "That's nice; there must be an American next door."

The "Shave and a haircut" was tapped again. This time I replied with the "two bits" which seemed the natural thing to do. A rapid series of tapping in some kind of rhythm ensued and I scooted away from the wall thinking that I had been tricked by the guards. There was silence after the tapping stopped. A few minutes later the tapping started again. I did nothing.

After some time a slow, steady thumping started that had no rhythm. I started counting. The thumping stopped and I tried to convert the number of thumps to a letter of the alphabet. The thumping resumed before I got my letter. I then realized I should be saying the alphabet rather than counting. I got "wal" on the last series of thumps. I didn't know what to do. The thumping resumed after some time, and I said the alphabet, and got "out ear to wal." I figured it must mean "put ear to wall" and shuffled along to where the tapping was coming from. I tapped twice on the brick wall with my knuckle as I pressed my ear against the wall.

A voice on the other side, obviously an American, said "If you hear me buddy tap twice."

I tapped twice in reply.

He got excited then and said he had been trying to contact me all morning, since morning was best while the guards were occupied with the buckets and morning water. He rattled off a couple questions and when I did nothing he slowed down and told me how to reply.

One tap was "no" – two taps was "yes" or "copy" – three taps was "I don't know" – and a rapid series of tapping was "repeat." I tapped twice that I understood.

He told me that his name was John McCain, he was a Navy Lieutenant Commander and had been shot down about a year prior, in 1967. He told me he was talking by wrapping his shirt around his cup and pressing the bottom of the cup against the wall. I tapped twice.

He asked me if I had a cup. I tapped once.

A lot of questions followed, "Are you an American? Are you a Pilot? Are you Navy? Airforce? Army? Civilian?" He got excited again when I replied "yes" to civilian.

"CIA?" he asked.

I tapped "no" and he immediately apologized for asking.

Had I been a prisoner long was the next question. I tapped slowly four times. I Should have tapped three, but did not know how I could get the half in there.

John explained that the "Shave and a haircut" rhythm was the call-up signal for a tap code the prisoners were using. The "two bits" was the go ahead. Since he could use his cup on the wall there was no need to tap, but he would teach me the tap code anyway. A solid thump was a danger signal and meant get away from the wall. Even though we had voice communications I started practicing the tap code.

^^^
Put simply, the tap code was to divide the alphabet into five groups of five letters each, dropping the letter "K."

1 2 3 4 5

1 A B C D E

2 F G H I J

3 L M N O P

4 Q R S T U

5 V W X Y Z

Tap vertically down first and then horizontally until you reached the letter you needed. For example, my name Brace would be tapped: B=1-2; R=4-2; A=1-1; C=1-3; E=1-5. Two taps at the end of each word meant you copied, and a "roger roger" – 4-2,4-2 – was usually sent back at the end of the message to indicate you understood. We signed off with a "GBU" for "God Bless You."

A couple days later I was given a cup and communications were wide open. John brought me up to date on the war, what Johnson had done, and the fact Nixon was running for president again. That was the biggest surprise. John had a loudspeaker in his room and heard The Voice of Vietnam with "Hanoi Hannah" every day. John initiated all communications because his cell looked out on the courtyard and he could keep track of the guards through a small nail hole in his door.

The lights were out in the cells during the day and the guards' eyes couldn't adjust to the darkness from the bright outdoors when they threw open the peepholes to check into the cell. A thump on the wall out of nowhere meant that guards were coming into the cell so stay away from the wall. Next to John were two Air Force officers. They communicated with John somewhat, but weren't as thirsty as I was for news. They had a speaker in their room, too.

My cell on the back of the warehouse building turned out to be an excellent place to establish communications with the north end of the camp. A group of officers living three men in one cell did the dishes for the camp. After each evening meal they would come down between the outside wall and the back of the warehouse to get to the washroom area. One would stride out ahead of the two carrying the basket of plates and say a few words to me as he passed by my louvered windows. On their return trip I would answer him as he again distanced himself from the guard escorting the dishwashers.

At other times I could talk to the men in the first stall of the washrooms, after the guard left the area to pick up another prisoner to put into the next washroom. The men in the washroom could clear the washcourt and would cough a warning if the guard was returning. Communications were absolutely forbidden and punishment could be severe; caution was required. I passed news to John about the happenings in the other parts of the camp and John kept me informed of what was happening in the world – according to the Voice of Vietnam anyway.

Occasionally John would get called up to the "Big House." That's what the prisoners named the building where I was taken the night I arrived in the camp. Sometimes he had news that was not on the speakers in the camp. In September 1968 John had gone through a particularly bad session at the Big House where they had broken his left arm again by bending it beyond its limited mobility. After almost four days of beatings and torture John had signed a "crime confession." In the years to follow in Hanoi I found that most prisoners had been tortured to the extent that many had signed "crime confessions, letters requesting amnesty, or early release, and letters to their buddies not to fly in this cruel and senseless war."

Some had been tortured into reading propaganda over the camp radio. They had tried this on John also, but he screwed it up so bad they could not use the tape they got from John.

The year 1969 passed quickly. John was certain we would be going home this year because they seemed to be bringing in prisoners from the outlying camps. Richard Nixon had won the election, and John felt Nixon would not let us sit there much longer.

In April 1969 I made contact with a Navy Seaman, Douglas Hegdahl, one day out of the louvered window. He was cooking the chopped bamboo and weed mixture they fed the pigs in a large wok over an open fire. The guards thought he was pretty ineffective because he was only about 18, and not an officer, when captured. Hegdahl told me he had fallen off the stern of a Cruiser in the Tonkin Gulf one night when he was dumping garbage. After swimming for the rest of the night he was picked up by a Vietnamese fishing boat. The Vietnamese beat him pretty badly, at first thinking he was a commando trying to swim ashore.

Doug could watch the entry to the washcourt where he was cooking the pig's chow, and I could clear the area back to the left of the window while we talked. A cough meant there was a guard coming.

Doug gave me a lot of news about what was going on in the camp. He explained that the Senior Ranking Officer had given him orders to take early release if it was offered and he would probably be going home in July or August. Doug had memorized some three hundred names of prisoners that were not publicized. Prisoners had been sorted after their capture according to their significance to the North Vietnamese propaganda value. Fully one-half the prisoners were not acknowledge as being alive and were not allowed to write or receive mail.

This did not change until after Doug's release and the Vietnamese turned a list of prisoners over to McGovern to be read at an antiwar rally back home.

Doug would be sure to tell our government that I was alive and in Hanoi. I thought to myself that that would be a great surprise to a lot of people. He asked about John and said to tell him his father was now Commander in Chief of the Pacific. I told him John already knew. A guard came and we had to break off our conversation.

I spent the next hour telling John about the Hegdahl conversation. Of course John had a hundred questions I should have asked Doug, but it was too late. Doug was released that summer and did let the CIA know I was alive and in Hanoi.

My family was warned not to say anything about what they now knew because it might jeopardize my position. My wife, I found out after my release, had remarried. She decided at that time not to tell my four sons that their father was still alive in Hanoi.

There was a communication bust in the building known as the Corn Crib in early fall of 1969. An Air Force pilot, Mel Pollack, and a Navy pilot, Tom Hall, were taken out of the Corn Crib and moved into my old cell behind John. I was moved into the corner cell on the backside of the warehouse. At least this cell had a door. We soon learned we could hold a three way conversation by using our cups in the adjacent corner.

It took about a week to get caught up on family, military careers and shoot-down stories. Then we started playing chess through the wall. We scratched a board on our bedboards and used chips of bricks and pebbles we smuggled back into our room from the washcourt for the pawns. Pieces of toilet paper with characters on them made up the major pieces. John got upset one day when the game was going hot and heavy and told us to cool it for a while or we would be caught. John's warning did not slow us down much.

In December 1969 there was another big communication bust in the camp. The guards found out that everyone knew my name. I was taken up to the Big House and told I must confess my crimes. John had told me to deny, deny, deny, if I was ever caught communicating. To me it was a matter of survival to let the Vietnamese know that I was well known in the camp and that I had talked to Douglas Hegdahl before he left. The interrogator was angry and told me I was to be sent back to the jungle.

Earlier in captivity I would have been beaten severely, but President Ho Chi Minh had died in September 1969 and since his death the treatment had improved.

I was still in solitary four years and six months after my capture. As I was taken back to my cell I thought, "I'll never know what is going on in the jungle." I told John, and the others, what the officer said. They all sympathized of course, but we had no control.

I spent the next week waiting for something to happen. One night they threw open the door to my cell and told me to prepare to move. I rolled up my rice mat and bundled together what clothes I had. Someone coughed out a "GBU" – God bless you – as I was picking up my bundles. I was blindfolded and led into the courtyard on the other side of the warehouse.

I was leaving friends and could hardly hold back tears as they dragged me across the courtyard. They pushed me up into a truck and told me to keep silent. I was up against another prisoner on the floor of the truck. I felt something hit my thigh and then a hand slowly tapped, "MCCAIN, who U." I smiled as I realized I was not being sent back to the jungle after all. I tapped back "EB GBU." Later I was to find that there were four prisoners on that truck leaving the Plantation: John McCain, Swede Larson, Ted Guy and me. Swede tried to join in on the tapping of names, but started his tapping on a guard's leg and received a hard kick for his efforts.

It would be Christmas 1969 in a few days. Little did we know we would see three more Christmases after 1969, still in Hanoi, still in prison.

Mr. Brace is the author of "A Code to Keep," St. Martin's Press, 1988, and Hellgate Press, 2000.

I assume this was after he dumped Hanoi Jane????