Vietnam POW Ken Cordier Veteran Tales

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good morning isn't it great to be alive and free I was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese communists for six years and three months under really harsh and sometimes unbelievable conditions and you might think that I lost my life and freedom during that time but I didn't as long as you have freedom in your mind you have a degree of freedom and we'll talk about that here I was finishing up my tour actually second tour in Vietnam flying out of camera on Bay and on this fateful day I mission was to escort a b-66 electronic warfare bomber escort him over North Vietnam on his electronic Intel gathering well I took off that morning with my back cedar Mike Lane and headed up to refuel over Thailand and then joined the v66 over North Vietnam I was I was flying at 24,000 feet and doing about 500 knots when all of a sudden I without warning I felt its thump and the airplane went out of control both fire lights started flashing and all the warning lights and they and the plane went out of control because I had no stick Authority dit around and nothing happened so I yelled at the back cedar Mike were hit eject he was confused poor guy whose first mission up north and he was about a mile or two behind the airplane the whole time and he thought I said oh shit something and it wasn't until he felt the blasts of wind when my canopy left and saw my seat pop out of the airplane like a cork out of a champagne bottle that he realized that if he didn't want to be the aircraft commander any longer he better pull his handle and he did got out well that was just an amazing event I mean getting shot down is just the most dramatic change of state that you can imagine one minute you're a hotshot fighter pilot master of the universe and seconds later you're hanging helpless in a parachute really hard to grasp that sudden change of state well as soon as I got out of the airplane and opened my eyes I saw the Phantom blow up out there so it was really close then I looked down between my feet I'm riding the ejection seat now look down between my feet and I saw they had fired a second sam at me which blew up right right below me and I could see that I was headed right for it orange and black fireball it looked like the gates of Hill well I just had time enough to close my eyes and hold my breath and I felt this hot flash and I was through the fireball and amazingly I didn't get a scratch not even a John Kerry Splinter in my arm well I had a ways to go but I panicked for the first time in my life I just had this feeling that if I didn't get out of that seat I'd write it into the ground and my reasoning was that the flames the heat from the fireball had burned away the automatic parachute extraction device and I wouldn't work so against everything I've been trained to do I I pulled the handles cut the lap belt and the restraints pushed away from the seat grab the d-ring pulled the handle and ban parachute open I couldn't wait to see silk over me but again that was against what I've been trained to do because you're supposed to wait to get to a lower altitude before you deploy the parachute because of the opening shock well I had a few minutes in the float down and assess the situation I couldn't tell where I was because there was an under cast and eventually I fell through that and if it would have been such a tense moment I think I would have enjoyed this because I was like floating down into a sea of cotton candy very quiet and serene in this layer of clouds well then I fell through the cloud deck and I looked down and I couldn't believe it all these missions I'd flown over Vietnam mostly over jungle but there wasn't any jungle it was all rice paddies and villages and no place to hide so I knew I had a very slim chance of any of evading well I finally hit the ground and got out of my parachute and first thing I sensed was the reach of gunpowder so I wasn't hallucinating about the fireball and my eyebrows I saw later were burned off and I had freckled powder burns on my forehead same thing on my arms worth flame went up the sleeve then I looked around and I could see these peasants running across the rice paddies yelling and a couple of them waving rifles so I did the honorable thing I threw my 38 as far as I could and stood up and put up my hands I was quickly captured and as was my backseater and they marched us off to the village where the army came with a truck and then the rough stuff began they stripped us our jockey shorts blindfolded us tied our hands behind us and threw us in the back of this truck where they tied us to the side and off we went to Hanoi stopping at every village along the way and I was the same scene everywhere they roll the canvas size of the truck up and you'd hear angry voices gathering and same scene everywhere they threw stones at us and whacked us with bamboo sticks and but the worst part was they all wanted to spit on us and by the time we got to Hanoi or covered with spit didn't get a chance to bathe for about a week well the ride to Hanoi was really painful sitting on a plank and the roads were terrible and every time we'd hit a chuckhole I'd bounce up in the air and come down hit on my tailbone and just screaming in agony uh I felt like my back was broken and I found out later that it indeed it was so we got to Hanoi the next morning and immediately put into a room I couldn't see of course oh all I know is they made me sit on the floor still hands tied blindfold and presently a man entered the room and started asking me questions in English at first it was name rank service number date of birth and those questions which were obliged to answer under the Geneva Conventions well then he moved quickly passed out and started asking military questions what kind of an airplane were you flying and what were your targets they assumed I was up there bombing and the ANA I politely refused to answer these questions and after a while he feigned anger and said you must answer our questions what makes you think you do not have to answer my questions I said well your country cyma Geneva Conventions on treatment of POWs and and the heat's floated at that he says nonsense you're not a powa you're a war criminal the u.s. not declare war on us and so that you're you're all hairy illegally and we're going to treat you as criminals if you don't answer my questions you're going to be severely punished I thought yeah right I've heard this before it's probably like Hogan's Heroes they'll put me in a cooler for a month well that wasn't the case they tied my untied my hands and put him in manacles clamps behind me put ropes around my upper arms and had me on the floor and foot on my back and cinched up until my elbows touched and then they just went away and left me well as you can imagine it was very painful and with my back hurting to begin with I don't think I was stood it for more than an hour and after I yelled long enough and loud enough they came in and loosened the ropes and resumed the interrogation this time they removed the blindfold and there's three little Vietnamese guys sitting at a table and it was supposedly my war crimes tribunal and and so they resumed the interrogation so I figured I'm going to have to tell him something because I can't take this painful torture so I just started making up question making up answers as I went along and he was as stood enough to realize that I was just putting him on and he stood up and he said I don't have time for this you're wasting my time and so you'll be punished more well I'm still feeling pretty brave so I said this is barbaric you're torturing me and when I need to see a doctor he looked puzzled me said oh you're not bleeding was wrong I said I think my back is broken I'm in a lot of pain and that was a big mistake as I found out later anybody that had an injury they tortured the injury to make it break sooner well this time when they put me back in the ropes they had me on the floor and they put a rope another rope around my neck and my ankles and arch me backwards as far as they could and how boy that gave new meaning to the word pain so here I am hogtied in the ropes and I didn't last long that time I said all right I'll answer your questions and so they loosen the ropes and and resumed the interrogation well I noticed they were taking a lot of notes everything I said so I decided I better figure out some way to build a story and stick to it and so I decided I'd tell him the truth but I multiplied everything by three I didn't think that would work for very long they'd surely realize how absurd it was to make these outrageous claims of the range of our radar and things like this so anyway I tried it and it worked it was easy enough when they go back double back and really question we asked a question just tell him the truth multiply by three well that got me through that interrogation and and then I spent the next the rest of that day and the next day with cycling interrogations mostly the same questions also some political questions asking about what I thought about the war I said I think about the war and did I support my government yes I do and what they were looking for was for me to make some anti-war statement or say that I thought it was wrong for us to be there which I never did and I never suffered for telling my two feelings then on the third day they came in with ropes and the manacles and they said now you will write your war crimes confession well they must have figured that I was not going to be eager to do that so I said I can't do that I haven't committed crimes and I can't confess the crimes I haven't committed so they put me tied me up again and put my hands in the manacles tied me up and I said all right I know what's coming I said what do I have to write and I broke I gave in that against my my personal motto never give up and never give in I gave him well the confession was typed on a piece of paper four little paragraphs and I was to copy them in my own handwriting and sign it and it was just going to write this copy this confession and the worst part was at the very end I had to write a thank-you I thank the Vietnamese people for their lenient and humane treatment signed it that's it and after that they left me alone the rest of the evening and when it got dark that came around and blindfolded me and led me out to a truck and off we went to the main camp at the time we called the zoo and I was put into a solitary room and I'd be in that camp three years and eight months and never go more than a hundred yards in any direction the okay so I'm in a solitary cell and nobody to talk to no way to communicate and really feeling low I I wasn't prepared for what had happened to me in the last three days and of course surviving a pows situation or anything in life preparation is really key and while there's no way I would prepare specifically to be a Pio w the training that I got really did give me something to fall back on and preparation to help me through that difficult time and that was the the training that we got was very good for instance when I was in the survival school in the interrogation training the interrogator school interrogator was coming off with a bunch of communist propaganda and ice marked and he stopped the training right there he says never smirk if you smart it's an insult to them and it'll go very badly for you so when I was gone through my torture sessions I was really exhausted and feeling giddy I wanted to I wanted to laugh well I bit my cheeks until they bled to keep from laughing so here I am in this solitary cell somebody tried to tap on the wall to me but I didn't understand it I had seen this tap code while I was in the interrogation room and I had seen it carved on the side of the table and but I didn't have long to study it and I got it wrong so it was tapping how his hearing was gibberish it didn't make sense after only a month of solitary I was at interrogation and the interrogator said would you like to have a roommate I said yes that would be nice and he said well you must promise to obey the camp regulations that is no talking out loud no singing or whistling no exercising and definitely no communicating with other pw's I said okay and then in walk my claim my backseater and we were marched off through a cell in a different building and that began our our time together in this two-man cell I like to describe the cells to paint a picture I do it with five bees and the cell was seven by nine feet and whitewashed on the inside so they could tell if you were missing doing anything on the walls and the five bees are the board's the bricks the bulb the box and the bucket well our beds were like a crude door on sawhorses just planks nailed together and no matter mattress hanging over the beds was a bare light bulb and that was on 24/7 you might wonder why didn't they turn the lights off during the daytime and not waste electricity well it's because of the the third be the bricks they bricked up all the windows so we couldn't see out it was forbidden to see other POWs and of course that made the cells very hot in the summertime no ventilation and a clay tile roof and it was like an oven and of things they didn't care we're there to be punished so they weren't worried about our creature comforts and then the fourth B was the box we had a lot of speaker box up on the ceiling in every room every cell and that was for our daily ration of propaganda voice of Vietnam in the morning and evening and locally produced propaganda from the interrogators and they did this because unlike Korea they had classes they didn't want us to see each other and communicate they wanted to keep us completely isolated so they just piped the propaganda into the rooms and the whole camp became a schoolroom and the last B of course was the bucket the rusty bucket in the corner was our toilet and they led us out once a day to empty it oh as we settled into our daily life I can describe that with B's also be no talking be no reading be no writing be no exercising and pretty harsh regimen of confinement well our day began at 5:00 a.m. when they rang the gong and the gong was not a round brass gong that they hit with a mallet there was an empty 85 millimeter shell casing hung from a tree and the guard would beat on that with a wrench made a horrible noise and got you awake in a hurry well by this time my back is really hurting I'm ready to get up anyway so we got up and the first thing was to fold up the mosquito net they gave us all a mosquito net which is one humane thing they did place was just humming with mosquitoes and it would have been just terrible as well as unhealthy to have to deal with the mosquitoes as it was we went around with bites all over us anyway so we pulled up the mosquito net and then we're supposed to sit on our bed and think about our war crimes and until 6 o'clock when the voice of Vietnam came on that was a broadcast beamed at the GIS in South Vietnam with lots of propaganda and things to make them homesick they'd just pipe this into ourselves as extra ration of propaganda for us was the news they called it was read by Hannah Hannah was our name for an English speaking Vietnamese and at the end of it a 30-minute broadcast they played two American popular songs and that was the high point of the day and I'll never understand why they didn't just turn the radio off when they got to the music it was they had the music at the end of get the GIS to hang on and listen so they get some current popular music well that was really great for us and then after the voice of Vietnam we waited for the morning meal morning meal came somewhere around 10 11 o'clock and it consisted of a bit of rice crudely milled brown rice and another bowl of soup and I don't mean Campbell's soup this was summertime boiled greens no meat no seasoning the fall was the best to get a couple of chunks of squash boiled in the water and where was absolutely the worst we got cabbage every day for four months well after the morning meal were supposed to get out in a little courtyard to bathe 10 minutes a day and the bathing facility was a seepage well and we drop a bucket and pull up a bucket of muddy water and pour it over ourselves and wash I wash our clothes with we had a small cake of grandmas lie so they gave us every 60 days and that was the washer bodies and our clothes and to shave once a week with a rusty razor plate miserable so we only got out two three times a week then at noon they rang the gong and we're allowed to take a siesta and siesta you know was that's good we get out of this environment by sleeping for two hours but not so fast most of the guards took see us and so the security was much lighter not as many guards walking around so we took that time to communicate with the tap code by this time I had learned the tap code properly and we get in this new cell and somebody on the other side of the wall taps shave and a haircut and tap tap before long we're getting proficient tapping away like woodpeckers amazing what you can tap when you have nothing else to do we were sort of innovators in abbreviations like people use in texting today we had all sorts of little abbreviations to save save tapping the only thing we didn't have that they used today was lol and it would have been neat to have known to use lol I mean we had G n G be goodnight god bless and stuff like that but after things progressed and we got kind of bored learned everybody's name and what the current interrogation topics were why we started doing family background the info and eventually that got done with that you know you married kids family word aware of your vacation where have you been stationed blah blah blah so you run through all that and now this is endless days with nothing to do except to keep from getting caught tapping and so we resorted to telling jokes tapping jokes on the wall the only thing is when I tell you a joke and you think it's funny you laugh and that makes me feel good I entertained you or if it's a bad joke you go you know give me a Bronx cheer well the way we signified laughter was with our nails clicking on the wall and it was a considered a bad joke we'd thump it with our elbow well things Rock along like this and not many events and and then one day some poor guy got caught tabbing and we found out what the consequences were they hauled him out to interrogation demanded to know who he was tapping with of course the guy would deny everything they'd say no you lie and so they put him in the ropes anytime they wanted something from us the default position was put you in the ropes they knew you'd break so with a lot of mental anguish the guy would admit okay I was tapping the John brodack next door and that was really bad because you knew that the next thing is they take him out torture him find out who he's tapping to and before it was over we call it a calm perch why they would find that the whole camp was in communication not only the cells within a cellblock but the other buildings and we have many innovative ways to communicate between buildings so that way that was really a bad bad experience because of all the torture involved well every cloud has a silver lining and the silver lining was that they thought if they shuffled the camp that they'd break up the organization and so my cellmate was taken across camp to another building and somebody came in with me and so forth they had a master plan where they shuffled everybody all over the camp and they figure well that'll show him they won't be able to communicate now well as soon as the guard locked the door and walked away I'm tapping on the wall hi I'm Kim Corey hey who are you and by the next day the whole camp was in contacted yet they were never able to stop us in spite of the torture and beatings they never stopped us from communicating well life went on like this pretty harsh losing a lot of weight from the diet and forbidden the exercise if you got caught exercising it was a weakened irons that is with your feet and leg irons tied to the foot of the board and your hand and handcuffs behind you and they come around twice a day and let you out of the handcuffs to eat your rice bowl and if you didn't have a cellmate to help you use the bucket it got pretty pretty grungy so this is how we lived during those early years and we'd sort of adapted you know I was it was hard to stay optimistic we tried to keep ourselves pumped up with with communicating and most of us never gave up on God every Sunday we would have church service when there weren't many guards around the guards all took off on Sunday and the way we would do church is the senior ranking officer the SRO would thump the wall and it would be pass all around the building and we'd all stand up and do the Pledge of Allegiance and say the Lord's Prayer and then for approximately 10 minutes we could meditate or discuss various aspects of our religion with our cell mate we could only whisper I don't think I mentioned that we can only whisper to our cell mate if they ever heard your voice outside the cell that accuse you of communicating and come in and beat you up or worse well we'd have 10 minutes of silence of course no preacher no choir no singing allowed and at the end the SRO would thump the wall go around and then we'd all stand up again and and recite the 23rd psalm and that was in the church for that time well the months fade on in two years and it was really hard to keep optimistic but we were tested because it got worse three days before the 1968 election President Johnson I called him lying Baines Johnson unconditionally stopped North bombing North Vietnam and what I heard that that was my lowest morale since the day I was shot down he sold us down the river because he didn't even ask for a list of our names much less any guarantee of our treatment according to a Geneva Conventions and through secret means our government knew in early 1967 that we were being tortured and abused and and then as far as the simplest response of Geneva Conventions is that they there's obliged to give a list of the names of the people they held and in my case I was missing in action status for another year after the bombing halt well we were angry but we thought well at least maybe the treatment will ease up now and and they won't be so harsh well that was a pipe dream the Vietnamese seem to think that because our government made no mention of us in return for the bombing halt why they thought they could do anything they wanted with us and so they they took off on a new path of punishing us we were the worst kinds of criminals and to be punished and some of the some of the things that happened right away was they stopped the facials not Mary Kay facials we call the Meyer beatings facials they make you kneel down and to put your head at their waist level they take off of rubber tyred sandal and whacky across a head and face for minor infractions they didn't have to get permission to do that so that gave way to floggings and floggings meant that you had to strip naked and lay face down on the ground and they get a guard on either side of you with a truck fan belt and lay it to you and we learned about the stripes of Jesus experience because when we'd go back to our self our back would just be red X's all the way from the shoulders to the butt and that wore us down and they could flog you for anything one of my cell mates got to flog for looking disrespectfully at a guard he didn't like the guard didn't like him he just wanted an excuse to give him a whipping other things happen in that spring and summer of 1969 we didn't get outside to speak of we had very minimum rations the floggings it was all just grinding us down and we used to say it's make an old man out of young men well then another silver lining God recalled the great Ho Chi Minh communist dictator of Vietnam he died in September and there was a month of national mourning and as soon as that was over you could tell there was a new administration running the show first thing we noticed they came around and they knocked all the bricks out of the windows then they took everybody out of irons there was always guys in iron served various punishments everyone was taken out of irons they started letting us outside for two hours is a day and not limited on her bathing we we just got very optimistic we thought well they must be getting ready to let us to repatriate us not only they take everyone out of iron's they told us we should exercise to keep our health what a change and various other things like that they told us we didn't have to bow anymore bowing we took as a demeaning act and we always prefer whatever reason resisted bowing and I just hated bowing so did a lot of the other guys and we resisted in ways which didn't do any didn't accomplish anything didn't do us any good and just caused his grief but like I used to say in those days if you don't get a beating once in a while you're not getting away with enough and for instance one day I was being marched off through interrogation at being that point one of the camp dogs came trotting along crossed my path well it was a part of the camp regs that you had to bow politely to every Vietnamese well this dog came along and I stood to attention filed politely to the dog walk the guard knew immediately what I was insinuating so he gave me a couple of rifle butt chops to the ribs I'm lucky I didn't get a cracked rib and as soon as we get the interrogation room he told the interrogator what I had done and the guy started screaming and yelling at me and telling me I'd never go home and I was the worst criminal bla bla bla and so I took that for about ten minutes and he sent me back to myself well this was a minor victory I had a sore rib for a few days but I didn't have to sit on the stool for an hour actually 50 minutes that they had these interrogations set up so that you got the interrogation for 50 minutes and then the interrogator got a 10 minute break that smoking cigarette them and till they brought in the next guy so I saved myself 40 minutes on the stool on a cold February morning this is how we lived really hard to stay optimistic and I had noticed that by this time I was living in a new part of the prison where we had eight men in this cell 18 by 21 foot room and I noticed that everybody is really getting down at the mouth with her you know turn down corners and everything I said we got to do something about this you know so I instituted smile exercises and every morning when I do my exercises I do one 20 repetitions up on my toes and down and up and down to try to tighten up my facial muscles called up my smile exercise and of course some of the guys ridiculed me and said there's quartier or they're good and like a Cheshire Cat but some of them joined in with it and one much to smile about that's for sure well we're going along here and after the treatment changed I thought you know part of the uncertainty and the not knowing is how long you going to be there and by this time I'd been there nearly three years and so I I thought I'm going to pick a date to count down on what I think I'll be released and I made it far enough in the future that surely we'd be out by then so I I picked July the 4th 1976 the Bicentennial is the day I'd be free well my optimism paid off because I got out on a 4th of March of 70 so I got out early and so we're living in this limbo and when that treatment changed everybody got optimistic and they thought well they must be going to send us home soon and how foolish because we still had three years to go while they move this to a new camp where the physical conditions were better they had barred windows that were open for ventilation and we were allowed outside more we made a little jogging track so we could jog barefoot picked out all the pebbles and everything had a smooth so whose track things like that even though it had a foray into winemaking about this time that we moved to this new camp now in the summer of 70 we heard on the voice of Vietnam that the brotherly socialist people in Cuba had brought donated a ship load of sugar to Vietnam and within a week we started seeing a scoop of sugar show up on a tin plate and guys didn't know what to do with it some said well I don't want to eat that sugar it'll rot my teeth and we don't get any dental care here and others had other complaints some guys would mix it into their rice and make our rice porridge and and I said you know sure sugar water ferments and so I got some guys to go into the wine club with me and we had these one quart o tea pots that we always up to that time had kept our water ration in but when they moved us into the bigger compound they started givin us these large 20 liter lumen hands up for our water and so we have these tea pots with nothing to do and we had just gotten some packages from home or remnants they allowed the families to mail through International Post packages to Hanoi for us as this a black market scam because at that time they were like 1800 missing so everybody had had a family member that was shot down they'd send a package and of course the GAR guards and camp people had a wonderful little black market business er two point two or two kilos is four point four pounds well a couple of the guys got raisins very very wise thing to put in the package because the vietnamese didn't steal that and it's by stealing i mean like one of my 4.4 pound boxes had a little tin of hard candy and a pair of jockey shorts what happened to the rest of it you know so anyway I took these raisins and I did them and put them into these tea pots where I put the CEMP made simple syrup sugar water and set them up on the window ledge to age and sure enough it started working and pretty soon there's foam on the top and after about ten days I deemed it ready and scoop the the mother off of the top of these things and we had happy hour that Friday night one very good but it has some alcohol in it well any good deal like that is too good to last so what happened was we were there three months and in November of nineteen seventy's November the 20th we heard jets and anti-aircraft fire and all all kinds of stuff going on and we were just so thrilled we thought the bombing is back on and so there's all this racket and Sam's shooting off triple-a and and then it got quiet and then two days later they loaded us into trucks and back to Hanoi that scared him so badly that the US all-powerful US would come in and grant us all up and take us home so what they did was to empty the old Hanoi Hilton prison we called it that it was walo as a Vietnamese name and they emptied all the Vietnamese prisoners out of these seven large rooms and they put us all in this one compound with held 350 guys and we didn't even know it existed because we'd all been through the section we called Heartbreak Hotel where all the new guys were interrogated kept until moved out to the main camp what we were put into these big rooms and it was so exciting we really had a surge of optimism here and and we we were so excited we stayed up all night talking guards came around banging on the bars keep silent sleep we just ignored him well a lot of the guys were just ecstatic they said this is so wonderful because a few days into it we learned through some Vietnamese prisoners on the other side that it was a grab attempt to liberate a camp and guys thought oh that's wonderful but I looked at it as a source of pessimism because if the US government would mount a high high risk operation that close to Hanoi there was no foreseeable negotiated in for us and we're going to be there a long time well we started life in the Hanoi Hilton and even though a lot of guys got really down and pessimistic we were able to keep our optimism up by keeping busy we never got a book I never saw a Bible much had my own personal copy like these terrorists and Guantanamo never had pencil and paper to write with no dictionaries or language books so all we had was what was in our brain and we used a Yankee ingenuity to create writing paper out of toilet paper and and chalk out of little chips of orange roofing tile and you don't have to have a chalkboard on the wall the floor which is worn smooth by 60 or 70 years of prisoners pacing back and forth made an excellent chalkboard so for for math and chemistry and things like that where you want to write equations and so forth guys would cluster around the teacher and he'd write on the wall and then if the guard would come why we just rub it off with her rubber tire sandal and act like nothing had happened so what this did force was it kept our minds busy we had all sorts of projects if you had a course that you could teach or an area of expertise you were obliged to organize it and teach it and of course languages German French and Spanish were popular math history you name it that was amazing the the breadth of knowledge we had in that group we even did Toastmasters a couple of the guys have been in Toastmasters and reconstructed the Toastmasters program and we went through all that all of this who made the time pass and as long as we didn't make noise or create a disturbance they pretty much left us alone we called it live and let live period well things went along like this for nearly a year and a half and and then on a April Sunday we heard Jetson afterburner and bombs exploding and anti-aircraft and air raid sirens and we just went nuts I mean we're jumping up and down and cheering and singing god Bless America what a day because we knew if they're bombing Hanoi the wars back on that thing during the Sante raid was just a one-off thing to liberate that camp so now everybody gets optimistic again because President Nixon is carrying the war to these people to their capital city now maybe something will happen as it turns out it took almost a year but it did happen well every day they'd be back bombing Hanoi and some of the bombs were getting pretty close placer would fall off the ceiling and the crowd would shake and it was really exciting if you've never been in a bombing raid well I wouldn't advise it but it is very exciting so this went on for a month and on the 15th of May they loaded us all up on trottin at all they loaded half of us up on trucks and took off for parts unknown we drove all day and part of the night and we arrived at what we found out later was a camp on the Chinese border five kilometres from the Chinese border very primitive it was up in the jungle there was no electricity we had to go to bed and get up with the chickens but it wasn't all that bad because they told us when war is over we'd go back to Hanoi and that they would try to make our conditions better and so they left allowed us outside in our little courtyards all day still couldn't communicate with other sub Lots but the food improved the soup became mixed vegetable soup that was thickened and tasty I probably enjoy it today and we started getting a everyday a tin of and mackerel like like canned tuna and that we split that three ways so every day we got this ration of Russian mackerel and oil that was really good on the rice well we go along through the summer and nothing is happening we don't have any news because there's no not even the propaganda but on Christmas Day 72 they told us if we would behave not make a disturbance they allow us out in the area between the buildings and we could visit and celebrate Christmas with our fellow prisoners and this is the first time as it ever happened that we got to see all these other guys other than the one room that we had lived in that was interesting and while we're out there agar interrogator came around with the Hanoi newspaper and on the centerfold there's a big picture of a b-52 dropping a string of bombs and he said fresh Yankee war crimes bomb Hanoi b-52 and that was like seeing Santa Claus come down this chimney because we knew if now the b-52s are bombing Hanoi that it'll probably get over very soon and sure enough on Inauguration Day January the 20th they had us all load up on the trucks and back to Hanoi back to the Hanoi Hilton back to the old compound and the arranged us in rooms according our shoot down and after we were there a few days they had us all form out in the courtyard the only time this ever happened they said arrange yourself in a military fashion and so each cell block of 50 to 60 guys we called them squadrons and we all lined up and rank-and-file and looked pretty smart I'd say in our striped pajamas and then the camp commander came out and read something in Vietnamese and they translated it to English and it was protocol on the release of the prisoners so we knew at that point we were going home and when and the first group went out on February the 14th and I was in the second group which was released on the 4th of March well it was a kind of agonizing waiting for that date but we made the best of it a lot of things that talk about what you're going to do when you get home speculate about the family most of us didn't know hardly anything about the situation with our wives and kids and then the 4th of March came up they loaded us on buses out the front gate and drove us to Hanoi gia LOM Airport where we lined up a cordon our shoot down date and when our names were called one by one we step forward saluted the American brigadier general it was a receiving officer he shook hands and welcomed each one of us one by one we did a right face and marched out to the c-141 on the ramp with a big American flag on the tail and talk about proud here we were after all these years and mistreatment everything going out with our heads held high flying out in a US Air Force airplane not driven across some crummy bridge in an army truck so we we marched out to the plane everybody got on the airplane and ramp came up taxied out to the runway and when we took off as soon as we heard the gear come up that's when everybody let loose cheering and you've seen pictures I'm sure of the guys cheering and hugging each other what a moment then we were flown to Clark Air Base in the Philippines which has now been covered up with volcanic ash but we flew to Clark went to the hospital directly from the airplane bus to the hospital hospital up to the rooms they had they had reserved for us and the first thing we did was yes shower hot shower one of the greatest pleasures of my life was not having felt even warm water for six years and three months to stand under a hot shower I did that for about 20 minutes until my fingers are all pruney then after that that was down to the cafeteria for our first meal and first meal was steak and eggs cooked to order and with a banana split for dessert that was really something and while we were waiting in line I whined naturally developed because there cooking each steak to order a couple of the flight surgeons couldn't wait until the next morning start questioning us and a guy came up to me and they started asking me questions and what was I looking forward to and I said what do you think I've been locked up for I haven't seen a woman in six of three months and oh yeah a glass of whiskey please he said well I can't help you with the other but he said what were you drinking when you were shot down I said Jack Daniels black and he said oh okay and then he's talking to other guys and when I got up to the room after the meal here's a quart of Jack Daniels on the pillow and they hadn't given us access to even beer yet so here's his quart of Jack Daniels I took the lid off took a pull on it and pass it around on my buddies every everybody in the rooms around me had heard what was going on and so they all clustered in it we made one pass with that bottle that was look empty so that was the end of my freedom day we were there for three days with an medical treatment and initial interrogations and the first thing they wanted in the I said interrogation I meant debriefing its interrogations when it's the enemy the first thing they wanted was for us to write down all the names we have memorized they knew by this time that we all had memory banks and memorization was something that you welcomed to keep your mind active I had 350 names on my list and most of the guys had better more so we wrote out all our names that the cross-reference once we were all out and that way we accounted for everyone that was in the system including the ones that died up there and and that that was the first thing was to dump our memory banks and then the other questions about conditions at the point of our departure and so forth well three days there was enough and then we were all flown back to the States and they split us out to five different regional medical centers where we met her families as you might imagine that was quite an emotional event reading my wife and two kids who didn't remember me they were three and five when I left and ten and twelve and I returned and my parents were there as well so that was really a memorable homecoming and that began my my second life yeah it was it was different it was a challenge and my wife didn't do well she she quit her job as soon as I got shot down and just stayed at home gained Weyden sort of was a Rekluse and consequently the kids didn't get the upbringing and discipline that they should have had so we had some problems there one of the things that I had discussed before the release was well for myself I'm going to keep my mouth shut as best I can and not make any criticisms or lay down any rules or expectations for three months and and I stuck to that I just observed took notes I had a lot of stuff to talk about once I went back on active duty which was actually four months and so I waited until we got to the new duty station in the new house and then we had a family meeting and they didn't take to it very well and then there's I didn't realize it at the time but my wife had depression and she as soon as I came back she is ready to leave everything to me and we needed to work as a team which we did not and so my adjustment period to answer your question I considered to be five years when I got my divorce and it was not a good time for me and I flip Utley say I'd rather spend another year in Hanoi than live those five years again it was difficult and because we weren't we weren't prepared in a lot of cases for what we had to contend with now some of the guys whose wives were strong and did a good job with the kids and kept you know kept things together had a much easier but then there were a lot of guys that got divorced right away and so there was a whole spectrum of readjustments and some of them there's a few guys that I know of odd to this day I don't think they've readjusted in 40 years they they Harbor negative feelings and like in my case I wanted to find where I was captured I was shot down and captured in a very remote area only 85 miles from Hanoi but it's really primitive country I went back several times and fired the last trip two years ago I I spent some money had to do some bribes and hire a guy who was dependable from South Vietnam to go up to hand away spent a little wealth among some of his contacts and we found where I was captured so we went back there my my wife and my daughter and we visited what those people had an interpreter it was really closure to meet these people and there were still simple rice farmers and they hadn't shown any any anger or tried to mistreat traders when we were first captured and they were curious why I would come there after all these years I sold him through the interpreter I just want to thank you for not killing me and they were appreciative I had some gifts form school supplies and stuff there's a good experience no and as a matter of fact living in Dallas I've become acquainted with and good friends with a few Vietnamese and find them to be good people intelligent and of course the ones that made it over here we're already successful in their own country and they have a wonderful work ethic and education ethic and they the Vietnamese that have come here after that war are like our European immigrant ancestors a hundred years ago I've told them that and I've said it many times I said we're really proud of you and what you've done since coming here and but as far as going back on these dress line in I didn't have any problem with them now if I ever met face to face is one of the tortured boys I might have a hard time controlling myself and I know to this day I could put a bullet in a head of any one of about a half a dozen of them that I had to suffer under and no twinge of remorse you

Info

Channel: ErikJohnston

Views: 546,799

Rating: 4.8205376 out of 5

Keywords: Ken, Cordier, Veteran, Tales, Vietnam, War, POW, Figher, Hanoi, Hilton, Air, Force, Officer, Combat, POW/MIA, Issue, Prisoner, Of, (Film, Subject), Military, (Profession)

Id: mIKsW0FgRzQ

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 64min 37sec (3877 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 02 2013

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