Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War by Bruce Henderson Read Free Book Online Page B

official record noted: “Honorable Dismissal Granted.”
    Dieter enrolled the following semester at College of San Mateo, twenty miles south of San Francisco. The only two-year college in the area that offered a degree in aeronautics—emphasizing ground school fundamentals but no actual flying—San Mateo “kind of saved” Dieter as a student. He earned three A’s and three B’s during his first semester, in spring 1962, incourses that included mechanical drawing and elementary aeronautics. After another semester he was named the Aeronautics Student of the Year. Along the way, he even passed the required English examination—without cheating.
    To be nearer to the new school, Dieter left San Francisco and lived in his van, sleeping on a raised platform he had built in the back and had covered with a thin pad and sleeping bag. He lashed his surfboard and skis to the roof. The commercial van was windowless but had ample ventilation from a three-foot hole in its side. The furnishings were sparse; the walls were unfinished steel; and there was an old carpet remnant on the floor. Most of his clothes he kept folded in his old air force duffel bag. A wire hanger holding a shirt or two was usually hooked to the ceiling. Dieter sometimes found friends who let him park in front of their residences and gave him bathroom privileges, but often he pulled into the school parking lot for the night. In the morning he used the gym facilities for showering and shaving. He was a vagabond on wheels, and to all who met him in those early-1960s, pre-hippie days in the Bay Area, Dieter, “full of life and overflowing with exuberance,” epitomized the term free spirit .
    When it came to the opposite sex, Dieter was a charmer with an unquenchable appetite. His handsome visage, winning smile, and engaging manner were part of the package, and there was also his beguiling foreign-correspondent accent, which his buddies thought allowed Dieter to suggest things to women that would have earned them a slap in the face. Once, Dieter conducted his own neighborhood sex survey. It began with a conversation in the school cafeteria—Dieter and some buddies were discussing a class assignment in sociology having to do with what percentage of married women would engage in extramarital sex. Twenty percent was the agreed-upon number. Dieter estimated that the average suburban neighborhood had ten to twelve homes per block, so two married women per block would swing. Dieter said he would test the theory. The next day, he reported to his friends that 20 percent was indeed correct. Dieter had selected a block at random, knocked on front doors, introduced himself to the woman of the house, and thereafter stated his amorous intentions. He got halfway down the block before striking gold, and did not doubt he would have had similar statistical success on the other half of the block. His classmates had no doubt, either.
    There was no shortage of girls at school willing to date Dieter, and he could at times be selective. He especially liked it when a girl’s father was “a doctor or lawyer or banker.” Girls who had money, Dieter discovered, often bought presents for a guy living hand-to-mouth out of his van. Whenever necessary, he was happy to supply them with an appropriate occasion, like his birthday. In those days, Dieter had a birthday “maybe once a week.”
    One friend that Dieter made at College of San Mateo was Mike Grimes, also an aeronautics major who planned to become a navy pilot. It didn’t take long for Grimes to realize that Dieter had no income but “survived on his charm.” Dieter was a “people magnet”—not just with women but with men, too. “You couldn’t help but like him and want to be around him. Everything was always fun with Dieter.” Invitations to parental homes for dinner abounded, and Dieter accepted them all, eating heartily, entertaining family members, and happily taking as many leftovers as were offered. When Grimes