Surviving Hell by Leo Thorsness Read Free Book Online Page A

might never know what happened to me. I also felt that I had failed my profession by allowing myself to be shot down in the first place. But these feelings were small in comparison to what I experienced when I broke under torture. I had friends who were already in the POW system. I knew they must have emerged from the same horrific torture that had broken me with their honor intact. But I had failed. Strapped on a slab, I tried to cry. But I was past tears. If I ever saw my fellow POWs, I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up.

    After eighteen days, they pulled me out of solitary in Heartbreak —along with a naval pilot who had been shot down two weeks after I was, Ev Southwick. They moved us to the Zoo and pushed us into a cell with Jim Hiteshew. Jim, badly injured, was lying on the center of three bed boards. We said hello and told him our names; Ev adding that he was Navy. I said that I was Air Force out of Takhli Air Base in Thailand. Jim, almost entirely covered in a cast, said, “Hi, Leo, I’m Jim Hiteshew. We knew each other at Takhli.” We had both changed so much in six weeks we didn’t recognize each other.
    Jim was an Air Force major shot down six weeks before I was. He had ejected at the bottom of a dive run doing about 600 knots, breaking both legs and one arm so badly that the Vietnamese had almost let him die in the field. But he had refused to give up and they had reluctantly brought him in, putting him in close to a full body cast covering both legs, his chest, the lower half of his back, and one arm. They left a small opening so he could defecate and urinate. Jim needed help to survive.
    Ev looked me over and said, “You’re in bad shape. We’ve got to get you back on your feet so we can both help Jim.”
    I immediately began to tell them I had failed. As soon as they knew what I was talking about, Jim said roughly, “Knock it off, Leo. Don’t you know?”
    â€œKnow what?”
    â€œThat everyone who goes through that type of interrogation has one of two things happen: either they broke or died—some did both.”
    There was—and there still is—no way for me to express my absolute euphoria at hearing these words. I was not a failure. I was average and happy to be so.

CHAPTER 5
    TAP CODE
    M y six years as a POW were divided into two more or less equal periods. The first three years were brutal. I lived in solitary confinement or with one or two other POWs in a small cell. If the guards heard any sound, we were instantly beaten or made to kneel for hours on rough concrete. The last three years were more of a routine. Fifteen to 45 POWs lived together in big cells. We could talk out loud.
    More American aviators were shot down in 1967, the year I was shot down, than any other year of the war. So when I arrived, the Vietnamese were hustling to find new prisons. In addition to the Hilton, we gave the various POW camps names like Skid Row and the Plantation. They opened a new complex that had once been a French film studio. It was farther out on the outskirts of Hanoi than the Hilton. We called it the Zoo. It was there that I was moved with Ev right after being tortured at Heartbreak.
    The Zoo housed over 100 POWs. It had a swimming pool in the middle of the several large one-story rectangular buildings. The pool was full of stale water, garbage and bugs—a bad-smelling, mosquito-breeding site. Since the Zoo was not originally a prison, most of the rooms (now cells) had a window. But the Vietnamese didn’t want communication between the POWs, and soon after we arrived, our guards became bricklayers. They bricked up all windows to prevent us from seeing each other or using hand signals to communicate.
    Within minutes of being put in with Jim and Ev and Jim’s telling me that everyone who survived the horrendous Heartbreak interrogation
went past name, rank, serial number, and date of birth, I heard a syncopated knock on our wall.
    I