Perspective: 7 years, 4 months, and 27 days as a POW (NQM014)
"Resist to the point of permanent physical or mental damage and then no more. Give as little as possible and then bounce back to resist again." - Brigadier General Robinson Risner.
Seven years, four months, and 27 days. Think about how much you can accomplish in that time span. Now think about how it would feel to spend that amount of time without your everyday freedoms. Freedoms heroes like Robinson Risner sacrificed a lifetime for.
Shot down over North Vietnam on 16 September 1965 at the controls of an F-105 on a Hunter-Killer anti-SAM (Surface to Air Missile) mission, Risner spend almost 7.5 years as a Prisoner Of War (POW), mainly kept captive at the infamous North Vietnamese Hỏa Lò Prison prison (also known as the Hanoi Hilton).
This will undoubtedly be the first of many more POW stories I will highlight on this blog. Conditions at the Hanoi Hilton were notoriously bad. The torture was constant. Although Vietnamese propaganda to this day maintains no Americans were tortured during the war, multiple eye witness accounts tell a different story. Maureen Callahan wrote a brief piece about the torture in 2014: “The Americans were thrown in tiny cells, slabs of concrete for beds, single, bare light bulbs making sleep impossible. They were in a constant state of starvation, and when they were fed, their watery soup was laced with pebbles or feces. They were made to stand on stacked stools for days on end. They were often strapped down by 15-pound leg irons, which caused lacerations and infection, or by stocks at the ends of their beds, which kept them on their backs for days. The walls and floors were overrun with roaches and rats. When they were strapped down, they were forced to lie in their own excrement.”
The late great John McCain, held by the Vietnamese himself for over five and a half years, wrote about his ordeal in a detailed first-hand account for US News & World Report. Among the episodes of torture and darkness, there were also moments of light. POWs bonded together. Prisoners shared already small rations, stood up for each others rights at the risk of additional torture, and used an ingenious tap code to communicate. when communication was strictly forbidden. This tap code was used for everything from plain communication to reading poetry, and spreading outside news throughout the camps to teaching each other college-level courses in subjects such as chemistry and math. Some of the courses were so detailed that a number of POWs received college credit for them after they returned stateside.
General Risner wrote an excellent memoir after his return from Vietnam called The Passing Of The Night. Rob Jones, the Marine whom we wrote about in our very first NQM post, also started an excellent podcast called Use the Weight., where he does a fine job summarizing the book in Episode 8. A few notable excerpts are below.
ROB JONES USE THE WEIGHT PODCAST: EPISODE 8
On hunger and a stronger mental mindset: "After we ate, the guards would take me down to wash the dishes, he watched me carefully to make sure I didn’t eat any scraps. When he was not looking, I would eat whatever scraps I could. If they ended up catching me, they made me pour everything on the floor. This floor was filthy, it was the habitat of the rats. This was the room where for 40 years guards had relieved themselves in a pit, and where we emptied our waste buckets. But despite the filth, as soon as the guards left I would pick up the scraps and devour them. There were times I found banana peels that had turned black. They were tossed in a corner where I knew the rats had nosed over them. When the guards weren’t looking I would put them under my shirt and take them to my room to eat them. I was so hungry that I would eat anything with any substance or bulk.”
Rob Jones adds: He is so hungry, he was wiling to eat anything that had been on a never cleaned bathroom floor, one with rats going over them. Think about that, next time you say I am hungry or I am starving, you are not. If you are not willing to eat food off of a bathroom floor you are not starving.
On Isolation and running an estimated 25 miles in one day in a tiny prison cell: "They made him spend ten months in pitch black. One day they just boarded up his windows. He is in that dark room for 10 months straight. This is what he says: “It started getting darker and darker, soon I couldn’t even see the back of my hand. All of a sudden my neck became incredibly hot, like someone was aiming a blowtorch right at it. I was becoming so agitated and nervous I could not sit still. I stood up and began to walk, even when eating my food. For nearly a year after that, I never sat down to eat my food. It was not fear of the dark, but something strange was happening to me. The agitation continued to build, after 5 minutes I began to ran back and forth in the room. I ran and ran and ran. Sometimes I switched to push-ups and then sit-ups. It was a couple hours after the 2130 gong when I stopped, after hundreds of push-ups and as nearly as a 1000 sit-ups. It was as if I had an animal on my back. The fact that I could not get rid of this feeling caused me to be even more panic stricken. I could not understand it and get rid of it. I was convinced I would never get out of that cell.” He estimated he was doing 25 miles of running a day to distract himself.”
On getting through the torture sessions: “Just make it one more minute. Anyone can withstand anything for one minute. And so when the minute ended, he would say again “make it one more minute”. And that is something anyone can use. Remember that next time you are going through a hard minute. Remember all the hard minutes Robert Risner had to go through over the 7 years he was imprisoned. You will probably realize you can make it one more minute.”
Perspective: “They end up putting him in leg stockings. For the first three days, he is not fed and not given water. He is also not allowed to go to the bathroom. He is basically lying in his own shit and piss for three straight days. After almost dying of thirst, he is given meager rations. He is in the leg-stocks for a total of 32 days. Rob summarizes perspective really well after running 31 marathons in 31 days: I’d much rather run 31 marathons in 31 days than being in the stocks for 32 days.”
Thankful: “On returning home, they felt thankful. Thankful to their brothers in arms, the American people, and their Commander In Chief President Nixon. They didn’t feel bitter, they didn’t feel depressed, they were thankful to their country, their fellow citizens, and their president.
Main takeaways we can all apply in our own lives.
Small victories add up: “First one, small victories. When he was in prison, he was always looking for that small little thing to keep him moving forward. When he was being tortured, he was looking for victory by knocking himself out so he wouldn’t be tortured further. When he was in prison he tried to get a small victory by communicating with others or showing the guards he wasn’t afraid by looking them straight in the eyes. We can all do that in our lives as well, if you are trying to make a change in your life, look for the small victories you can find that will add up.”
You are still in the fight: “No matter the situation, you are still in the fight, you are always in the fight. Even though these guys were not fighting anymore in their planes, they were now fighting a propaganda war. There are so many different aspects to fighting. For me personally, there was a fight back at the home-front, so that’s how I knew I needed to fight that fight back here. I needed to recover and get healthy so I could give back to veterans, because direct combat is not the only way to fight. So regardless of your situation you are still in the fight.”
Fight for something bigger than yourself: “This book shows that selflessness is the way to survive anything. Risner wasn’t just trying to survive for himself. He was constantly thinking about his family and the other POWs that were depending on him to be strong as commander. He was thinking about his country that counted on them to maintain their military bearing, and to fight that propaganda war and not give the Vietnamese anything. He was fighting for something bigger than himself, a cause he cared about.
Perspective: “He appreciates his clothes, soap, having a toilet, hot water, Remember that when something is going bad, there are people that have survived much much much worse. Keep that perspective.”
