Operation Just Cause... ...for as long as it takes
Sent in by MilitaryHub.Com From: "News Editor"
Written by Cynthia Minnick
11th Wing Public Affairs
BOLLING AIR FORCE BASE, D.C. (AFPN) -- By their own admission, fighter pilots are a cocky group who maintain a cream-of-the- crop mentality. But when they are suddenly shot out of the sky and become prisoners of war in enemy territory, they rapidly descend into another kind of reality.
"All of a sudden you're not that (fighter pilot) anymore," said a former Vietnam POW. "And you're scared."
The film "Return With Honor" tells the powerful story of American pilots shot down over North Vietnam and their challenge to survive as POWs. Excerpts of the film were shown during the 11th Wing Professional Development Series held in the Defense Intelligence Agency auditorium June 14.
Honored speakers at the event were three former Air Force POWs featured in the film; U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, retired Col. Fred Cherry and retired Lt. Col. Kevin McManus. The three men spent more than a combined 20 years imprisoned in Vietnam.
Shot down 1966, Johnson was a POW for almost seven years. A former member of the Thunderbirds and director of the Air Force Weapons School, Johnson retired as a colonel after a 29-year career. Today, Johnson is a congressman representing the Third Congressional District of Texas.
Cherry had more than 30 years of active duty before retiring from the Air Force at the rank of colonel in 1981. A major when shot down in 1965, he spent more than seven years incarcerated as a POW in Vietnam.
A 1964 Air Force Academy graduate, McManus was a lieutenant when shot down in 1967. He spent more than five years as a POW and eventually retired from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel.
Hushed and humbled, the audience listened intently as the flyers described their experiences in captivity. After the initial terror of being shot down, the men were spat at, stoned, faced firing squads and dragged off to prison camps. The next ordeal was usually interrogation. The captors wanted information and the pilot's lack of response often determined the next nightmare -- in walked a torturer.
While most people cannot imagine dealing with such brutality on a day-to-day basis, torture soon became a way of life for the prisoners. Escape was virtually impossible. The Americans would have been easily recognized outside the prisons even if they had successfully escaped. So they learned to endure, no matter how merciless the situation.
Johnson described one occasion when he and the ranking officer tried to in-process some new pilots who had been shot down.
"We were trying to get word to the new guys about what was going on, trying to calm them down," he said. Caught in the act by a Vietnamese guard, Johnson and the other officer were each put in solitary confinement.
Johnson's cell had a barred window covered with thick plywood. Thrown on a hard bunk and locked in leg stocks, Johnson laid in virtual darkness for more than two months. "I learned to eat bugs and I learned to watch them," he said grimly. Finally, a typhoon whipped through one day and blew the cover off the window.
"For the first time in 72 days I saw the sun rise, trees -- God in all his glory," recalled Johnson quietly. "I just knew there was someone looking over me." That day the Vietnamese came and unlocked his leg stocks, returning him to his original cell.
Maintaining their honor and holding on to faith was vital to survival for all three of the POWs. A fellow prisoner sent McManus four rules: Keep faith in God. Keep faith in country. Keep faith in family. Keep faith in fellow prisoners.
Each man had their own personal wellspring filled with strength, honor and courage and each drew from that source in a way which was most meaningful to them.
"I can attribute most of my strengths from the way I was raised," said Cherry. "I got it from my family and from the way I was taught by my teachers -- it gave me the inner strength I needed to get through."
But the most important sustenance for the prisoners was simple communication, he added. The tap code was a communication method used between POWs. They spelled out words by tapping a certain pattern on the walls. The alphabet was used in a grid pattern where the number of taps indicated the column and row of the letter. Sounding "like a den of runaway woodpeckers" at times, the men used the tap code as a form of message-based information, education and recreation.
"That's why the tap code was so important," said Cherry. "We were able to defy the enemy to prevent us from communicating. I learned to play chess through the wall. We'd just set up the chess 'board' as a grid and play. We'd take little slivers of paper, write the pieces on them, and then move them around."
Writing was an accomplishment in itself since the POWs didn't have pencils. Because of its lead content, an old toothpaste tube would be used as a writing instrument.
"We were going to teach each other everything we knew and unload our brains on one another," said Johnson. "We had one guy that taught us thermodynamics. So we picked up a lot of knowledge."
The information gained included contributions from Navy POWs the Air Force pilots might not have otherwise sought out. "I learned more about boats than I ever wanted to know!" Johnson said laughing.
All three men tried to maintain a sense of humor throughout and after their ordeal. Indeed, they said humor was crucial to survival. Jokes were frequently transmitted via the tap code. Tapping also served as a confessional of sorts since there was nothing about the prisoners' lives that they didn't wind up telling someone in the camp, according to Cherry.
When asked to comment on how they viewed their resilience and renewed confidence in humanity, the answers reflected their individual philosophies.
"Life is a series of two steps forward, one step backward," said McManus. After a moment of contemplation, he added, "Sometimes three steps backward.
"But the people who were (in the states) in the '60s and '70s had it much tougher than we did," he continued. "It is much harder making choices than not making a choice. And we really had only one choice when you got right down to it -- to live or not to live -- because you could give up. And there were some that did."
For those who survived, letting go of animosity and anger over their experiences took time and tolerance. "I have washed my hands of any hatred," said Cherry. "I went back (to Vietnam) in 1993 and spent two weeks at the prison camps where I was held. We talked with a couple of the Vietnamese officers who had been in one of the camps with us, and it was not a problem to sit across the table and talk to them."
Old wounds may have mended and times have changed, yet something very profound has remained constant for these American since their release as POWs. Summed up in one simple word, it is their freedom.
"The flag does stand for something," said Johnson. "It stands for the greatest nation in the world. And you are looking at three guys who would go back and fight for it again."
Sent in by MilitaryHub.Com
by Linda D. Kozaryn
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- Accounting for those missing from past wars is a matter affecting today's readiness, not just payment of a debt come due, according to Deputy Defense Secretary Rudy de Leon.
Today's service members count on the nation's commitment to do all it can to find them and bring them home if they are captured, listed as missing in action or fall on the field of battle, he said. "Our men and women in uniform will only have faith in us if we keep faith with those who went before," de Leon said in a recent speech to the National League of Families of POW/MIA in Southeast Asia.
De Leon reaffirmed DOD's pledge to account for veterans missing from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
"... Behind each black slab on that wall of the Vietnam Memorial stand the families that yearn for answers. ... And we will not waver in our efforts to bring them home. We will continue our diplomatic efforts to discover the whole truth about those last seen alive and in captivity," he said.
He noted American teams arrived in North Korea, June 25, to conduct the first of five joint recovery operations slated to be complete by Veterans Day, Nov. 11.
This is the fifth consecutive year U.S. recovery teams have operated in North Korea, according to DOD officials. Since 1996, teams from the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, known as CILHI, have conducted 12 such operations and recovered remains believed to be 42 soldiers. Remains of another 10 soldiers are undergoing forensic review at CILHI.
"I believe that with these efforts -- augmented by the important work of the U.S.-Russian Commission on POW/MIAs -- we can be more hopeful now than at any other time the last half century that we will finally be able to account for many of the (more than) 8,000 still missing from the Korean conflict," de Leon said.
He saluted the teams who work on investigative, research and recovery operations. They include Joint Task Force-Full Accounting based at Camp Smith, Hawaii, and Defense Intelligence Agency interviewers who now have a permanent space at Hickham Air Force Base, Hawaii. He also recognized scientists at CILHI and the Armed Forces DNA Laboratory in Maryland, who do pioneering work with the latest state-of-the-art technology for mitochondrial DNA testing.
"I know how important these personnel are," de Leon said. "I am committed to protecting the resources that are so essential to our mission."
DOD is sending a team to CILHI to review their mission requirements, get their concerns about their manning levels resolved, and ensure that their organizational structure and resources fit the mission, he said. The Life Sciences Equipment Laboratory in San Antonio will be provided the resources they need to meet their critical supporting role, he added.
The deputy secretary is well aware of the lack of closure surrounding the missing in action. His uncle, a staff sergeant from Colorado, was a Korean War POW. "After 20 years of searching, two weeks ago I read the file on him from the Army archives," de Leon said. "Reading that file today and looking at how we work with our families 50 years later, there are so many dramatic changes.
A simple telegram sent to de Leon's aunt reported his uncle as missing. The years passed, the armistice was signed, and there was still no word, he said. Finally, some prisoners released from North Korean camps reported that they'd seen her husband and they witnessed his death. The Army records simply say the cause of death was malnutrition and dysentery.
"In the file, I read the letter that his mother wrote to the Army saying, 'I'll do anything possible to have my son returned to me.' As I read this file ... I could understand the stories that my mother had been telling me about my aunt, about how there was nowhere for her to go, about why she was so bitter -- a wife with two children living with her mother, my grandmother, untouched by any support system, such as the league offers today."
The National League of Families of POW/MIA in Southeast Asia has helped change the landscape "so that people like my aunt will never be alone again," de Leon said. "No matter what happens. No matter how difficult it is to trace what happened."
Sent in by Timothy Guy
The state of Florida passed a bill directing the Florida Department of Transportation to fly the POW/MIA flag and erect appropriate markers honoring them. SB 1018 passed by the Florida Senate by a vote 40-0 and 119-0 by the Florida House. It is now on the Governors desk awaiting his signature. It took two years but my letters and several other people from Florida requesting this. I was hoping that they would name the rest areas after POW/MIAs but getting them to fly the POW/MIA flag 7/365 is better then not at all.
Tim Guy
Sent in by American Veterans Search
This Letter is dedicated to all POW/MIA's and to all American veterans who have given us so much to be thankful for....
Dear Brothers & Sisters
There are 2,058 American POW/MIA's left unaccounted for from the Vietnam War Alone and over 9,000 from the Korean war along with over 85,000 from WWII. In this number are some that were KIA (killed in action), but their bodies have not been returned home.
For those brave soldiers who fought but have not returned, and whose fate is known only to God, we must pledge together to them and to their families to remember them each day and to do everything in our power to speak on their behalf. To find them and return them to their own soil, living and dead alike, during a time of relative peace seems a small enough sacrifice in comparison. Can we in good conscience do less for the patriots who sacrificed their existence for us and our well-being?
This is not simply the American thing to do, or the Humane thing to do, it is the RIGHT thing to do.
They have been away too long and they need to be with their families, friends and loved ones. They have been in the hands of the enemies far too long and NOW we need to do all we can to bring them home. It is time that we as Americans force our politicians and government officials to account for all those who are still missing and unaccounted for. We need to educate our children and teach them about what really happened to our troops, and not the sugar coated stories and lies they are fed in textbooks. It is time they learned the truth about their husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters and the truth about their fates. Let's forget the politics and political games and just bring them home NOW! There are many veterans from WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, the Gulf and other wars still not accounted for and its is now time to bring ALL of them home to their families and loved ones. REMEMBER, THEY ARE NOT DEAD UNTIL THEY ARE FORGOTTEN. WE MUST REMEMBER THEM !
Please remember those who fought for our country, proudly....So that you and I can enjoy the Freedom...we have today...
VISIT OUR POW/MIA PAGE"Help Bring Them Home to American Soil"
SEE What this 12yr old young lady "Nikki Mendicino" is doing for our POW/MIA's
AMERICAN VETERAN
SEARCH
*Here you can Locate and Reunite with your Service Buddies Now !*
" Walk In Peace "
Your Brothers,
Rich & Jack AVS
