The Boat School Boys
 

By Richard A. Stratton

Tales from Southeast Asia

It was a new ball game sitting in solitary confinement in a Hoa Lo “Hanoi Hilton” isolation cell. It was far different than a week previous on Ticonderoga (CVA-14) goofing off in the Ready Room as a newly assigned lieutenant commander maintenance officer of the world famous Golden Dragons (CAW-19, VA-192). No more A-4Es, no more flight schedules, no more LSO debriefs, no more mission planning, no more manning of the spare or the ready tanker, no more mail call. It all came to an abrupt halt on 5 January 1967 when I ate my own 2.75 folding fin aircraft rockets on a weather reconnaissance hop.

I was now a tortured, beaten, starving hulk designated as the “Blackest of Criminals” in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and an official “Yankee Air Pirate” (eligible to be hung from the yardarm, having been caught in the act of piracy). I was alone, separated from all my shipmates.

I did not know whom to trust, what the rules of my new mess happened to be, or what was expected of me in this new and strange form of warfare I was about to embark upon. The walls had more banging and knocking than the whole hull of the venerable 27C that had been my previous home. There was a rhythm and a pattern to the noise that had all the class of a wall full of woodpeckers. I remembered enough Morse code to recognize that what I was hearing was not Morse code; but it sure wasn’t the ghosts of French Foreign Legionnaires having a happy hour. This isolation wing of the prison had a limited number of cells. Once a day you would put your honey bucket out and your morning soup bowl. One of the cells would open up and those prisoners would gather up the gear and proceed to a cell at the end of the passageway that had some running water piped into it. These guys would do the dishes, buckets and their armpits taking their sweet old time, making a hell of a racket and yakking away at each other to beat the band. But wait a minute, they were not talking to each other, they were talking to the rest of us as if they were talking to each other. Each cell had a high barred window open to the air. If you stood on your cement slab pad you could pick up what they were saying.

“If you read me, cough once for yes; twice for no.” Cough. “Are you Air Force?” Cough. Cough. “Are you Navy?” Cough. “Are you an O-5?” Cough. Cough. “Are you an O-4?” Cough. “Oh sh__, another lieutenant commander!” “Do you know who won the Army-Navy game?” Cough. Cough. “Oh hell, a dumb lieutenant commander at that!”

“Jim Stockdale and Robbie Risner are the SROs (Senior Ranking Officers). Their rules are: communicate at all costs; when they get around to torturing you, hold out as long as you can, bounce back and make them do it all over again; don’t despair when they break you, they have broken all of us; pray.” Cough. “Two Thais are next to you and have been trying to communicate with you. They are using the tap code; it is a box; the first letters are: American Football League Quits Victorious. Communicate. My name is Galanti—Paul Galanti.” BANG. The universal danger signal, as I found out later. They were hauled out of the cell block, tortured and I did not see Paul for three years.

The rules of the new ball game were quite simple. To lead was to be tortured. To communicate with a fellow prisoner was a de facto sign of leadership resulting in torture. To fail to bow was to be beaten and tortured. To fail to do exactly what you were told and when you were told was to be tortured. Medical attention was reserved to those who might have some propaganda value and then only in respect to the parts of you that showed. Food and water were rationed out only to the extent to keep you alive, but in a weakened condition. Lenient and humane treatment were defined as permitting you to live. You were being held as a hostage and as a propaganda tool; otherwise you had no value. You were a slave to communist ideology.

Their rank questions made sense—find the SRO. But the Army-Navy game! Doesn’t that beat all! The pampered nephews of Uncle Sam! The Boat School Boys are forever with me! I really don’t know if that is a curse or a blessing. Although I must admit that it took a set of cajones for Paul to get the rules of the road and the tap code to me. I had met Stockdale at Stanford University where I was his numerical relief in the international relations program. He was a Boat School boy, but I must admit, having already been tortured, that his rules of the road were a Godsend to my resistance posture.

You see, I started out in this man’s Navy as a naval aviation cadet, having been first a private in the Massachusetts National Guard. I knew what it was to be an enlisted man as my father and brother had been before me. I did not take it to be a sign of second-class status—it was just different. I was a NavCad for the purpose of being a naval aviator, not of being an officer; if you had to be an officer to fly from carriers then so be it, no big deal. But these officers were something else! Here’s how the myth built up in my mind. Recognize, that as far as I was concerned initially, all officers were Boat School Boys.

NavCads ran out to the obstacle course; officers rode out and back in a cattle car. NavCads formed up for church call on Sunday while the officers drove by, shooting us the Hawaiian peace sign, to pick off all the best looking girls at Pensacola Beach. The officers got to go to the O’Club and watch pretty girls at the pool and drink Bloody Marys; the NavCads got to go across the street to the ACRAC (Aviation Cadet Recreation and Athletic Club)—a primitive but welcome beer hall. NavCads got to wash aircraft while the officers lounged around. NavCads got to man fire bottles while the officers started their engines. NavCads took the leftovers while the officers got the prime flight times and first shots at available aircraft. Not complaining mind you; just a fact of life registering more because they were no better or no worse an aviator than you were.

As a plow-back instructor in advanced training, I started to sort out the Boat School Boys. They hung in there together. They were adventuresome, but over-confident. But they were, as a rule, unprepared for hops, careless about academics, and cavalier about performing for grades.

As a plankowner in a new fleet attack squadron forming up, it became obvious to me that the leadership put the Boat School Boys in desirable positions of trust. In the wardroom, their napkin numbers kept them together at the formal sittings. They tended to pull liberty together. They had contacts ashore and afloat that enabled them to get things done and take care of their troops in a manner I could only aspire to. They got the recommendations to Test Pilot School and nifty postgraduate programs.

Sound green eyed with envy? Jealous? Left out? Angry? It may sound like it, but it is not so. They were different and I was different. Someday they would be in command and in the flag mess. If the Navy kept faith with me I’d fly my butt off and aspire to have a shot at commander and maybe even get my own squadron. We were different.

And how different the Boat School Boys were! During the six years I spent in prison, I had the good fortune to be in the middle of the internal prisoner communication nets that the Viet Cong (VC) never could eliminate. I watched good SROs stand up and be counted, only to be cut down like firewood. I saw their replacements come and go. I assisted in building up new communication nets when old ones were compromised. I got a good feel for those of my shipmates—the vast majority of who were sterling, outstanding warriors—who had that something extra to rally the troops, restore faith, charge the hill one more time, and be there when you needed them.

What we as survivors all had in common was neighborhood, church, school, friends, and family that made us the people we are today. Our education and training only built upon, refined, and honed what already was there. However, it did not take me long in Hanoi to discover that the BSB (Boat School Boys) were in a class all by themselves. Indeed my first life saving contact was with Paul Galanti, BSB extraordinaire.

At great risk to life and limb, you would try to communicate. The purposes of communication were to formulate resistance plans, escape plans, resistance to enemy propaganda ploys, names of downed and imprisoned Americans and their allies, set up the chain of command, establish our rules of the road, build morale, and basically, to screw the VC in any way that we could think of. We had our own war to fight and we could not figure it without communication.

The last thing you needed when you started to set up a communication net or pass the word was to have some overly educated jackass try to debate with you the theology and philosophy of what you were trying to do, especially when you were tapping. Some guys wanted convincing, others wanted it to be fair, still others thought it was too something (dangerous, frivolous, demeaning, childish, hard, soft, etc., etc.). You don’t know what a thrill it was to find that on the other side of the wall you had a BSB. He would get it right the first time around. You would get no guff. “Roger WILCO Out.” Later on he might come back and ask if you or the SRO knew what you were doing, or suggest a better way, or tell you frankly that he thought it was useless. But he never passed that down the line.  

The Boat School Boys...

One of our acting SROs (a BSB) took it into his head that the POWs would all go on a fast to show the VC that we would not tolerate the torture and beating of prisoners. We would fast until the VC granted us the rights of POWs under the Geneva Convention. He passed the word down the line to his emaciated, already starving, sickly troopers via a net made up mostly of BSBs. We went on the fast much to the amazement of the VC who were only too glad to eat the rations themselves (since we actually were winning the war about the time LBJ knocked off the bombing). Meanwhile, the BSBs went back up the net to convince our stalwart but misguided leader that the fast was counterproductive and got the order rescinded. Obey—an easy word—but with critical implications for survival. Innovation—not always productive, like a fast for the starving; but better than sitting on your duff.

All of the lessons that Mother Bancroft taught her sons, many of which did not have the approval of the Academic Committee, were played out on the VC. A BSB, during a filmed propaganda session, blinked out “torture” in Morse code. A BSB is on the cover of Life magazine showing an inverted Hawaiian peace sign (Life airbrushed the fingers out lest their customers be scandalized). A BSB, seriously injured and on a stretcher, refused the offer of an early release at a time when our own internal policy for release would have let him go with honor. The stories of the sons of Mother Bancroft go on and on. But BSBs were lifesavers through unflinching leadership and inspiration through example to me. I came out of the prison experience vowing to become a part of the BSB system, which was certainly a change from all of my earlier NavCad and junior officer carping. And indeed, my Navy twilight tour was within the USNA system.

The United States Naval Academy performs a unique service for the country that other institutions, like my Georgetown and Stanford, never could or should perform. The Naval Academy is in the business of forming from the raw material of society, a group of leaders of men and women. It produces a class of warriors, a cadre of men and women who are willing to sacrifice their treasure, their bodies, and their very lives for the Constitution, and for the citizens of the United States of America. The Naval Academy recreates the dedication of the signers of the Declaration of Independence who gave their all for their beliefs. The Naval Academy is in the business of developing integrity, honesty, courage, and stamina through rigorous physical and intellectual conditioning.

The product of the Naval Academy is not an engineer, a political scientist, a chemist, or a physicist. The product is a citizen, a person formed in a heroic mold, who we hope will never have to be a hero, but who we are confident has the fortitude to go in harm’s way to protect the Republic. The product is a person who will do the right thing for no other reason than it is the right thing to do. The product is a person who recognizes excellence and is willing to strive for it. The product is a person dedicated to caring for the enlisted men and women of the U.S. Navy, those people who do most of the work and most of the dying in our Navy.

The product of the Naval Academy is a person who well represents the nation no matter what port he enters or sea he sails upon. No other institution does this. The greatest accolade given the U.S. Naval Academy in the Vietnamese Communist prison was the statement the camp commander, Major Bui, made to John Sidney McCain III ’58, when John, son of the commander-in-chief Pacific, refused an early propaganda release: “They have taught you too well, McCain! They have taught you too well.”

May we always continue to teach Midshipmen “too well”.
 

Richard A. Stratton spent six years in seminaries studying for the Catholic priesthood. He transferred to Georgetown University and obtained a degree in history. He entered navy pilot training, discovered he liked it, and decided to make the Navy his career. Stratton was shot down over North Vietnam in January 1967. In March of ’67, he was forced to attend a press briefing in Hanoi. He pulled his “Manchurian Candidate” antics when he appeared drugged and robot-like and with unfocused eyes made exaggerated bows to the four corners of the room. This conference focused world attention on the treatment of POWs in Vietnam and the mind-altering acts imposed on the POWs to secure their compliance. He retired from the Navy with the rank of captain.

Sketches by Michael McGrath, President NAM-POWS.

1. The Tap Code. Communications were the lifelines of our covert camp organization. It was essential for everyone to know what was happening in camp, whether the news was about a new torture or just a friendly word of encouragement to a disheartened fellow POW. The primary means of communication was by use of the “tap” code. The code was a simple arrangement of the alphabet into a 5 x 5 block. It was derived through one man’s code knowledge gained from Air Force survival school. The Vietnamese were able to extract, by torture, every detail of the code. They separated us and built multiple screens of bamboo and tarpaper between each room, but they never succeeded in completely stopping us from communicating.

2. Watching. Countless hours were spent in this position as we “cleared the hallway” for guards. Each man gladly took his share of clearing, because the consequences of getting caught while communicating could result in torture and months of a miserable existence in irons or “cuffs.”

All the POWs became “peekers” as we followed the daily activities around camp. Everything from the movement and interrogation of prisoners to the obscene acts committed by the guards with animals, was noted. The news was quickly passed from room to room in the tap code.

3. Cuffed. This picture shows being cuffed to a wall. The usual position was with the wrists handcuffed behind the back. The cuffs were taken off twice a day for meals. If the cuffs had been too tight, the fingers would be swollen and of little use in picking up a spoon or a cup.

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