The Last Christmas in Camp

(After the Son Tay Rescue Raid the Communists decided to ship the younger studs up to the Chinese boarder and place us old fuds downtown Hanoi, on ground zero, in case of massive raids and an invasion. American POWs had by then attained a measure of value as hostages.)

An Air Force Ace, Jim Kassler (RIP) was at one point regaling me with war stories from Korea and Vietnam. He recounted how just before his shoot-down his crew chief had remarked, while strapping him in to his aircraft: "Don't worry if you get shot down, sir. I understand that they are putting you up in the Hanoi Hilton until the end of the war."

Jim allowed as how we might have trouble with that Hotel designation in our dotage. That day in 2017 I feared future generations might consider us to be in the same circumstances as the Saudi Princes currently found themselves — all of us allegedly having been ensconced in the 5-star accommodations of a prestigious hotel chain.

Jim predicted revisionist pundits posing as professors, if they should teach about the Vietnam War at all, would manage to remove the quotation marks around "Hanoi Hilton" when referring to the POW main prison location.

Cell Interior Hoa Lo Prison

In PBS's ersatz 18-hour "documentary" The Vietnam War, Burns and Novick totally distort the Vietnam experience by coating grains or truth with truckloads of misstatements and innuendo. My granddaughters attending colleges and watching TV today are being indoctrinated, not educated.

Jim and I started our own reality check by matching stories about our first few weeks after checking to the Maison Centrale. There was no lounge, lobby or check-in area. We were placed in a holding room with knobby walls designed to attenuate sound, a hook in the ceiling and a couple of hooks in the walls. There was one light hanging form a wire out of the ceiling. There was a rusted bucket in the corner obviously for human waste. The surfaces were stained with human fluids. The air was stale, fetid and cloying. I was to spend a week there in my skivvies, "checking in."

After about a week in the Knobby Room I was transferred to a private accommodation in the maximum security wing, appropriately named by the old timers "Heart Break Hotel." This cell had hot and cold running rats through a rat hole (drain) at the base of a courtyard wall.

I had my own private toilet — a rusted bucket with a lid. There were two cement bed pads built against the wall with leg stocks at the end of each. It appeared to be a space about 6 feet wide, 8 feet long and 14 feet high. There was a bared and boarded window high up on the outside wall and a strong door with a Judas hole on the passageway side. I had two meals a day with random hits on the head and interrogations at unpredictable times through any 24-hour period.

The Strappado in Process: Welcome to Hanoi

There was no medical care. Once they determined that I was going to live they issued me some go-aheads made of rubber tires for soles and inner tubes for an arch strap, T shirt, skive shorts (boxer), mess dress uniform (striped PJs), a hand towel, a see-thru blanket and a straw matt. I was a thing of sartorial splendor.

Interestingly enough, I had no injuries resulting from the blowing up of — and my simultaneous ejection from — the A4E Skyhawk. There were no injuries resulting from the parachute landing or the succession of beatings administered by the rather irate peasants that captured me.

If you arrived in Hoa Lo with injuries that they exacerbated as part of their torture regime as they did with Jim Kassler and others, torture was an unmitigated evil. Otherwise, if they tortured you, you either lived or you died.

Their intent was not to kill you by torture but to exploit you. So voluntary death was not an option that was on the table. As a result you learned how far you could resist on any one day and took the process to that limit. The concept was to bend to just before they broke you and you did something incredibly stupid to hurt your shipmates or your country. You learned that they also had limitations.

Authority for torture came from the highest levels and the individual interrogator may or may not have that authority on any one day. They also were working with time constraints and maybe you could outlast them. And sometime, you could make it just too much work for them, given whatever result they were looking for on that day. It was a crap shoot.

Eventually I was moved around to other prisons in the Hanoi area: the Zoo, the Plantation, Hoa Lo Little Vegas, and Hoa Lo Unity. At each step the accommodations improved: another cell mate, 3 cell mates, 30 cell mates, 40 cell mates. Torture, as a routine event, stopped around 1969; my last beating was in 1970. I was released in 1973. Food and water became adequate to sustain life. Sporadic mail (6-line forms) exchange was negotiated by Mr. Kissinger.

In the fullness of time I won, as had Jim Kassler.

After about a year we were of no use to them. They could get no real propaganda value out of Jim the captured"Ace" nor of me"The Mad Bomber of Hanoi." Their efforts to exploit us actually may have done us some good in that they had to produce us or at least account for us at the end of the war.

What is the purpose of this discussion? Certainly my wounds were insignificant compared to the horrific combat wounds experienced by the ground troops.

Cell in "Camp Unity section of Hoa Ho

Our living conditions were far superior to those experienced by those captured and held in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I did get to live in the shadow of great Americans: future VP and Presidential candidates, ambassadors, senators, congressmen, politicians, flag & general officers, artists, teachers and captains of industry. I was blessed.

The purpose of this discussion is to document two facts. Americans were not treated as Prisoners of War, they were treated as criminals. There was no Hilton Hotel in Hanoi in which prisoners (or princes for that matter) were ever held captive.

American POWs were held in the Maison Centrale on 1 Pho Hoa Lo, Hanoi, Vietnam. This jail was sort of a cross between Rikers Island, NYC and Sing Sing in Ossining, NY. The remains of the Maison Centrale are now a museum.

Once again, Yogi said it best:"I'm lucky. Usually you're dead to get your own museum, but I'm still alive to see mine."

(Thanks to Mike McGrath for the line drawings.)

Capt. Richard Allen Stratton (USN ret) flew 22 combat missions and earned two Air Medals and the Combat Action Ribbon during his service in the Vietnam War. He was attached to the USS Ticonderoga Air Wing 19/Attack Squadron VA-192 as a Lieutenant Commander from 1966-67. While a prisoner of war from 1966 -73 he earned the Silver Star for valor and leadership during his 2,251 days of captivity. From 1989 to 1995 Stratton served as Chairman, Department of Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War.

In fact they often run in packs, and more often than not those packs are highly dependent on a den mother. No matter where or how far they roam, especially in wartime, subs don't stray too far from the "Mother Ship" and never for too long.

They return for all the reasons anyone goes home to mom: for succor, nourishment, replenishment and, often enough, repair.

Regardless of the trouble a sub got into or whatever damage it sustained, the mother's job was to make everything all right again, sometimes with remedies bordering on magical. In addition to stores of supplies and munitions, these service ships carried large inventories of parts and materials, and could fix anything. What they didn't have in stock they could make in one of several on-board machine shops.

The USS Canopus was one of those ships, in Navy argot a "Sub Tender."

She was named for the brightest star in the southern constellation of Carina and the second-brightest star in the nighttime sky. The name itself comes from the mythical figure Canopus, navigator for Menelaus, king of Sparta.

She didn't start out as a sub tender. She didn't even start out as Canopus. And she was already long in the tooth when she took her star turn in the Bay of Manila in the early, harrowing days of World War II.

She was launched as a passenger liner, the SS Santa Leonora, in 1919 by the New York Shipbuilding Company for W. R. Grace and Co. But her future never lay with the leisure class.

She was taken over by the Navy shortly after completion in July 1919 and placed in commission as USS Santa Leonora. She was a trans-Atlantic troop transport briefly but then was transferred over to the Army in September 1919.

A Shipfitter donned the one breathing apparatus outfit undamaged by the bomb's detonation and carried a fire hose down to the magazines, backed by shipmates working in relays, each of which stayed as long as men could stand the fumes.

"The ship's Chaplain led a rescue group into the engine room, where fragments and escaping steam had caused the most casualties, administering the last rites to dying men and helping to evacuate the injured.

USS Canopus (AS-9) in Apra Harbor, Guam, with Submarine Division 17 alongside, October 29, 1924 (US Navy photo).

"The Chief Machinist Mate shut off the steam at the boilers, saving men from being scalded to death, and then helped the wounded to safety. He was later found wandering around the ship in a daze, with no recollection of what happened after the blast."

It took four hours to get all the fires out. In a tour of the magazines several crushed and exploded powder charges were found: unsettling testimony to how close to complete destruction the ship, and all on board, had come.

"Only a miracle prevented a general magazine explosion," Capt. Sackett wrote, "but miracles do happen. Bomb fragments had severed several pipes near the magazines, which released floods of steam and water that kept fire away from the rest of the powder."

The Canopus was seaworthy again in just a few days, although a good deal of ammunition had been lost when the magazines were flooded, and several store rooms were severely damaged by the explosions.

"From Charleston our crew went to Westover Field, Massachusetts and flew submarine patrol for two weeks. Then we were given a new plane of our own to take overseas. We left from Mitchell Field, New York and went to Bangor, Maine for supplies, then left the States for Newfoundland where we sat for about a week because of bad weather.

"We went on to the Azores when the weather finally broke, and gassed up for the flight to Africa. We landed in Marrakech, then on to Tunis, and from there we flew to Foggia, Italy where they took our plane. They gave us an old beaten up one in its place. Later we found out that this was customary; a new plane was given to a crew that was about finished and ready to go back to the United States

"We were assigned to an air base at Cherignola, Italy and given a six-man tent to sleep in at the edge of an almond orchard. At first we had a dirt floor, cots and candles for lights. We started improving the flooring and made some cabinets out of cardboard and rolled up the sides of the tent to let in cool air. After a week or two we were given one bulb for light. It got its power from a generator at the base.

"We started flying with other crews to learn how to fly in formation. Experienced pilots flew with us for a few days and then we were on our own to fly every day, weather permitting. We started flying actual combat missions on August 12, 1944.

"The targets in northern Italy were called "milk runs," more like training missions, but the Polesti targets were the worst in Europe for enemy flack and fighters. The Hungary targets were bad for fighters, but Blechammer, our target on August 22, was as bad as Polesti. We had to fight our way away from the target until the moment we had to parachute out of the plane.

"Before we got to the target we'd lost an engine due to flack (ground fire). We saw one plane blow up and two others take hits. On three engines, we could not keep up with the formation. After the bombs were dropped, we were attacked by four fighters, lost another engine and suffered other damage as well.

"One fighter came toward our tail, another from the side, and yet another from the underside. I shot the plane attacking our tail, and it exploded. The fighter on the side killed Tomlinson, our waist gunner, and hit Benetti, the ball turret gunner. That gave the German fighters two positions not covered.

"The next attack came from above. Our top-gunner, Peterson, and I both were shooting at him, and he was hit and bailed out. Then I realized we were going down fast and our radio was shot out. I got out of my turret and went up into the waist and put on my parachute.

Peterson came down into the waist with his parachute on, and I had to move Tomlinson's body from the escape door so we could get out. I opened the hatch and motioned for Peterson to go out, but he motioned for me to go! I realized that we had to get out, so I jumped. Peterson told me later, when he saw my chute open he jumped, too.

"As we were going down, we realized we were being shot at. A German fighter came straight toward me. We had heard about fighter pilots shooting at airmen in their chutes. But, at the last minute this one tipped his wing and came close enough for me to see him motion to me.

"I went down in the woods. The others were captured in an open field. I could not get my chute out of the trees, so I took off my flying suit and boots and left them in a stump hole. I crawled under some bushes and tried to collect my thoughts. I removed my escape kit and tried to determine where I was.

"I decided to move to a better location but had not gone but about ten steps when someone hollered and I looked to see a German soldier with a rifle pointed at me. He kept motioning for me to put my hands up. I could see he was as scared of me as I was of him. Another soldier then came up, and they searched me. They kept saying "pistols," I guess because they knew we were issued .45 pistols. I told them mine had gone down with the plane. I was always glad that I didn't wear it, because I might have tried to use it.

"We were taken to a small village about the size of Efland, North Carolina, and it had a jail. There I saw two of my crew members and four from another crew at the jail. We spent the night with bed bugs androaches. The next day we were moved through the village and were fortunate to have the German soldiers along to keep civilians off of us. They were throwing things, spitting and hollering "gangsters" at us. We understood why later on when we passed a hospital that had been bombed.

"We were put on a truck with eight others and transported to the city of Budapest. There we were given something to eat, the first food we'd had had since being shot down. We were questioned and our belts, shoelaces, rings, watches and everything we had in our pockets was taken from us.

"We found out later that we were in an old political prison. It was three stories high and was open in the center with walkways around each staircase. All of the cells were solitary cells about four feet by sixteen feet in size with no windows and one light bulb that burned all of the time.

Our comforts consisted of one cot, a door with a slot through which bowls of soup were given to us twice a day and one loaf of bread a day, and one bucket for a toilet. No one ever spoke.

"Enduring seven days of this, you did a great deal of thinking. I counted the bricks in that cell a thousand times, and I thought I would remember the number, but I don't. After seven days of silence I was taken to a German officer for questioning. We had been trained to give only our name, rank and serial number. I was then sent back to my cell for another seven days, followed by another trip for questioning.

"After a few days we were taken under heavy guard to a train station where we were put on those notorious, forty by eight, boxcars that were known all over Germany: forty men or eight horses.

"I think there must have been forty of us in the car when more men were brought in. It was too crowded to lie down, so we had to stand or sit. We were locked in our boxcar and in the next one were the guards with their dogs. We only had one bucket for a toilet for over forty men. Some men were sick and some were injured. We were on the train for two days before we were allowed to get out and given water and bread.

"At this point everyone was filthy and many had dysentery, still with only one bucket in the boxcar. We stopped in a large rail yard one night and the R.A.F. came over, dropping bombs. The guards left for shelters and we were left behind, locked in the boxcar. Luckily the bombs missed us.

They did tear up some of the rails further ahead. We stayed there another day, locked up. Finally, we started again, attached to another train. We started seeing lots of bomb damage to towns and bridges as we passed through Poland.

"After five days the train stopped. We were at a train station in a small town where there were guards with dogs to escort us on a one mile walk to our camp. By this time, we were in pitiful shape. The camp was still being built, but we were assigned to barracks with twenty-two men, all together in one room.

We had a spigot to wash up with and a latrine which had ten holes. Many times you didn't have time to wait. For that reason it was a very good thing our government sent lots of clothes and shoes to the camps.

"We had roll call twice a day, and were given soup and one-fourth of a loaf of sawdust bread a day.

Once in a while, we got Red Cross parcels, which were like Christmas to a child. We were each supposed to receive a package, but we usually had to divide one package four ways. They contained everything you needed for a week: canned cheese, canned meat, crackers, candy bars, chocolate, cigarettes, toilet paper (which was worth a fortune), a sewing kit, playing cards, biscuits, and writing paper.

"Cigarettes were often used as money; so many cigarettes for a candy bar, so many for a sweater, so many for socks and so many for a pencil. Many old prisoners were getting parcels from home that included clothes, food and cigarettes.

We received a variety of things from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, but it was the food parcels that kept us alive. Many more men would have died had it not been for those food parcels.

"We had a number of POW's who went out of their minds and tried to climb the electric wire fences. Guards in the towers would shoot over their heads as a warning but always had to shoot them because they were so determined to try to escape.

"Other men had received musical instruments from home or were able to get the guards to get instruments for them. These musicians would get together and play. At Christmas the Germans allowed us to use a large hall and the men with instruments gave a wild party. You should have seen the crazy dancing that was done. Until the last song, "White Christmas," was played. After that each one of us went back to our room with tears rolling down our cheeks.

"We were getting war news from a small radio, the size of a pack of cigarettes, that had been smuggled in a piece at the time. We could receive the BBC once a day on a certain wavelength. One person listened, and told some other men who, in turn, told other men in each of the other barracks to spread the news of the day.

"We knew the war was about over and that the Russians were coming toward us. But, we did not know where or how fast until we started to hear big guns in the distance, getting louder. On February 5, 1945, word was sent around to get what you could carry and be prepared to move. Early the next morning, we were marched out the gate in groups of two hundred men, with one guard for every ten prisoners. With every twenty men there was a dog.

We went to a warehouse where Red Cross parcels had been hoarded by the thousand and were given all that we could carry. The snow was knee-deep, and the temperature was ten below zero.

"We walked about ten kilometers before we stopped for the night in a snow-covered open field. Every one of us was , hungry, thirsty and dead-tired. All that we had to eat or drink was the snow that we could pick up. Many, many nights during the march, we slept on the ground in the ice and snow. Peterson and I each had a blanket and a long Army overcoat made of heavy wool.

"We put one overcoat on the ground and covered up with the two blankets and the other overcoat. The blankets were thin like burlap and did not do much to keep us warm. We were not allowed to build a fire even if we had something that we could burn. One morning we awoke to find that someone had switched our top coat and exchanged it for a short one that only went to mid-calf. Our other one went down to my ankles, and was really warm.

"Not too long after we started on the march, I had my twenty-fourth birthday, on February 11, 1945. My good buddy Pete (Paul Peterson) presented me with a small piece of bread for my birthday gift. He had saved the bread for me from his small rations for a couple of days.

"The next morning we were still tired, had sore, blistered feet and were very hungry. All of us were cold, and some were sick. We had camped by a little stream which we drank from and used as a latrine. We were moved out and went to the road a short distance away and found that another group had used this stream ahead of us!

"We walked until almost dark when we reached a school where we had some protection from the outdoors. We had hoped to be able to keep warm inside, but our clothes, shoes and socks were soaking wet. We were warned by some of the older prisoners not to take off our shoes because our feet would swell and our shoes would shrink as they dried. So, we slept in our wet shoes.

"If we dared to take off our shoes for the night, we tied the strings together, and put them around our neck for safety. We could not march without shoes. We estimated that we had walked about sixteen kilometers. That night we could hear heavy guns, and British bombers came over and dropped bombs ahead of us.

"We started out again the next day. As we had been warned, some men could not get their shoes on because their shoes had shrunk. We were pushed again that day because the guards wanted to get further away from the Russians. Many more men began to drop out and we heard some shooting behind us. We felt that it was probably the guards carrying out their threats. We hardly stopped except maybe to let military traffic go by.

" The condition of the men continued to get worse. One night we were able to get into a big barn where we had hay and straw to lay in to keep warm and rest. That barn felt like a motel. We stayed over until the next day and then began another day of walking. We came to another prison camp which was used to get everyone together.

"There was every nationality you ever heard of. The French Moroccans had long black hair worn under a turban and they washed it every day under the spigot and took baths out in the open. When they went to the latrine, they carried a little pitcher with water, didn't use paper even if they had it, using instead their left hand. They then washed their left hand and did not use it to eat with.

"The young guards were taken away and replaced with old home guards. We actually felt sorry for them but we needed them to keep the civilians away from us. The home guards were getting desperate because they didn't want to be caught by the Russians. One day we were near an old mill sitting in the sun in a cemetery picking off body lice when we heard American bombers.

The bombers soon came into sight, straight toward us. They were flying low and we could see bomb doors open. We knew they were getting close to dropping bombs, so we took cover behind a rock wall. Each time a bomb exploded, the wall would start coming apart. It was a very close call for us. We later found out that they were bombing a bridge just beyond us.

"By then it was April and getting warmer. We did not have to walk as far, or fast, and found more schools and farms to sleep in. We began to hear more big guns behind us. On the night of April 24, 1945, we were in a big barn when we heard a terrible sound which turned out to be an American armored car coming to find out where we were.

"The next morning an American spotter plane came over very low, waving its wings back and forth. We were going toward the Rhine River and later saw two tanks and armored cars with American markings coming toward us. The Americans had stopped at Bitterfield on the Rhine River, waiting for the Russians to get there. We were told they were part of Patton's forward division.

We were liberated at Bitterfield on April 26, 1945. The Americans helped us cross the river on a temporary bridge because all of the bridges in the area had been blown up . Peterson and I were taken by a tank crew to a house that the Americans had taken. We were told to burn our clothes, which we gladly did.

We had not had a warm bath in two months, had worn the same shoes, had not had a haircut, and were in terrible condition. We both got into the largest bathtub I had ever seen, large enough to swim in. It was wonderful to be able to shave and put on clean clothes. Each of us was given a big glass of whiskey and all of the food we could eat. With full stomachs, we went to bed under a large feather blanket that made us feel like we had died and gone to heaven.

"We were trucked to the Hallie staging area and flown to Rheims. We then flew to La Harve on May 13, to Camp Lucky Strike, which had tents for all American POWs. We were fed around the clock and had egg nog between meals. After a few days you would not recognize your friends because they had clean clothes, haircuts, and gained a great deal of weight. Many men got sick from over-eating.

"By then the war was over, and we just had to wait for ships to come to take us home. Later we learned that they kept us longer so that we would gain some weight before we got home to our families. We boarded ships on June 5, and docked in New York on June 12. We were then taken to Camp Kilmer, NJ in preparation for going home. You were put in barracks according to the state you lived in.

"We were put on a train bound for Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and when we got there we were again examined and given new clothes and $50 to get home. I caught a bus to Fayetteville and then another to Hillsborough. At six o'clock on the morning of June 15, 1945, I walked to my Uncle Ewell's house and he took me home to Franny and the rest of the family. I was finally back home. And thankful."

(This write-up by Sgt. Ernest G Liner was taken from the 459th Bombardment Group's website)

(Click here for Ernest "Gordon" Liner's full biography posting on this site.)