When Hell Was In Session
On July 18, 1965, Navy Cmdr. Jeremiah Denton’s A-6 Intruder was shot down during an attack on enemy installations near Thanh Hoa. Months after his capture, he brought the plight of Vietnam prisoners of war to public attention in a television interview in Hanoi, blinking his eyes in Morse code to spell out “T-O-R-T-U-R-E.”
Knowing the consequences would be severe, Denton responded to the Japanese reporter’s questions about U.S. bombing by declaring, “Whatever the position of my government is, I agree with it, I support it, and I will support it as long as I live.” Miraculously, the tape made it to Japan with minor cuts and was bought and aired by a U.S. network.
For embarrassing his North Vietnamese jailers, rebuking their attempts at communist indoctrination, and shepherding his troops through covert communication and orders, Denton paid a price demanded by few Americans who wear the uniform.
The following is an excerpt from Denton’s classic account of his time in prison, “When Hell Was in Session,” now in its seventh printing.
The situation in 1968 was full of contradictions and ambiguities, and behind it all was the Johnson administration’s difficulty in trying to come to terms not only with Hanoi but with South Vietnam on proposals that would satisfy the three parties. The peace negotiations in Paris had been between the U.S. and Hanoi, but in November the two sides agreed to allow South Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government – the Communist entity in South Vietnam – to join the talks, which they did in 1969. Perhaps this was the breakthrough towards peace that encouraged the North Vietnamese to believe an end was in sight.
In any case, they prepared for the coming release ceremonies in a savage way, and our 14-month sabbatical at Alcatraz suddenly came to an end.
Just before dawn one day in the middle of December, a guard hid in a bomb shelter across the cement gutter from my cell and slipped unnoticed into the empty cell between (Air Force Capt. George) McKnight’s and mine. We had gone on the wall to each other as soon as we had awakened. At the first few taps the guard leaped from the cell and shouted to McKnight, “You communicate! You communicate!” He shook his finger at my door and repeated the charge to me in a high-pitched, excited voice.
Instantly, a deep chill ran through my body. They could have caught us communicating at any time, and this sudden noisy coup could mean only one thing. After 14 months of relative peace, we were to be tortured again. I knew this would be a deadly serious matter. The others sensed the same thing, and fear immediately gripped them. I began to pray.
As we watched under our doors and listened intently, trying to figure out the next move, guards came to McKnight’s cell and led him away to a building across an alley outside the compound gates. Then all was silence again. I tapped to (Navy Lt. j.g. George) Coker, two cells away, and we speculated on what was happening to McKnight. We concluded the worst.
Several days later, in the early morning hours, McKnight came dragging along the cement walk to the latrine, where he emptied his bucket. I peeped under my door at him. He was bloody and looked terrible, but he had enough strength remaining to scrape to us that the North Vietnamese had tortured him into writing a letter of apology for his crimes.
He was put back in his cell that day and tapped to me just a few words: “Purge, I say no comm.”
We understood the word “purge” only too well, and we appreciated his getting word to us that he had denied communicating. Of course they weren’t interested in whether we were communicating or not. It was just a convenient excuse to put pressure on us for some as yet unknown reason.
Before McKnight could continue tapping, I was taken from my cell and across the alley to a quiz room where I faced Mickey Mouse, no longer the attentive listener. He got right to the point.
“You have been caught communicating,” he said, shaking his finger. “You must write letter to President Ho Chi Minh and apologize for your crimes.”
I said I would not.
“OK,” Mickey Mouse said. “I leave you to think deeply.”
I was taken to another room in the same building. Irons were placed on my legs and I was pushed against a wall, arms outstretched over my head. There I stood for two days and two nights under guard. If my arms slipped, the guard would force them upward again and press a nail hard against the palm of my hand for added encouragement.
On the third morning, Mickey Mouse came in and asked me again if I would write the letter of apology. I refused.
“We are going to get serious then, Denton,” he warned. Having beaten them in my last two torture sessions in 1966, I thought I could do it again. In an effort to deter the punishment, I wrote Mickey Mouse a note reminding him of my previous success, and said that if they were determined to torture me, they would have to torture me to death. That was a mistake. It was a pledge I couldn’t keep.
The next stage was rear cuffs and leg irons. A guard dragged me around the rough cement floor until the leg cuffs began tearing into my ankles. He jerked me left and right, lifted me by the rear handcuffs – the same mess all over again for hours. Then I was left on the floor for a day.
Mickey Mouse gave me one more chance to write the letter, and again I refused.
In the months since my last torture, the Vietnamese had developed a rig that was unknown to me, and it was the perfect answer to my ability to take pain until passing out. As soon as Mickey Mouse left the room, a guard slammed open the door, and held out a rope and a four-and-a-half-foot pole, pointed at one end.
Two more guards came into the room, and the three of them began tying my wrists and lower forearms together in front of me. They forced my elbows apart and forced my knees between them, and pushed the pole through the hole created by my elbows and knees. Then they tipped me back on my spine and propped my feet on an overturned stool so that my feet were raised about a foot off the ground.
In essence, I was in the fetal position, my thighs pressed against my chest so tightly that I could hardly breathe. My body was tipped at such an angle that most of my weight was on the tip of my spine. The pole was the key to the rig. If the rig was properly tied, I would pass out eventually and fall on my side; the end of the pole would hit the floor and slide out of the rig, easing the pressure on my arms and restoring circulation. The pain that came with the blood circulation would bring me back to consciousness; thus the prisoner couldn’t beat the rig by passing out.
But the guards had tied the ropes poorly. They had allowed some of the loops to overlap, and by working at the rope I could eliminate the overlaps, thus loosening the rope and allowing enough circulation so that I lasted about four hours without passing out. The rig was still painful, but I could stand it. Mickey Mouse came in, obviously worried that the rig wasn’t working and I would beat it, as I had promised.
He had the guards untie me and I was brought some food, but I couldn’t eat it. I dawdled with the food to buy time, but Mickey Mouse became impatient, and with a wave of the hand said, “Denton, we will break you now.”
I was retied, but again ineffectively, and I was able to last four more hours. Finally, a guard named Sad Sack inspected the rig, criticized the guards for their incompetence, and supervised the retying. This time the rig worked, and after an hour of agony, during which time I watched my hands slowly swell and turn black, I passed out and fell over. The end of the pole hit the floor and slipped from the rig, as intended, and the rush of blood to my arms brought me back to consciousness and renewed pain. By then, six or seven guards were kicking and punching at me.
After a period of time, pain becomes an all‑encompassing entity, a fiery, blinding devil that courses into every part of the brain until you would literally do anything to escape it. After three cycles, the rig became too much. It had driven me to the point where I would have happily committed suicide to escape it. I would have run my own mother down with a truck if the price was freedom from pain, but I could do nothing. I felt my heart pumping mightily to force the blood through my strangled limbs and hoped that it would give out.
I prayed to die.
After a total of about 12 hours in the rig, I called for the guard, who had been listening outside. In a matter of seconds there was the sound of excited voices as he passed the word that I had broken, and I heard several people rushing in triumph toward the cell. Among them was Mickey Mouse with pen and paper in hand. I agreed to write.
The next day, in about three brief paragraphs, I wrote, in essence: Dear Ho Chi Minh, I am sorry I bombed your country. Please forgive me.
On December 23, I was returned to my cell practically unconscious and in high fever. I was too whipped to eat, and just slumped on my pallet.
On Christmas Eve, still very sore and with the fever still raging, I was blindfolded and walked with assistance to the Plantation, two blocks away, where I was taken to a brightly lit room that was obviously rigged for picture taking. There was a spectacular table full of goodies, including champagne, in the middle of the room.
And there, ensconced on a high-backed chair, was my old friend Cat, his eyes sparkling. He thought I had been beaten down and was now prepared to mop up what was left.
“Ah, Denton,” he said, “good to see you again. How are you?” I told him I had been tortured again. He ignored that. “How are conditions?”
“Terrible! Can’t eat because of the torture.”
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Only if you do it for everyone.”
The conversation, such as it was, was deteriorating rapidly. Cat was getting angrier and angrier, and I was getting meaner and meaner.
To break the tension, Cat politely offered me a banana, but I declined.
“All right, Denton, eat that banana!” Cat said, his voice rising as he pointed to the table.
“No.”
“It will be good for you.”
“If everyone gets a banana, I will take it.”
He lost his composure.
“Shut mouth! You eat banana! That is an order!”
I just looked at him sullenly and shook my head. It was an impasse, and Cat was fast losing face. Abruptly, he ordered me back to my cell.
I knew I would pay for my attitude, but I was angry as hell about the apology I had written to Ho Chi Minh.
They broke off the torture temporarily after McKnight’s and my ordeal because they wanted to go through the ritual of observing our holiday season. But on January 8, I was taken across the alley for the second time, where Mickey Mouse asked me what had happened on Christmas Eve. I shrugged and told him I had followed the Code of Conduct and refused a special favor.
“You were a fool on Christmas Eve, Denton, and now you must pay,” Mickey Mouse said. “You must read on the camp radio.” He knew I would refuse.
I was run through the same mill for two more excruciating days, only this time Mickey Mouse left the window open and faced me toward it so the prisoners at Alcatraz could hear my screams. When I gave up, he had me read excerpts from their news service into a tape recorder for about a minute, but I was so incoherent that the tape was useless.
The next day, Softsoap, holding a pole and rope in his hands, warned me that the tape was unsatisfactory and said, “You must make it sound more like you.” The following day I read the news over and over again until they settled for something they thought they could play on the camp radio, but it was still screwed up. They played the tape for about 20 seconds, but when my shaky voice and gross mispronunciations brought laughter and jeers from the Alcatraz cells, they turned it off.
As soon as I was returned to my cell, Mickey Mouse tried to cash in on my screams by ordering (Navy Capt. James) Mulligan to read on the radio and threatening him with torture if he didn’t.
“I know what you did to Denton,” Mulligan told them, “and you’ll have to do the same thing to me.”
The waves of B-52 bombers had done their jobs and could fly almost without fear of loss. President Nixon had sat silently in the White House while a hurricane of criticism raged in the country and throughout the world. In a few days, the planes had methodically smashed Hanoi’s air defenses. Something that could have been done 10 years previously was now successful. The North Vietnamese leadership caved in. The bombing was halted on December 30. Negotiations were resumed in Paris on January 8, 1973.
On January 23, President Nixon announced the end of America’s longest war, with the cease-fire to go into effect on the 27th.
Images of my family running across an airstrip, arms outstretched, swirled through my mind as we plodded through the last days of imprisonment.
Now the North Vietnamese wanted an end to it. They announced terms of the peace agreement over the camp radio and then delivered mimeographed copies of the agreement and protocols of the release to every prisoner, as provided for in the peace agreement. The seniors from Building Zero and Blue returned to the community.
On February 3, when we rejoined the others, the barricades had been torn down and half the camp was allowed in the courtyard at one time for games. I wept in joyful reunion with Bill Tschudy, a face out of the distant past, and Ed Davis, a voice out of the distant past. I remembered as though it were only yesterday the soft, deep voice singing “Fly Me to the Moon,” and the single word “Agony!” being tapped out on the wall. The word expressed perfectly the events of seven and a half years. I attached pale faces to whispering voices: Ray Merritt, Ralph Gaither, Bob Purcell, Phil Butler ...
And Red McDaniel came up to me, hand outstretched, and said that many of his friends had seen me on television, in the interview with the Japanese reporter, before he had been shot down.
“That was remarkable, Jerry,” he said. I was much relieved. Through all the years of imprisonment, I had worried about the image the North Vietnamese had managed to project of us to the world. Now I understood that our efforts had not been in vain.
Camp discipline was gone, suddenly. The guards still carried their guns, but there were no restrictions on us. No more note drops, covert communications, policy decisions. When they offered us new clothing we thought at first to refuse it and go out the way we had lived for years, in tattered pajamas. But then we said, “Oh, hell,” and everyone lined up for the leather shoes, the socks, khaki pants, shirt and windbreaker provided.
Now the sandal was on the other foot as Risner, Stockdale and I went in one at a time to be questioned by Mickey Mouse, two other officers and a civilian.
Mickey Mouse asked what I would say when I got home.
“I haven’t answered your questions this long. Why should I answer you now?” I asked. “Why do you care what I say anyhow? There are hundreds of men who will speak when they get home.”
“You have credibility, Denton.”
“What do you expect? Don’t you know I’ll tell about the torture?”
“Yes. We expect that.”
“Why do you want me to tell you what I will say?”
Mickey Mouse sucked in his breath, paused for a moment, and then said, “We afraid when you get home and make speech, Mr. Nixon will not give us aid he promised. Public would not allow.” I was struck by the “mister.” They had changed.
“I will say that through 1969 you treated me and the others worse than animals.”
I expected a denial, but instead he leaned forward and said, “Yes, but is that all?”
“No. That is not all. Late in 1969 you came off the torture. After that, to my knowledge, you did not resort to extreme punishment. You then acted within your conscience, such as it is.”
“That’s the truth,” Mickey Mouse said, “but others may not tell truth.”
“If there is any exaggeration, the senior officers will take care of that,” I replied.
As the 13th pilot to be shot down, I would go out with the first group as senior officer. The sick and injured would be in the front ranks and then the others in the order of shootdown.
Our captors agreed to allow us to march out under our own leaders. We would go through the gate in Heartbreak Hotel that I had entered blindfolded and bound so many years ago.
Heads up, chests out, some men staggering a bit, we marched in cadence to the buses, then were driven, subdued in the solemnity of our thoughts, almost hypnotized, through streets lined with throngs of silent people to Gia Lam airport, three miles from Hanoi. Much of the rest is a blur.
Guards with sidearms ... Fox in a sidecar directing the operation through a walkie-talkie ... Rat ... Flea ... the first sighting of the airport and a long, hard cheer from the prisoners. A Red Cross tent.
But no American planes. There had been a delay, and I prayed there hadn’t been a last-minute hitch. Rat, who had introduced me to my cell at Alcatraz, now gave us good food, beer and fudge. “We would like this to be a pleasant memory,” he said.
He offered us souvenirs of Hanoi. We already had quite a few, I said, and declined for all of my group.
Shortly after noon a beautiful sight appeared in the clear sky: the high tail and swept wings of an American C-141. Another cheer, then a short drive to the release point; a long table; Rabbit at a microphone; and on the other side of the table the handsome men and women in the blue uniforms of the U.S. Air Force, with Frank Sieverts of the State Department and Roger Shields of the Department of Defense. We kept looking toward the waiting C141, its huge ramp opened wide in welcome.
Dazedly, we walked one by one up to Rabbit and gave him our names; he repeated them in a flat voice and we walked to the plane. In moments it was lifting us to the sky on its way to Clark Field in the Philippines.
We were leaving it all behind. Heartbreak, New Guy Village, the Mint, Little Vegas, the Gate, Zoo, Alcatraz. And Ron Storz, Atterberry, and others buried somewhere in North Vietnam.
Once we were in the air, I was told that the senior officer was invited to make a statement upon arrival. I scratched out a few words, then tried to memorize them as we flew along.
“We are honored ...”
I thought about the 50,000 American fighting men who had given their lives in a cause at last won.
“... to have had the opportunity ...”
I heard a thump as the wheels were lowered. The men began to stir. We had covered the distance between captivity and freedom quickly.
“... to serve our country ... under difficult circumstances.”
The plane taxied to a stop. I was shaky, and stumbled on the steps. There was a large crowd waiting.
“We are profoundly grateful to our commander in chief and to our nation for this day.”
I felt strangely unfulfilled. I hadn’t said quite all that was in my heart. Final, unrehearsed words slipped from me: “God bless America!” Land that I love.
Jeremiah Denton, 89, is a retired Navy rear admiral, a former Republican senator from Alabama and a life member of The American Legion.
Reprinted with permission of WND Books, a subsidiary of WND.com. Copies of the book can be purchased online at WhenHellWasinSession.com in hardcover or e-book format.
Denton’s legacy lives on through his international humanitarian work. To learn more about Admiral Denton Legacy Initiatives / IMEC, go online: www.admiraldenton.org