Defiant: The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned by Townley Alvin

Author:Townley, Alvin [Townley, Alvin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

15

TO TELL THE WORLD

“Why do you want to fight against the just cause of Vietnam?” Hanoi Hannah asked American GIs on January 30, 1968; it was Tết, the Vietnamese New Year. “You can see you are losing. Lay down your arms! Refuse to fight! Demand to be taken home, now! Today! Do you want to die in a foreign land, eight thousand miles from your home?”

As the broadcasts droned on, the POWs at Alcatraz learned that North Vietnam and the Việtcộng had staged coordinated attacks throughout the South around Tết. In fact, North Vietnamese generals had planned much of their Tết Offensive at the Ministry of National Defense, just across the street from Alcatraz. According to Hannah, the People’s Army and the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (Việtcộng) had routed the Americans, the South Vietnamese army, and the puppet regime in Saigon. Reality differed somewhat. Indeed, seventy thousand Communist troops had violated the traditional three-day holiday truce between all parties and staged attacks across the countryside, in countless towns and, most startlingly, many of South Vietnam’s major cities. A small unit breached the U.S. Embassy, rockets attacked the American base at Cam Ranh Bay, and General Westmoreland’s own headquarters came under fire. In the United States, televisions broadcast scenes from across Vietnam: firefights, wounded soldiers, a faltering American mission. Ultimately, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces recovered from the surprise attack and effectively beat back the surge, but American casualties topped 20,000, with more than 5,000 killed from January through March of 1968. Insurgent losses were many times higher, yet the Communists accepted prices Americans would refuse to pay.

In the days immediately following Tết, the Camp Authority covered the walls of one Alcatraz quiz room with photographs from the offensive. A young sergeant walked the POWs along the walls, showing them images of victorious Communist forces, burned ruins in Saigon, and defeated Americans. Other photos showed images from the United States itself: peace marches, protests, and student rallies. Sam Johnson tried not to believe the pictures.

“What do you think?” asked the sergeant.

“I don’t know,” Sam answered.

“Look around you,” he said, “You can see we are winning the war. How can you think the war will not be over soon? The United States will retreat and go home, and we will be the winners.”

Rabbit visited during the same week and happily cast even more doubt into the minds of the Alcatraz Eleven. “Our just cause is winning,” he gloated to Sam during a quiz. “Now you can see!”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“You have seen proof!” Rabbit exclaimed. “Our photos, our radio! The United States has given up and will lose the war in Vietnam!”

“I cannot believe your photos or your radio.”

“The bombing has stopped,” Rabbit said. “Your country has deserted you. You will never go home. You have been left here to die.”

“I can’t believe that,” Sam said. If he let himself believe that, he’d crack in a week—but months had passed since he’d last heard an American jet over Hanoi or wailing air raid sirens.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.