Operation Thunderhead by Kevin Dockery

Author:Kevin Dockery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Surviving the shouting mob, Coker and McKnight were turned over to the military, who took them away. They were transported to the Hanoi Hilton, where they both underwent an interrogation about their escape. Open about what they had done, McKnight didn’t cooperate with the interrogators as much as he simply told them the truth. Both men expected to die in prison at the hands of the North Vietnamese. The tortures they had faced were ample evidence of what they could expect, and neither of them figured things would get any better. Escape was a tremendous risk, but it wasn’t any worse than remaining prisoners.

Astonishingly, there was no real torture applied to either man. There had been no escape committee, no organization of prisoners that had aided the men. It was very nearly a target of opportunity, and the North Vietnamese seemed to recognize that. Only a few days went by before Coker and McKnight were returned to Dirty Bird.

The rest of the prisoners at Dirty Bird knew that something had happened, but had no real information as to just what had taken place. What was obvious was the reaction of the guards and the staff. They were nervous about something, and there were suddenly a number of apparently high-ranking North Vietnamese officers walking about the place.

The first action taken by the guards was to place leg irons on all of the prisoners while they were still in their cells. These weren’t the horribly heavy punishment irons, just leg shackles for the most part. In addition to securing the legs of the prisoners, their cells were addressed. The cell doors had reinforcing bolts put through them to hold the locking mechanisms securely in place. Not all of the prisoners had known how to open their doors at will, and now it didn’t matter.

There were no widespread punishments, no purges or wholesale torture, just the increase in security of the prisoners and the camp as a whole. Suspecting an escape, the prisoners tried to take a head count among themselves. They noticed a missing man, but he was not Coker or McKnight. One of the prisoners had been far too ill to make an escape attempt, but he was missing. It turned out that the guards and staff had taken the man away to use in a propaganda piece.

The use of the prisoners as hostages to help protect the power plant had proven to be a failure. The U.S. air strikes had continued against both the plant and the nearby bridge. The facility known as Dirty Bird was not a secure one and wasn’t worth the bother to improve it. By the end of October, all the prisoners held at Dirty Bird had been placed at other facilities. Most of the prisoners were sent to the Hanoi Hilton, where they ended up in the Vegas location.

It wasn’t very long before the news about who had actually made the Dirty Bird escape attempt made it into the prisoner communications net. As the story spread to the other camps, the morale of the prisoners was raised by the news.

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