Surviving Hell by Leo Thorsness

Author:Leo Thorsness
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2010-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

I had been at the Zoo for about a year in two different cells with two different sets of cellmates when I was moved into solo. I ended up spending a year at Camp Punishment. The treatment was less brutal than in my initial 18 days and nights of interrogation in Heartbreak, but the camp was accurately named. The North Vietnamese still wanted us to cough up material they could use in their propaganda efforts to condemn the United States as an evil and aggressive nation attacking a small peace-loving country. You knew it was bad news when you were taken to the “office” and saw a tape recorder or a tablet and pencil on the table. Those of us selected for Camp Punishment were told we were there because of our “non-cooperative” attitude. We were beaten, forced to kneel on concrete, and tortured in other ways. Several times the interrogator told me, “You must learn to suffer.”

This I had already done. I had learned also that suffering was more than physical pain. Time itself was an enemy. Each POW developed his own way of “passing time.” Some mentally solved math problems. Others “wrote” poetry. (We had no pencils or paper, so writing was an act of memory as well as composition.) Several POWs designed houses. One became so enamored of his cerebral structure that he actually built the house he mentally designed in solitary once he got home. When I chatted with him some years later, however, he admitted that this structure, which had seemed so grand in a North Vietnamese prison, was not functional or pleasing to the eye, but he stayed in the house. He loved it because it had helped him defeat time in North Vietnam.

Most of my solo time was spent making plans for the future, reliving and in some cases reconfiguring memories of the past, and learning poetry via tap code from fellow POWs.

My plans always included a lot of family, faith, fun, and friends. (About flying, my fifth F, I was not so sure.) I worked hard that year to get a perspective on myself, the kind of thing you never bother to do when you don’t have time on your hands. I was no longer sure of who I was. I knew I was not who I had been—that other self I carried with me through prison like a familiar stranger, someone I had once known well but had grown apart from. I saw an obvious truth about this fellow: He had been too involved in his work, flying all week and checking out a plane on weekends to increase his chances of promotion. He had forgotten what was really important in life. I think almost all POWs had a similar epiphany in solitary. I had loved being a fighter pilot, but I knew now that if I ever managed to get out of prison, I’d never again be able to put my nose to the grindstone and keep it there. I wasn’t sure what type I now was, but I knew it would never again be type A.

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