F-105 Thunderchief Illustrated by Lou Drendel

Author:Lou Drendel [Drendel, Lou]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Aviation Art, Inc
Published: 2017-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

That struck me as so ludicrous....I mean, after what I had just been through, here was this guy reciting some phrase that he had learned from an idiom book. I tried to think of another idiom that would qualify as a real snappy comeback , bur all I could come up with was: “And a stitch in time saves nine.”

“Exactly’” He says.

He didn’t know what I meant, but I found out soon enough what he meant. He went about his work, which was to find out what the next target in Hanoi was. That was his major question.

“Whar new target Hanoi?”

They would tromp on my broken leg, and I would tell them I didn’t know. All I could do was lay there and bleed from all the cuts and contusions the ejection and beatings had produced. They didn’t give me any water. They didn’t give me any medical treatment, and when the pain got too bad, Mother nature would just tum my switch off and I would pass out. When I came to, they would get back to it. That went on for about a day or a day and a half and I finally told them that I would have to start lying, because I just didn’t know what the next target was going to be.

“Must not lie’” He said.

“Well. I’II have to guess then.” I said.

“OK, we allow you to guess.”

They put a map down on the floor in front of me. I rolled over, and through a haze of blood, sweat, and tears, pointed to a spot on the map. He turned the map around, looked at the spot, and said, “That shows you do not cooperate’ That is thermal power plant, and it is already destroved’”

They threw me into a cell, and for the next three weeks I was tortured sporadically for information. I kept asking them to do something about my leg, which by this time had swollen up to the size of my waist and turned various shades of black, blue, and green. Their answer was:

“You do not blame us for that leg. You did that to yourself. If it rots off, we throw you away!”

After all the mistreatment my leg had suffered, I was sure it was gangrenous, and that I was going to lose it. What the Bug was saying was, “If your leg has to come off, we will just dispose of you, because we don’t do major amputations....we have many more prisoners to pump for information.” I believe he was being honest, because we didn’t bring back any POW who were amputees. We had 357 guys who were over there more than five years....they all came back with all their limbs. That indicates to me that if I had lost that leg. I would not have come home.

After about three weeks. a doctor we called ‘Mr. Peepers”, because of his coke bottle glasses, looked at the leg and said he thought they could pin the leg back together.

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