First Heroes: The POWs Left Behind in Vietnam

by Rod Colvin

Overview

The result of five years of research, First Heroes untangles an intricate web of information and ultimately concludes that the prisoners of war that were held captive in Southeast Asia were forgotten or ignored by their own country. Author Rod Colvin crisscrossed the country interviewing military and government officials, veterans, returned POWs, political figures, journalists, and members of the National League of Families and the National Forget-Me-Not Association and balances hard facts with the dramatic personal accounts of parents, wives, brothers, sisters, and children who have waged a difficult battle for the truth about their loved ones. This chronicle is as much a testament to the faith and unending hope of the family members as it is the story of the men themselves. First Heroes is destined to change the way readers think about war, freedom, and their country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781940495163
Publisher:	Addicus Books
Publication date:	11/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	319
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Rod Colvin is the founder and publisher of Addicus Books, an independent publishing house. A former broadcast journalist, he is the author or coauthor of three previous nonfiction books: Evil Harvest: The True Story of Cult Murderin the American Heartland, Overcoming Prescription Addiction, and The Type 2 Diabetes Handbook. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

Read an Excerpt

First Heroes

The POWs Left Behind in Vietnam

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By Rod Colvin

Addicus Books, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Rod Colvin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-940495-16-3

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CHAPTER 1

Taking Off the Bracelets

The F-4 streamed like a flaming comet through the thick clouds shrouding the jagged mountain peaks northwest of Haiphong. For Major Laird Guttersen, the pilot and last man on board the fighter escort, the countdown to death was ticking off in seconds. Suddenly the burning aircraft broke through the swirling mist and Guttersen catapulted himself into the air, free of the disabled plane. Before his feet touched earth, the F-4 crashed into the mountainside, spewing its molten metal parts in one last flaming blaze.

Guttersen clambered to his feet, twisting out of the restraints of his parachute. Below him lay a seemingly peaceful valley, a picturesque peasant village nestled against the foot of the mountain. But for him the serenity was a mockery. He was a downed U.S. Air Force pilot in North Vietnam. The natives definitely weren't friendly. He had defied sudden death with a well-timed leap, but the battle for survival was only just beginning.

Impelled by the urgency that began when a MiG heat-seeking missile targeted on the F-4, bursting it into flames, Guttersen scrabbled in the hardpan, digging a hole to bury his 'chute. The frantic shouts of his co-pilot as they'd scrambled to escape the blazing aircraft still sounded in his head. Now they were separated by miles of enemy terrain. The backseater, Lieutenant Myron Donald, was the first to bail out. Donald hadn't waited for the order to jump. He couldn't. The missile had hit just below his seat. He had to get out. He'd parachuted safely to the ground, only to float into the waiting arms of a North Vietnamese Army unit.

As Guttersen stuffed the 'chute into the shallow hole, he wished to God he could bury with it the military secrets stored in his mind. To learn what he knew about the Pentagon's planned offensive maneuvers, his captors would torture him beyond endurance. If he broke under torture — which he feared he would — dozens of his comrades would die needlessly.

Scattering stones over the freshly-mounded dirt to conceal the signs of digging, Guttersen started up the mountain, taking a diagonal course to mask his trail. There was no doubt searchers would soon be in pursuit, drawn to the scene of the fiery plane crash. His hope lay in rescue by a helicopter. He'd commanded the planes in the flight to continue on to the base; their bombing mission completed, they were running low on fuel.

The portable radio in Guttersen's hand crackled to life. "We're sending in a 'copter to get you."

Overhead the murky clouds swirled, obscuring the granite mountain peaks. A rescue attempt was a mission impossible.

"No!" shouted Guttersen. "There's no visibility up here. This stuffs hanging below the tops thick as mashed potato. Later! Get me later when it's moved off!"

Whatever reply was made, the major didn't hear it. He was hearing the voices of villagers already coming up the mountain. In a running crouch, counting on his green and gray mottled flight suit to camouflage his movement, he took cover in a low, sparse thicket. Too late he saw the hazard of his hiding place: it lay beside the only path across the mountain.

Hunkered down in the shrubbery, sweat trickling down his back and leg muscles cramping, Gottersen watched as the excited villagers ransacked the plane's wreckage, triumphantly bearing what they'd salvaged past him as they stumbled homeward.

But not all the villagers had come to scavenge. Some had come in search of the pilot. They were fine-combing the area, shouting instructions to one another and firing warning shots to force him out of hiding. Occasionally, a searcher stood so close Guttersen could have reached out and touched him.

Hour after agonizing hour passed while Guttersen waited, unable to move and hardly daring to breathe. Then in late afternoon he heard the clatter and roar of an incoming 'copter, risking its way through the still low-hanging cloud cover. As the 'copter broke through the cloudbank, too distant for Guttersen to break and run for it, the searchers' guns were trained on it. They had known where to expect the bird's landing because they had guided it in, setting up a homing beacon on the radio frequency used by Guttersen. The helicopter rose into the clouds. There could be no more rescue attempts for that day; dusk was closing in fast

It was going to be a long night, but not a hopeless one. Guttersen knew the searchers would leave at sundown, fleeing the evil spirits believed to haunt the tops of the mountains at night. He would move under cover of darkness, away from the path and to a more remote area, praying the rescue 'copter could find him again in the morning.

The last band of searchers was getting ready to leave. Led by a teenager in the uniform of a reservist, the searchers chattered and laughed as they peered behind rocks and beat the bushes, playing their deadly game of hide-and-seek. Guttersen saw two young girls leave the group, giggling and glancing furtively around. They were walking toward the bushes where he was concealed.

With a terrifying premonition, he knew what was about to happen. Of all the bushes scattered around the area, the girls had selected Guttersen's place of concealment to relieve themselves. He was about to be found.

Guttersen fumbled in his shirt pocket for the packet of high potency vitamin capsules he carried and quickly swallowed them. The vitamins would give him the strength and stamina to take him through the coming seventy-two hours.

Inches away from Guttersen, one girl squatted and reached behind her to push aside a protruding branch. Her hand touched Guttersen's face and she jumped to her feet, screaming.

In seconds Guttersen was surrounded. He stood, warily eyeing a young boy nervously gripping an AK47 in both hands, so frightened he was swinging the weapon wildly, threatening not only the captive but everyone in the group. At that instant a rock the size of a baseball struck Guttersen's groin. Another followed and Guttersen ducked. The possibility of being stoned to death loomed in his mind, but as he turned, bouncing the rocks off his back and hip, he saw that there was but one rock-thrower — a boy pitching rocks as rapidly as he found them.

The uniformed youth, no more than fourteen, stepped forward and Guttersen was looking into the muzzle of a .45. Behind the lad, a white-haired old man with gnarled features aimed a single shot .50 caliber rifle of a vintage dating back almost to America's frontier days.

"Surrender or die!" the young commando ordered in English.

Guttersen surrendered. In weeks to come there would be times he wished he'd chosen death, times in which he would look for ways to commit suicide. But on the day of his capture — February 23, 1968 — he chose life.

A rope around his neck, his hands tied behind him, Guttersen was hauled, stumbling and failing, down the rock-strewn mountain path, and in the dark, over the slippery stones of a creekbed to a neighboring village where a military intelligence team awaited, forewarned of his coming.

Stripped of his wet clothes, Guttersen stood naked before his interrogators. One of them, holding a coil of rope in his hands, threatened that if the major did not cooperate in the beginning, his suffering would be infinitely worse. But to each question, Guttersen gave the same response. He recited his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. A fist crashed into his face each time, sending him sprawling to the floor. And each time, on command, he struggled to his feet for the next round.

When he felt the rope being fastened around his arms behind him, Guttersen knew the worst was to begin. But the worst was beyond what even his torturers had planned.

Kneeling on the stone floor, the rope looped around his upper arms, Guttersen's agony began. Two guards held the rope ends, one foot braced against his shoulders. Each time he refused to answer a question, the guards increased the rope's tension, gradually wrenching his arms from the shoulder sockets.

But with insane ineptness, his tormentors had looped the ropes wrong. As Guttersen's arms separated from the sockets, his back broke — the vertebrae snapping like knuckle bones.

"It was like having a massive heart attack," he recalled later. "I couldn't breathe for the stabbing pain."

The major had triumphed, however. He had not broken under torture. And the interrogators had not come close to discovering the military secrets he held. They were only trying to coerce him into summoning a rescue helicopter for them to shoot down.

"I hurt over every inch of my body. And they had tied my hands so tightly that when they untied them next day, they were black and swollen like sausages. I figured I'd lost them ..." said Guttersen.

In the morning Guttersen's clothes were returned to him, still wet, and he was taken to a waiting truck for the trip to the base camp north of Haiphong.

Overnight the temperature had dropped near the freezing mark. A chilling wind had risen, bringing the threat of icy rains. Huddled on the truckbed, shivering in his wet clothes, and his body racked with pain, Guttersen learned he was not going to the base camp. His captors, bundled in blankets and feather quilts against the biting cold, announced a change of orders. He was to be taken to the infamous Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi — a twenty-four-hour trip.

Along the route, Guttersen was the source of a sadistic entertainment. At every village his blindfold was removed and he was pushed roughly off the truck to have his picture taken, kneeling at the feet of laughing villagers who held his ropes, pretending they had captured him.

Guttersen arrived at Hoa Lo feverish with pneumonia and was flung into a torture chamber — one of several the POWs bitterly dubbed "New Guy Village" because it was where all incoming prisoners were interrogated. For five days he was given neither food nor water, and allowed no sleep while the questioning and beatings continued relentlessly. In the next room he could hear the screams of a fellow prisoner. He thought it was Donald, his backseater who'd been on his last mission before going home when their F-4 was shot down.

Guttersen lay on the floor, aware that he was dying. Through the feverish haze he heard the interrogation team come into the room, felt the group of hands hauling him to his feet

A paper was thrust at his face. "Sign this!" a voice hissed, "and maybe we can find you some penicillin."

"I'm allergic to it," mumbled Guttersen.

"Better yet! Sign or we'll give you penicillin!" Guttersen shook his head. "No."

A hand cracked across his face, sending him crashing into the wall. His knees buckled and he slithered to the floor. "Get up!"

He stared dumbly at the wall, inches from his face. He blinked and blinked again to clear the mist from his eyes. Scratched in the blood and muck, in letters almost too small to read, was a message: "Keep the faith baby."

For Guttersen, as for all the POWs at Hoa Lo, the enemy's persistence in obtaining signed statements resulted in beatings. The statements were often words quoted from Bobby Kennedy or Senator William Fulbright to which the prisoners were commanded to copy and sign their names.

"I learned early on that if you refused to anything, it led to beatings and torture," Guttersen recalled. "The trick was to refuse at first, then act as if you'd changed your mind and were ready to cooperate."

Consequently, the POWs made up their own statements nonsensical words to which they signed fictitious names, such as "Ima Bullshitter."

"It aggravated them," said Guttersen, "but not as much as if you didn't write anything at all."

Still uppermost in Guttersen's mind was the fear of divulging secrets the Communists had not learned he knew. If the day came when they did know, Guttersen would have to take his own life because "they would go after it and they would get it." His plan, he said, was to run and dive headfirst into a wall, hoping the impact would kill him or, at least, fracture his skull, driving it into his brain.

In the beginning, Guttersen reacted in anger toward his captors until he realized anger was a cover-up for fear and that it was, in his words, "unproductive." His anger then became hatred, but that was self-destructive. "It tears you to pieces over the long term."

As a last measure he resorted to love. Guttersen created a "love symbol," filling his mind with thoughts of his seven-year-old daughter Karen, her arms around his neck, saying, "I love you, Daddy." It served him well the five years he was held prisoner teaching him to pity instead of hate his torturers and freeing him from the burden of hate so many captured men brought home with them.

There was much to hate at Hoa Lo. Held in solitary confinement, severely punished if caught talking, the men found one way to communicate. Tapping on the walls of their cells, using a kind of Morse code, they exchanged information and the names of other POWs.

The season in hell ended March 14, 1973, for Guttersen and thirty-one other men at Hoa Lo. They were the ninth group released during Operation Homecoming. On that day they were flown to freedom and home from the Gia Lam Airport. For many, those who could forget, the long ordeal was ended. Laird Guttersen was ready to move on with his life, but he was not ready for the government resistance he encountered when he inquired about the POWs whom he feared had not made it into the system and who may have been left behind.

A classified debriefing troubled Guttersen most of all. "We were given a direct order in writing not to become involved with any MIA/POW organizations such as VIVA and the National League of Families."

What bothered him was the manner in which the order was issued. "It was given to us in writing. We were asked to acknowledge that we understood it and give it back. Then the paper was destroyed ... right there in the room!"

To Guttersen it seemed as though "it was not a security problem but rather something they didn't want to go any further." He concluded the motivation was political, "That the administration wanted the whole prisoner release thing to hit a crescendo and then go out of existence really fast."

MAY 24, 1973: White linen tablecloths fluttered in the breeze stealing under the huge red and yellow striped canopy set up on the south lawn of the White House where the romantic airs of the Air Force Strolling Strings mingled with the clinking of crystal goblets.

The menu included roast sirloin of beef and strawberry mousse, washed down with California wine — heady fare for men long accustomed to thin rice gruel, watery pumpkin soup and chunks of hard bread eaten in the stench of dark, dingy cement cells.

The honor guests were the recently returned prisoners of war; the White House gala was a joyous, official celebration of their return. They'd made it. Lining row after row of banquet tables, their Navy whites, Air Force and Marine Corps blues and Army greens contrasted with the bright-hued gowns of their wives and sweethearts accompanying them.

Earlier in the day, their host, President Richard Nixon, had said this was the largest sit-down dinner ever catered by the White House staff: 1,300 guests including 587 returned POWs.

Among the guests were Colonel Laird Guttersen, just promoted, and his wife Virginia. Surrounding them were many of his former comrades-in-arms — some he was meeting again for the first time since he was captured and others, meeting face-to-face for the first time, fellow prisoners known only by their names telegraphed by tapping on cell walls.

Sitting at a table near the Guttersens was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. From time to time, Guttersen furtively eyed the ranking cabinet member; when there was an opportune moment, the colonel had a question to ask.

Words spoken by the nation's commander-in-chief during an afternoon reception still rang in Guttersen's ears. Nixon had been talking about foreign negotiations and classified documents being leaked to the press when he said;

"... we must have confidentiality, we must have secret communications. It isn't that we are trying to keep anything from the American people that the American people should know...."

But these same words held different meaning to Guttersen. Like his guests, the President was enjoying himself on this night, basking in the warmth of hero worship, for to these men he was a hero. He was the man who had secured their release and brought them home. On all other sides he was under increasing attack in the aftermath of the discovery of the Watergate break-in.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from First Heroes by Rod Colvin. Copyright © 2013 Rod Colvin. Excerpted by permission of Addicus Books, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction,
Acknowledgments,
1 Taking Off the Bracelets,
2 The Missing In Action/Prisoners of War,
3 Refugee Sightings,
4 Refugee Letters,
5 Ngo Phi Hung,
6 The Government Focus on Refugee Sightings,
7 The Mortician,
8 The Nhom Marrot Mission,
9 U.S. Government Studies on the POW Question,
10 A Review of Communist Trends on POWs,
11 Returned POWs Remember,
MIA/POW Families.,
12 Earl Hooper, Sr,
13 Jean MacDonald,
14 Jerry DeBruin,
15 Robert Cressman,
16 Sarah Frances Shay,
17 George Shine,
18 Vince Donahue,
19 Maureen Dunn,
20 Marian Shelton,
21 Lynn Standerwick,
22 Sue Sullivan,
23 Kay Bosiljevac,
24 Dermot Foley,
Afterword,
Bibliography,
Appendix,
About the Author,