1, 2, 3, 4, What Were They Fighting For?

Book review by Lisa Cigliana, Free Press contributor

Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in
Southeast Asia 1961 -- 1973
By Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley
Naval Institute Press

Reading accounts of the Vietnam conflict is, in many ways, a Rashomon-type experience. The story that you will hear is dependent on the perspective of the storyteller.

Historians, for example, continue to argue about decisions John F. Kennedy made, or did not make, regarding Vietnam immediately prior to his assassination in 1963. It seems clear that Kennedy was struggling to retain his power as commander-in-chief over the various military and diplomatic advisers who wanted to escalate the conflict in Southeast Asia. There is no universal consensus on the reasons for the massive building up troops in Vietnam within 18 months of his death.

Amidst all of this controversy, a very fine book has emerged that tells the story of the Vietnam conflict from the point of view of the American Prisoners of War (POWs or PWs). Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia 1961-1973 is a meticulously documented book that offers a narrative story from the first American taken prisoner in January 1961 through the official end of the conflict in 1973.

Since Honor Bound was published by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Historical Office, it comes as a surprise to open Chapter 1, "The Historical Setting," and read one of the finest 13-page accounts of the origins of the Vietnam conflict. The authors apparently decided that their mission was to tell the POW story, and not refight the war. They have crafted a concise, neutral history that -- reading between the lines -- indicts the American government for unthinkingly continuing the colonialist practices of the French, albeit for different purposes.

And then the authors describe the consequences to the POWs of military strategy: "The absence of an official war declaration left the American prisoners in legal limbo wherein the North Vietnamese could characterize them as 'pirates' or 'mercenaries' and deny them the protection of wartime conventions." The Vietnamese captors reminded the POWs of this contradiction on a regular basis, adding to the prisoners' anxieties.

Horrifying Daily Violence
Honor Bound details the experiences of the PWs and their daily routines. The violence shown on TV and in the movies dulls our senses to the literal effects of blunt instruments on the human body, but certain passages in Honor Bound are almost too horrifying to read: torture sessions, solitary confinement, forced confessions.

"Of course," the authors write, "in resorting... to physical brutality, prison officials effectively discredited their own indoctrination program, which was based on the alleged justness and humanity of their cause."

But, in a converse twist of logic, the reader might ask the question, "whose soil is this war being fought on?", and "who were the invaders?" As difficult as it is to read about torture inflicted on American servicemen, it remains true that Vietnam did not attack the United States but was attacked, and that many innocent Vietnamese lives were lost. Torture cannot be condoned, but anger at these fighting men would seem to be a human response.

The prisoners of war also had to contend with US military rules governing their own behavior when being held by the enemy:

For the Americans, whose Code of Conduct precluded cooperation with the enemy and specifically prohibited responses to questions beyond the so-called "big four" (name, rank, serial number, and date of birth)... there was no way they could comply with both the captor's requirements (for information) and their own Code of Conduct... The Vietnamese, who had obtained copies of the Code and studied it for clues on how best to exert pressure on the Americans, assumed that, where persuasion and harassment had failed, brute coercion would succeed... What they did not realize was how much abuse the prisoners would take before surrendering.

The POWs operated as a unit, whenever possible, to continue the war behind prison bars. A form of secret code was created so that prisoners, even when held in isolation, could tap on the walls to each other. This served both military purposes and social purposes:

"To communicate with a comrade -- even when there was no special message or information to convey -- became an elemental drive and a death-risking priority... communication, even 'idle chatter,' was a key to withstanding the sometimes overwhelming sensory deprivation of the prison camps. Communication kept the prisoners in touch with reality. It kept them sane."

Coping In Impossible Circumstances
Given the inhuman and unnatural suffering, it is understandable that many men had religious experiences while in captivity. "This is not to say that every (POW) had a 'leap of faith' or underwent a deathbed conversion while in prison." The authors describe one particular group of cellmates: they were "two 'tough guys' who prior to their imprisonment had not been particularly reverent, (but) traded prayers and renounced swearing during their time together... 'Don't misunderstand... we weren't two fully developed saints sitting dispassionately through the day discussing theology. There probably wasn't a thimbleful of serious theology between us. We just knew that without our faith in God, without our common belief ... we could not have made it through.'"

Because Honor Bound ends in 1973 with the release of the final POWs, it does not describe their return to American soil. This country was deeply torn about the war and did not regard them as heroes in the same way that WWII veterans were lauded. A companion volume about the POWs' post-war years would be most welcome.

A haunting question lingers in the mind: For what did these men suffer?

The Vietnamese apparently had a better grasp of what was going on in their country than the Americans did. The Vietnamese indoctrination sessions, which are summarized in "Honor Bound," seem to offer an analysis of the conflict that is in agreement with the authors' version in Chapter 1:

The new prisoner was informed that he was a criminal -- perhaps the unthinking agent of his government, but a transgressor nonetheless, the latest in a long line of invaders who historically had meddled in the affairs and violated the sovereignty of the Vietnamese people. The Vietnamese, the interrogator would explain, had liberated their country from Chinese control a thousand years earlier and had more recently repulsed the Japanese and the French. The thrust of the lecture was partly nationalistic, partly ideological. The (prisoner) was told that the United States had resumed the colonialist role of France in Indochina and that the Saigon government was a stooge for American interests as it had been for the French. The interrogator went on to indict American society itself as decadent and corrupt and dominated by a small ruling class of powerful and wealthy individuals.

And then there is this frighteningly accurate quote from a Vietnamese captor, as told to Commander James Stockdale, who led fearlessly and suffered relentlessly in captivity and then returned home to a distinguished post-war life and to serve as Ross Perot's running mate in 1992:

"Our country has no capability to defeat you on the battlefield. But war is not decided by weapons so much as by national will. Once the American people understand this war, they will have no interest in pursuing it. They will be made to understand this. We will win this war on the streets of New York."

And a few years later, they did.