News-Info-Alerts

Re: Ex-POW Has Been to Hell and Back

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: April 08, 2002

"Ex-POW has been to hell and back

By Howie Paul Hartnett, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The weather was cruddy.

It was a miserable January morning to be doing anything, much less a dawn patrol over northern Vietnam. But the flight was normal and coming to an end for Lt. Cmdr. Richard A. Stratton.

Then his wingman thought he spotted something at a river mouth below. The two A-4 Navy fighter planes circled around.

Stratton fired on a boat before spotting bridge construction materials along the riverbank.

He tried to hit them, but his only remaining weapons failed.

The pack of aerial rockets fell into each other and exploded. Fire and debris flew into the air-intake. The engine shuddered, then exploded, shearing off the tail in the process.

Stratton ejected and landed in the only tree behind the only house for 5 miles. The natives beat Stratton and turned him over to the authorities.

"It was a bad day," he said.

It was the first of 2,251 bad days.

From January 1967 to March 1973, Stratton was a prisoner of war held primarily at the "Hanoi Hilton."

But this was no hotel, and his captors were no Col. Klink or Sgt. Schultz armed only with a laugh track.

Inside these prisons, there was only torture, defiance and unmitigated heroism.

All three will sound familiar to most of Stratton's audience today at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Blue Heron Boulevard and Military Trail in Riviera Beach.

Stratton and his wife, Alice, will be the keynote speakers for National POW/MIA Recognition Day ceremonies at the center beginning at 10:30 a.m. in the chapel.

The day is actually observed on April 9, but local POWs gather at the center once a month on Mondays, and coordinator Betty Barnett didn't want to upset the routine.

"We have a real large group," she said. "But all of them don't participate. Some of them don't even want to be connected to it. They can't handle their trauma."

There are 556 former POWs enrolled at the center in Riviera Beach, Barnett said. Nine are from the Vietnam War, nine from Korea and 538 from World War II.

What's more astounding is the resiliency of former POWs.

"Since 1999, I've only seen two of our POWs die," Barnett said. "They're really survivors."

That's because, at least in Vietnam, most POWs were aviators -- the cream of the military crop, chosen for their exemplary health and intelligence, Stratton said.

Still, no one is immune to torture.

"Torture is a different thing for different people," Stratton said. "For some, it meant kneeling on a broomstick for three days. Guys would land with a broken arm and they would just twist the arm."

Torture was the result of disobedience, showing leadership or trying to communicate with other prisoners.

"They made every effort to keep you isolated so you spend every effort to keep communicating," Stratton said.

Prisoners communicated to get the latest orders from the senior ranking officer, make escape plans and keep their sanity. Messages were sent using a tap code taught to prisoners as they came in.

"They (the captors) could not believe that we could send as much as we could by tapping on the wall and flashing symbols," Stratton said. "It was used because most of us were taught Morse Code in preflight and most of us forgot it. Plus, how do you distinguish between a dot and a dash by thumping on the wall?"

Sometimes communication was simply playing a game, such as chess, but mostly it was used to plan escapes.

Never mind that American aviators looked quite a bit different from their captors.

"It's kind of hard to pass as a 5-foot hairless Vietnamese when you're a 6-foot stinkin' caucasian," Stratton said. "But you couldn't not at least make a plan."

Some plans nearly succeeded. A few men made it into cities or rivers before being nabbed.

"The optimum plan was to get into the river," Stratton said -- the idea being to let the river carry you out to sea and safety. The problem was that North Vietnam was starving and people lined waterways searching for food. They would fish the escapees out of the water and return them to face harsh punishments that stopped just short of death.

With some exceptions, the point of incarcerating Americans was not to kill them or gain military secrets.

It was to use them for propaganda.

The Communists wanted POWs to denounce their country or smile for foreign envoys or become tokens of their generosity.

There were few takers. Young Navy pilot John McCain III didn't take them up on their offer, despite being the son of Adm. John McCain II, the Pacific Fleet's ranking officer.

"As soon as they figured out he wasn't going to help them, he was thrown into a cell," Stratton said of McCain, now the Republican senator from Arizona. "He was bound to a stretcher for four months before he was able to walk. He was one of the boys.

"He performed well, very well."

The standing order of the senior ranking officer among the Navy men, James Bond Stockdale, was to refuse everything.

In a story posted on his Web site, Stratton writes that Stockdale -- H. Ross Perot's vice presidential running mate in 1992 -- once avoided becoming a public puppet by cutting his head and wrists and beating his face bloody with a stool until he was completely unpresentable.

"There is an old saying amongst the leaders of troops: 'Never ask your men to do anything that you have not done yourself or would not be willing to do if called upon,' " Stratton wrote. "Stockdale lived his orders."

Stratton lived those orders until his Henry Kissinger-negotiated release in March 1973.

Following his captivity, Stratton worked with the U.S. Naval Academy, was chairman of the Department of Veterans Affairs Advisory Committee on Prisoners of War and a clinical social worker specializing in trauma victims, veterans and substance abusers. He retired after 30 years in the military as a captain and now lives in Atlantic Beach near Jacksonville.

Alice Stratton is a clinical social worker, helped in the creation of a Fleet and Family Support Center at Naval Station Annapolis and was the first Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Force Support and Families.

Richard Stratton has not been back to visit the Hanoi Hilton -- much of which has been replaced by real hotels.

"Why the hell would I ever go back to Vietnam?" he asked. "You don't go back to places you're not wanted."

As a social worker, Stratton has seen the detrimental effects of war on others, but he's been able to keep his experiences in perspective.

"You have to ask my wife" how it's affected me, he said. "(But) if you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have been flying airplanes in the first place."

POW memorabilia will be on display in the main atrium of the veterans hospital from 8 to 10 a.m. today. The formal ceremony, including the Strattons' speeches, is open to the public, but space is limited and priority seating will be given to former POWs.

For more information, call Barnett at 882-8262 ext. 2351.

howie_hartnett@pbpost.com

© 2002, The Palm Beach Post"