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Re: A Re-Birthday

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: February 12, 2003

"THIRTY YEARS OF FREEDOM

Some days are merely ordinary. But Feb. 12, for one Fort Worth man, isn't one of them.

By Chris Vaughn Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH - There's a photo of Robert Purcell taken Feb. 12, 1973, in Hanoi, his gaze focused on something unseen, his face completely emotionless.

No one who looked at the photo now would know that Purcell and the other men standing two abreast are staring at a C-141 airplane that would end years of their captivity in North Vietnam.

It is equally hard to judge Purcell's emotions on this Feb. 12, 30 years to that day, as he pulls out a giant scrapbook and thumbs through the reminders of his 91 months as a prisoner of war.

Purcell, 71, may forget many an important date, but this one never gets by. His wife, Suzanne, calls it his "rebirthday."

"I'll exchange phone calls with some of the guys; 'Hey, do you know what day it is?' " he said Wednesday morning from his southwest Fort Worth home. "I can't believe it was 30 years ago. It seems about 10."

Purcell was among the first POWs to leave Vietnam, a status accorded him because of his shoot-down date -- July 27, 1965.

Flying just 100 feet off the ground and targeting barracks outside Hanoi, Purcell's F-105 Thunderchief was hit by small-arms fire and lost a wing. Seconds after he ejected, the plane exploded.

Air Force Capt. Robert B. Purcell, a father of five, a man described by a former commander as the "loudest, friendliest, smallest, most nervous" pilot he had ever been around, was listed as killed. No one had seen a parachute.

"They had a memorial service for me at St. Louis Bertrand's Catholic Church in Louisville with a casket and a flag," he said. "When I got back, I met a man who told me he was a pallbearer for me."

He was the 17th POW of the war.

"We're very proud of our numbers," he said. "Don't ask me why."

Seven years and seven months of captivity, most of it in a place called "The Zoo," some of it in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. More than three years of half-rations and torture sessions. Four years and three months of absolutely no contact with his family.

"You just took it one minute at a time or one day at a time, sometimes a second at a time," he said. "I contemplated suicide, but I couldn't justify it. ... After about six years, you just get hard-headed about it."

Purcell will not dwell on the bad parts of the experience. He's too good-natured for that.

Instead, he spends time on the good parts -- "One time a guard slipped me a piece of candy in my cell and I got on my knees and cried" -- and the darkly humorous ones -- "Two men in a hot cell with no windows and no moving air was tougher than solitary. When they threatened you with solitary, you said, 'Great.' "

Ken Cordier shared a 48-person cell with Purcell for 18 months at the Hanoi Hilton. Purcell, as the senior officer in the room, was "cool and level-headed" and led by example, said Cordier, who lives in Dallas.

"He had a quiet leadership that promoted harmony," Cordier said. "I always felt we had one of the best rooms in the Hanoi Hilton."

Coming back to the United States and his family in Louisville carried its own pain. Oh sure, there were the congratulatory cards, proclamations all over Kentucky, notoriety he never would have gotten otherwise.

"You think you're a hero," he said. "My God, I was the mayor of that town for a while."

But there was also a wife who had grown independent of Purcell, five children who had grown up without him, one of whom didn't even remember him. And for Purcell, there was partying to be done and a wish to be anything but static.

"Collectively, we were a bunch of nervous wrecks," he said of the former POWs. "Repatriation is a long road."

In some ways, Purcell couldn't recover with his family. He divorced his first wife in 1976 and spent years trying to re-establish a fatherly relationship with his children. He knows what he missed with his children because he had another child, Matthew, with his second wife, Suzanne, in 1988.

"I know what that bonding is now," he said.

Purcell never regained his fighter pilot skills either. He completed his career in the Air Force in 1979, retiring from Carswell Air Force Base and staying in Fort Worth. He went to work as a simulator instructor for American Airlines, where he worked for another 15 years.

He now views the U.S. involvement in Vietnam as a mistake, but he is anything but bitter about what he gave up for the war.

"It marked me forever," he said. "But in a good way. It gives me a sense of maturity and perspective that I never would have had."

In honor of Vietnam POWs

On Wednesday, the House passed a resolution 424-0 to recognize the courage and sacrifice of prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. The resolution calls for a full accounting by Vietnam of the 1,902 members of the U.S. military still unaccounted for.

Chris Vaughn, (817) 390-7547 cvaughn@star-telegram.com "