Re: A War Story

Date: March 21, 2004

"A war story

By Bridie Isensee

The Facts

LAKE JACKSON — There was once a time in Randle Terry’s life that he didn’t have many friends — only “me, myself and I,” and the three geckoes who sometimes came to visit.

That was during 18 months of the Vietnam War when Terry was kept in solitary confinement by the North Vietnamese. The euphemism for the place was the Outhouse and when Terry first got there, he was shackled in an 8-foot by 8-foot room.

The Brazosport High School Class of 1954 held its breath as its members listened to the stories that reflected the heroism of the man who was once the tall, lanky red-headed class secretary. Terry, who now owns a construction business in Pensacola, Fla., was honored Saturday by classmates celebrating their 50-year reunion, as well as by the city of Lake Jackson and Brazoria County.

From 1966 to 1973, Terry was held prisoner by the North Vietnamese. For 78 months, he endured torture and starvation. Only once did he learn how his wife and children were doing. It was from a picture of his wife, Susan, and his four little girls, who were 7, 6, 5 and 2 years old when he had left. But also in the picture given to him by a head guard was the baby girl he had never seen. Susan Terry had only been a couple months pregnant when he left.

Little did the U.S. Navy captain and his pilot know that their F-4 Phantom would be shot down by enemy troops on Oct. 9, 1966, after they had set out on their mission from the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea. The pair was to strike the railroad yards at Phu Ly, about 20 miles south of Hanoi.

Just after they had released the bombs, Terry and the pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Neils Tanner, felt a thump. Tanner fired off the afterburner, hoping to make it to Laos, but the plane went down.

Terry recalled how the ejection force was so great, the pressure stripped his helmet, oxygen mask and most of the survival gear from his body. It also tore three panels from his parachute, which actually saved his life. As he was falling, Terry said he saw the holes in his parachute caused by the hundreds of people shooting at him from the ground. But Terry’s descent was so fast that they missed.

“It was a blessing,” Terry said of his destroyed parachute.

When he landed, Terry was beaten by a crowd of people. Terry still bears the scar from the knife of the man who wanted to cut his throat.

When Terry produced his Geneva Convention Card, North Vietnamese ripped it to pieces, stripped Terry down to his shorts and tied him up. He was paraded into a village, where children lined up to hit him with bamboo and switches.

That was only the beginning of Terry’s 78 months as a prisoner.

He had many close calls with during that time. He told the story of how once, while he was being loaded onto a truck to be taken to another village to be paraded as a prisoner of war, a voice told him to fall to the middle of the truck bed. As Terry dropped, a man who had been eyeing him thrust a sword through the truck’s bamboo slats.

“The Lord or somebody told me to get in the middle of the truck,” Terry said.

Through his time in captivity, Terry was severely tortured. Terry was trained to only give his name, rank, serial number and date of birth. But under the pain of torture, such as when his shoulder sockets were pulled out of their joints by a rope thrown over ceiling rafters, a person breaks, Terry said. You finally give in and what your captives want you to say, Terry said.

Terry was nicknamed Joker by his captors for one episode in which he and Tanner devised a false “confession.” It stated that Navy Lt. Clark Kent and Navy flier Ben Casey were turning in their wings because of the unjust and illegal war.

When the press got a hold of the confessions, complete with the buzz words, it revealed the pair were being tortured.

Terry’s mainstay throughout the beatings and solitary confinement was his faith in God, Terry said.

“Religion is a very big thing when you ain’t got nobody else,” Terry said.

While Terry was barely clinging to life, his wife, Susan, was bearing crosses of her own back home, raising five little girls on her own, not knowing if her husband was dead or alive.

Susan Terry smiled wryly as she recalled returning to Lake Jackson with her girls from California, where she was staying on a military base.

In Lake Jackson, her family endured the looks and whispers of people who disapproved of the war, she said. Some parents told their children not to sit next to the Terry girls on the bus, and some children were not allowed to go to their home to trick or treat on Halloween.

“It wasn’t that easy,” Susan Terry said.

She received some letters from her husband, but she knew he was only writing what he was being told to write. But she always kept the faith.

“I just kept believing that he was alive,” she said.

Terry was finally released and was reunited with his family in 1973.

Bridie Isensee is a reporter for The Facts. Contact her at (979) 237-0149.

© 2004 The Facts"