AP Alert - Idaho
Code of conduct for captured servicemen is 50 years old
By JOHN K. WILEY
FAIRCHILD AIR FORCE BASE, Wash.-The military code that instructs captured U.S. soldiers to give nothing but their name, rank and serial number turned 50 on Wednesday as officials at the U.S. Air Force Survival School honored former prisoners of war who were guided by that code. President Dwight Eisenhower signed an executive order Aug. 17, 1955, establishing six articles of conduct for captured members of the U.S. armed forces. The order was the first time the code had been written, but represented traditions that date to the Revolutionary War, survival school officials said.
"As far as I'm concerned, every man's code of conduct is right here, in his heart," Cletys Nordin, a Korean War POW, told reporters before the survival school ceremony. "When you are captured, everyone is an individual and you have got to make these choices yourself."
The 80-year-old Nordin was among about 20 former POWs being honored by the survival school, which teaches all Air Force flight crews how to survive and evade capture after being shot down and methods to resist and escape after being taken prisoner.
After a tour of the survival school facilities, the former WWII, Korea and Vietnam POWs and their families were honored at a formal retreat ceremony. Nordin and former Vietnam POWs Ernest C. Brace and Glendon "Glen" Perkins said they were beaten, starved and spent long periods in solitary confinement.
Asked if their captivity would have been different without a code of conduct, Perkins said that was "an unknown."
Each said reports of U.S. military abuses of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were overblown by the news media. "Abu Ghraib was more like a college hazing than the torture we experienced in Vietnam," said Brace, a civilian pilot flying for the Central
Intelligence Agency when he was captured in Laos on May 21, 1965. For nearly eight years, he was held prisoner in a series of jungle camps, eventually being sent to the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," where John McCain - who became a U.S. senator and presidential candidate - was tapping out
messages in Morse code in the next cell.
Brace, 73, wrote "A Code to Keep," a memoir about his captivity, and served as McCain's Oregon campaign director when the Arizona Republican ran for president in 2000.
Perkins, 71, and his crew aboard a Douglas Skywarrior were shot down over North Vietnam in July 1966. He and most members of his crew spent nearly seven years in POW camps before their release in the spring of 1973. Nordin went through basic training during World War II and was recalled to duty for Korea in 1949. He remembers being told to give nothing more than his name, rank and serial number if captured, but said he got no other
formal instruction.
Nordin, who endured 32 months in captivity after being force-marched 600 miles to North Korea, said the "old" code of conduct that existed during WWII was not adequate in Korea, where Chinese Communists used brainwashing techniques and propaganda ploys not seen in previous wars.
Brace said Vietnam POWs "had a lot of conversation" about the code, which was altered to suit the conditions.
"Resist to the best of your ability, but don't let them maim you for the rest of your life," said Brace, who had his front teeth knocked out and his cheek broken during interrogations.