Then, bowed or bent in half, the prisoner was hoisted up onto the hook to hang by ropes. The ropes were tightened to the point that you couldn’t breathe. During a routine torture session with the hook, the Vietnamese tied a prisoner’s hands and feet, then bound his hands to his ankles-sometimes behind the back, sometimes in front. It would hang above you in the torture room like a sadistic tease-you couldn’t drag your gaze from it. And let me tell you, those years of physical and mental torture, away from my family, were hell.Īs a POW in the Hanoi Hilton, I could recall nothing from military survival training that explained the use of a meat hook suspended from the ceiling. Forty-two of those months were spent in solitary confinement with 10 other fine American patriots because the Vietcong labeled us “diehard” resistors. I was 35 years old, a husband and father of three small children. After landing, I struggled to get to higher terrain and, while trudging through the jungle, was quickly found by a flood of North Vietnamese soldiers, who eventually took me to Hoa Lo Prison, the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” where I would spend the next almost seven years of my life held captive by the Vietcong. In the midst of parachuting, my back and right arm broke and my left arm was severely injured. Enemy shots caught our right engine on fire, and as the plane was going down, we ejected just before the aircraft crashed. | Photo courtesy of Congressman Johnson's office. The planes the Pentagon fixed for us did have guns fitted to them, but the gun’s success rate was about 50 percent.Ĭongressman Sam Johnson. Never mind that the planes had no bombing system for air-to-ground combat, which the Air Force needed for ground support, no gun and no sight system for bomb targeting and dogfighting. Due to consolidation at the Defense Department, the Air Force had been ordered to use them, too. The planes we were flying, F-4 Phantom IIs, were really Navy aircraft designed for fleet defense. Unfortunately, that was not out of the ordinary. When the enemy began firing at us from the ground, I switched to guns and squeezed the trigger. I had recently left the Air Force’s precision demonstration flying team, the Thunder Birds, and Chesley and I were flying low over the trees doing 700 knots on the deck. The mission was simple: neutralize an enemy anti-aircraft gun and then eliminate a truck park they used for supply delivery with two loads of napalm. It was on that fateful 25th mission over North Vietnam that my co-pilot Chesley and I were shot down. In my 29 years in the Air Force, I flew 62 combat missions during the Korean War and 25 during the Vietnam War.
I signed up to become a fighter pilot, even though I had never set foot on a plane-I thought it sounded exciting.
At the age of 20, when I was called to serve my country and defend freedom, I hadn’t blinked an eye. That was a lesson I learned myself during the war in Vietnam. It read, “Freedom has a taste to it to those who fight and almost die that the protected will never know.” I’m reminded of a phrase I will never forget that was etched on the prison wall by a fellow captive in Vietnam. Comments like those of Donald Trump, or any other American, suggesting that veterans like Senator John McCain or any other of America's honorable POWs are less brave for having been captured are not only misguided-they are ungrateful and naïve. Diminishing the courage and patriotism it takes to leave your family, face the enemy and even-God forbid-endure wartime torture has no place in a post-Vietnam America. I hold the deep conviction that our country should respect the service of all our faithful troops and veterans. If not a hero, I am, however, a proud American veteran. They served our country faithfully and with all their heart. I reserve that title for my wife, Shirley, who held our family together while I was rotting in a cell in the Hanoi Hilton for nearly seven years during the Vietnam War. I do not feel like a hero, and I do not call myself one-I reserve that title for my fellow veterans who fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives. House of Representatives.Īsk a veteran, and most will tell you they are not heroes. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) represents Texas’ 3rd congressional district in the U.S.
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