Bloods (22 page)

After United States forces raided the Son Tay prison camp in 1970, security got a lot tighter. The guards were fully geared with grenades and everything. And the interrogators said if there was an indication of another raid going on, we will kill every one of you. And I believe they would have.

They knew that the United States probably knew where the camps were located, so they would mount a lot of their antiaircraft guns close to the prisons, some on the prison walls. They figured that the United States planes wouldn’t get them. But even from the first, when I was shot down, our planes would come in and hit close by. Many times those cell walls would rattle, and plaster would fall from the ceiling. I never was afraid, because I always felt that we needed to keep the pressures on them or we could sit there forever.

From 1968 on, they would give you bits and pieces about the peace negotiations. When the bombings picked up in 1972 and the presidential campaign was going on, we thought something was going to happen. One of the provisions in the Paris Accords in 1973 was that the prisoners would be notified. So a few days after the peace agreements were signed, we were called out in a formation, and they announced we would be released soon.

You would think that everybody would have jumped up and down, and said, “Oh, happy days.” Nothing. Not a sound.

To me it was a feeling of relief. But I wasn’t convinced
until we were actually out of there. We just knew we were going to get out after the Tet Offensive because they were getting their ears beat off. And when the incursion took place in Cambodia, we thought so, too.

The North Vietnamese agreed to let American C-141 airplanes into Gia Long airport to pick us up. When I got on the plane, I still thought the Communists could change their minds or the engine might not go. It wasn’t until wheels up that I said, “Whoooo, man. We made it.”

It was February 12, 1973. Six years, six months, and twenty-three days after my capture.

I think they had some candy and some sodas on the plane. When we got to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, we went through the chow hall and, boy, we just tore up the ice cream.

I landed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. The first thing I said to Carol was, “I made it back.” She was so excited she just screamed.

Carol did a beautiful job of keeping me alive in the children’s minds. When I would put the finger on the son, he responded because he kinda remembered the old days. But the daughter, it was a real trial because she never had a concept of just what a dad does. I guess she supposed that I would be a sugar daddy.

I guess most of us were shocked by how some things had changed. The explicit sex in movies. The openness about homosexuality. The attitude of doing your own thing. The fancy colored pants and wide belts for men. And the high prices!

We really hated that we missed the hot pants and miniskirts.

For the first couple of years I kept having dreams that you were just about to be released and for some reason you couldn’t find your pants or your jacket, and you weren’t allowed to leave until you did. But you never could find them. Or one of the interrogators would take you back. Or you would be free, but you would know that in a week you had to go back.

When I was first captured, I was really praying fervently that the Lord would get me and my fellow prisoners out of there right away.

I kinda grew up in the church. At the age of twelve, I
accepted Christ. I was a churchgoer and tried to live right. I had a pretty strong faith at the time I was captured. But one of the things I had to deal with was, Lord, why am I here? Why do you do this to me when I’ve been trying to do right all this time?

One month passed. Two months passed. Six months passed. A year passed. Old McDaniel’s still sitting here, still praying.

After two years, I have to look at this situation. Is the Lord listening to what I’m saying? I am suffering, and nothing’s happening. So I had to reconcile myself that it just might be that I’m not to go back in the flesh, alive, to the United States. Then I had a lot more peace of mind, and I was able to continue then to cause that faith to grow.

It says in St. Paul and Romans that if we are children of God, we are not exempted from the trials and tribulations. He’s going to give us the strength to go through them. That’s in 1 Corinthians 10:23. So I said even if they take my mortal life, I’m still okay. I never did lose faith.

One of the real pluses from that experience was that I’m a lot closer to God. And a lot of things that might scare a lot of other people in terms of dangers, I can just walk right on through without backing away, shying away, or making compromises that really should not be made.

I’ve been there.

We had a grand time. My retirement party on my two-and-one-half-acre home here in Hubert, North Carolina, just down the road from Camp Lejeune. That was 1 October ’72. We had some 750 people here on this lawn. All types of people. There was a 12-piece orchestra on the lawn. We had all the barbecue pits going. Four hogs on the spit. My soul pot was in operation with chicken stew. I heard they drank somewhere in the neighborhood of ten barrels of Tom Collins and martinis. The party was supposed to last from three o’clock until six. Apparently they forgot the time, because the last folks left the next morning. I never been to a ball like that in my life. I couldn’t stand but one retirement, I’m sure.

When I retired, I had been sergeant major longer than anyone on duty at the time in all the services. I was the senior enlisted man in the whole United States Armed Forces. I could look back to becoming the first black sergeant major in the Marine Corps, serving 19 different
generals, and being sergeant major to General Cushman three times, including Vietnam, when it was the largest Marine force ever assembled. After I made sergeant major, it was 12 years before the Marines made another black one.

I guess I heard from two thirds of the generals on active duty at the time I retired, all the way to Okinawa and Japan. General Cushman called me his strong right arm, and President Nixon sent me greetings. But Alabama was somethin’. They made me honorary mayor of my hometown, Gadsden, and gave me the key to the city. Governor Wallace sent his representative, the commander of the National Guard of the state of Alabama, and called to tell me how proud he was of my career and how it stands as an example for others to follow.

That’s a long way to come for a boy who come into the Marines so poor he had just a quarter in his pocket, had pasteboard in his shoes to cover the holes, and one pair of drawers with a knot tied in the damn seat to keep them from flappin’ around like a dress.

I was six when Daddy died, and it was just me and Mama. He was gassed while serving in Europe in World War I, and I think he never got over the effects. Mama made $3 a week working for white folks, and I used to rake coke from the white people’s ashes they threw away so we could get some heat in the fireplace. But when I got to be twelve, Mama wanted me to have a gun and learn how to shoot ’cause Daddy was a soldier boy. So she took in washing for fifty cents a week until she got enough money to buy this gun. It was a single-barrel .22.

When I was fifteen, Mama got sick and needed an operation. So I dropped out of school—I guess it was the eighth grade—and went to work at Republic Steel. By 1942, I was making $1.40 a day and was the first black man to ever operate a overhead crane at the steel company. I was still walking 4 miles to work, too.

Well, one morning, this white man, Mr. Wilcox, who was going to relieve me, had this newspaper, and he showed me a story. “Ed,” he said, “here’s a new thing starting. If a Negro is qualified, he can join the Marines. That’s the greatest outfit that’s ever been. I was a Marine. If you join the Marines, you’ll go places. It will take
nothing but a lot of hard work, and you do what you’re told.”

(left to right)
“Fast Eddie” Wright, Wallace Terry (author), and Steve Howard before Cobra helicopter at Bien Hoa Airbase South Vietnam, 1969

Norman McDaniel
(standing)
leads captured American pilots in singing Christmas carols at the “Zoo,” on the outskirts of Hanoi, North Vietnam, in 1970

Edgar Huff, shortly before his retirement, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina

Bill Norman
(right)
with then Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt