Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (19 page)

Back aboard ship, Hassett immediately “brought up the fact” with the squadron CO Hal Griffith and others that Dieter might have “disappeared on purpose.” Hassett reported that Dieter had “dropped out of formation without any communication.” Even though Dieter had been Tail End Charlie on the bombing run and most vulnerable to ground fire, the senior officers agreed that it was unusual for someone to “just disappear like that.” Who was to say that the “off the wall” Dieter hadn’t flown to Bangkok—which, with its nightlife, cuisine, and beautiful women, was considered the jewel of Southeast Asia? Everyone knew that Dieter was prepared to live in the guise of a German civilian, and that at times he chafed under military rules and discipline.

Some who knew of the clash with Hassett and his threat to restrict Dieter to the ship for the next six or seven months wondered if that had been enough to push him over the line. His roommate, Dan Farkas, who perhaps knew Dieter’s mind-set best, owing to their close quarters, didn’t think Dieter would consider flying off on his own as a “good way to get out of the navy” or away from Hassett. When Farky heard about the abbreviated search for Dieter, his first thought was:
If anyone else had gone down, Hassett would have hung around longer looking for him
. He didn’t see Hassett taking any risks for Dieter.

Spook heard the talk about Dieter taking off but rejected it. He felt horrible that Dieter had been abandoned without a greater effort to find him, and fretted about whether he should have disobeyed Hassett’s order and continued searching. They had radioed word of Dieter’s disappearance, and search-and-rescue aircraft—most probably from Thailand—would respond. But Spook had been the last to see Dieter, and knew where to start looking. With time he could have expanded his search, and maybe have found Dieter.

The other pilot who had been on the mission to Laos, Denny Enstam, soft-spoken and congenial, thought it was “fifty-fifty whether Dieter got shot down or took off.” If a pilot wanted to flee, Enstam knew the best way would be to “go on a bombing run, drop down low, and disappear”—exactly what had happened with Dieter that morning. Of course, Enstam, a combat veteran of VA-145’s previous deployment aboard
Constellation
, knew that an attacking aircraft could go down swiftly without being seen, and that some
times only the pilot of a plane that was hit realized there was any small-arms fire. As for what Spook considered the shortened search for Dieter, Enstam estimated that they had looked and waited around for Dieter for fifteen or twenty minutes, and thought their departure “wasn’t out of line.”

Lessard harbored no suspicion that his buddy had deserted. For a navy pilot to flee in his aircraft to another country during time of war would be treason. Lessard was aware that Dieter could be “a little different sometimes,” but he would have understood that such an action would have been “the end of his life” in America. He could not have returned without facing a court-martial, and he would never have found “another flying job.” Lessard knew there were many things Dieter looked forward to doing, both in and out of the navy, including returning home and marrying Marina, and eventually flying for the airlines. Lizard could not imagine his buddy throwing all that away.

Dieter was not the only
Ranger
pilot who went missing under mysterious circumstances on February 1, 1966. Around 4:00
P.M
., with his wingman a few feet off his right wing, Commander Hubert “Iceman” Loheed, forty-one, of Middleboro, Massachusetts, a 1948 graduate of Annapolis and commanding officer of VA-146, was attacking a barge on an intercoastal waterway north of the DMZ in North Vietnam when something went wrong. Considered a “real cool guy” by his men, Loheed had rescued an injured duck on a rural California road before
Ranger
left for WestPac, nursed it back to health, and kept it in the ready room as the squadron’s mascot. Naturally, someone of a lesser rank had to clean up after the duck, but the suave Loheed regularly stood before the pilots briefing them before a mission with the duck on his shoulder. Flying A-4 Skyhawks—delta-winged, single-engine jets that were the navy’s primary light bombers—Loheed and his wingman released their ordnance and pulled up into a steep climb. Suddenly, with no distress call from Loheed, his wingman, Lieutenant ( j.g.) Jeff Greenwood, twenty-four, of Coral, Michigan, saw him pull up “real nose high” and roll sharply to the right. Greenwood stayed with him as they dived straight down, pulling out in cloud cover only at about 1,000 feet above the ground. He then lost sight of Loheed’s plane, and a search failed to find any trace of the pilot or the aircraft. Greenwood reported that Loheed must have been “incapacitated in the cockpit” or
“dead before he hit the ground” to account for his apparent failure to try to regain control of his aircraft or eject. (Loheed’s remains were recovered in the wreckage of his plane in 1986.)

The assignment the next morning to look for Dieter went to his best buddy, Lizard Lessard; and his flight leader, Lieutenant Commander John Stovall, thirty-three, of Kermit, Texas (who was called “Smokey” because he always had a cigarette going). Although he held the same rank as Hassett, the easygoing, hard-drinking Stovall “wasn’t uptight and stuffy like Hassett.” Also, Stovall “liked Dieter and got along with him,” and Lizard knew his flight leader would want them to give it their best shot in locating Dieter.

So eager was everyone in the chain of command—including
Ranger
’s skipper, Leo McCuddin—to begin a search for VA-145’s missing pilot at first light over Laos that the two Spads were sent off in a special launch an hour before sunrise—some five hours before the start of
Ranger
’s regular flight operations that day.

When the Spads reached the search area an hour later, a blood-orange dawn was breaking over Laos. Starting at the river crossing, heavily cratered from the previous day’s attack, the two planes began a methodical “square search pattern.” They went in one direction for a minute, then turned left at timed intervals to form an ever-expanding box. Flying mostly between 500 and 1,000 feet, depending on the terrain, Stovall was in the lead with Lessard above and behind his right wing. Both pilots scanned below for any sign of an aircraft down or an emergency signal. At the same time, Stovall was responsible for keeping them high enough to clear ridges and hills, and it was Lessard’s job to follow his flight leader’s altitude and course changes.

About an hour later, their search pattern took them over a long wooded ridge that ran east to west. After passing over it, they soon spotted a small clearing a few miles to the north. Coming closer, they saw wreckage that was identifiable to them as an airplane. Dropping down near treetop level, they confirmed four main pieces strewn on the ground: a tail section, a denuded fuselage, a partial wing, and an intact wing. All were painted in the navy aircraft color scheme: light gull gray
on top and glossy white on the bottom sections. The intact wing had a white star set in a blue field with red and white stripes. On the fuselage was painted the willow-green diagonal stripe of the Swordsmen’s insignia, with a lion raising a medieval sword. On the engine cowling, painted in black, were the numbers 504.

Wreckage of Dieter’s Spad in Laos, February 2, 1966.
U.S Navy.

Quickly reporting the sighting, they were told that a U.S. Air Force helicopter—from a base at Nakhon Phanom in northeastern Thailand—would be en route, along with a search-and-rescue (SAR) coordinator aboard a four-engine C-54 Skymaster, equipped as a radio relay station to provide command and control for rescue missions involving multiple aircraft. Lessard and Stovall would wait to guide them to the wreckage; carrying a full complement of rockets, bombs, and ammunition for their 20 mm cannons, they would provide protective air cover.

As Lessard passed low over the wreckage, which lay at the end of a rut plainly made in the yellowish-brown soil by the careening plane, he looked for any indication that the crash had been survivable. Two things gave Lessard hope. First, the cockpit and fuselage were intact. If Dieter had been strapped in, he would have had a chance. Also, there was no sign of a fire. But if Dieter had survived, where was he now? Lessard kept hoping to see him step out of the foliage, waving skyward.

When the helicopter arrived, it was an HH-3E, nicknamed the Jolly Green Giant—a twin-engine, heavy-lift helicopter used for search and recovery as well as combat and special operations. With titanium armor plating and a high-speed rescue hoist, it was a welcome sight overhead to any downed aviator. The problem—as radioed by Stovall to the SAR units—was that there had been no sighting of the pilot and no signal from him since they had been overhead. That meant the helicopter would have to hover near the wreckage, and send down an armed crewman to look for an injured or dead pilot in the wreckage.

By then, Stovall and Lessard had been in the air for more than five hours, and they faced an hour’s flight back to the ship. Arriving along with the other SAR aircraft were two air force Skyraiders, also based in Thailand. The air force flew the A-1E, a two-seat (side by side) version of the Spad with an oversize cockpit covered by a big bubble canopy. The navy pilots called these aircraft “queer Spads” because of their unusual design. When they worked SAR, the air force A-1s were code-named
Sandy
; their primary mission was to protect SAR units in hostile surroundings. This was now their show. Before departing, Lessard took another look at the broken plane in the clearing. Knowing Dieter, he was willing to bet that his friend’s body was not inside the wreckage. And if there was no body, where was Dieter? The only Americans who had penetrated this deep into Laos on foot were Special Forces reconnaissance teams. It was isolated, hostile country.

Not long after Stovall and Lessard returned to the ship,
Ranger
sent out a secret radio message based on their report and an update from the SAR units after the wreckage had been searched. The message was addressed to CINCPAC—the commander in chief of all forces in the Pacific—and various naval commands in the Pacific and continental United States:

As for any suggestion that Dieter may have flown off to enjoy the delights of Bangkok or some other exotic milieu, the location of the crash belied any such intention. The wreckage was found eight miles north of the Route 27 intersection the Spads had bombed. Bangkok was about 400 miles in the opposite direction. In fact, had Dieter proceeded north-northwest away from the target as he was headed when he crashed, he would have arrived over Hanoi in the time it would have taken him to reach
Ranger
. No one argued that Dieter was “nuts enough” to voluntarily head in that direction or even “ditch in the boonies” of hostile Laos, practically on top of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Spirited talk among the pilots now centered on another aspect of Dieter’s personality and reputation, and in this regard there was widespread accord. Although he had crashed in the dark heart of Laos, where once in the hands of the ruthless Pathet Lao virtually nobody made it out, his squadron mates believed that if he was still alive Dieter Dengler “could escape from anywhere.”

Shortly after Dieter stepped into the bush,
he heard what sounded like “tearing metal” coming from the direction of the crash site.

Staying in the area would help his buddies find him when they came looking—and he knew they would come, even though he had been unable to radio a distress call. But remaining in the vicinity also increased the likelihood of being captured. His best chance for evading the enemy was to get away from the wreckage, which, from the noises he heard, had probably already been found.

While dropping from the sky in his broken aircraft, Dieter had “no time for fear.” He was busy with the difficult task of flying his crippled plane, and trying to get it on the ground without being killed. The crash had been over very fast, and he still had no memory of climbing from the cockpit and crawling away. He was driven now not by fear, but by a strong will to survive. It was not a new feeling for him.

He checked the small compass attached to his watchband. The obvious direction to head in was west, toward Thailand—a loyal ally of the United States in the war. But, figuring that his pursuers might anticipate his heading west, and try to cut him off before he could reach Thailand, Dieter decided to go north. If he was not rescued in a day or so, he would
then turn west and walk to Thailand, since it was “so close.” His evasion plan was to make it to the Mekong River, less than thirty miles away. On the other side lay Thailand. He had hiked that far in Germany, and he had learned—first from his mother and later alone—how to live off the land. He assured himself that the distance was “no sweat” and he would “walk right out of here in nothing flat.” He hoped not to be stopped and questioned, and he would try to avoid contact with anyone. If questioned, he would—as he had planned—speak German and show his civilian identification.

After 200 yards he came to a creek with steep, twenty-foot banks cut by several seasons of monsoon rains. “Really, really thirsty,” he slid down to the creek, only to find the water rust-colored and stagnant. Recalling warnings about deadly diseases prevalent in the jungle, he did not take a sip or even rinse his mouth. He had iodine tablets, but there was no time to stop and purify the water. He had to keeping moving. Trying to scale the bank on the other side, he sank knee-deep into powdery dirt that gave him no traction. He waded down the creek, stepping into muddy sinkholes along the way. When he came to a tree that had fallen across the creek, he was able to pull himself up the bank.

About half a mile from the crash site he stopped to get “squared away for the evasion.” The heat and humidity were unlike anything he had known—he thought the temperature must be “at least 120 degrees.” He had spent summers in oven-like San Antonio, Texas, but this tropical heat “had it beat all to hell.” The heat and dehydration were already driving him “nearly mad,” but he had to prepare for what could be a long trek if he wasn’t quickly rescued.

He sat on a fallen tree in a wooded area, and rolled up his trousers to inspect his left knee, which hurt to bend. The injury was something he had “forgotten all about” in planning his escape route to Thailand, but the intense pain was coming back to remind him. The knee was black and blue and badly swollen. For added support, he wrapped it with an elastic bandage from his first aid kit. Something wet had been running down his back. He reached behind his neck, and his hand came back covered in blood. He found a shard of glass stuck behind his right ear, pulled it out, and pressed a bandage against the puncture.

He removed his survival vest and flight suit and wiped the caked blood and mud off himself as best he could. From a canvas rucksack he took out his civilian clothes, which had gotten wet in the creek but were already dry. Because of the humidity, they were not dry for long—when he put them on, they stuck to him like a second skin. He rearranged his gear, deciding what to take and what he didn’t want to carry. The iodine tablets, medicine, food, fishing line, and hooks he placed in his jacket pockets. He started to shift other things from the survival vest to the rucksack when the world around him exploded with gunfire. He dived for cover.

When the firing stopped, he heard yelling.

Dieter had left his standard-issue .38 revolver on the log. After much thought he had decided not to go on missions with his modified .22 handgun. He was worried that if his German cover failed and he was caught carrying a weapon with a silencer and soft-nosed bullets, it would be considered a violation of the Geneva Convention and would jeopardize his status as a POW. Had he known then what he would later learn—that no one in deepest Laos abided by the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of POWs—he would have brought the .22 and silencer.

His emergency radio was also on the log. He remembered what he had been told aboard ship about the handheld devices, which when activated sent out a beeper signal so a helicopter could home in on a downed aviator’s location. Having learned that Jolly Green Giants would land wherever they heard an emergency beeper, the enemy had used captured radios to “bag a helicopter.” Therefore, the pilots had been briefed not to let their radios fall into enemy hands because “they’ll call in your buddies and then someone else will be down.”

Knowing he could not outrun the enemy search party with his bum knee and convinced he would be captured “within five minutes,” Dieter crawled back to the log and stuck the blade of his knife into the radio. He pushed the radio, gun, and survival vest—none of which he wanted the enemy to find—into a hole beneath the log and covered them with dirt and leaves.

With loud voices off to his right, he headed in the other direction. He slithered on his belly through the dense undergrowth, dragging his ruck
sack and sleeping bag with him. He had gone a short distance when he heard someone approaching. Quietly, he pulled the nylon bag over him, hoping the green material would serve to camouflage him.

A barefoot man passed five feet away. At first, Dieter glimpsed only a pair of strong, callused feet. When the man went by, Dieter looked up and saw something he did not expect. His pursuer was not dressed in a soldier’s uniform. Short and with leathery skin, he wore only a loincloth. A rifle was slung over one shoulder, and he swung a machete to chop through the dense vines and branches as he went.

In a while, the shouting seemed to be moving farther away.

Dieter doubled back. His signal mirror was still in the survival vest, along with a plastic map of Laos. He wanted them both. He thought he could quickly locate the log but was unable to do so. In the meantime, the voices suddenly seemed to be circling back. To keep looking didn’t seem prudent. Crouching low, he moved away, stopping every few steps to listen. When he heard nothing more than the cacophony of birds and insects, he checked his compass and turned northward again. He was determined to evade capture and stay alive, no matter what.

In a section of dense jungle, he came to a narrow path and followed it, even though the instructors at SERE had advised against traveling on trails. That may have been sound advice for downed Allied pilots trying to evade capture in occupied Europe during World War II, but Dieter quickly discovered it was not always practical in the jungle. He now faced, just two feet off either side of the trail, walls of vines as thick as his wrist and filled with thorns—obstacles that were “impossible to get through.”

Somewhere off to his right he heard a girl singing. When the path meandered toward the angelic voice, Dieter backtracked and found another path to take. Eventually, he emerged from the jungle into a lightly wooded area. He came to a log fence covered with thorny vines and walked along it until he came to a cluster of bamboo. As he grabbed hold of the bamboo to hoist himself up over the fence, the ground beneath him gave way, leaving him swinging above an open pit six or seven feet deep. The hole, about ten feet wide, had been expertly covered with branches and leaves. If he hadn’t taken hold of the bamboo when he did, he would have fallen in. He managed
to pull himself up to the top of the fence. Looking down, he saw that the bottom of the pit was laced with sharpened bamboo spikes “staring up” at him. Had he landed in the pit, he would certainly have been killed.

On the other side of the fence was a clearing that looked deserted. Ideally, he should have circled the clearing so as not to be spotted in the open, another technique taught at SERE. But it was a long way around through dense foliage, so he moved cautiously across the grassy field. At the far end of the field he came to a picket fence. He opened a small gate and hurried into heavier foliage, ducking underneath the canopy. Stopping to get his bearings, he only then realized he was standing underneath a hut built on tree stumps about six feet off the ground. He would learn that this was common practice to keep snakes and animals from coming inside.

Dieter froze, listening for any sound from the hut. All was quiet. Hoping to find something useful, he inched his way up a wooden ladder. Inside the hut was the body of a man who had been dead for some days; at least, Dieter thought it had been a man. The lower half was gone and the “big, round eye sockets” were empty. Streams of ants and thousands of maggots were at work. The disfigured corpse made Dieter “think right away of leprosy.” Afraid to touch anything, he hurried back down the ladder without searching the hut.

He soon came to a wide river. Uncertain whether leprosy was contagious, he was eager to leap right in and wash himself off, but he saw a herd of water buffalo on a nearby sandbar and wasn’t sure if they would charge or not. Continuing on, he found a deep pool near the bank. He stripped down and jumped in with his bar of soap. The bath was a brief respite from the heat of the day. Quickly gathering up his clothes, he placed them and his boots inside his nylon sleeping bag to keep them dry, then eased into the river and dog-paddled to the other side, where he found a cove blocked from view. He rewrapped his injured knee, dressed, and then ate some pepperoni, which made him even thirstier. Filling up one of his boots with river water, he dropped in two iodine tablets and waited thirty minutes for the chemical reaction to be completed. Although the water still looked dirty, and smelled and tasted like iodine, his first drink “tasted wonderful” and renewed his strength.

Still heading north, Dieter entered a meadow filled with tall elephant
grass. From there he went through an area of lightly wooded flatland, where he came across more clearings. Being cautious, he went the long way around. He felt safer in the cover provided by the jungle, although it was difficult to make much progress in the dense growth without a machete to clear the way.

The time was now close to 5:00
P.M
., and Dieter looked for a place to spend his first night in Laos. He found a spot adjacent to a clearing, so that if a plane went over he could jump out and try to signal it. He unrolled his sleeping bag next to a log and zipped himself inside to escape the mosquitoes, which had started swarming as soon he stopped moving. At first it was too hot in the bag and he was unable to sleep. Eventually he did fall asleep, but around 2:00
A.M
. he was awakened by something crawling up his leg on the outside of the bag. It was heavy, “about 30 pounds.” He kicked hard, then heard it hit the ground and scamper away. The night had turned cold, and after this interruption he was unable to get back to sleep. Monkeys whined excitedly, and night birds hooted nonstop.

Overhead, the stars were “so clear,” and their illumination found its way through the roof of the jungle. He wondered if Marina and his mother had been informed yet. He imagined how surprised they would be when he showed up in Thailand. The thought occurred to him that maybe he could “lay low for a while” in Thailand before reporting to the military authorities. His $200 would probably go a long way there—he might even “take a train to Bangkok” and see the sights.

At dawn, he packed up and started out. Although he still hoped for a quick rescue, he decided to turn west toward Thailand. Already “getting familiar with the country,” he followed a trail, ready to dive into the undergrowth at the first sign of anyone approaching. He came to another empty hut. Taking off his boots so as not to leave shoe prints, he scaled the ladder to a porch area. He now saw several neighboring huts, also on stilts, built on the gully of a river. They all looked deserted. Two were frames only, and appeared to have been gutted by fire.

In one corner of the hut he had entered was a hanging basket of blue orchids, cascading down like “a miniature waterfall.” What looked something like potatoes were lying on the floor, and he filled his pockets. He also took an empty bottle hanging on the wall to use as a water container.

Down at the river, which looked like the same one he had crossed the day before, he washed out the bottle and filled it with river water. He dropped in iodine tablets, then washed up and pushed on.

After following another narrow trail for a couple of hundred yards, he halted when he saw the straw roof of a large hut sticking out above elephant grass taller than him. The trail appeared to be heading directly for the hut. He turned around and headed back in the direction he had come.

It was then he heard the familiar rumble of Spads overhead. The closest open area was at the river, so he ran for it. Just as he arrived, two Spads passed overhead. They were so low he could see on their sides the insignia of his squadron.
His buddies had come for him!
He watched the planes head east, getting smaller as they did. Then they turned, and appeared to be heading back. But instead of flying over him again, they turned left and climbed to a higher altitude.

As he hurried for the hut, Dieter “practically tore off” his blue shirt to get to his white T-shirt, which he ripped up one side. He grabbed a bamboo pole along the way. When he reached the elevated porch—the nearest perch—he hastily tied the white shirt on one end of the pole and waved it over his head.

Dieter soon spotted a Jolly Green Giant skimming over the jungle, “ready to do some business.” The helicopter and two Spads were circling above an area about three miles to the southeast, and Dieter knew what that meant. They had found the wreckage of his plane.