Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (21 page)

He wondered where they were taking him. As near as he could tell from glimpses of the sun through the jungle canopy, they were generally proceeding east by southeast—away from Thailand and deeper into Laos. Although he was disappointed to be moving farther away from Thailand, he was relieved that they were not going north, toward Hanoi.

They crossed over a ridge, then started down a steep mountainside. The trail was so overgrown it had to be widened with machetes. With his arms tied behind his back, Dieter had difficulty keeping his balance on the descent, and “fell most of the way down.” They were only halfway down when the sun dipped below the horizon. Without discussion, they pushed on until they arrived at the valley floor, in darkness. A small village was situated near a narrow stream, and here they made camp.

Not long afterward, two of the guerrillas returned with a tall man who obviously held some position in the village. He motioned for Dieter to empty his pockets. When the tall man saw the dispenser of razor blades, he fussed with it a bit before producing a blade. In obvious disbelief, he loudly chastised Dieter’s guards. Someone handed him Dieter’s German passport. Obviously confused by what he was seeing, the man seemed to be demanding other identification and grew “angrier and angrier” when it wasn’t forthcoming. Dieter decided that since the prospect of pulling off his fake identity with these people was dimming, it was time to show his military identification and reveal himself as a downed U.S. Navy pilot—and therefore, a prisoner of war to be treated humanely under the terms of the Geneva Convention.

Dieter took off his boots. He pointed to the razor blade the man still held and made a cutting motion. The man warily handed him the blade. Dieter sliced into the soles of both shoes just enough to remove his ID cards. They did not appear to surprise the man. He barked an order to the soldiers, who, with “dirty looks,” came for Dieter as they clicked bolts on their guns.
This is to be my execution
, Dieter thought. Instead, they beat him with their rifle butts and fists, then staked him out for the night.

In the morning, two permanent guards were assigned to him. They wore matching light khaki uniforms and sandals cut from tires. They both carried backpacks filled with ammunition and hand grenades. Dieter soon dubbed one of them Thief, because he took a “simple, ten-cent comb” from Dieter’s jacket and refused to give it back; and the other one Bastard, because whenever he had a chance he harassed Dieter “out of pure hatred.” Although Dieter was continually “looking for a chance to get away,” the two were always with him. Thief carried a U.S. carbine and an ammunition belt around his waist. Bastard had an old-style Russian automatic rifle fed by an attached drum magazine.

The next day, they passed several antiaircraft sites; the guns were well hidden under the jungle canopy. Later, in the dark, they crossed Route 12, a major thoroughfare for military supplies heading southward, before settling down about a mile away in a large cave where a group of villagers were also spending the night. Dieter was tied to a platform, and the soldiers sat at the cave’s entrance smoking their pipes.

A pretty young woman with a baby in her arms sat down near Dieter, who smiled at her. She shyly smiled back. Dieter motioned, asking if he could hold the child. To the obvious surprise of others nearby, the woman came over and handed him her baby. Dieter cradled the infant lovingly, careful to support its head. The baby at that moment seemed to Dieter like his only friend. When he handed the infant back it was as if a “spell in the cave” had been broken. Other mothers came forward, offering their babies for him to hold. When the mother of an older child approached, the boy burst into tears and held onto her skirt. Dieter took off the St. Christopher medal he was wearing and hung it around the boy’s neck. The boy stopped crying, and touched the shiny medal like “a newfound plaything.” During those moments of positive human contact, Dieter could forget his predicament; he was “almost happy.”

On Dieter’s fifth and sixth days as a prisoner they continued their trek, with regular but brief stops for water and food at villages along the way. Everyone including Dieter had the opportunity to take a quick bath in a wide river that snaked through the countryside, irrigating rice paddies on either side. The guerrillas bathed with their hands held modestly over their genitals.

During one stop, everyone was gorging on bananas given by a villager. Dieter got Bastard’s attention and pointed to the bananas, hoping to be given one. Bastard’s answer was a burst from his automatic rifle, which sent dirt flying all around where Dieter was sitting. Certain he had been hit, Dieter was surprised to find no blood. Then, his fear replaced by anger, he started for Bastard but thought better of it.

Each night now, Dieter was being given a handful of half-cooked sticky rice formed into balls and served on a banana leaf. All his life, Dieter had hated rice, but he was learning to “like and respect” it as the main food that would keep him alive. Sometimes, he was served meat of unknown origin
and bananas, both special treats. While he ate, his hands were free but his ankles were kept tied to a stake, and one of his guards remained nearby. After that, it was time for the familiar drill of being staked out spread-eagle for the night. He had learned to push away rocks and sticks jabbing into his back by moving from side to side. If the moon and stars were visible, he looked at them last before shutting his eyes. It gave him comfort to think that Marina might be looking at the sky and seeing the same view. He often awoke in the middle of the night when it turned bitterly cold, but was so exhausted he usually went back to sleep quickly. Every morning he awoke to find a mass of new insect stings and mosquito bites. He also often found leeches on him. They wiggled along on the ground until they found something warm-blooded to which they could attach themselves, dropping off only after becoming engorged with their host’s blood.

Dieter was particularly repelled by the leeches; their flattened bodies could be up to an inch long. Once, noticing blood running down his ankles, he pulled up his trousers to find dozens of the slimy bloodsuckers clinging to each ankle. He tried to pull them off, but their slippery surface made it difficult to get hold of them. When he did grab one, it ended up attached to a finger. A native came to his assistance, using a flat bamboo stick to scrap each one off and fling it away. Dieter discovered that something in the chemistry of the leeches prevented blood from coagulating. Even after they came off, every place they had been attached bled until the wound was washed.

Whenever they entered a village, Dieter was tied to a post or tree and put on display. In the larger villages more than 100 men, women, and children would gather around him. Most were polite and did not say anything—they just stared at him as if he were from another planet. Occasionally, his presence provoked a different response: rocks were thrown, and people would spit at him. Each village, large or small, provided the group with water and sustenance, along with an experienced guide to take them on to the next village.

On the seventh day they stopped at a village whose name sounded to Dieter like Yamalot. A local elder, “evidently a province chief,” came to see Dieter. He was carrying Dieter’s military identification cards. Short and rotund, he wore a blue shirt and trousers, a light jacket, leather boots,
and horn-rimmed glasses. Dieter wondered how this gentleman, who would look at home in San Francisco, had ended up deep in the jungle. Dieter’s curiosity turned to surprise when the man spoke in fluent French.

“Comment ça va?”
asked the province chief.

Dieter answered in French, adding how good it was to find someone he could converse with. He was already regretting, however, not having spent more time on his French lessons in middle school.

The man offered his right hand and Dieter shook it.

The province chief placed an arm around Dieter’s shoulder and walked him up steps cut into a massive rock overhang where they sat down across from each other. Dieter’s two guards came with them, but they were uncharacteristically subdued; even Bastard nodded deferentially to the chief. The rope around Dieter was removed, and he pointed to the burns on his neck and wrists. The chief said something to the guards, who hung their heads. Dieter took off his boots and rolled up his trousers to show his sores. A soldier summoned by the chief appeared with a case of medicines, and went to work on Dieter, cleaning his wounds and painting them with Merthiolate. Having noticed Dieter’s accent, the chief asked where he was from originally.

“Deutschland,”
Dieter said.

The chief said he had been to Germany, and named several cities he had visited. When he mentioned Stuttgart, Dieter interrupted excitedly, saying he was from a small village near Stuttgart. The man made a point of saying that he had been to the Geneva conference several times, leading Dieter to expect he would be well versed in the international treaty regarding the treatment of prisoners of war.

Dieter began to have faith in this educated, well-traveled man. At the very least, for the first time since his capture he was in the hands of someone in charge who seemed to be a “genuinely good man.” Now that his arduous journey was apparently over, Dieter hoped that things would be different and he would be well treated.

The chief said Dieter’s “poor mother” must be very worried. He said he would let Dieter write a letter to her and another one to his wife to tell them he was “alive and well.” When Dieter explained he wasn’t married but had
a fiancée he hoped to marry as soon as he returned home, the chief said he should write to her.

An old woman appeared with a small blue notebook, which she handed to the province chief. He ripped out a few pages and gave them to Dieter, along with a fountain pen from his shirt pocket. The chief encouraged him to tell his loved ones that he was “in good hands” and would be released soon.

Dieter couldn’t believe his good fortune, to be under the authority of such a reasonable and intelligent man. He was glad he hadn’t made a stupid attempt to escape in the jungle and been killed. When he thought of going home—to America to see Marina, and to Germany to visit his mother—his spirits rose to a level they had not reached since the crash.

Dieter wrote the letter to his mother in German, and printed the one to Marina, leaving no spaces for anyone to insert added words or phrases. There was much to say but he was careful not to write anything that could be used for military or propaganda purposes. He did not say what he had gone through or where he was—he said nothing to keep the letters from reaching home. Mainly, he wanted to get across that he was okay, and would see them again. He printed his name at the bottom of each letter: he would not write his signature, since a forger might copy it on a false confession. Dieter had picked up this precaution in his SERE training.

As he wrote at a small table, the province chief remained seated across from him. The chief kept asking more about Dieter’s life in Germany, and how Dieter had ended up in the United States. Slowly, his tone changed from friendliness to agitation. “How could you fall for the American trick?” he demanded. “It was they who killed your father and leveled your towns, and now you are just about giving your life for them.”

“I am a pilot,” Dieter said evenly. “I have a job to do and I do it when I’m told. When I joined the navy there was no war in sight, but now there is, and I’m obligated to it.”

After an hour, Dieter was finished with his letters.

Dinner that night was delicious: he had two boiled eggs, and some sugar was sprinkled on his sticky rice. As Dieter ate, the chief kept up the banter. Finally, leaning toward Dieter, he quietly said, “You will be released in two weeks but you must promise me that you’ll go back to Germany.”

Dieter smiled happily, saying of course he would return to Germany. He did not say how long he would stay; nor did he mention that his tour in the navy would not be finished for two years.

The chief had more good news, telling Dieter he would be kept with other Americans until his release.

Dieter was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing other Americans. “Where are they now?” he asked.

In a camp about “one and a half day’s walk from here.”

After a luxurious bath that night, in a hut where an old woman brought in buckets of warm water, followed by more sticky rice and further doctoring of his sores by the man with the medical bag, Dieter fell asleep. When he awoke on a thin mat, with no ropes securing him to stakes, he thought he must be dreaming. Food, tea, and water were served; then, in mid-morning, the province chief arrived in a jolly mood, shaking Dieter’s hand like an old friend and offering cigarettes for the umpteenth time even though Dieter had repeatedly said he didn’t smoke. Dieter’s two regular guards were in the room—as they had been all night—but they remained unobtrusive.

Again the two men sat across from each other at the table. The province chief gave a lengthy discourse about the ills of America, touching on racial discord and accusing the Americans of trying to tell the Vietnamese people how to live when they couldn’t solve their own problems. He knew about various antiwar demonstrations in specific cities and universities. He even commented derisively about the assassination of President Kennedy by “one of his own fellow citizens.” Dieter listened but said little, feeling that he was no match for this man’s grasp of American history, dates, and names. When the comments became more personal—when the chief accused U.S. pilots of intentionally bombing women and children—Dieter answered, “just short of yelling,” that such claims were untrue. Then he stopped himself. He wasn’t about to get into a discussion about the strict rules of engagement the pilots were following, which so limited the targets they could hit.

The province chief took from a leather attaché case a typed paper, which he put on the table in front of Dieter along with the same pen Dieter had used the previous night to write the letters home. The official said Dieter
no longer had to be “ashamed of his true feelings” about the war and was now free to sign a statement denouncing the bombings.