Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (34 page)

Stopping at one of the way stations that appeared out of nowhere every fifty or sixty miles, he filled the gas tank and went inside for a sandwich and beer. He was casually watching a television mounted above the bar when a still picture of Dieter in uniform filled the screen. The announcer explained that navy pilot Dieter Dengler had escaped from a POW camp—

Spook heard little after that. He put some money on the bar, went outside, started up his Scout, and headed north.

Dieter had been one of the guys Spook tried not to think about. He found he had to do so while flying combat missions, in order to stay focused. There had been little time for grieving over lost squadron mates while he was operating in the South China Sea. And now, there could be no room in his life for ghosts like Gary Hopps, John Tunnell, and all the others who were gone. It was too painful. They had to become “past history.”

Yet there had always been something different about Dieter. He was not known to be dead or captured; he was only missing. Too, Spook had been unable to let go of a feeling that he had “let Dieter down” by not staying on the scene against Hassett’s orders and looking longer and harder for him. And now, so abruptly that it put a lump in his throat, the news of Dieter’s escape and survival “lifted this colossal weight” off Spook’s shoulders.

Spook drove on toward Fairbanks, “bawling like a baby.”

Dieter had made it back, and Spook couldn’t wait to see him again.

Dieter spent several days on
Ranger
.
After his first night in the ship’s sickbay, he was shown to the admiral’s stateroom. One of the first things he did was to pick up the phone and order a “big steak,” which was delivered with all the trimmings. A sheet cake decorated with “Welcome Home, Dieter” was also brought up from the galley. Dieter happily popped into his mouth a rosette of red icing. Slices of cake were served to his squadron mates, who crowded into the room for a celebration and a group photograph.

Dieter’s proud commanding officer, Hal Griffith, would write in Dieter’s officer fitness report for the six-month period ending that month: “Lieutenant ( j.g.) Dengler’s tenacity and perseverance in escaping from the enemy will remain one of the most amazing feats of the present conflict in Southeast Asia.”

On July 25, Dieter was flown to Clark Air Force Base, where he was taken by litter onto a C-141 Starlifter, a four-engine jet the size of a Boeing 707 configured for medical evacuations. The next morning he arrived at Travis Air Force Base in northern California, where he had a brief reunion with Marina and his brother Martin. On July 27, Dieter was admitted to San Diego Naval Hospital, where he was to remain a patient for more than two months. For his first few nights, he found the bed too soft, and slept on
the floor. Several times he awakened in the dark, screaming. When nurses came running, he flailed at them, thinking they were Pathet Lao guards and he was back in the jungle prison camp. He would continue to have such flashbacks for months.

Dieter with his physician, Captain Alden Holmes, during his two-month stay at San Diego Naval Hospital.
U.S. Navy.

Dieter was still off-limits to the press and public. He was assigned a senior public affairs officer, Captain Gaylord “Hap” Hill, forty-three, of Coronado, California. It was Hill’s job, initially, to make sure Dieter stayed off-limits until higher-ups declared otherwise.
^*
In the hospital, Dieter was allowed no unauthorized visitors. One enterprising reporter dressed as a janitor and pushed a broom down the hallway, trying to sneak into Dieter’s room, but was halted by a military guard at the door.

As his condition improved, Dieter was questioned extensively by naval intelligence officers about his capture, imprisonment, escape, evasion, and rescue. A team from Washington, D.C., administered a polygraph examination. Also, Dieter told close friends that at one point in the debriefing he was “injected with sodium Pentothal,” considered a truth serum. What the scrutiny was all about, Hill explained to Dieter, was that the navy wanted to be certain there had been no misconduct on his part during his imprisonment.

Two years earlier, Hill had been the public affairs officer assigned to another U.S. Navy pilot, Lieutenant Charles F. Klusmann, a photo reconnaissance pilot shot down during a mission over Laos, who escaped from the Pathet Lao in August 1964 after two months of captivity. Klusmann spent two days in the jungle and then safely reached a government camp, where he was eventually picked up by U.S. forces. The “glory of his escape,” Hill explained, had been “tarnished a bit” when it was revealed that Klusmann, during his captivity, had signed a statement “condemning U.S. operations in Vietnam and Laos.”

Dieter was asked repeatedly whether he had signed a confession or any other statement for his captors. Dieter kept giving assurances he had not, although he had been pressured to do so and tortured when he refused. Another issue was that Dieter had carried civilian identification, but given the fact that he was German-born and could have used such identification to explain his accent, this was not seen as a major problem, even when his passport ended up in Moscow, where the state-run newspaper
Pravda
called him “a West German military officer serving in American disguise.” At the conclusion of Dieter’s lengthy debriefing, it was determined there had been “no misconduct” on his part during his imprisonment. Dieter proved to be “the genuine hero that the navy had hoped for.”

Hill and Dieter flew to the Bay Area and were at dockside on August 24 when
Ranger
returned to Alameda after eight months overseas. Besides that trip, Dieter also made a few unauthorized excursions from the hospital. Most notably, he climbed down a fire escape one evening and was not back until the wee hours. The next morning, Hill “practically cut [his] throat” shaving when a local news radio station reported: “Navy escapee slips out of the hospital and ends up dancing with the girls at a go-go bar.”
He rushed to the hospital and “read the riot act” to a grinning and unrepentant Dieter.

Dieter finally faced the national press on September 13, 1966, at a press conference held in a banquet room of the officers club at the Naval Air Station, North Island. For his official coming out, the navy had his mother and his brother Klaus flown in from Germany a few days earlier. Their reunion had been tearful and joyous.

Sitting behind a draped banquet table with a battery of microphones and television cameras staring him in the face, Dieter was dressed in crisp tropical whites with his wings of gold pinned above his left breast pocket. He was tanned, handsome, and the picture of health. In the seven weeks since his rescue, he had gained back forty-five pounds.

After being introduced by a senior officer as a “dauntless naval aviator,” Dieter looked out at the roomful of print, radio, and television reporters, photographers, and cameramen behind whirring film cameras set up on tripods. “You know, I have been through some terrifying experiences, but
since it is my first experience with the press I am kind of frightened right now. But I am happy to be here.” He beamed at the audience. “Man, it’s great to be alive and free. I tell you in our moment of desperation, Lieutenant Martin and I decided we would rather die free in the bushes than die at the communists’ hands.”

Dieter at the press conference in San Diego, September 13, 1966. At left, public affairs officer Gaylord “Hap” Hill.
U.S. Navy.

In his opening remarks, Dieter thanked Skip Cowell and his rescue helicopter crew, and Spad pilot Gene Deatrick, who “saved my life.” About Deatrick, he said, “It was a miracle he spotted me…. He may not know it, but he has a great friend for life.”

Smiling, Dieter said, “I guess the sooner we get to the questions, the sooner I can get back to the business of flying again.”

Jerry Dunphy, a popular news anchor for KNX-TV in Los Angeles, who had been a pilot in World War II, asked: “How did you manage to escape where all the others failed? How do you explain it?”

“I was in the prison the shortest time and maybe I was physically the most able to do so. And my previous background in Germany and naval survival school both helped me do the job.”

“What do you mean by ‘previous background’?” Dunphy asked.

“I grew up during the war and it was a matter of taking care of yourself, and this did a lot for me…. I was able to stand on my own feet.”

Pierce Abbott of ABC News asked, “Could you describe to us how Lieutenant Martin was killed?”

Dieter bowed his head momentarily. He knew what he would say, and what he would not say. “We were crawling along on our hands and knees, and all of a sudden somebody jumped out of the bush about twenty feet away, yelling, ‘
Americali
.’ He was swinging a machete, and he just started chopping away, and he hit my friend in the leg and then—I turned around and started running.” Dieter was not going to give any more details before he had a chance to meet and sit down with Duane’s family and tell them everything they wanted to know.

In his answers, Dieter went into graphic details about his own captivity—beaten and tortured, staked out on the ground, hung upside down, dragged by a water buffalo, locked in foot blocks and handcuffs, barely subsisting on scraps of maggot-infested food and resorting to eating rats, snakes, and “anything that crawled.”

John Dancy of NBC News homed in on a sensitive area, which Dieter was prepared for after being briefed at length by navy officials. “Were you bombing in North Vietnam or Laos?”

“My target was in North Vietnam,” Dieter said.

The way to explain his escape from Laos when the U.S. military was not supposed to be in Laos, the Pentagon had decided, was to claim that Dieter’s target had been in North Vietnam, close to the border with Laos, and that after his plane was hit he had crashed in nearby Laos, where he was taken prisoner.

Dancy asked Dieter to describe his escape, which he did.

“What happened to the other men, besides Lieutenant Martin, who escaped with you?” Dancy asked.

“I really don’t know, sir.”

Dieter was asked what the future might hold for him.

“Well, in prison, all we talked about was food.” His smile was now bright enough to light up the room. “We talked about deep freezes and refrigerators, stacking the food up. I decided I am coming back home and I’m going to start a restaurant, a German-type restaurant, and I’m going to stack the food up and never be hungry again.”

Hill observed from his seat at the end of the table that all the reporters, even the most seasoned newshounds, were “almost stunned by the story.” Dieter was the longest-held American to escape from captivity in the Vietnam War, and this fact itself made for a gripping headline and story. But Hill knew it was more than the tale of a POW’s escape. Dieter’s story was about an “incredible test and triumph of human spirit and tenacity.” As Dieter held the press corps spellbound with his story, Hill understood that Dieter was about to be transformed into not only the most popular military man to return from Vietnam, but the “national hero” that a “hungry country” needed.

The impact of Dieter’s story was confirmed when Hill was handed a note soon after the press conference—which had been broadcast live on national radio and television—that Dieter was being summoned by U.S. Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. (D-Georgia), the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, for an appearance before the committee in two days.

Dieter was “surprised by all the attention” he was getting and seemed to feel his story “wasn’t a big deal.” Hill noted Dieter’s “modesty” in talking about his escape and survival; Dieter described his successes as “just doing his job as a navy pilot.” Whenever anyone asked Dieter how it felt to be a hero, he was quick to say he didn’t think of himself as a hero: “Only dead people are heroes.” That attitude, Hill knew, would serve Dieter well personally, not just publicly.

The next day, Dieter and his ever-present escort, Hap Hill, were walking in the corridors of the Pentagon. Word had spread that the dashing navy pilot who had been on television and radio and whose escape and rescue had made headlines across the country was in the building. At almost every office they passed people emerged to shake Dieter’s hand and congratulate him. In the office of an assistant secretary of defense, Dieter was instructed as to how he would handle his appearance before the Senate committee.

On their way out of the Pentagon, Dieter and Hill stopped at a shoe-shine parlor. The bootblack working on Dieter’s shoes looked up casually after a few minutes, and then with a startled expression exclaimed, “Ain’t you the one who escaped from the Cong?”

Dieter smiled and nodded.

The bootblack began snapping the cloth across Dieter’s shoes with new gusto. “Man, you gonna get a shine better than Mr. McNamara’s!”

In the morning, they took a cab to the Senate office building for the hearing. Dieter was seated alone at a table before the elevated seats of the committee members, with Hill directly behind him.

Senator Russell, one of the most senior members of the Senate, called the hearing to order, saying he had been advised there were areas that would be inappropriate to discuss in public session: first, disclosure of information about “military operations that would jeopardize the lives of any of our fighting men” second, details concerning the other prisoners in the camp, “except that other gallant American, Duane Martin” third, tactics and techniques that Dieter had applied to elude his captors.

Russell went on: “The Chair believes that all of us who love this country and who are proud of the competence and dedication of those serving
in our armed forces have been impressed and thrilled by the accounts of the extraordinary experiences of Navy Lt. ( jg) Dieter Dengler during his imprisonment after his aircraft was shot down while attacking a target in North Vietnam.” Russell was a longtime U.S. senator from Georgia, and as head of the Armed Services Committee he certainly knew that Dieter’s real target was in Laos, and that U.S. planes had been bombing there for some time.