Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War (5 page)

The brothers could disagree, and even fought, although when they were growing up it had always been Dieter who imposed his will on Martin. Their biggest fight as adults—a real donnybrook—was over a prized ski sweater from Switzerland that belonged to Martin. Seeing a sweater that looked like his on a girl at City College, Martin asked where she got it. “From Dieter Dengler for my birthday,” she said. After years of submitting to Dieter, Martin drew the line. He came home furious, and the brothers argued. Martin gathered all his clothes from Dieter’s room and was heading down the hallway when Dieter charged from the opposite direction. “This must be yours, too,” Dieter said, throwing a wadded-up shirt in Martin’s face. Martin dropped the clothes, and the fight was on. They grappled in the hallway, down some stairs, and through the house. Martin, who was a college wrestler, frustrated Dieter with his quickness and holds, and they fought to a draw, both left cut and bloodied.

Notwithstanding their fisticuffs, either brother would defend the other. Late one night, they were sitting in a pizza joint in San Francisco when a group of young men walked in. One of them, whom Martin recognized as a former boxer at Lincoln High School, had on a red-and-white beanie. A smiling Dieter said, “I like your hat,” to which the wise guy responded, “If you want it why don’t you take it?” Accepting the invitation, Dieter stood up to do so. Martin reached the guy first, and in a flash took the guy’s hat off his head. The boxer swung. Martin ducked and drove for his legs, taking him down hard. One of the boxer’s friends jumped forward to help, but found he had his hands full with Dieter. The fight lasted until four policemen broke it up. Dieter and Martin were placed in a paddy wagon to go to the station and be booked.

At that point, Dieter decided to fake a heart attack. He did it so convincingly that Martin thought his brother was dying until Dieter squeezed his hand. The policemen “got really scared” by Dieter’s loud groans, his wild gyrations, and the spittle drooling from his mouth. They called an ambulance and began pumping Dieter’s chest. By the time the paramedics arrived, the cops had forgotten all about booking anyone. Dieter was transferred to
the ambulance and Martin was allowed to accompany him. When they reached the hospital emergency room, Dieter stood up, said he was feeling much better, thanked the paramedics, and, with Martin at his side, strolled out of the hospital. “If they had booked me,” Dieter told his brother, “I would never become a navy pilot.”

Dieter and Martin decided to join a fraternity. They both went through various initiations and humiliations, including being taken, in the middle of the night, to some surrounding hills and ordered to strip and be at school by 7:00
A.M
. Dieter went through it all until one day at the fraternity house when he was doing push-ups as ordered by two frat brothers. With one of them standing on each side of him, they simultaneously jerked his arms out from under him, causing him to fall flat on his face. “More push-ups!” one of them yelled. Dieter came off the floor like an enraged bull, slugging both the frat boys. “Don’t
ever
do that again,” Dieter said. “I want to be in your club but don’t be stupid with me.” With that, Dieter dropped to the floor for more push-ups. By the time of the pinning ceremony a few weeks later, Dieter had changed his mind. Although Martin stayed for his fraternity pin, Dieter announced to the group, before walking out, “I’ve been watching you guys. You have no idea what life is about. You’re all just out of high school. I don’t want to be part of your club or be around you guys. And I don’t want to pay thirty-five dollars to join.”

After a year at City College, Dieter hit a stumbling block of his own making. Although he had already passed the mathematics examination required for graduation, Dieter feared he would not pass the required English exam. Having come to the United States as an adult with limited exposure to English, Dieter would always speak, write, and think best in German. Yet this exam covering English grammar and spelling was a requirement for a two-year degree. Learning that Martin was scheduled to take the English test first, Dieter asked a favor: after he filled out his answer sheet, could Martin smuggle out the test?

Martin knew all about Dieter’s propensity to get what he wanted with little regard for rules, tradition, or, at times, consideration of others. Martin did not make excuses for Dieter’s ways or methods, although he understood where they came from. In fact, having experienced a childhood in the poverty of postwar Germany, Martin had some similar tendencies, like
splicing into a neighbor’s cable for television and radio reception and being caught only when the other guy reported reception problems. Together in San Francisco, he and Dieter climbed telephone poles and “dropped wires down” in order to make free calls to Germany and elsewhere.

Indisputably, Dieter’s daring and calculating ways had helped the family eat and survive in desperate times. To Martin, Dieter was still the hero of Calw. More than once Dieter had saved Martin’s hide, sometimes by reputation alone. When Martin was pounced on by a gang of toughs ten miles from home, they stopped when he hollered, “My brother is Dieter!” In a real sense, Martin, even in adulthood, was continuing to try to repay his older brother for being there for him throughout the years.

So, Martin smuggled out the English test and gave it to Dieter.

Dieter went into the examination room having memorized the multiple-choice answers to each question on the standardized test. The only problem was that he was given a different test, which he of course flunked. Told that he could retake the exam until he passed it, Dieter came back the following week. When he was handed the test, he said helpfully, “This is the same one I took last week.” The monitor thanked him for his honesty, and handed him another test form—the version that Dieter had memorized.

The first one called into the dean’s office was Martin. Although there was no question in anyone’s mind that Martin had legitimately passed the test, the monitor had reported one copy of the test missing after the session. Then, oddly enough, his brother Dieter went from “flunking to 100 percent correct,” said the dean. The dean went on to say that he liked Martin, and hoped that he would tell the truth because it would be a shame for him to be kicked out of school. Martin told the truth, and went home and told Dieter to do the same. When it was his turn before the dean, Dieter was given a choice: withdraw voluntarily, or be expelled for cheating. Dieter took the out he was offered. His official record noted: “Honorable Dismissal Granted.”

Dieter enrolled the following semester at College of San Mateo, twenty miles south of San Francisco. The only two-year college in the area that offered a degree in aeronautics—emphasizing ground school fundamentals but no actual flying—San Mateo “kind of saved” Dieter as a student. He earned three A’s and three B’s during his first semester, in spring 1962, in
courses that included mechanical drawing and elementary aeronautics. After another semester he was named the Aeronautics Student of the Year. Along the way, he even passed the required English examination—without cheating.

To be nearer to the new school, Dieter left San Francisco and lived in his van, sleeping on a raised platform he had built in the back and had covered with a thin pad and sleeping bag. He lashed his surfboard and skis to the roof. The commercial van was windowless but had ample ventilation from a three-foot hole in its side. The furnishings were sparse; the walls were unfinished steel; and there was an old carpet remnant on the floor. Most of his clothes he kept folded in his old air force duffel bag. A wire hanger holding a shirt or two was usually hooked to the ceiling. Dieter sometimes found friends who let him park in front of their residences and gave him bathroom privileges, but often he pulled into the school parking lot for the night. In the morning he used the gym facilities for showering and shaving. He was a vagabond on wheels, and to all who met him in those early-1960s, pre-hippie days in the Bay Area, Dieter, “full of life and overflowing with exuberance,” epitomized the term
free spirit
.

When it came to the opposite sex, Dieter was a charmer with an unquenchable appetite. His handsome visage, winning smile, and engaging manner were part of the package, and there was also his beguiling foreign-correspondent accent, which his buddies thought allowed Dieter to suggest things to women that would have earned them a slap in the face. Once, Dieter conducted his own neighborhood sex survey. It began with a conversation in the school cafeteria—Dieter and some buddies were discussing a class assignment in sociology having to do with what percentage of married women would engage in extramarital sex. Twenty percent was the agreed-upon number. Dieter estimated that the average suburban neighborhood had ten to twelve homes per block, so two married women per block would swing. Dieter said he would test the theory. The next day, he reported to his friends that 20 percent was indeed correct. Dieter had selected a block at random, knocked on front doors, introduced himself to the woman of the house, and thereafter stated his amorous intentions. He got halfway down the block before striking gold, and did not doubt he would have had similar statistical success on the other half of the block. His classmates had no doubt, either.

There was no shortage of girls at school willing to date Dieter, and he could at times be selective. He especially liked it when a girl’s father was “a doctor or lawyer or banker.” Girls who had money, Dieter discovered, often bought presents for a guy living hand-to-mouth out of his van. Whenever necessary, he was happy to supply them with an appropriate occasion, like his birthday. In those days, Dieter had a birthday “maybe once a week.”

One friend that Dieter made at College of San Mateo was Mike Grimes, also an aeronautics major who planned to become a navy pilot. It didn’t take long for Grimes to realize that Dieter had no income but “survived on his charm.” Dieter was a “people magnet”—not just with women but with men, too. “You couldn’t help but like him and want to be around him. Everything was always fun with Dieter.” Invitations to parental homes for dinner abounded, and Dieter accepted them all, eating heartily, entertaining family members, and happily taking as many leftovers as were offered. When Grimes brought Dieter home he was a big hit with Grimes’s mother and teenage sister. “You can bring that boy home anytime,” his mother said.

Sometimes Grimes, at close range, could see just how well Dieter scored. One morning, Dieter approached Grimes and said he had two girls ready to party and needed another guy. “We should be studying,” Grimes protested. “We have a physics final at two o’clock.” Dieter said they could make it work. Grab some six-packs—the girls had given him beer money, Dieter said—and drive the van out to the shore at Coyote Point, and be back in time for the test. Against his better judgment, Grimes agreed. By one o’clock, they were dropping off the girls and hightailing it back for the test. The two Romeos, feeling no pain after drinking beers and having nothing to eat, entered the physics room fifteen minutes late. Everyone was quietly taking the test. Midway up the stadium-seating steps, Dieter tripped and came crashing down, sprawled out in front of the class. For some reason, the instructor did not kick him out. The next day, Dieter and Grimes arrived at the physics lab as the teacher posted the test scores. Grimes got 94, and Dieter 98. Grimes was not surprised. He knew Dieter was a serious student who studied and did the assignments because he wanted his degree so that he could become a navy pilot. Indeed, he was the star student in the aeronautics department, whose chairman, George Van Vleet, had been a pilot in World War II and took under his wing this motivated German
immigrant who always earned the top grade in any aeronautics course. Still, Grimes recognized that much of Dieter’s success came from an abundance of charm and ingenuity.

One morning Grimes was riding with Dieter after leaving the Black Egg, a blue-collar bar in San Mateo known for a ghoulish betting pool: patrons wagered on when the next person would leap off the Golden Gate Bridge, the winner being whoever came closest. The bar was also known for its breakfast special: a pickled egg, shoestring potatoes, bacon rinds, and a short draft beer—all for 99 cents. Suddenly, Dieter pulled over to the curb. “My Volksy is not running so good,” he said. “You stay here, Mike.” Dieter got out and went back to the engine compartment. After some banging noises, Dieter came back around. Grimes noticed for the first time that they had parked behind a VW bug. Dieter popped open that car’s engine compartment; took off the distributor cap; and pulled the plugs, points, condenser, and rotor. He replaced them with the corresponding parts from his van. Down went the lid. Then, Dieter went back to his engine and quickly installed the clandestine parts. On the road again, Dieter said matter-of-factly, “Volksy running good now.”

In the summer of 1962, after living in his van for a semester, Dieter was referred by the college housing office to a family in Hillsborough looking for a local college student to exchange yard work and other chores for room and board. Donna and Jim Love, a couple in their mid-thirties, had four rambunctious sons spaced a year apart ranging from six to nine years of age. They had just purchased a large estate that had once been owned by a son of William Randolph Hearst. They wanted a male college student willing to work around the place, as well as supervise sporting and other outdoor activities for their gaggle of boys. Jim Love, an executive with a San Francisco stock brokerage firm, saw in Dieter “lots of spirit, enthusiasm and smarts.” The Love property—only a mile from College of San Mateo—was extensive, with many mature trees, and Dieter climbed every one of them to the top. He also built a sturdy tree house in a huge oak, hauling up the required tools and materials by rope. The boys marveled at Dieter’s daring and dexterity; he could swing around on ropes in trees just like Tarzan. Such feats endeared him to the boys, and made Dieter seem larger than life. He could also run circles around the boys with a soccer ball on
the large field at the back of the property, but when they moved to the basketball court, Dieter had to be taught that getting the ball into the hoop was more important than nonstop dribbling. Dieter’s room was off the kitchen and had its own bathroom and windows that looked out onto the wooded property. He helped barbecue steaks, sausages, and burgers—a treat for him after the scarcity of food when he was growing up—and then helped the boys with their nightly chores of doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen.