Surviving Hell (4 page)

We Midwesterners thought of the military first when we were arranging our lives. My older cousin was killed in World War II, my future brothers-in-law all served in the war—one was killed in a B-17—and my brother was serving with distinction in Korea when I was serving without distinction in college. So in December 1950, I signed up for a four-year enlisted hitch in the U.S. Air Force.

While I left South Dakota State with no degree or academic achievement, I didn't come away empty-handed. I had made an excellent decision the first day during registration. The lines were alphabetical: A-F, G-L, M-R, and S-Z. I was a “T” and therefore in the fourth line. But I noticed the cutest girl there, Gaylee Anderson, was in the first line. I was smart enough to step to the end of the first line and stand behind her. By the time Gaylee finished registering, I had reserved a dance with her at the freshman ball that evening.

I was immediately addicted to her effervescence and sense of humor. There was much in common between us: She was from South Dakota, of Swedish stock, and I was from Minnesota, of Norwegian stock. The “Scandinavian thing” would always be a subject of
banter. Shortly after I got home from my six years of imprisonment in Hanoi, we were at dinner with two couples from our church. As usual, there were many questions about the POW experience. In response to a question from one of our dinner partners, I said, “Without question, those were the most significant six years of my life.” He immediately looked at Gaylee and said mischievously, “What do you think about that? You were not with him during his most significant six years?” Gaylee thought a moment, and then responded, “Well, if Leo says those were the most significant years of his life, he means it.” Then she added, “Of course, he's Norwegian. If he'd been a Swede, he could have done it in three.”

After three months of dating and three years of letters from Air Force bases, we were married during Christmas leave in 1953. A year later we had a beautiful, healthy daughter who was 11 years old when I left for Vietnam in 1966.

I wanted to savor memories of Gaylee, so instead of using them all up quickly in the mountain hut, I moved for a while to the box that held recollections of flying, the other passion of my life.

It had taken me a while to become a flyer—two years as an enlisted man before the Aviation Cadet Program opened up because the Air Force needed pilots for Korea. I applied and was accepted and briefly entered a limbo where I was looked at with disdain by enlisted personnel who thought I was putting on airs by trying to become an officer—and by officers who thought the same thing.

By January 1953, I was at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, beginning 15 months of training on how to be a pilot and officer. The three basic parts of the program were military training, academics, and flying. The military training came easy: I already knew how to march, stand at attention, and pass inspection. Then came three months of books. Finally we got to the fun part: flying. As a kid I was a good athlete. Throwing, batting, kicking, running all came easily. I felt that flying would be the same. But there was one problem: I am left-handed.

My flight instructor at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, was Lieutenant Luellan. Our training aircraft progressed from basic to advanced: L-21 to T-6 to T-28 to T-33. The
L-21 was a little two-seat tandem Piper Cub. It was a tail dragger: the main gear under the wings and the third wheel under the tail. (L-21 was its military name; all civilian aviators know it as the “Super Cub.”) Its 125-horsepower engine hurled you along at least 100 mph.

When the day for my first flight finally came, Lieutenant Luellan told me to grab my parachute and follow him. We walked across the ramp to the flying machine, where he said, “Follow me and watch what I check on the walk around.” After some explanation of what was important besides the fuel and oil levels, he said, “Okay Thorsness, you fly from the front seat—try it on.”

With eagerness and a bit of apprehension I climbed in, cramming my own bulk and that of my parachute into the tiny cockpit. The lieutenant continued, “Get your feet down there on the rudders, lock your shoulder harness into your seat belt and snug them both down.” His next instruction was, “In the middle there, sticking up between your legs, is the control stick.” I confidently grabbed the control stick—with my left hand, of course. I quickly scanned the few instruments on the control panel and glanced back over my right shoulder where Lieutenant Luellan was watching. With obvious disbelief, he said, “The throttle is over there on the left side panel.” I looked at my grip on the control stick, looked over to the left side and saw the little lever with a knob on top. It was obvious that the throttle was important and would have to be continuously held while flying. So I did what was logical: reached with my right hand across my left hand and forearm that was holding the control stick and gripped the throttle. I instantly knew that this was not a good way to impress a flight instructor. The lieutenant simply shook his head as he walked away after staring for a moment at my crossed arms.

In the memory box I searched while being held captive in the mountains of North Vietnam, I found something I'd almost forgotten about: a near fatal mistake when I had progressed to the more advanced T-6 “Texan” trainer. It also happened at Goodfellow. I was flying solo and entered the downwind leg—parallel to the runway about a mile away, heading due south at 1,000 feet above
the ground and at about 100 knots (115 mph). When I was about half a mile past the end of the runway, I made a 90-degree turn to the east. I felt I was doing well—beginning to lose an appropriate amount of altitude and slow the aircraft.

A good checkpoint, in addition to the runway, was the Goodfellow football field near the end of the runway, and just slightly to the east. I didn't realize until I was nearly through my 90-degree turn onto final approach that the wind was blowing me a good bit off course. Panicking, I realized I would overshoot and be more lined up with the football field than the runway.

Two of the best bits of aviation advice I remember receiving in flying school came from a crusty old aviator, Captain Malone (“crusty old” at that stage of my life meant that he was 27), who told me, “There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.” He added, “Never exceed your limits, or the airplane's limits, and you will live to be an old man.” As I approached Goodfellow—low to the ground, without extra airspeed, and overshooting the final approach—I was contradicting all his maxims at once.

I turned too sharply, dipping my left wing down too far. I was losing lift. To counter, I stupidly applied a bit of right aileron. Bingo! I'd just set up a snap roll.

If I had done the logical thing—reversing and trying to roll back to the right—it would have been over. It was much faster and used less altitude to accelerate the roll all the way around and back to level wings. Call it instinct, luck, divine intervention, whatever—it was a lesson that vividly lived in my memory room's Flying box.

As I thought about it, I realized that the process that had made me a flyer had also made me a man. I had entered the Air Force because I didn't have anything else to do. But I soon discovered that I had found a profession rather than just a place to bide time. Once I was married and a father, I wanted to get ahead, and the Air Force let me. I attended night classes offered by the University of Maryland while we were stationed from 1959 to 1963 at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany. (That was the height of the Cold War and, in four years in Germany, I rotated regular work, night classes, and 72-hour tours sitting at the end of the runway with a nuclear bomb in an F-105 bomb bay. We slept in concrete bunkers near the end
of the runway so we could be airborne within 15 minutes if the “bell went off.”) After four years of study and night school, I was within six months of receiving my degree. When we left Germany for Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, I was allowed to stop at the University of Omaha and finish.

At Nellis, I continued night school aiming for a master's degree in aerospace operations management from the University of Southern California. (We rented a house in Los Angeles so that both Dawn and I could register for school, and I returned to Nellis every month to fly enough hours to stay current in the F-105.) Each quarter I had one engineering course and two or three other courses. The other courses I aced. But engineering was a nightmare. (Literally: when I was in the Hanoi Hilton, I had recurring dreams of trying to cope with these courses and would wake up momentarily thankful that I was in North Vietnam rather than at USC.) Gaylee, who was good at math, helped me, but most nights I stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m. memorizing formulas I didn't understand and math concepts I had never heard of.

After miraculously receiving the degree, I cleaned out our West Covina rental home, and returned to Nellis. The first day at work the operations officer said, “Welcome back, Leo. Congratulations. And, by the way, this morning your assignment to Southeast Asia came in. You were at the top of the heap—lots of F-105 flying time and good gunnery and bombing scores. You are now a Wild Weasel.”

A
fter a hard, sleepless night in the bamboo hut, Harry and I were untied and moved a few miles to the edge of the foothills. We arrived just as light was breaking and were locked in adjacent rooms in a small building. A wooden cot was the only furniture. I was asleep within minutes. But I almost immediately awoke to the sound of loud noises in the next room. It was Harry being taken out. “I'm hurt,” I heard him shout in response to whatever orders the North Vietnamese were giving him.

Fifteen minutes later I heard him stumble back into his room. Then there was a jingling of keys—a sound that would soon take on sinister implications—and my door opened. They let me use sticks for support as I dragged myself out. As I passed Harry's door, he hollered, “Geneva Convention, Leo. Hold out.” I shouted back: “Do my best.”

We had all been taught about the Geneva Convention when we entered the military. And before going into combat, we were briefed in more detail, particularly about Article 2, which states that when captured, a prisoner of war is obligated only to give four pieces of information: name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. Captors are not supposed to ask for more and are specifically barred from using physical or mental means to obtain it.

These four items formed a mantra I repeated to myself as I was escorted outside. I recognized the smell of hogs, a strong farm memory. The North Vietnamese motioned me around the corner and sure enough, there were several scrawny pigs in a pen. A guard opened the gate and moved me forward. Then came a push from
behind and I was face down in the muck. I rolled onto my back and looked up. In barely understandable English, a guard said, “Name?” With as much dignity as someone in bloody shorts lying in pig shit could muster, I said, “Thorsness, Leo K; Major; AO3025937; February 14, 1932.”

Next he said, “What target?”

I replied: “Thorsness, Leo K; Major, AO3025937; February 14, 1932.”

“Bad answer,” he snarled and threatened me with a thick stick. “Tomorrow target?” he tried again.

I got as far as, “Thorsness, Leo,” when the stick smacked me.

I stayed with name, rank, serial number, and date of birth as an answer to each question. The guard stayed with the stick. It hurt badly, but I could stand it. As they dragged me back I said, “Okay,” when I passed Harry's door. “Good,” he answered.

I got a plate of dirty steamed rice and not enough water. My body and mind were totally spent, and I fell in and out of fitful sleep for the next few hours, waking several times to the sounds of trucks. I knew that their trucks traveled mostly at night; they were a great target of opportunity during the day on our missions over North Vietnam.

I woke for good when I heard the keys jingling again. The door opened, and they motioned me to walk down the corridor. I could hear mob sounds. With my walking sticks in hand, I moved slowly out the door and in the direction of a military truck. It was perhaps 100 yards away. North Vietnamese peasants lined both sides of a worn path. As I started down the gauntlet, they crowded toward me, becoming a sea of fists and angry faces.

The guards acted as cheerleaders, riling the crowd even more. The peasants spit at me and hit me; threw stones, dirt clumps, and fists. They knocked away my walking sticks. I got up and was knocked down again. Then I was on all fours crawling as well as I could. Finally the guards began to yell at the peasants, shoving them back and dragging me toward the truck. Grabbing the tailgate, I pulled myself upright. The guards pushed me onto the truck bed, then two of them jumped in and forced me onto my back. As I stretched my arms I touched the truck-bed edge on the left, and a
body on the right. “Is that you, Harry?” I asked. “It's me, Leo,” he replied. A guard shouted, “NO TALK,” and hit us both.

In a few minutes we were on a bumpy road with the angry mob receding behind us. The roads were bad, and we were often bounced off the truck-bed floor. If I tried to roll on my side or put my hand behind my head as a cushion, the guard kicked me.

After three or four hours, I could see a few lights and buildings out of the back of the truck. We were on a paved road now, making several turns. The truck stopped and backed up to a large gate. We were there: the infamous Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi—the Hanoi Hilton. Harry and I were dragged out of the back of the vehicle and separated. It would be three years before I got a glimpse of Harry again across the prison yard—the guard opened my cell door a couple of seconds before Harry was back inside his cell. It was three more years before I talked to Harry as we were loaded onto the bus heading for Gia Lam airport and our flight to freedom.