![]() ![]() McGrath was beaten within an inch of his life. They came in and tortured everybody in the camp." "I heard him go out the ceiling that night," McGrath recalled, "and we said, 'Well, the torture starts tomorrow.' And we were right. Ed Atterbury was beaten to death after he was caught. ![]() There were attempts to escape, but none succeeded. We were going to fight to try to deny them the propaganda." "We didn't have our airplanes anymore, or we didn't have guns to fight with. "That was our fight in the prison camp," said Charlie Plumb. When Jeremiah Denton was trotted out for a photo op, he told the world what was really going by blinking out the word T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code while Richard Stratton put on an over-the-top show of being brainwashed. "Communication gave us the strength, the organization, the leadership, the inspiration to continue to resist." Mike McGrath demonstrates how prisoners communicated by tapping on the walls in Morse code. "Communication was the key to our life," said McGrath. Martin asked, "How important was communication?" The only defense against the pain and guilt was finding a way to talk to each other, by tapping in code through stone walls. "You felt you let your country down by not just holding on and dying," McGrath replied. I started telling them lies, half-truths." "I remember my arm going out of place, and I said, Oh, I got to tell them something. Martin asked, "Do you remember when you broke?" We all had guilt feelings that we broke a bond with the United States and gave information, whether false or true." McGrath said, "No man stuck to name, rank, serial number. What were they trying to get out of you? Shumaker said, "They just wanted to get propaganda statements out of us, about how we (according to them) bombed churches and pagodas and all kinds of things, which was untrue." Shumaker noted, "They ran a metal bar down my throat to keep me from screaming." "Then they rotate over your head until your shoulder dislocates, and no man can stand the pain." "They put your arms behind your back and they'll cinch up your elbows until your ribs start pulling apart here," McGrath said. "I was tortured 12 times," Shumaker said.ĭrawings by Mike McGrath show us exactly what that torture looked like. "I was in it for, I think, maybe two or three weeks or so." Prisoners would be held in leg irons.Īnd worse, much worse, awaited them in a place called the Knobby Room – the torture room where the Vietnamese would try to extract information from the prisoners. "How long would they leave you in those things?" Martin asked. Shumaker showed Martin leg irons that were applied to those who "misbehaved." "They'd lock your ankles in here," he said. Often injured when they bailed out, the pilots were abused by angry villagers, given crude medical care, and held under not just harsh, but cruel conditions. And there you are on the ground, you know, and reduced to almost being an animal." Robert Shumaker, who was shot down in 1965, said, "You're on top of the world, flying this fighter that could go a thousand miles an hour, you know? You're invincible. We will pursue this war 'til our last dying breath.'" Charlie Plumb, a former Hanoi Hilton inmate, looks at a roster of other prisoners of war whose stories are told at the American Heritage Museum. "I think most of the guys would tell you that this guy saved our life," said Plumb. The exhibit tells their harrowing stories, such as that of the late James Stockdale, who received the Medal of Honor for his courage in captivity. ![]()
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