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Lieutenant/Colonel Richard A. Stratton, United States Navy, in his chronicle, Prisoner At War, was able to give a reason for something that went from the back pages of some off-beat, underground newspaper in 1954, when the United States began aiding South Vietnam, to the headlines even of this day, 43 years later, of the New York Times and the covers of Time, Newsweek, etc. On the last page of his gripping account, he is asked “Why?” Why our involvement in Vietnam? He said, “I am a pilot! I’m a professional!” Let’s not stop there, though, unless we’re ready to stop at “We the people. . . He went a bit further to explain his own, personal mind-set. He said, “I have used the simile before: if a doctor gets a certain vicarious pleasure out of cutting people open, he is sick!” “Then, why do you do it?” was the next logical question. “Because I do not think,” he said finally, “war should be left to the war lovers!” Point taken! There’s a thing called HONOR involved. We must honor the commitments that our country has agreed to with another that is fighting for their very freedom.

On another hand, what of Eugene B. McDaniel, Captain United States Navy, in his narrative, Before Honor. . .? Is this just another war torn, torture driven man writing of a distant truth? Absolutely not! The title he chose for his narrative is from the book of Proverbs. It reads in chapter 18, verse 12: “. . . before honor is humility.”

For more than six years, Captain McDaniel, “Red” to his friends, risked everything in order to maintain the lines of communication between the men. There were many avenues for talk to take. One was the incessant tapping codes used. His Vietnamese captors were not idiots. They had studied long and hard to get to their individual positions. One of the things learned was Morse code. In order to use tapping without being detected, the code would have to be made unique from its customary form. For instance, the letter “K” was forbidden at one time, so instead of “K”, the code would be first row, third letter. This slot was normally occupied by “C”, but somehow, a group of men starving, in pain, with nothing but a sense of patriotism, duty. . .and love for God nudging them on, made sense of the changes, and relayed the names of not only themselves, and their roommates, if they were fortunate enough to not be in solitary, but also those of any new men arriving along the chain. About the time they got one code down, the enemy deciphered it. Now, without aid of any verbal means, a new method would have to be invented. No sounds could be present except those of the man who was discovered using the old code as he screamed out in pain as his body was literally pulled to its very limits!

Another method of communications used was by written notes left in the strangest places; places like the rock wall behind the fifth brick from the right two spaces down, or the piece of paper under the daily refuse bucket bonded there by a speck of toothpaste. When they are caught, and make no mistake, they are usually caught, the “ropes” are always ready in Room #8. Even the sound- proofing could not hide the cries of agony.

But for my own faith in God, it is beyond me where hope came from. During the hours upon hours of isolation in total darkness, Red, a deacon in the Southern Baptist Church, said, “I felt God’s presence in my prison cell. He gave me the strength and courage to survive.” In fact, he says the suffering made it possible for his faith to be made stronger. He was strong because of God, and his family in the United States, a wife and three children, were made strong by the same faith, and, by the same God. I will never forget the picture of his reunion. Only two days after release from a living hell of over six years, he was somehow able to wrap those stinging, throbbing arms around Dorothy and the kids and convey the love still “sound as a dollar” in his heart. It lasted, folks!

They are HEROES! Although the torture was terribly severe, Colonel Risner never allowed hatred to enter his most sacred of sites. . . his heart.

They are HEROES! The things that many of us take for granted, Commander Stratton served for, and he suffered for. . . , he survived for!

Yeah, they are HEROES! They spent years in a confinement that would warp our very imagination, so that we, in protest, would have some of the most damnedable rights . . . even that to burn the flag of the country that those men loved so very dearly.

They are HEROES! Commander Plumb fought, and suffered so that we as Americans could go on any given day, be it Friday to the mosque, Saturday to synagogue, Sunday to church, or possibly not go, as atheists. Freedom of religion! Only one of many!

When they were released in 1975, it wasn’t until their particular C-141 military aircraft crossed into international air space that these men, and all of the others, over 100 on the initial flight out of North Vietnam, with tears streaming down their faces, lifted their voices and murmured words of thanks similar to those that Martin Luther King, Jr. quoted so often from that old, Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, We Are Free At Last! As Colonel Risner hobbled down the steps from the plane, and reached the ground in the Philippines, pain was still gripping his every moment, but he was oblivious of it. His fist was not shoved into the air in defiance. He did not offer a CBS news crew a condemning declaration for his President, Richard Nixon, or a criticism of his country. He turned with pride, as every man did at the bottom of those steps, and saluted a fellow officer with tears in his eyes. Colonel Risner looked, and saw his family running to him, and with those conspicuously deformed arms, those arms pulled from their very sockets by those

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