Part 35 (1/2)
Johnson was silent for a long moment. ”What do you believe now, this very day?”
Clark Clifford looked his President in the eye. ”Exactly the same as I wrote in my letter to you three years ago. That our ground forces should be kept to a minimum, that Vietnam could become a quagmire.
Later, I said we could lose as many as fifty thousand men, and that the whole Vietnam effort could become a catastrophe for the United States.”
”Do you still feel that way?” Johnson barked.
”Let me say this. In 1965, as the head of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, I visited Southeast Asia and was greatly impressed with the spirit of our military men and that of the Vietnamese. I would like to visit again.”
”You will, you will,” LBJ boomed. ”But do you feel the the same way?”
”Yes, yes, I do, Mister President,” Clifford said after a short pause.
Clifford turned to Whitey Whisenand and noted the black-bordered poster he held. ”I've heard of your pilot's casualty blackboard. Is that it?”
”Yes,” Whitey said.
”May I see it, please?”
”Oh migawd,” the President said.
Whitey held out the blackboard on which he tallied the current aircrew casualty figures.
”pop, Aircrew MIA/KIA POW Aircraft USAF 404 206 879 USN 226 129 374 USMC 73 15 206 USA 160 58 454 (Helios) TOTAL 863 408 1913.
”I might add, Mister President,” Whitey said, ”that the overall casualty count for last week is the highest ever. In one week we lost 543 killed and 2,547 wounded.”
”It's that d.a.m.ned Tet battle, isn't it?” the President exploded. ”And Khe Sanh. We're losing men there, too, aren't we?”
Whitey answered him. ”While it's true we are losing men in the Tet battles, particularly where the Marines are retaking Hue, we are not losing many men at Khe Sanh. The casualty rate there is minimal. The men are well hunkered in and the enemy shows signs of pulling out.”
”Well, then, it's that d.a.m.ned Ho Chi Minh,” the President raged. ”He just won't fight a war like a good Christian should.”
1345 HOURS LOCAL, TUESDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 1968.
HOA Lo PRISON, HANOI DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM The pain never went away. It was endured, relegated to life itself.
Pain from his ankles where the stocks closed on them met with the pain from his badly healed left arm. The dull numbness where his hips lay on the cold concrete was merely a buzz in the background that would spike every hour to wake him and force a slight s.h.i.+fting to a new position. To feel pain meant to live, to live was to survive. Survival was everything. To survive was to win over his captors who were so intent on breaking his spirit. They had broken his body, and-in the ropes-they had taken away his mind for a time, but the flame of his spirit still existed. From a bare flicker while in the ropes to a raging exuberance when in contact with a fellow American prisoner, the flame existed. They would never totally possess him. He knew now how he was inside, he had measured himself. And what he found gave him pride. By trying to debase him, they debased themselves.
By torturing him to breaking, they formed a hot-steel core they would never understand. He knew now they would have to kill him to extinguish the flame. And he was convinced that for the time being they did not want to kill him.
He was worth more alive than as a corpse. Alive, they could maybe make propaganda use of him. Yet they could not see that the figures in pajamas they presented to communist ,hips pressmen were mere robots performing in jerky, programmed ways that fooled no one except their captors. Or that his misspelled and badly written ”confession” was worthless except to the vanity of the imbecilic man who had beaten it out of him.
Flak Apple had been having reoccurring dreams of either flying or walking the streets of his old neighborhood with his mother. In the flying dreams he rarely flew an airplane.
Usually it was effortless soaring and rolling around huge white clouds.
Although in his dream with his mother he was full-grown, he seemed to speak to her as a child. But so far she had never answered. Every time when he awakened from the dream he would keep his eyes shut, trying to go back.
Fragments would flicker, but he could never regain the feeling of reality the dream provided. His eyes would sting, ineffable sadness would sweep over him like a wave that could drown him. He was back in the despair of a prison camp in Hanoi. He fought back with prayer.
”Dear G.o.d,” he would begin. ”I ask only for enough to bear this burden.”
And his mind would tell him he was given enough to start the day. He knew that was G.o.d talking to him because G.o.d had given him his mind in the first place. Then he would begin his day.
The guard would never enter and release him to perform his morning toilet; he had to pull the waste can over to the slab and lift it next to himself.
He had great joy twice a day. Right after noon, when the guards were somnolent in the heat, he would tap code through the wall with Ted Frederick, and late in the afternoon he would be taken to a filthy cesspool to empty his wastebucket. Even then he could communicate.
Frederick had taught him that coughs, sneezes, throat-clearing, sniffs, spits, finger-snaps, even how one walked spelled out tapcode letters.
Sometimes he found secret messages written on sc.r.a.ps of coa.r.s.e toilet paper stuffed in a drainpipe. Maybe Julie Andrews thought the hills were alive with music, but Flak knew the camp was alive with communicators. It was time now to talk with Ted Frederick.
TAP TAP TI-TAP TAP, he rapped.
TAP TAP. Frederick was on line.
HOW U, Flak asked.
COPING. N U.
SAME. HARDEST PART IS AFTER DREAMS.
YEAH, Frederick rapped back. CIDS. WIFE. ESCAPE.
HOW BIG YOUR s.h.i.+T CAN. HOW WIDE, Flak tapped.
BUCET SIZE. WHY.
MY LEGS HURT. CANT SQUAT. RIM CUTS b.u.t.t.
PUT SANDALS ON RIM.
There was a long pause while Flak digested this important piece of news.
He was ecstatic. Simple things became earthshaking to a POW. Sitting comfortably on the c.r.a.pper was one such.
JOY. JOY. JOY. MEGA THANK DE NADA.
They spoke of home, various squadrons, and mutual acquaintances.
HOW POW NAMES GET OUT, Flak asked.
WILL TELL WHEN WE CAN TALC NOT TAP. Then the guards started stirring.
Time to sign off. Frederick made two raps and a GBU.
They came for him early that evening. Crazy Face unlocked his stocks with heavy, fumbling hands that sent sharp pain shooting up both legs.
When he rolled off the concrete slab and fell to his knees, Crazy Face drooled and kicked him in the ribs. A second guard standing outside the door barked something in Vietnamese, causing Crazy Face to scuttle away.