WEBVTT

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Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg
Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is

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retired US Air Force Colonel Ronald Webb. He is a Vietnam veteran and spent

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nearly six years in captivity as a
prisoner of war after being shot down in

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June of nineteen sixty seven. He
is also the recipient of two Silver Stars

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and Colonel Webb, thanks very much
for being with us right pleasure. Where

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were you born and raised? Sir? I was born in Trenton, New

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Jersey, August twenty ninth, nineteen
thirty seven. And had there been a

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history of military service in your family
before you served? My father was a

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CBE in World War Two US Navy. What made you want to join?

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Was it knowing about your father's service
or was there another reason? I was

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enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington,
Indiana, and I entered one of two

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rotcs we had on campus, the
Air Force, and I went all the

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way through the Air Force ROTC program
and came out to commission second lieutenant.

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Okay, and where did you go
after that? I entered the Air Force

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as a navigator trainee, and of
course everybody that comes into the Air Force,

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goes through San Antonio and from there
I went to Waco to train as

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a navigator. I served five years
as a navigator, but I had an

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opportunity to go to pilot training,
so I went on to pilot training in

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nineteen sixty five and in Waco,
in Mesa, Arizona, and Williams Air

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Force Base. I graduated in nineteen
sixty five sixty six and entered F four

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Phantom training at Davis Monthan Air Force
Base in Tucson, Arizona, and from

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there I went through survival training and
then on to Vietnam. I have yet

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to meet a Vietnam pilot who did
not love the F four. Can I

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say that you love the F four? Also? Absolutely wonderful machine. Well,

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I may be getting ahead of the
story, but I was on my

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forty fourth counter mission to North Vietnam
in the Phantom. I was a backseat

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pilot copilot and I was involved in
a mid air collision with another Phantom head

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on. Two of us were able
to bail out, the other two were

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killed. Two Phantoms were destroyed.
It's a very powerful airplane and I was

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able to survive a collision a head
on collision. Our airplane was actually torn

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apart. We went into a flat
spin. We were on fire, and

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my front seater, who was a
World War Two colonel I was a captain,

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then gave me the command to eject
and I was able to get out.

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He was too, and a day
later we were captured, but we

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were north and east of Hanoi,
considerably far up into what's known as Package

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six, so chances of being rescued
were very, very slim. Let me

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back up just a touch from your
role as a back seater. Did you

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often fly with the same front seat
pilot? I did. My regular front

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seater was Colonel Frederick C. Boots
Bless, who had been a double ace

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in Korea, and he and I
trained together at Davis Mountain and it was

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quite an honor to fly with him, and that particular day he was the

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winged DIO director of operations. In
that particular day, June eleventh, he

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loaned me out to the new squadron
commander, Hervey Stockman, full colonel,

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who was a World War Two veteran, and he had some kills in World

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War Two shooting down German airplanes,
and so I was flying with him for

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the first time up to package six
and unfortunately he was not leader of the

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flight, but the leader of the
flight essentially had determined that we would fly

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with the other leads squadron at the
same altitude, same air speed, and

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at the same turn point. And
as a experienced back Saar, I challenged

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that particular plan and I was overruled
and I was told by the major that

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was leading the flight that we would
fly it as he had briefed it.

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And unfortunately, about three hours later
we had a mid air collision and it

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killed the other two pilots from a
sister squadron. Explain what was happening that

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day, what we were trying to
achieve with that we were flying a mid

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cap mission. That's a combat air
patrol that would protect one five aircraft that

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were attacking a Backchang rail yards.
This was north and east of Hannoi.

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The rail line runs down from China
from the north east down into Hannoi and

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the F one fives were bombing it. We were essentially a protection or flight

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that a big cap that would fly
in escorting the F one O fives and

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then escorting them off the target to
keep the MiG fighter aircraft from attacking them.

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So that was essentially our plan mission. And you mentioned the collision.

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Could you see it coming? It
was at a split second thing, very

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split second. The lead a flight
we were number two, called out,

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very very briefly, look out,
the other flight is coming through. And

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then it felt like we flew into
a mountain. We went into a flat

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spin and we were I tried to
fly the airplane and it was like holding

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a wet noodle, you know,
it was. We were out of control.

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There were flames. We were in
a flat spin. My front seater

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had never called me this, but
he said, Jesus Christ, bail out,

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and so I ejected. Tell me
about that. The ejection and parachuting,

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we we safely. The weather was
great. We were flying essentially at

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between eighteen and twenty two thousand feet, so when I ejected, we had

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a long time to come down,
and it was somewhat mountainous country. There

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were valleys where we could we could
see. As I got closer to the

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ground, I could see people and
I attempted to steer my shoote into the

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side of the hills and I went
through a large tree. As I went

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through the tree, I gathered my
chute all my equipment and got out of

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the tree fairly readily, and then
I proceeded to hide my parachute and get

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my equipment out of a seat pack. I got all of that equipment out

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and stuffed it in my g suit
pockets. I had some slight burns.

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My back, of course hurt,
possibly from the adjection action, possibly from

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coming through the trees. Found myself
a hiding area. It was fairly thick

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jungle, but I burrowed down behind
essentially logs in a wooded area. I

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had a camouflaged helmet, one of
only two on that flight that day.

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Everyone else had white helmets, and
my camouflaged helmet enabled me to hide better.

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And as I mentioned, I got
all of my items out of water

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bottles, and I did not have
a radio. They were out of radios

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that day that I went up there. But I got everything that I could

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carry into my g suit pockets,
and I had this plan. I found

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a large stick that I was using
get up and down because my back hurts

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are bad. But I had myself
pretty well hidden by the time the people

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got up on me into the area, and they had primitive weapons, rifles

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and young young kids. They were
looking up into the tree area that I

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had come in. They knew exactly
where I had penetrated the jungle, and

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they were assuming that I was still
hung up up in the tree in my

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parachute, which would not have been
uncommon, but anyway, I had managed

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to get out, and so they
didn't see me, and it was getting

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darker. They searched the area,
and they eventually moved on down into the

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valley, and then I spent the
night without any sleep. Of course,

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my raft I had in the sea
kit had inflated and had been punctured,

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so I had no comfort from the
raft in my hiding area. But I

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had my big stick, and I
had a plan that as soon as I

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kept looking at my glove hand because
it's so dark in the jungle, and

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as soon as I could see my
hand, I figured I would pull up

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and head on to the east to
the Gulf of Tonkin area. And I

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knew it was going to be a
long trek, it would be months probably.

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We had gone through jungle survival and
we had learned how to live off

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the jungle. Certain roots you could
cut to get water, and certain things

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you could eat, and I figured
that I would make my way to the

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Gulf of Tonkin and hopefully get picked
up by the baby get out in the

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water. But the people came back
up on me, and I didn't hear

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them. They approached me very quietly, and so once I stood up out

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of my hiding place with my stick, they fell upon me like a pack

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of dogs. And they tore my
clothes off and allowed me to keep my

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underwear, took my boots, but
they figured out later they gave me my

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boots back because they were going to
have to hold me all the way down

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the jungle. They did that.
They trusted me up ropes around my neck

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and my arms, and pretty much
trust me up tightly, took me down

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into a valley, and there were
a number of civilians down there. There

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was one Vietnamese girl that had a
first aid kit, and they noticed that

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my back was black and blue all
the way down to my legs, and

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they marveled at that. They owed
and the back of my back, and

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there wasn't anything she could do,
but she was certainly attentive. They gave

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me something to eat and water.
They gave me a leaf with a slab

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of glutinous rice with a little piece
of pig fat on it. And I

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found out many years later that that
was a delicacy, you know, for

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them to give me something like that
to eat. But they were they were

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treating me well. We understood ho
chie men had ordered the countryside to capture

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pilots and that the community would get
a reward of some sort. They were

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to bring us in with all of
our gear and they would be summarily rewarded.

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But we were I was taken into
that valley and waited the capture of

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my colonel and what the leader of
the search team had a pith helmet on,

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but I think he was paramilitary.
He wasn't a military man. But

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he had a notebook with a fountain
pen, and he drew two parachutes and

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he wrote number one on mine,
and he says number two where And I

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knew when we came down in our
shoots where my colonel had landed, So

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of course I told him Hunter Nadia, and so they they had a German

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shepherd dog that was in the search
with him, and so they used him

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and they scoured the area for most
of the day and they finally found him,

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but they had branched out all over. We were placed in jeeps that

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had been pulled up into the area. I was put in one jeep,

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my colonel was in another one.
This was after we had been marched for

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several hours and down a path to
the jeeps. When we got there,

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I was placed in one jeep with
three or four men in there with me

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that were guards, and they threw
the German shepherd in on top of me.

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I was on the floor. So
we rode for quite a while with

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that poor German shepherd and he was
having a hard time, you know,

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keeping his balance and he was on
top of me. But anyway, that

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was our trip down to the next
area. The next area was believe it

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or not, a rail line.
I happened to know that about three weeks

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before my squadron and I was on
the flight had flown over this rail line.

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But we were assigned a JCS target
Joint Chess Staff target, and we

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were our flight lead. A Lieutenant
colonel said target of opportunity. Hit that

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railroad train was coming down there,
and so we attacked the train and hit

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the rail line. And I know
we were very successful because weeks later I

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was on ground zero looking at hundreds
of people were working on that rail line

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locomotive was turned over on its side, and that train had been badly damaged

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and the tracks had been damaged,
and so I knew that my squadron had

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actually done a good job of bombing
that rail line. At that station,

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though we were read out of these
little Mau books or ho Chiumn books read

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books, we were read the riot
Act in Vietnamese people through rocks at us,

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hit us with switches and essentially had
their opportunity to abuse us up to

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a point. After that, we
were back in the cars and taken to

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another site for the night. That
site was at a Catholic church complex and

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had a lot of trees around it, and there were guns all around that

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church, and the bottom of the
church hadn't been dug out, and there

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were troops then in there. There
were bivouact in there. The guns were

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thirty seven fifty seven eighty five millimeter
guns that were stationed around that church.

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So if we had hit those guns, we would have been accused of destroying

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a church. I was interrogated at
that point in a building and there were

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two men that interrogated me. One
of them was a dead ringer for ho

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Chie men. He looked just like
ho Chie mentlenn old gentleman with a white

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beard and everything. I'm sure it
wasn't ho But anyway, he had a

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younger man that spoke very broken English, and they read me the riot in

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Vietnamese and in English, and the
only thing I can remember from the interrogation

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was that the young man said to
me, now, you and your President

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L. Johnson are prisoners of war. And I thought that was pretty cryptic,

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because throughout the time I was a
POW, they never used prisoner of

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war. They always called us air
pirates, black criminals, and never POWs,

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never prisoners of war. Until we
were in weeks of release, I

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was beaten there by another man outside
the building who asked me to go beyond

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the four Big four. We called
it name ranks, service number, and

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data birth and that's what we were
trained to give under Geneva conventions. That's

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all we were required to give.
And he wanted me to tell me about

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my family and the unit I was
flying in. What kind of aeroplane?

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Asked me a number of questions.
I refused to answer him. He took

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off his shoe and started beating me
around the head, and of course I

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was still trussed up, so they
knocked me around, knocked me off the

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stool. Incidentally, they had given
me a pair of khaki washpants that were

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way too small for me, but
they made me put that on, and

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then they had a man with a
camera take pictures. So I was photographed

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at that point, but I don't
I don't think I ever saw that photograph.

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I don't think it ever appeared anywhere
in their propaganda. But anyway,

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from that point on, we stopped
at another location and slept on the ground

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that night. I guess we were
making our way to Hannoy. So the

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next day we made it to Hannoy
and to the Hanoi Hilton, the main

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French prison downtown. When we come
back, retired US Air Force Colonel Ronald

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Webb takes us inside the Hannoi Hilton
and describes the torture and the interrogations,

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as well as the tap code that
kept the POWs bonded together. I'm Greg

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Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles.
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas.

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Our guest in this edition is retired
US Air Force Colonel Ronald Webb.

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He is a Vietnam veteran who spent
nearly six years as a prisoner of war,

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and we pick up the conversation with
Colonel Webb describing what the Hanoi Hilton

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prison was like. There is a
main entrance into the prison. There's a

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portcullis gait that you go through.
And when we first brought in, we're

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still all trust sed up. And
they laid Hervish stockman down on the pavement,

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and they laid me down next to
him, and I was amazed that

208
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I saw his hand, and his
hand was very, very swollen, and

209
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his fingers were very swollen, and
both of our wrists had been tied very

210
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tightly. So I meant my imagination
was that mine looked the same. But

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they separated us. They took him
into one derrogation room and me into another.

212
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We called him the knobby rooms.
In other words, they were rooms

213
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that the walls were festooned with hand
sized clumps of plaster. It's a suppress

214
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sound, the whole idea. And
they had hooks in the ceiling that they

215
00:22:52.119 --> 00:22:59.960
they tied parachute cord to and they
would trust you up. Whatever you're injured

216
00:23:00.200 --> 00:23:04.599
or ailment was, they would use
that against you. If you had broken

217
00:23:04.759 --> 00:23:10.240
arms or bad legs or bad back, they'd trust you up in such a

218
00:23:10.279 --> 00:23:15.920
manner to inflict as much pain immediately
as they could. So the hooks in

219
00:23:17.000 --> 00:23:22.640
the floor and in the ceiling were
used to trust up the parachute cord.

220
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They had a little stool that they
sat on, a interrogation table, three

221
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chairs, and the interrogation started.
The interrogators I found out over the years

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there were two essentially perfect English.
They didn't even have the British accent that

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Radio Hanoi and Hank they had kind
of a British accent to their English.

224
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But these two interrogators, I guess
they had interrogated so many Americans over the

225
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course of years that their English was
excellent. You could close your eyes and

226
00:24:04.319 --> 00:24:10.240
you could tell it was you couldn't
tell it was an American. Everett Alvarez

227
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was the first man captured in August
of nineteen sixty four. I went down

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in June of nineteen sixty seven,
almost three years after him, and I

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didn't think I'd be a pow very
long, But you know, six years

230
00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:33.160
later I got out. But so
Everett was there nine years, eight and

231
00:24:33.160 --> 00:24:38.720
a half to nine years But anyway, getting back to the interrogator, they

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they went after tactical intelligence. What
was your what's the next target? What

233
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are your targets? What are your
modus operendi, so to speak, how

234
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do you operate? How many airplanes
come in? Many of the things they

235
00:25:00.119 --> 00:25:06.960
already knew, but they wanted to
know whether you would would part the information.

236
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And of course you deny it as
long as you can. We were

237
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trained in our survival training programs to
deny it up to the point of losing

238
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your physical senses and then lie.
That was the program that we had in

239
00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:33.240
the Survival series training survival, evasion, resistance, in escape training in the

240
00:25:33.319 --> 00:25:40.200
Air Force. The Navy had a
little different program. Years later, we

241
00:25:40.279 --> 00:25:47.640
streamlined it so that all of the
services abided by the Code of Conduct in

242
00:25:48.519 --> 00:25:53.559
appropriate fashion. Some of the lies
that were told up and Hannoi did get

243
00:25:53.559 --> 00:26:00.440
guys into trouble because they, particularly
the Navy guys, they would name Hollywood

244
00:26:00.640 --> 00:26:07.680
characters and funny book characters out of
the members of their ship. But in

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00:26:07.799 --> 00:26:14.599
my case, I simply told him
I was a navigator, I wasn't really

246
00:26:14.759 --> 00:26:18.119
a pilot, and I didn't know
anything about what the pilots were doing,

247
00:26:18.920 --> 00:26:23.119
and that my whole job was just
to get us up to the Hanois and

248
00:26:23.279 --> 00:26:27.319
get us back home, you know, And that was it. They had

249
00:26:29.319 --> 00:26:34.079
my flight suits, said they knew
what squadron I was from and what bass

250
00:26:34.079 --> 00:26:44.680
I took from Darnang, South Vietnam. So essentially I couldn't lie very much

251
00:26:44.720 --> 00:26:51.599
about anything. Oh, the main
question was how did you get shot down?

252
00:26:52.559 --> 00:26:59.200
Now that was a good one because
at first Blush I felt a little

253
00:26:59.240 --> 00:27:03.720
embarrassed that I was in a mid
air collision. So I simply said that

254
00:27:03.799 --> 00:27:08.880
I was shot down by ground fire. Some big guns shot us down.

255
00:27:10.799 --> 00:27:17.000
Well, they would write this down
into their book, and I'm sure in

256
00:27:17.160 --> 00:27:22.519
subsequent interrogations they found out that that
area that I was in that I was

257
00:27:22.599 --> 00:27:26.480
captured, there were no big guns
around. So then they said, are

258
00:27:26.519 --> 00:27:30.119
you sure you were shot down by
big guns? No, I think maybe

259
00:27:30.119 --> 00:27:34.799
it was a meg. I think
a meg got us. So then they

260
00:27:34.839 --> 00:27:38.440
went back to their air force and
checked see if any MiGs are up that

261
00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:42.240
day, and of course they got
me on that lie. And now you

262
00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:45.960
said you were shot down by megs? I said, well, you know,

263
00:27:47.799 --> 00:27:52.160
it's very possible that we ran out
of gas, you know, and

264
00:27:52.279 --> 00:27:56.319
so I had a different story each
time, and I may have eventually told

265
00:27:56.359 --> 00:28:02.359
him I was in a mid air
collision. Now, were the interrogations mostly

266
00:28:03.519 --> 00:28:07.599
after you first got there or did
they continue for a while. The interrogations

267
00:28:07.640 --> 00:28:18.319
initially were for military tactical information of
the air operations of the war. Later

268
00:28:18.440 --> 00:28:29.240
on it was all thought reform propaganda
interrogation training us to turn against our country.

269
00:28:29.759 --> 00:28:37.039
The whole idea was to proselytize us
brainwash thought reformer that wanted the same,

270
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:45.039
and they wanted us to turn against
our country, appear in films and

271
00:28:45.079 --> 00:28:53.880
whatnot as andi war activists. We
unfortunately had three officers it did that they

272
00:28:53.880 --> 00:29:00.599
were never released early even though they
had played with the commune this line.

273
00:29:02.400 --> 00:29:07.400
At the end of our time up
there, there were eight enlisted men also

274
00:29:07.559 --> 00:29:15.799
that had been brought up from the
South that had also violated the Code of

275
00:29:15.839 --> 00:29:25.400
conducts. So essentially we had two
officers and enlisted types that we brought charges

276
00:29:25.440 --> 00:29:30.480
against when we returned home. But
out of five hundred and ninety one that

277
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:34.799
were returned, that's a very small
percentage. What were the conditions like the

278
00:29:34.839 --> 00:29:41.160
rest of the time, It went
through about three eras. The first years

279
00:29:41.279 --> 00:29:49.680
there were very brutal. Up to
November of nineteen sixty eight, President Johnson

280
00:29:49.799 --> 00:30:00.160
had ceased attacking the North and we
settled in with a three hundred and twenty

281
00:30:00.200 --> 00:30:07.799
five of us that were the old
era of POWs. And then of course,

282
00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:15.559
in late seventy one seventy two,
Linebacker two came through and we picked

283
00:30:15.640 --> 00:30:22.319
up another two hundred or so POWs
to flesh out to five ninety one.

284
00:30:22.119 --> 00:30:33.160
So in the eras were we were
brutally treated separated. I had over eighteen

285
00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:37.920
months of solitary confinement, and that
was not uncommon. We had some men

286
00:30:38.039 --> 00:30:45.279
up there that were two and three
years or more of our senior people.

287
00:30:47.279 --> 00:30:53.960
And they kept us separated because they
never wanted us to organize, because if

288
00:30:53.960 --> 00:31:00.240
we could get our military organization going, we would be able to counter their

289
00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:08.400
propaganda program a lot stronger. And
so they denied us that we had to

290
00:31:08.440 --> 00:31:15.039
communicate through the walls with our tap
code system. Let's talk about that,

291
00:31:15.079 --> 00:31:19.279
because he received another silver Star for
what is considered unusual and ingenious methods of

292
00:31:19.319 --> 00:31:27.160
communication. So explain that the tap
code is a five by five matrix of

293
00:31:27.200 --> 00:31:33.079
the English alphabet. Since our twenty
six letters. One letter had to be

294
00:31:33.160 --> 00:31:40.960
dropped, so the letter C the
letter K was supplemented as a C.

295
00:31:41.160 --> 00:31:51.519
So in the five columns you have
aflqv and our memory device was air Force

296
00:31:52.200 --> 00:32:00.599
loves Quick Victories American Football League quits
victorious. The British used it world War

297
00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:08.799
two and they remembered it as Alfred
Fondley Love Queen Victoria. It's a five

298
00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:15.319
by five, So in the first
column or row, however you want to

299
00:32:15.319 --> 00:32:21.920
set it up, A f l
q v R the five lead lines A

300
00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:29.440
B, C, d E,
f G h I j K, l

301
00:32:29.880 --> 00:32:36.000
M n O, P q R
S, t U, v w x

302
00:32:36.319 --> 00:32:40.680
y Z. So if I were
to tap my name web, I would

303
00:32:40.680 --> 00:32:49.480
go, first of all, there's
a sign up call telephone shaven haircut B

304
00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:57.680
and the answer is two bits.
So once I start tapping, I would

305
00:32:57.680 --> 00:33:06.799
go A f l q v v
WS. I'd go VW A A B

306
00:33:07.079 --> 00:33:15.240
C d E A A B A
A B I got Webb. The beauty

307
00:33:15.279 --> 00:33:20.079
of the tap code as of five
by five is that whenever we were outside,

308
00:33:20.240 --> 00:33:24.200
we'd always be sending with our fingers
in the hopes that somebody was seeing

309
00:33:24.359 --> 00:33:32.119
what we were sending In latter months
there we were allowed outside to get some

310
00:33:32.400 --> 00:33:39.240
fresh air. We would use it
as a as a baseball code top of

311
00:33:39.279 --> 00:33:47.640
the head a f l q V, and so it was not uncommon for

312
00:33:47.759 --> 00:33:53.359
us to be scratching, rubbing.
But we're sending the tap code. In

313
00:33:53.400 --> 00:33:58.599
just a moment, Colonel Webb shares
another innovative variation of the tap code.

314
00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:02.119
He also tells us about his release
and what it was like to taste freedom

315
00:34:02.160 --> 00:34:08.119
again after nearly six years of confinement. I'm Greg Corumbas, and this is

316
00:34:08.199 --> 00:34:15.679
Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. We now conclude

317
00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:21.320
our conversation with retired Air Force Colonel
Ronald Webb, a Vietnam veteran and prisoner

318
00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:24.199
of war. In a moment,
you'll hear about how he was freed,

319
00:34:24.840 --> 00:34:30.519
but we pick up the story with
Webb's explanation of another variation of the tap

320
00:34:30.559 --> 00:34:37.679
code. About two years before the
end, I got moved once again solo

321
00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:45.559
into a different camp, right into
the main prison, and I got moved

322
00:34:45.599 --> 00:34:50.559
into a cell block. And as
soon as my door was closed, I

323
00:34:50.719 --> 00:34:58.280
heard a profusion of coughing and spitting
and hacking, and the awful of sounds.

324
00:34:58.400 --> 00:35:04.119
You can imagine. I was all
the kinds of sounds like that,

325
00:35:04.199 --> 00:35:07.199
and I thought I was in the
tb ward that these guys were dying.

326
00:35:08.000 --> 00:35:13.760
Well, what it was was Admiral
Jeremiah Denton went an admiral then. But

327
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:23.320
Jerry Dent had come up with the
voice tap code were and he would make

328
00:35:23.360 --> 00:35:30.079
these sounds and that's how they set
the tap code. It worked fine,

329
00:35:30.159 --> 00:35:36.079
except that the guards oftentimes did a
lot of coughing and spitting two and so

330
00:35:36.159 --> 00:35:39.679
that would interrupt messages and you'd have
to go back and start all over again.

331
00:35:40.119 --> 00:35:45.239
But I give Jeremiah Denton credit for
a voice tap code. Getting back

332
00:35:45.320 --> 00:35:51.320
to the origin of the tap code. It had been used in World War

333
00:35:51.400 --> 00:35:55.320
Two. It had been used in
Russia under the cyrillic alphabet in Stalags.

334
00:35:58.239 --> 00:36:04.760
The Americans and the Brits used that
in the World War two Stalags in Germany.

335
00:36:06.679 --> 00:36:10.239
A man who had been a pow
in World War Two, Claude Watkins,

336
00:36:12.039 --> 00:36:19.679
trained in our survival training program at
Stead Air Force Base. Claude had

337
00:36:19.719 --> 00:36:27.079
been a pow in the Stalags and
on a lark over coffee one day he

338
00:36:27.239 --> 00:36:30.920
had three or four guys that were
drinking coffee, and he told him about

339
00:36:30.920 --> 00:36:36.039
the tap code. It wasn't part
of the curriculum at that time. One

340
00:36:36.039 --> 00:36:40.239
of the guys that was having coffee
was Smitty Harris F one oh five pilot.

341
00:36:40.760 --> 00:36:45.079
Smitty has subsequently written a book about
it. But he was one of

342
00:36:45.119 --> 00:36:53.159
the first five or six guys captured
in January February of nineteen sixty five.

343
00:36:54.360 --> 00:36:58.840
And while they were all together,
these first four or five guys, he

344
00:36:59.000 --> 00:37:01.920
told them about the tap code.
He says, if we ever get separated,

345
00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:07.719
he said, you might want to
remember we got to communicate with a

346
00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:14.360
tap code through the walls. It's
a tapping. You can't send morse code

347
00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:17.079
because you can tap a dot,
but you can't tap a dash. So

348
00:37:17.719 --> 00:37:24.159
anyway, they remembered it, and
in every cell in Hanoi it was itched

349
00:37:24.679 --> 00:37:31.719
on the walls or under bedboards.
The Vietnamese knew we used that. They

350
00:37:31.760 --> 00:37:36.840
couldn't. They tried to duplicate it, you know, guards tried to enticeis

351
00:37:36.880 --> 00:37:42.599
and communicating you get punished if you
got caught. They just never could get

352
00:37:42.639 --> 00:37:46.800
the rhythm of shaven a haircut.
You mentioned that this was developed to help

353
00:37:47.800 --> 00:37:53.440
build up your resolve and resistance to
their propaganda efforts to indoctrinate you. So

354
00:37:53.519 --> 00:37:59.320
explain how much that helped being able
to communicate with each other to resist what

355
00:37:59.360 --> 00:38:04.679
the Vietnamese are trying to do to
you. It was the tap code was

356
00:38:04.719 --> 00:38:10.840
our source of communication and bolstering each
other through the walls. If a guy

357
00:38:10.880 --> 00:38:15.639
got tortured and he was being punished, you know, tortured and then was

358
00:38:16.639 --> 00:38:23.719
required to write letters or something against
his country, they would come back to

359
00:38:23.800 --> 00:38:27.519
the cell and guys would tap to
him and say, hang in there.

360
00:38:27.719 --> 00:38:31.639
You know, we've all been through
it. We did everything we could to

361
00:38:32.360 --> 00:38:42.480
keep up our morale. Of course, as an American, we come from

362
00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:50.880
a society that is so free and
so abundant and information that it's it's very

363
00:38:50.960 --> 00:39:00.079
difficult for an American to swallow the
communist line. I really aized today in

364
00:39:00.199 --> 00:39:07.280
our current situation, we're seeing maybe
an aberration to that. But we were

365
00:39:07.519 --> 00:39:14.840
educated, for the most part.
We were college educated officers. The poor

366
00:39:15.280 --> 00:39:23.280
guys that had been captured in Korea, it was their first exposure to communist

367
00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:32.119
indoctrination. We had the benefit of
what they went through. President Eisenhower promulgated

368
00:39:32.199 --> 00:39:37.480
the Code of Conduct after Korea.
We were all trained in that, and

369
00:39:37.559 --> 00:39:45.480
so we had that advantage not only
being officers and educated. You know,

370
00:39:45.559 --> 00:39:50.440
some of the people up there head
masters and PhDs. I lived with Jim

371
00:39:50.440 --> 00:39:54.280
Stockdale and he had a PhD.
And so you know, we're pretty well

372
00:39:54.440 --> 00:40:01.039
educated groups. So we found their
propaganda line very repugnant, and so I

373
00:40:01.119 --> 00:40:06.960
don't I don't believe anybody really believe
in any of that. When did you

374
00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:10.559
first start to get an inkling that
you were going to be freed? During

375
00:40:10.679 --> 00:40:19.960
Linebacker two, the Vietnamese packed up
about three hundred men and moved him up

376
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.519
to col Bang on the Chinese line
away from Hanoi. Once again, I

377
00:40:24.559 --> 00:40:32.440
was fortunate to remain downtown, in
downtown in the main prison when those raids

378
00:40:32.480 --> 00:40:40.880
came in Christmas of nineteen seventy two. The stone slabs we slept on actually

379
00:40:40.960 --> 00:40:51.480
bounced from the bombing. In downtown
Hanoi. We had bamboo shades across the

380
00:40:51.559 --> 00:40:54.800
windows in the cells, but you
could look up at an angle and you

381
00:40:54.840 --> 00:41:04.079
could see aircraft dropping things, dropping
bombs, and of course any aircraft going

382
00:41:04.159 --> 00:41:12.440
back up, and the American attack
knew where the camps were. We didn't

383
00:41:12.480 --> 00:41:19.599
feel threatened in being bombed. We
knew our guys were pinpoint bombing, and

384
00:41:19.679 --> 00:41:24.760
I found that out when we had
our first trips out of Hanoi without blindfolds

385
00:41:24.840 --> 00:41:30.679
and could see the job that Sacked
did on bombing the rail line in Hanoi.

386
00:41:30.760 --> 00:41:37.960
On one side of the street were
four story buildings the windows weren't shattered,

387
00:41:38.280 --> 00:41:44.480
and on the left side were industrial
complexes that had been blown to bits.

388
00:41:45.039 --> 00:41:51.119
So the Sack bombers did a terrific
job, and they took some losses.

389
00:41:51.159 --> 00:41:57.719
Of course, we lost thirteen B
fifty twos I believe. But anyway,

390
00:41:58.159 --> 00:42:02.159
to answer your question, when that
attack was going on, if we'd

391
00:42:02.239 --> 00:42:06.800
had luggage, we'd have packed them
because we knew we were going home.

392
00:42:07.079 --> 00:42:13.920
President Nixon had finally come back to
get us. Lyndon Johnson left us.

393
00:42:13.920 --> 00:42:19.320
Sarah, what was that moment like
when you were finally back with Americans when

394
00:42:19.320 --> 00:42:25.679
that exchange happened. Probably the greatest, greatest day of our lives was when

395
00:42:25.679 --> 00:42:31.920
we lifted out at Hanoi on that
See forty one. We lifted up the

396
00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:37.440
airplane, erupted it into chairs and
tears, and it was a magnificent flight

397
00:42:37.519 --> 00:42:45.519
to Clark. At Clark, we
were and given the opportunity to call home,

398
00:42:45.599 --> 00:42:47.559
and we got mail, and we
got all of our records brought up

399
00:42:47.599 --> 00:42:52.679
to date. The first thing,
first thing we all wanted to do.

400
00:42:52.119 --> 00:42:59.039
When we got to the hospital at
Clark, I had a briefing officer and

401
00:42:59.119 --> 00:43:01.480
a nurse and her and they,
you know, we're going over our problems,

402
00:43:01.519 --> 00:43:05.840
and I said, I've got to
get to the shower. I've got

403
00:43:05.840 --> 00:43:08.280
to get to the shower, because
we were all we wanted to wash han

404
00:43:10.039 --> 00:43:15.199
Unfortunately, when I got to the
bathroom, at the shower room, it

405
00:43:15.400 --> 00:43:20.519
was you couldn't see a steam in
there. Everybody was in there Washington.

406
00:43:20.559 --> 00:43:25.400
But anyway, it was a great
time. Then they flight back to America.

407
00:43:25.639 --> 00:43:31.199
I landed in Washington, d c. And my daughter came running out

408
00:43:31.239 --> 00:43:37.039
and I picked her up. And
there's a fairly famous picture that was in

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a number of the papers of her. She was almost nine years old and

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00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:50.360
two when I left. Anyway,
we had the families there to meet us,

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and that was that was the greatest
day in the world. Did they

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00:43:52.480 --> 00:43:58.599
ever let you bathe when you were
in prison? We had cold cisterns with

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00:43:58.760 --> 00:44:04.760
scuppers that a couple of days a
week we would go out and throw the

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00:44:04.800 --> 00:44:07.760
water over us, and if we
had any clothing, we'd stomp on it,

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you know, try and wash that. Occasionally they'd give us haircuts,

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00:44:13.599 --> 00:44:16.679
and that was always a chance for
the guards to pull hair out of you,

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00:44:16.679 --> 00:44:22.239
you know, so that was brutal. They had razor blades on occasion

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00:44:23.199 --> 00:44:29.039
that they would leave in the shower
stall, and by the time you got

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00:44:29.079 --> 00:44:31.239
there, somebody had already taken the
blades out and put an old one in,

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00:44:31.320 --> 00:44:35.360
you know, so they were useless. You touched on this a moment

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00:44:35.400 --> 00:44:38.480
ago when you talked about the flight
leaving Hanai going to the Philippines and Clark

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00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:43.920
Air Force Base. You are one
of a few Americans who knows what it's

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00:44:43.960 --> 00:44:46.599
like to have freedom, to lose
it, and to get it back.

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00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:52.159
How do you put into words what
that's like. Until you've lost it,

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00:44:52.800 --> 00:45:00.519
you never know what you lost.
But getting back to America and resu a

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healthy life in the greatest country on
earth is a blessing every day that I've

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00:45:07.400 --> 00:45:15.360
been back, and it's been fifty
years, and it's been fifty wonderful years.

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00:45:15.960 --> 00:45:20.559
You know. We've had our ups
and downs in this country. I

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00:45:20.599 --> 00:45:25.519
think we're at our lowest point right
now, which is very disconcerting to those

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00:45:25.599 --> 00:45:35.800
of us who have lost our freedoms
and Americans just don't know how great we

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00:45:35.920 --> 00:45:42.519
have it. I find that I'm
blessed. I've come back in pretty good

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00:45:42.559 --> 00:45:51.400
shape. I have pretty good health, and I treasure every cherish, every

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00:45:51.480 --> 00:45:54.960
day that I have as an American. Now, when you came back,

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00:45:55.039 --> 00:46:00.159
you worked in Air Force intelligence,
correct, I did. I flew a

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00:46:00.159 --> 00:46:04.920
little bit because I had been a
navigator. I had lost all those navigator

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00:46:04.960 --> 00:46:09.280
hours, so my pilot hours were
limited. So I went into C to

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00:46:09.679 --> 00:46:15.840
T thirty seven's. I went through
training in three different airplanes and ended up

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00:46:15.840 --> 00:46:22.440
flying the Saberliner T thirty seven back
and forth from Langley Air Force Base to

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00:46:22.519 --> 00:46:29.039
the West West Coast and back to
build hours. I came back a major.

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00:46:29.519 --> 00:46:36.119
I got promoted to lieutenant colonel and
went to some senior schools. I

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00:46:36.199 --> 00:46:42.840
went to the Industrial College. I'd
been to these Air Force Staff college and

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00:46:43.719 --> 00:46:47.280
I was at a point where I
couldn't go back in and fly anymore because

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00:46:47.320 --> 00:46:52.960
I didn't really have the flying credentials
to lead a flight group. So I

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00:46:53.000 --> 00:47:00.480
wanted to the intel business. I
had a secondary AFSC and intelligence I was

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00:47:00.519 --> 00:47:07.559
assigned to Federal Aviation for four years
and as an intelligence pilot operator, and

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00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:13.199
I worked with the State Department,
and I managed all the communist block flights

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00:47:13.199 --> 00:47:16.920
that come into America, VIP flights
that come into America. I'm working with

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00:47:17.039 --> 00:47:23.320
the State Department from FAA, and
during those four years, I kept book

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00:47:23.440 --> 00:47:35.719
on the Soviet airflot scheduled operations,
Cubana charter operations to the Cubans, and

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00:47:36.920 --> 00:47:42.840
they were guilty of transgressions the whole
time, but I kept book on that.

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00:47:43.719 --> 00:47:50.360
It was picked up by the Air
Force Journal Armed Forces Journal magazine and

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00:47:50.559 --> 00:47:57.480
they interviewed me and they took my
records and they presented them to Barry Goldwater,

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00:47:57.599 --> 00:48:02.760
Senator Goldwater, who entered them in
the congressional records. And President Reagan

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00:48:04.239 --> 00:48:10.679
was the president, and he went
ahead and canceled Arara flot scheduled operations and

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00:48:10.880 --> 00:48:17.039
Kbanner and so I got a Defense
Superior Service Medal for that. I didn't

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00:48:17.079 --> 00:48:22.519
know I was in that kind of
arena, But I just did my job

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00:48:23.039 --> 00:48:30.760
at Federal Aviation, and I'm very
proud of that particular award more than anything

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00:48:30.800 --> 00:48:37.039
else. After an extraordinarily impressive military
career. What are you most proud of?

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00:48:37.760 --> 00:48:42.639
Well, I'm proud that I was
an Air Force officer and that I

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00:48:43.400 --> 00:48:52.719
could go a full career. And
I'm proud to have served in a war

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00:48:52.840 --> 00:48:58.639
that a lot of people question whether
we should have ever been there, but

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00:49:00.440 --> 00:49:13.280
I felt that I was doing the
national defense mission. I'm proud of being

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00:49:13.320 --> 00:49:16.599
an Air Force officer. And lastly, what does it mean to you to

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00:49:16.639 --> 00:49:21.840
have the American Veteran Center collecting your
story and the other oral history's event.

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00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:28.239
Well, as far as I know, you're a very fine organization that does

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00:49:29.760 --> 00:49:36.440
build history over the lives of those
of us that have served in that history

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00:49:36.559 --> 00:49:43.559
is something in America that I think
all folks are to be up to date

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00:49:43.639 --> 00:49:50.960
on and learn about. Just About
every family in America has some association with

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00:49:52.039 --> 00:50:00.559
military uncle's cousins, father's, grandfather's
sons, daughters, and I think they

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00:50:00.599 --> 00:50:06.280
find it interesting you're reading American military
history. Sarah. It's an honor to

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00:50:06.320 --> 00:50:08.440
meet you. I thank you for
your time today, and I thank you

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00:50:08.480 --> 00:50:13.079
most of all for your incredible service
and sacrifice for our country. Thank you.

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00:50:13.159 --> 00:50:16.079
We've been speaking with retired US Air
Force Colonel Ronald Webb is a Vietnam

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00:50:16.159 --> 00:50:22.000
veteran recipient of two Silver Stars,
spent nearly six years in captivity in Vietnam

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00:50:22.039 --> 00:50:28.760
after a midair collision in June of
nineteen sixty seven. I'm Greg Corumbus.

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00:50:28.880 --> 00:50:43.840
This is Veterans Chronicles. Hi,
this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for

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00:50:43.880 --> 00:50:47.320
listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation
of the American Veterans Center. For more

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00:50:47.360 --> 00:50:52.199
information, please visit American Veterans Center
dot org. You can also follow the

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00:50:52.199 --> 00:50:59.199
American Veterans Center on Facebook and on
Twitter. We're at AVC update. Subscribe

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00:50:59.239 --> 00:51:02.360
to the American Veteran and Center YouTube
channel for full oral histories and special features,

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00:51:02.599 --> 00:51:07.840
and of course, please subscribe to
the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get

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00:51:07.880 --> 00:51:12.800
your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles