Speaker 1: This is Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is retired US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton, a
Speaker 1: flight officer who spent seven and a half years in
Speaker 1: captivity after a forced ejection over North Vietnam. He is
Speaker 1: also the author of Reflections on Captivity, which recounts his
Speaker 1: experiences as a prisoner of war and those of many others.
Speaker 1: Commander Haliburton was born in Florida, but spent most of
Speaker 1: his youth in Davidson, North Carolina. He told us about
Speaker 1: his education, his pursuit of military service, and finding a
Speaker 1: bride who could have had no idea what their marriage
Speaker 1: would bring in just a few short years.
Speaker 2: I was born in Miami, Florida, but I was raised
Speaker 2: in Davidson, North Carolina, from the age of two up
Speaker 2: until I went to Swani Military Academy for last two
Speaker 2: years of high school. I came back to Davidson and
Speaker 2: attended Davidson College and graduated in nineteen sixty three with
Speaker 2: a degree in English literature. Marty and I had met
Speaker 2: during college. She went to Queen's College and I went
Speaker 2: to Davidson and they just, you know, twenty miles apart,
Speaker 2: so she still had a semester to go, and we
Speaker 2: got married in December of nineteen sixty three while I
Speaker 2: was in pre flight and she was still in college.
Speaker 2: And so from there we went to various training bases
Speaker 2: and so on.
Speaker 1: A desire to fly F four has led him to
Speaker 1: pursue a Navy preflight program in Pensacola, and that was
Speaker 1: just the beginning of getting prepared to serve in combat
Speaker 1: as a naval aviator.
Speaker 2: My IT tests showed that I had twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: in one eye, and so they put me into the
Speaker 2: NFO pipeline Naval Flight Officer pipeline rather than the pilot pipeline.
Speaker 2: And make a long story short, I passed the AI
Speaker 2: test and was slated to go back to pilot training,
Speaker 2: and I don't know it never never paperwork never got
Speaker 2: to the right place. And anyway, I qualified for F
Speaker 2: four's and so that's what I really wanted to do. Anyway,
Speaker 2: so I stayed with that, and we wound up in
Speaker 2: the rag It Replacement Air Group in the VF one
Speaker 2: oh one in Key West, Florida. And when I finished,
Speaker 2: when I finished that training, I was going to join
Speaker 2: my first squadron, which was VF eighty four in Oceana, Virginia,
Speaker 2: and Harty was eight months pregnant at the time, and
Speaker 2: so I moved her up to Miami where she had
Speaker 2: some family, and I went on to join the squadron.
Speaker 2: But then she called as I stopped off in Davidson
Speaker 2: to see my folks, she said, I think I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have this baby. So I got emergency Lee went back
Speaker 2: to Miami and I saw my daughter for five days,
Speaker 2: and then I had to go on and until I
Speaker 2: joined the squadron. And then that was in April of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: A month later, as a brand new dad, Porter Halliburton
Speaker 1: deployed to Vietnam. He wouldn't return home for years.
Speaker 2: In May, we deployed aboard the USS Independence for Vietnam.
Speaker 2: The Independence was the first East Coast carrier to go
Speaker 2: to the West coast operations in the South China Sea.
Speaker 2: And of course the F four and what we've been
Speaker 2: trained to do was air to air defense, you know,
Speaker 2: we had air to air missiles and so on, and
Speaker 2: yet in Vietnam we were going to be doing lots
Speaker 2: of other things as well, and so we we sort
Speaker 2: of did some training for that in preparation for that,
Speaker 2: but it was pretty cursory and it took a month
Speaker 2: to get to Vietnam, and we began began operations in
Speaker 2: what was called Dixie Station, which was off of South Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and we flew missions for a week or so under
Speaker 2: the control of Air Force Facts forward air controllers that
Speaker 2: were designating targets in South Vietnam, and so we we
Speaker 2: worked with that and kind of a warm up to
Speaker 2: go up to Yankee Station and began operations and rolling
Speaker 2: thunder against North Vietnam. Our operational period there was divided
Speaker 2: into three operational periods of forty.
Speaker 3: Five days each and with.
Speaker 2: R and R in between or going back to QB
Speaker 2: Point in the Philippines for maintenance and all of that.
Speaker 1: Commander Haliburton gradually began experiencing misgivings about the missions he
Speaker 1: was undertaking in Vietnam. Given the high risk and frustrating
Speaker 1: rules of engagement for American pilots. He seriously doubted how
Speaker 1: effective or worthwhile these missions were in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of the war.
Speaker 2: I had flown over seventy missions, mostly with the pilot
Speaker 2: that I thought was the best in the squadron. His
Speaker 2: name was Lieutenant Commander stan Olmsted, and of course I'm
Speaker 2: just I think I made Lieutenant JG. While we were,
Speaker 2: you know, in operations and so on, I was becoming
Speaker 2: kind of disillusioned with what we were doing, you know,
Speaker 2: just missions that didn't seem to be worth anything, and
Speaker 2: we were risking our lives and our airplane and all
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: We came back from R and R in Japan, and
Speaker 2: on our third line period, we were due to be
Speaker 2: back in the United States by Christmas, and so we
Speaker 2: were all looking forward to that. And then finally we
Speaker 2: got a notification that we were going to have a
Speaker 2: mission that was one of those that McNamara and Johnson controlled.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't you wouldn't normally be able to tack these missions
Speaker 2: and so on. And it was a bridge from China
Speaker 2: to Hanoi across the river at Taiwing, and it was
Speaker 2: a rail and road bridge, and so it was a
Speaker 2: major communication between China and Vietnam and taking it out
Speaker 2: really would have disrupted their ability to supply of course,
Speaker 2: that was independent of stuff that was coming in by
Speaker 2: ship to high Fall, and I think we were pretty
Speaker 2: frustrated with the rules of engagement. I mean, for example,
Speaker 2: we still have air to air mission protecting, you know,
Speaker 2: tar cap, bar cap, all kinds of things, but the
Speaker 2: rules of engagement said you had to have visual identification
Speaker 2: of the airplane that was not squawking, not identifying itself. Well,
Speaker 2: once you do, once you get close enough to visually
Speaker 2: identify the airplane. The two kinds of missiles that we
Speaker 2: had were not very effective, and so it was very frustrating.
Speaker 1: Finally, Commander Halliburton was sent on a mission that he
Speaker 1: felt was worthwhile. However, a strike from an anti aircraft gun,
Speaker 1: possibly from a surface to air missile site, sent his
Speaker 1: plane down and changed the course of his life forever.
Speaker 2: But finally we were getting a mission that I thought
Speaker 2: was worthwhile. And there were about thirty or more airplanes
Speaker 2: from our squadron, I mean from our air wing that
Speaker 2: were involved. And we had four aircraft from our Air
Speaker 2: Force squadron and four from the other Air Force squadron,
Speaker 2: which is VIA forty one, and we were assigned flak suppression,
Speaker 2: meaning we were going to duel it out with the
Speaker 2: anti aircraft guns that protected the tiwing, and so we
Speaker 2: were flying pretty low level to avoid sam two missiles
Speaker 2: which don't operate well below three thousand feet, but it
Speaker 2: put us right in the envelope for an aircraft fire,
Speaker 2: and so standing I got hit on the way to
Speaker 2: the target, and we took a hit right in the
Speaker 2: front cockpit, and Stan was killed, I think immediately, and
Speaker 2: my oxygen masks blown off my I had piece of
Speaker 2: metal sticking out of my hand. There were papers flying around,
Speaker 2: holes in the canopy and everything, and so I knew
Speaker 2: that I had to make a decision, you know, whether
Speaker 2: to get out of the airplane or not. And so
Speaker 2: I decided I would, And so I ejected and very
Speaker 2: short riding the parachute and very near village that was
Speaker 2: shooting at us while we were well, I was coming down.
Speaker 1: But there were really two decisions. The first one was
Speaker 1: whether to eject at all, which he obviously did. The
Speaker 1: second decision was how to eject.
Speaker 2: I had two choices for ejecting. There are two ways
Speaker 2: to do it, and the primary and preferred way is
Speaker 2: handles that are up here above the seat that you
Speaker 2: pulled down and it pulls a canvas shield in front
Speaker 2: of your face to protect you from the blast of ejection.
Speaker 2: And all of that well, I reached up there to
Speaker 2: do that and I felt twisted up metal, and I
Speaker 2: pulled it down. I realized it was my kneeboard that
Speaker 2: held all of our papers and maps and everything I
Speaker 2: all twisted up. So that was the indication that we've
Speaker 2: been hit pretty hard. And so I threw that down
Speaker 2: and decided. I didn't know whether this was damaged or what,
Speaker 2: but I made a quick decision to use the other.
Speaker 2: And there's a d ring between your legs here, and
Speaker 2: you just pull up on it and bang, there you go.
Speaker 1: That's retired to US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. In Just
Speaker 1: a Moment, Halliburton describes trying to avoid capture in North Vietnam,
Speaker 1: being captured and what happened next. I'm Greg Corumbus. This
Speaker 1: is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1: This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
Speaker 1: this edition is retired US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. Just
Speaker 1: a moment ago, Haliburton told the story of his plane
Speaker 1: being shot down, making the decision to eject and safely
Speaker 1: parachuting to the ground. But he wouldn't be safe for long.
Speaker 1: Just like every other downed to American aviator, his first
Speaker 1: choice was to avoid capture. He landed near the village
Speaker 1: over which his plane had been shot down, and from
Speaker 1: there began his fight to survive, and he could see
Speaker 1: his odds of avoiding capture dwindling. By the moment.
Speaker 2: I knew there was a there was a village. There
Speaker 2: were people shooting at us, at me, uh and uh.
Speaker 2: When I landed, I got on my radio and said,
Speaker 2: you know that I've been We've been hit, I ejected,
Speaker 2: I was on the ground, I was okay all of that.
Speaker 2: I got no response from it at all.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And so I began to try to go to the
Speaker 2: opposite direction from this village, try to get over this
Speaker 2: little hill, because I knew that the that the carrier
Speaker 2: had sent a rescue helicopter on a destroyer pretty pretty
Speaker 2: far up into Hollong Bay or Gulf of Donkey, and
Speaker 2: I knew that there was a chance that you know,
Speaker 2: that helo might get in, and so I wanted to
Speaker 2: get away from the gunfire and so on.
Speaker 3: I never made it over the hill.
Speaker 2: Because I just ran out of water and energyed everything.
Speaker 2: I've probably in some kind of shock, and so I
Speaker 2: had to stop and rest. And at one of the
Speaker 2: funny incidents, there was I looked for the place of
Speaker 2: best cover, which is just some kind of bushes. It
Speaker 2: wasn't much, and so I started for that, and right
Speaker 2: in front of me, a big black snake starts going
Speaker 2: for the same bush, and so I decided, well, I'll
Speaker 2: let that guy have that and I'll go somewhere else,
Speaker 2: which was not very good cover anyway. And so anyway,
Speaker 2: the villagers came and I didn't take them long surround.
Speaker 3: They knew pretty much where.
Speaker 2: I was and so on. So I was captured and
Speaker 2: taken to their village. And as I was as we
Speaker 2: were walking back, the airplanes from that we're coming back. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: they had the same track out as they came in,
Speaker 2: and so a couple more airplanes were shot down. I
Speaker 2: think three other airplanes were shot down simply because they
Speaker 2: came back exactly the same way it went in, and
Speaker 2: the gunners are there waiting. I later I heard nothing
Speaker 2: on my radio, but I destroyed it right before I
Speaker 2: was captured, just because I didn't want the North Vietnamese
Speaker 2: to have it, because we knew that they used that
Speaker 2: to try to lure in rescue helicopters and to a trap.
Speaker 2: And so when I cut that cord to the radio.
Speaker 3: That was I knew that was my last bit of.
Speaker 2: Attachment to the world that I was leaving behind, and
Speaker 2: so I had no idea what lay ahead, but I
Speaker 2: knew it wouldn't be it wouldn't be good in any
Speaker 2: in any sense. But right then I determined that I
Speaker 2: was going to do everything I could to survive. And
Speaker 2: for example, in the little village, they treated me pretty
Speaker 2: well actually and allowed me to I indicated I was
Speaker 2: very thirsty.
Speaker 3: They gave me some water, a little what.
Speaker 2: What passed for soup for them, and rice, and I
Speaker 2: wasn't at all hungry, but I ate it out of
Speaker 2: just determination that I was going to eat everything, and
Speaker 2: I didn't want to offend these people, you know, by refusing.
Speaker 2: And so I made some decisions right there that that
Speaker 2: I kept with me throughout my captivity.
Speaker 1: The villagers treated Halliburton fairly well. The North Vietnamese army
Speaker 1: was a different story.
Speaker 2: I was there in that village for probably several hours,
Speaker 2: and again they I don't think they'd ever seen a Caucasian.
Speaker 2: Maybe we hadn't bombed up in that area much at all,
Speaker 2: and so they were just they were curious about all
Speaker 2: this equipment.
Speaker 3: I had everything.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, I was very afraid that they were
Speaker 2: going to fool around with my seat pan, which has
Speaker 2: a life raft in it, and I thought they were
Speaker 2: you know, if they actuate that in this little room
Speaker 2: where we were, the life raft is going to you know,
Speaker 2: explode and they're going to feel like, you know, this
Speaker 2: was some kind of a booby trap or something. And
Speaker 2: so I was really trying to keep and then they
Speaker 2: had my gun, my thirty eight, and I was fully
Speaker 2: with it and went off. You know, right, he didn't
Speaker 2: kill anybody, had it pointed up. But so anyway, they
Speaker 2: were very curious. And then after a couple of hours
Speaker 2: a jeep a ride with some military or I don't
Speaker 2: know where they were, regular military, I think they were,
Speaker 2: and I was, you know, handcuffed and blindfolded, and we
Speaker 2: went off and it took a couple of days to
Speaker 2: get the Hanoi. Even though it was only forty miles.
Speaker 2: The road was just absolutely terrible. I mean sometimes you
Speaker 2: would just go in one or two miles an hour
Speaker 2: trying not to get and of course I'm handcuffed and blindfolded,
Speaker 2: and it was a pretty rough trip. And we stopped
Speaker 2: at a village, and that's where my first interrogations began.
Speaker 2: And the interrogator who was civilian, I think, but he
Speaker 2: didn't speak English, but he had a phrase book, you know,
Speaker 2: and so he could write out questions and push the
Speaker 2: paper over to me with a pencil and want me
Speaker 2: to write the answers, and of course I pushed the
Speaker 2: paper back, and anyway, that became a very tense situation
Speaker 2: because that happened back and forth several times. I wound
Speaker 2: up with a guard with AK forty seven next to
Speaker 2: my temple, and I thought, well, okay, that's that's that's
Speaker 2: the end of this. This is how it's going to end.
Speaker 2: So but they didn't want to kill me, and so
Speaker 2: they got him away anyway, and then we spent the
Speaker 2: night a couple of nights in some kind of an
Speaker 2: army army camp, army base or something. And then I
Speaker 2: wound up arriving in the morning at the Hanoi Hill.
Speaker 2: I was by this time my thirst was just overwhelming.
Speaker 2: I just was so thirsty. And they set me down
Speaker 2: in this hallway and there was a spicket there, and
Speaker 2: I just turned that spicket on and drank, not really
Speaker 2: even thinking about the fact that you don't do that.
Speaker 2: You don't drink this water. It has to be boiled.
Speaker 2: But I never got sick from it, so I was
Speaker 2: very lucky. But this began. Then I moved into Heartbreak Hotel,
Speaker 2: where there were six other guys there, all of us
Speaker 2: having been shot down either on the seventeenth or the sixteenth, all.
Speaker 3: From our ship.
Speaker 2: We had four POWs from our ship, and then two
Speaker 2: that had been photo reki on five c's to take
Speaker 2: pictures before all of this operated. Of course, they got
Speaker 2: shot down, and what they missed was another SAM site
Speaker 2: that we did not know about. And I'm pretty sure
Speaker 2: that the anti aircraft fire that got us was part
Speaker 2: of that SAM site. So I'm told that the next
Speaker 2: day of the day after that, a strike specifically went
Speaker 2: in to wipe out this SAM site.
Speaker 1: That's retired to US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll learn how Halliburton's rigorous training for what
Speaker 1: to do if captured as a prisoner of war helped
Speaker 1: him out in some circumstances and made his life much
Speaker 1: worse and unnecessarily so in other circumstances. He also explains
Speaker 1: how his refusal to cooperate with his interrogators led to
Speaker 1: him having worse and worse living conditions over time, but
Speaker 1: he also tells us the amazing story of how the
Speaker 1: North Vietnamese effort to put him in the worst possible
Speaker 1: situation ended up being one of the best. I'm Greg Corumbus,
Speaker 1: and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm
Speaker 1: Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is retired to
Speaker 1: US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. Halliburton and other American service
Speaker 1: members had been taught very clearly what they could and
Speaker 1: could not divulge to their enemy captors, and Halliburton abided
Speaker 1: by that carefully, but he says his life would have
Speaker 1: been easier if he and others could have mentioned other
Speaker 1: information that was of no value to the North Vietnamese.
Speaker 1: The strict policy complicated his time in the camp and
Speaker 1: also kept his loving wife and family in the dark
Speaker 1: about his true situation.
Speaker 2: I had been offered opportunity to write a letter home.
Speaker 2: I said yes. I knew that we were guaranteed that
Speaker 2: by the Geneva Conventions, and I said yes, I'd like
Speaker 2: to write a letter home. And they want to know
Speaker 2: the address where I would send it, I'd take it.
Speaker 2: I didn't wear a wedding ring, no identification other.
Speaker 3: Than you know, my.
Speaker 2: My ID card and dog tags and so on. And
Speaker 2: they wanted to know the address that I would send
Speaker 2: the letter, and I said, I'll just send it to
Speaker 2: the US. That wasn't allowed. So I passed up the
Speaker 2: opportunity to write. And that's one of the regrets that
Speaker 2: I have, because this training that we had in Seer
Speaker 2: School was really black and white. It was just you know, name, rank, service, summer,
Speaker 2: date of birth, nothing else. You're willing to die, give
Speaker 2: your life before anything else. In Seer School, I had
Speaker 2: been undergoing interrogation, you know, by this guy that was
Speaker 2: wearing a uniform that looked like a Soviet uniform and
Speaker 2: yet you know he's supposed to be Korean. And it
Speaker 2: was crazy. And they said, okay, here's an academic situation.
Speaker 2: You were lying on a table here and you have
Speaker 2: a bubbling chest wound. You need an immediate blood transfusion.
Speaker 2: What's your blood type? And they said, oh, start the
Speaker 2: program again.
Speaker 3: We're alive.
Speaker 2: What's your blood type? I said, APOSTI quick.
Speaker 3: As I could. It's on my dog tags.
Speaker 2: It's you know, it's on my ID card, but I
Speaker 2: wanted them to know that because I would die without
Speaker 2: a blood So I was criticized for that. It was
Speaker 2: not name, ranks, date of birth, it was blood type.
Speaker 2: So that was the error of our training in the
Speaker 2: in the code of conduct, It's not It took it
Speaker 2: away from any kind of leadership decisions, uh, analysis of
Speaker 2: what your situation is, Uh, how you are going to
Speaker 2: survive in captivity without communication with your captors over particularly
Speaker 2: over a long period of time. And so the first
Speaker 2: until we kind of figured all this out, it was
Speaker 2: very rough time because trying to stick to the name
Speaker 2: right and service number, date of birth was very difficult.
Speaker 2: You know, ours kneel on your knees, or or in
Speaker 2: leg irons, or or.
Speaker 3: Being beaten or threatened and all of this.
Speaker 1: Commander Halliburton's refusal to answer questions got him moved to
Speaker 1: worse and worse locations until he eventually had to complete
Speaker 1: a stint in solitary. But it was just when he
Speaker 1: reached his darkest moment that the North Vietnamese made a
Speaker 1: critical error and ended up revitalizing Haliburton and improving his outlook.
Speaker 2: So finally I was given a choice, and they said,
Speaker 2: if you continue to refuse to talk to us, we're
Speaker 2: going to move you to a worse place. Well, my god,
Speaker 2: I was in this little cell in Heartbreak, which is
Speaker 2: just two concrete bunks with built in leg irons and
Speaker 2: a bucket, and not a whole hell of a lot
Speaker 2: more than that. I couldn't imagine a worse place. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, if you talk to us, we'll move
Speaker 2: you to a better place, a much better place. You
Speaker 2: be with your friends, you get better food, you'll play games,
Speaker 2: write letters. It would be wonderful, you know. And of
Speaker 2: course I wasn't going to do that. And so I refuse, used,
Speaker 2: and moved to a worst place. And so long story short,
Speaker 2: I moved to three more worst places. Each one was
Speaker 2: worse or bad in its own way, not exactly like
Speaker 2: the little cell in Heartbreak, And so I was I
Speaker 2: wound up in what I think was the worst place
Speaker 2: I had. It was a storage shed out by the
Speaker 2: back wall of this prison that we call the zoo.
Speaker 2: I wasn't in the ann or Hilton anymore. And it
Speaker 2: was full of coal dust that had been used to
Speaker 2: store coal, and filthy it would have had every vermin
Speaker 2: rats were running in and out, and.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 3: Very sick.
Speaker 2: They left my food outside for the ants and the
Speaker 2: rats to get before they put it inside for me,
Speaker 2: and then I couldn't eat it. It was just really
Speaker 2: and I really thought I was going to die there.
Speaker 2: I couldn't see how I would survive. And so when
Speaker 2: I was given this same choice again, it was really
Speaker 2: it was the hardest decision I'd ever had to make
Speaker 2: in my life, aside from whether to get out of
Speaker 2: the air plate or not. And I just I knew
Speaker 2: I couldn't see any good outfit if I said yes
Speaker 2: or no, you know, and so it was very difficult,
Speaker 2: but I finally I said no, you know, I said, well,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to die, I'm going to die, you know,
Speaker 2: without sacrificing my my integrity, honor, whatever, and letting down
Speaker 2: your your buddies, your fellow POW's was a huge motive
Speaker 2: motivation aside from your own feelings about.
Speaker 3: Right and wrong and doing your duty and all of that.
Speaker 3: I mean, you just.
Speaker 2: Couldn't let these guys down. You didn't, you'd be disgraceful.
Speaker 3: You couldn't live with that.
Speaker 2: When I said no and was blindfolded and led up
Speaker 2: to another cell block. I I had no idea what
Speaker 2: it was going to be like. And they opened the
Speaker 2: door to this cell and pushed me inside and said,
Speaker 2: you must care for Cherry. And it was plain, you know,
Speaker 2: I was going to be this guy's servant. I was
Speaker 2: gonna be caregiver. I had to take care of him
Speaker 2: and do everything for him. And it was Major Fred Cherry,
Speaker 2: a Black Air Force pilot, and he was very badly injured.
Speaker 2: He'd almost had his arm ripped off his body. He
Speaker 2: had broken foot and all kinds of things. And in
Speaker 2: their eyes and their concept about racial relations in the
Speaker 2: United States, they thought were putting a young southern white
Speaker 2: boy in with a black man and being told to
Speaker 2: take care of him would be the worst thing that
Speaker 2: they could do to me, And of course it wasn't.
Speaker 2: I was so hungry to be with another friendly human being.
Speaker 2: I didn't care what he looked like or anything. The
Speaker 2: significant thing, though, at the time, was that up until
Speaker 2: this time, I'd been concerned with just very basic things. Survival,
Speaker 2: doing my duty, getting home in as good as shape
Speaker 2: as I possibly could. Those are the three things that.
Speaker 3: I was concerned with.
Speaker 2: But now I'd been given something important to do. To
Speaker 2: try and help a man survive, and this arm business
Speaker 2: and everything wasn't it wasn't the thing that risked his life.
Speaker 2: It was the fact that they later operated on his shoulder,
Speaker 2: trying to put his arm back, because they had some
Speaker 2: idea they might send him home early, because he was
Speaker 2: the first black, first and only black at the time,
Speaker 2: that they were going to send him home as a
Speaker 2: propaganda gesture, and so they operated on him. And then
Speaker 2: that's the thing that really really required my help. And
Speaker 2: he says, I saved his life, and I think I did,
Speaker 2: but I had no choice, and because by that time
Speaker 2: we had become such close friends, and I learned so
Speaker 2: much from him. I mean, hell, he was my senior officer,
Speaker 2: you know, he outrang me by two ranks, and I
Speaker 2: just I had never been in this kind of a position,
Speaker 2: and having something important to do change my whole outlook
Speaker 2: on captivity and what life's all about and everything. And
Speaker 2: I realized that up until then, part of my duty
Speaker 2: was communications and memorizing the names of everybody else who
Speaker 2: was there and passing on information. But beyond that, you know,
Speaker 2: it was just we all thought the war was going
Speaker 2: to be over very soon. Now realized how important it
Speaker 2: was to build a military structure with command and eventually
Speaker 2: building a community. You know, we were all that was
Speaker 2: our family now, and so it was time with Fred.
Speaker 2: I was with him for eight months. When we were separated,
Speaker 2: it was one of the saddest days in my life.
Speaker 2: I just I didn't know what was going to happen
Speaker 2: to him. He was still in bad shape.
Speaker 1: After his time caring for Colonel Cherry. Commander Halliburton was
Speaker 1: once again facing these sub human conditions of Vietnamese prison alone.
Speaker 1: And the tides did not begin to turn until after
Speaker 1: the death of Hochi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader, in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: So that's when the terrible decision was made by the Vietnamese.
Speaker 2: They sent us on the Hanoi March. And there's the
Speaker 2: other time that I thought we were going to die
Speaker 2: was in the Hanoi March.
Speaker 3: But we survived.
Speaker 2: And I know that they were threatening to put us
Speaker 2: on trial for war crimes and execute us. And when
Speaker 2: that was announced, President Johnson said, if you do that,
Speaker 2: I'm going to use the B fifty twos to level Hannoi.
Speaker 2: And so they did not put us on trial, but
Speaker 2: they did institute a policy of systematic torture to get
Speaker 2: what they had not been able to get before, and
Speaker 2: so this began the worst period of our captivity. I
Speaker 2: went out to another prison out in the country, very
Speaker 2: bad place called the Briar Patch. I was back in
Speaker 2: solitary confinement and went through some really, really tough times
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 3: And that period.
Speaker 2: Lasted from the summer of nineteen sixty six until late
Speaker 2: sixty nine or seventy, when the policy was changed again
Speaker 2: for the better. Hoach you men died in late sixty nine,
Speaker 2: and so they took that opportunity to change her policy
Speaker 2: towards us, because I think even they realized that what
Speaker 2: they were doing was having a counter effect. Now the
Speaker 2: world knew that we were being tortured.
Speaker 1: That's retired to US Navy Commander Porter Halliburton. This was
Speaker 1: part one of our conversation with Commander Halliburton. In part two,
Speaker 1: we'll learn how he learned that he had been declared
Speaker 1: killed in action, and that's how his family thought of
Speaker 1: him for a long time. We'll also discuss how that
Speaker 1: got fixed, how the famous tap code developed and kept
Speaker 1: morale as high as possible among American prisoners. And of
Speaker 1: course how he got home and what his life is
Speaker 1: like since please join us for that. I'm Greg Corumbus
Speaker 1: and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus
Speaker 1: and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of
Speaker 1: the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American
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Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time
Speaker 1: for Veterans Chronicles