Eleven Letters Honor POW's Hidden Wound

Was it really a sin for a man to give in?

Could I better resist each demand?

Brudno told others he agreed to write his confession after handcuffs were ratcheted into both wrist bones. Like others, he struggled with depression. Two pilots, Phillip Butler and Robert Shumaker, later told military historians they tried to kill themselves in Briarpatch by beating their heads against walls.

Brudno built a reputation throughout the camps for outwitting his captors.

After a month alone in an underground pit for communications violations, Brudno continued the widespread practice of tapping on the walls in code: the letters of the alphabet corresponded to a certain number of taps. Air Force Maj. Wes Schierman remembers admiring Brudno's invention of a new way to communicate the code: He tied a sequence of knots in lengths of string torn from a blanket, then sneaked the strings to other prisoners.

Brudno also was adept at mocking his captors when forced to read news reports critical of the war over the radio. More than once, his ironic, singsong voice was broadcast through the camps. Prisoners chuckled when he incorporated a mild obscenity into Ho Chi Minh's name.

Marine Capt. Orson Swindle heard a Brudno broadcast from his cell in Hao Lo prison, the "Hanoi Hilton." Swindle remembers it as a bright spot in a dark day.

"I've got to meet this guy," he remembers saying to himself.

League of Families

By the late 1960s, wives of POWs began talking of their struggles, figuring that the policy of silence hadn't done much good. Debby Brudno kept a low profile, enrolling in a graduate program at Columbia University to help lend shape to what seemed like formless years ahead. She soured on the war for reasons more personal than political.

Bob Brudno completed his four years as a naval officer and threw himself into POW-MIA issues.

He grew impatient with protesters and politicians who called for the end of the war and used the POWs as a rationale. He saw it as hypocrisy: Why weren't they worried about human rights when the Hanoi March was in the papers?

He moved to Washington and was elected to the board of the new National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. The league organized letter-writing campaigns to urge Hanoi to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

As more families spoke out, they started receiving more letters from prisoners. The White House was pressured to show that POWs were a priority. On Nov. 18, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed off on a plan to invade a prison camp and rescue about 70 Americans.

Shaving Day

The raid began under a quarter moon that hung over Haiphong Bay and cast a thin light over the countryside. It was early on Nov. 21, 1970, and William Guenon was piloting a C-130 at shakingly slow speeds toward Son Tay, leading a formation of six helicopters flying as fast as they could at its wings. The helicopters carried 56 Green Berets and Rangers. The C-130 was to light up the prison camp with flares before the 56 raiders freed the Son Tay prisoners and loaded them onto helicopters.

Guenon remembers scanning the list of the prisoners. His eye tripped over one of them: Brudno, a friend from flight school.

At 2:17 a.m., Guenon flipped on an internal green droplight to signal loadmasters to release parachute flares. The sky was aglow. The helicopters swooped inside the prison walls, spraying guard towers with 7.62mm guns. The raiders rushed out of the helicopters and swept through the prison.

They found empty cells.

The prisoners had been moved to another camp five months before.

After hearing of the failed raid, some prisoners were overjoyed that they hadn't been forgotten. But Brudno's bouts of depression deepened. He had always been angry at his captors, but now he boiled. Although conditions in the camps -- including food rations -- had improved after 1969, Brudno would go days at a time without speaking. Tschudy watched helplessly as Brudno often refused to eat the food he received, his body carved into harder angles by near starvation.

When his head cleared, he taught math and physics to others. The camp sometimes looked like a university: 96 percent of the prisoners in North Vietnam had gone to college and had sampled a wide range of courses among them. Navy Cmdr. Paul Gallanti tutored Brudno in French. Brudno picked the brains of literature majors and fixated on composing his poem. He mentally designed a dream house down to the last floor joist.

As my dream house progressed, I became more obsessed

With designs for your future with me.

For without you to share all those dreams with me there,