Stars & Stripes US Edition Alaska 040414 by Steve Abeln

Volume 6, No. 16 ©SS 2014

FRIDAY, APRIL 4, 2014

Two men, two fates Everett Alvarez Jr. and Floyd James Thompson

More than 700 U.S. servicemembers became prisoners of war in Vietnam. None endured longer than Floyd James Thompson and Everett Alvarez Jr. The two men represent the extremes of the POW experience — in captivity and in life. Pages 2-6

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COVER STORY

‘A uniquely American tragedy’ Two servicemembers depict the yin and yang of the Vietnam POW experience Operation Homecoming

been shot down in August 1964 during a U.S. reprisal raid after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, considered by In the early weeks of 1973, the many the de facto start of the war. infamous Hanoi Hilton was filling “I had become something of a up with Americans. For once, the freakish leginflux of prisoners was something to end,” Alvarez celebrate. would later Negotiators write. “After from the Unitall, the period ed States and of my captivity North Vietnam spanned the had just finentire length ished wrangling of this undein Paris over an clared war.” agreement to For those cease hostilities locked up with after nearly nine him, Alvarez years of open was living fighting between proof it was the two countries. possible to For the hunmaintain dreds of U.S. military prisoners held at discipline the French coloand hold on nial-era Hoa Lo to faith in prison, and those someday being gathered making it from elsewhere home. in the country, the e rc Fo r Ai S. the U. They end was near for a Cour te sy of son is knew he’d period of wartime in ob R ill B 1st Class r borne up captivity unprecPOW Airman orth Vietnamese soldie N a . y 5 b 6 during edented in American 9 20, 1 guarded re on Sept. tu p ca s an early history. hi r afte period of isolaAmong them were tion as the sole U.S. prisoner of war in men who had enNorth Vietnam. He had later weathdured marathon torture sessions, ered harsh interrogation and outright long stretches of starvation and torture and, in a final blow, received years of isolation in dank cells and some of the most heartbreaking news even cages. Now they could walk the from home any prisoner could get. grounds of the prison, talk to fellow Yet he’d never given up. POWs, even go to the jail kitchen for “I knew I could make one more day snacks fixed with food from a backlog because this of care packages their jailers had other guy recently stopped withholding. was seven or As more prisoners arrived, they more years noticed they were being grouped ahead of roughly in order of their capture me,” said a dates, which they guessed would fellow prisbe the order in which they’d return oner, Tom home. Some were new arrivals shot Hanton, an down during the recent bombing, Air Force captain while others had been confined for shot down in 1972 and most of the war. today president of In the eyes of most of them, no the Association of prisoner had endured longer than Navy pilot Everett Alvarez Jr. He had Vietnam War

STORY BY CHRIS CARROLL Stars and Stripes

POWs. “There was always someone ahead of you.” As prisoners continued to gather, to the surprise of many, word soon spread that there was someone ahead of even Alvarez. “Hey, tell Ev there’s a guy here they brought up from South Vietnam who’s been held longer than Alvarez,” another prisoner said. “His name’s Jim Thompson.” Alvarez had read about Thompson being held in the South years earlier and wondered whether anyone could survive in such conditions. His reply, related by author Tom Philpott in Thompson’s biography: “I’ll be damned.”

Different fates By the time the United States withdrew from what was then the lengthiest war in its history, the two men — Special Forces Capt. Floyd James Thompson and Alvarez — had become the longest-held American POWs. They were two of the 662 military prisoners of war who came home alive from Vietnam, according to Defense Department statistics compiled by the Association of Vietnam War POWs. All have their own stories and faced unique challenges. But in many ways the soldier Thompson and the sailor Alvarez represent two extremes — the yin and yang — of the Vietnam POW experience. Thompson, captured in South Vietnam 50 years last week, spent much of his nearly nine-year ordeal in remote jungle prison camps, with the Army refusing to acknowledge he was even alive. When fighter pilot Alvarez became the first American shot down over North Vietnam a few months later, his face was on magazine covers. He

soon became widely and incorrectly regarded as the longest-held prisoner of the Vietnam War. Thompson’s comparative anonymity continued in the post-war years, and it galled him. It can be traced to at least two factors. First, his wife, Alyce, had developed a relationship with another man in the year after her husband’s capture, and in an effort to spare embarrassment to herself and her children she had demanded the Army withhold details about Thompson’s captivity. Second, many point to a widespread bias within the Army in the 1960s that caused POWs to be held in low regard, almost as if they had failed by being captured. In similar fashion, Purple Heart decorations in Vietnam were sometimes disdainfully dubbed “combat inefficiency badges” for troops who, instead of shooting the enemy, ended up injured themselves. The family and admirers of another Army captive in South Vietnam — Capt. Humbert “Rocky” Versace, who fiercely opposed his Viet Cong captors for two years until they finally killed him in 1965 — worked for decades before he posthumously received the Medal of Honor in 2002. “I just don’t believe the Army at that time was willing to give the Medal of Honor to someone who was a prisoner of war,” Stephen Versace, Rocky’s brother, told Stars and Stripes. “In their minds, heroes were not people who were captured.” While supporters around the country were donning metal POW bracelets to help keep attention focused on the fate of U.S. prisoners, Thompson’s name was never engraved on one. It was different in the Navy and Air Force. Names like James Stockdale and Lance Sijan still reverberate in the histories of the services. Stockdale was a Navy commander (promoted to captain in captivity) who had helped set up a secret command system in prison and almost killed himself to conceal it. Sijan, an Air Force captain, was so bent on escape and resistance that he was murdered by his angry captors. SEE PAGE 3

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COVER STORY when Thompson — by then a captain — deployed to South Each was Vietnam in December 1963. awarded the There, he commanded a Special Medal of Honor Forces unit in a remote camp soon after the war. in Quang Tri province in north Alvarez, who central Vietnam, near the locareceived the tion of the later battles of Khe Silver Star and Sanh. other medals for his time in captivity, often tried to Shootdowns correct the record On March 26, 1964, Thompabout who was the son was on an observation longest-held POW S. Air Force mission in a small plane flown Courtesy of the U. in the decades by Air Force Captain Richafter the war. For errillas, by Viet Cong gu ard L. Whitesides. Wanting ld he , him — sunny and m na et Vi h or were fully POWs in Sout ts hu a better look and undeterred or s gregarious in his ge ca ld in s. were typically he ming jungle weather and insect by the danger, Thompson outlook once home ea exposed to the st told Whitesides to fly lower — it was a time of than the 1,500-foot altitude allowed continual achieveby regulation. As the plane swooped ment. He raised corpse propped up by guards as a a family, succeeded in careers in down, Vietcong insurgents opened up ghoulish joke — until he saw him government and private business with small-arms fire and shot it out of move. and moved in social circles that the sky. “He looked like something out of included U.S. presidents. When Thompson regained conAuschwitz,” O’Connor told Philpott Thompson, also a Silver Star recipisciousness and found himself a in “Glory Denied,” a 2001 biography ent, struggled to shake the horror of prisoner of local mountain tribesmen of Thompson. After hearing half an imprisonment. His Vietnam torment drafted into service by the Viet Cong. hour of scratching through a cell gave way to tragedy at home that wall, O’Connor asked Thompson what Whitesides was gone. He would later was almost mythical in its depth and be classified as killed in action. he was doing. completeness. He battled alcoholThompson, suffering from a spinal “Standing up” was the stoic reply. ism, struggled in his Army career, fracture as well as smaller injuries, His devastated condition – the result watched the ongoing destruction of was temporarily crippled by the of years of starvation, torture and his family, became disabled and sufcrash. Luckily, he was also being repeated bouts of malaria — terrified fered deep depression. treated humanely by the highlanders. other new POWs. For O’Connor, it “He was kind of our version of “I was taken from village to village showed what a survivor determined Job,” said Orson Swindle III, a in the weeks following my capture,” to see home again was capable of Marine aviator and former POW con- enduring. he told the Army in debriefings after fined for more than six years. “Just returning home. “They made no “I don’t know anyone else who endless suffering.” attempt to interrogate me or treat could have lived through the stuff he me like a prisoner. I couldn’t walk, did,” said O’Connor, who soon lost so they weren’t worried about an Old man of the South track of Thompson as the North Vietescape. They were very solicitous of namese shuffled prisoners between Alvarez wasn’t the only one at my welfare.” camps. the Hanoi Hilton in January 1973 As he regained some mobility, Thompson had come into the Army for whom Thompson’s arrival was mindful of his obligation to “make 12 years before that meeting, in a surprise. Army helicopter pilot every effort to escape” under the mil1956, as an unenthusiastic peacetime Michael O’Connor had encountered itary Code of Conduct, he soon began draftee but he quickly acclimated to Thompson in early 1968 at a prison trying to slip away from camp. Each Army life. camp called Bao Cao. At the time, he time, he stumbled across a guard and Though the former grocery clerk hadn’t seemed a candidate for longpretended he was looking for a place lacked a college education, he had term survival. to urinate to avoid punishment. a sharp mind and was considered a Thompson, then four years into Unlike Thompson, Alvarez was promising enough soldier to attend his captivity, had finished a forced officer candidate school and receive a being interrogated by communist march up the Ho Chi Minh trail North Vietnamese officials hours commission. Fitness reports tracked into North Vietnam several months after fishermen pulled him out of the down by Philpott paint a picture of a earlier. His welcome to the country cocky, self-assured officer sometimes Gulf of Tonkin. He’d taken off earlier that day, Aug. 5, 1964, as part of a consisted of months shackled in a given to making snap decisions he’d first U.S. attack on North Vietnamsmall cage for refusing to celebrate pay for later. ese targets and been shot down soon In 1961, he was pulled into the North Vietnam’s Independence Day. after he’d emptied his A-4C’s 20mm Everything he’d survived was writ- Special Forces, which was rapidly cannon into a warship’s bridge. expanding to meet the demands of ten on his body as he stared out of a Within days, he became the first cell door at the camp, the first place an advisory mission to help South American POW to move into Hoa Lo he’d been held with other Americans Vietnamese troops hold off a growing Prison, well before it was dubbed, since his capture. When the freshly communist insurgency. with pitch-black POW humor, the captured O’Connor first saw him, He and his wife, Alyce, had three he took Thompson for an emaciated Hanoi Hilton. Although frequently children and a fourth on the way FROM PAGE 2

shackled and living in revolting, rat-infested conditions, he gave his interrogators only the required name, rank, service number and date of birth. Further questions he met with stony silence. Neither his North Vietnamese jailers nor the Viet Cong guerillas holding Thompson intended to allow their American captives to simply live out the war in confinement. Both men, they calculated, could be made into useful pawns in the larger Vietnamese communist cause. The administration of President Richard Nixon, many believed, would later use the plight of the POWs to attack North Vietnamese conduct on the international stage while seeking to shore up support for ongoing military actions.

Forced testimony Alvarez was the first U.S. prisoner of war taken in North Vietnam, while Thompson was the 14th U.S. servicemember captured in the South. It wouldn’t be long before they were followed by many more. In total, 734 U.S. servicemembers are known to have become POWs during the Vietnam War, and 662 survived the war, as did 138 civilian POWs. An additional 1,643 U.S. troops remain unaccounted for. By the end of the conflict, their sheer numbers made U.S. POWs natural bargaining chips for the North Vietnamese. Early on, however, when Thompson and Alvarez were first imprisoned, the Vietnamese communists were more interested in their potential value as propaganda mouthpieces. From Thompson, his captors were particularly desperate for public testimony that the Vietnamese people wanted the United States out of the country. They also wanted a statement from him that he was enjoying great hospitality as a prisoner, and they were willing to do almost anything to him to get it. By July 1964, Thompson had regained his ability to walk freely, but indoctrination and interrogation were intensifying. His captors had begun reducing his food rations to weaken his will to resist and transferred him to a newly built, heavily guarded camp where he was the sole prisoner. Suffering from malaria and fearing his chance to escape would ebb as he grew weaker, Thompson fled the camp one morning when his guards thought he was asleep. SEE PAGE 4

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He struggled northward through the jungle, hoping the Viet Cong would assume he was heading south. He was recaptured at dusk by local tribesmen who caught him as he crossed a river. “It was all downhill from that night on,” he said in a post-captivity debriefing. When he was brought back to camp, the commander beat him unconscious with a stick. VC political officers subjected him to longer, harsher interrogations. Beatings were commonplace, and his captors began starving him in earnest. It continued for weeks. Finally, in mid-August, drifting in and out of consciousness, Thompson copied a statement they had written for him and then read it into a microphone, simply to end the torment. When broadcast months later in the United States, the tape was the first evidence for the U.S. government and his family he was still alive. He was being treated very well, he had said. Afterward, he sank into depression over what he’d done.

Torture and confession Alvarez’s jailors became serious about extracting a statement from him two years into his captivity. By 1966, there were more U.S. pilots being held at the Hanoi Hilton. As the number of guards needed to corral the Americans grew, so did the level of brutality. Failure to bow to guards or a moment of defiance could result in a savage, disabling beating. Prisoners began to warn others — using the simple tap code that had become their primary means of communication — about a diabolical new method of abuse. Interrogators were using ropes and handcuffs to bind prisoners into stretched, distorted positions, cutting off circulation in their limbs and injuring joints. Once bent into the unnatural poses, the Americans could be left that way for agonizing hours until they agreed to confess to a litany of crimes against humanity and the Vietnamese people. “The worst time was at night, when you heard their keys rattling,” Alvarez said in an interview. “You knew they were coming to take someone, and you prayed it wasn’t going to be you. Then you prayed for the poor guy they took,” whose screams often echoed through the night. They came for Alvarez the morn-

ing of Aug. 9, 1966, and told him to write his confession. Alvarez refused. He had listened as some of his fellow prisoners held out through marathon torture sessions. They might scream their lungs out in pain, yet they resisted as long as they could. He knew it was his turn to be tested. Soon he found himself bound with his elbows pulled unnaturally close together behind his back by a pair of handcuffs. “It felt like a hacksaw had stuck deep in my flesh,” Alvarez later explained. “The cuffs seemed to cut through to the bone. My head was pushed far forward and all I could do was yell and scream to ride with the pain. They left me alone for quarter-hour spells and then returned, yanking my arms up and squeezing the cuffs tighter yet.” After a few hours, he could take no more. He wrote his confession with a sense of shame. “I had vowed to die rather than confess lies yet when the time came I chose not to die,” he said. “I had been tested and found wanting. I hollered for them to save my skin and this was the price I had agreed to pay. I capitulated during a single morning of torture.” Indeed, Alvarez — as Thompson had done after a regimen of beatings and starvation — had technically violated the Code of the U.S. Fighting Force by giving more than basic identifying information. It would be hard to find a POW who would condemn either for it, however. The reality of being twisted with ropes, or strung up by the thumbs, or subjected to electric shock quickly erases illusions of invincibility, POWs say. Some can joke about it now. “They weren’t going to get anything out of me. I mean, I was Steve McQueen in ‘The Great Escape’ — nothing,” said Paul Galanti, a former Navy POW who’s now commissioner of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services. “That lasted about an hour.” If a prisoner was tough enough not to break under torture, that probably meant he would die, several former POWs said. “We were all on the Code of Conduct, you know— name, rank, serial number, date of birth,” said Mike McGrath, a Navy lieutenant and A-4 pilot shot down in 1967. “I contend everybody went beyond that.” Ranking officers among the prisoners, who like Stockdale endured some of the harshest torture of all, established guidelines that gave

POWs latitude to decide how much agony they could take before signing a confession or making a statement. The general ethos was one of compassion — calling for prisoners to do their best to resist torture, but if they weakened in one session, to “bounce back” and be stronger next time. The key, McGrath and others said, was to find ways to deflect interrogators without defying them. That meant inventing names of fictional squadron mates, providing false information about ships and planes or fabricating details about life in America. One prisoner, for instance, told his interrogator about his family’s electric banana peeler. A fellow POW who heard about the story later bragged that his family was so well off that even the bedrooms in his house had banana peelers. Most of the interrogators weren’t very savvy. “You’d try to play cat and mouse with them, you’d try to tell them the minimum you could just to get out of there,” McGrath said. Sometimes nothing worked. “Occasionally, they’d put me on my knees for three days, and my knees turned into flat tires,” McGrath said. More than four decades after their release, orthopedic problems and nerve damage from torture are still common problems among former Vietnam POWS.

Family matters On Sept. 2, 1969, North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh died at age 79 — a turning point for the prisoners. Within weeks, at prison camps across North Vietnam, torture and abuse died down. As Stockdale said, Ho’s death meant “a lot less brutality, and larger bowls of rice.” In a literal sense, the POWs’ existence became brighter. “They came around and knocked the bricks out of the windows, which had been blocked up, and gave us some ventilation,” recalled Ken Cordier, an Air Force captain and F-4 pilot shot down in 1966.

As life grew more bearable for the prisoners, Alvarez was increasingly worried about what was happening at home. He had noticed a growing distance and unhappiness in the letters sent by his wife, Tangee, whom he’d married just three months before his capture. On Christmas 1970, he received a final letter from her, written 13 months earlier but withheld by prison officials. Then the letters stopped cold. Finally he wrote to his mother, desperately asking her to level with him about Tangee. On Christmas Day 1971, Alvarez was handed a reply from his mother with the words that devastated him: “Tangee has decided not to wait.” The lonely young woman had gone to Mexico for a divorce and had a new man in her life — a fact that Alvarez’s family had been hiding from him. Alvarez reeled from the pain of the blow, and retreated from other POWs as he replayed the details of his short life with his wife again and again in his mind. He leaned heavily on prayer and his Christian faith to help him cope. His despair didn’t survive long. In April 1972, he was pacing alone outside when he looked up at the first blue sky he’d noticed since receiving the news. He realized that whenever he returned to the United States, he’d be ready to move on with his life. (Alvarez would remarry within months of his release.) “I stood revitalized,” he later wrote. “It did not hurt to think about Tangee anymore. She was finally out of my system. I was free of her ghost. I was going to live.” Thompson, too, had fretted for years over the family left behind. The youngest of his four children, a son he had never seen, was born the day after he went missing in action. The shock had sent Alyce, his wife, into labor. For Thompson, his dreams of returning home to his family had sustained him in the darkest periods of captivity. SEE page PAGE 6 see 8

“I had vowed to die rather than confess lies yet when the time came I chose not to die. I had been tested and found wanting. I hollered for them to save my skin and this was the price I had agreed to pay. I capitulated during a single morning of torture.” Navy pilot Everett Alvarez Jr., seen above reading a copy of Stars and Stripes after being released from the POW camp.

P R E A M B L E

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Look for more in coming weeks!

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AFGHANISTAN

Picking the next president Candidates key to future of Afghanistan, legacy of US BY HEATH DRUZIN AND JOSH SMITH Stars and Stripes

KABUL n Islamist and former warlord. A bookish technocrat. The president’s longtime rival and his handpicked man. One of these will likely dictate Afghanistan’s future and the legacy of America’s longest war. As Afghanistan’s voters prepare to elect a new president Saturday, the field of candidates has narrowed to eight, with four frontrunners: Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani, Zalmai Rassoul and Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf. Though they are campaigning across the country as salt-of-the-earth Afghans, all the major candidates are from the Afghan elite. All have spent significant time abroad. Perhaps most significantly, all have vowed to do what President Hamid Karzai has refused to do:

Abdullah Abdullah: Abdullah once

served as Karzai’s foreign minister but has since broken with Afghanistan’s current leader. Abdullah promises to move even further from Karzai if elected. “The path that President Karzai has taken in the past few years has been to blame everything on the international community … it’s very disappointing,” Abdullah told Stars and Stripes during an interview at his compound deep in the Panjshir Valley. “I think that the goodwill that existed a few years ago doesn’t exist there anymore.”

sign a security agreement with the U.S. that would pave the way for a much reduced but continuing international military presence in the country. Such a presence is seen by many as key to bolstering the Afghan security forces as they continue to battle an entrenched insurgency. Whether Afghans accept the outcome of the election — the first democratic transition of power in Afghanistan’s history — will help determine whether the war-ravaged country moves closer to stability or slides deeper into chaos. The election also will serve as a litmus test for a mission that has severely challenged the 65-yearold NATO alliance and will determine the future of Afghanistan’s relationship with the U.S., which has deteriorated to the point of open hostility between Washington and Karzai.

Born in Kabul in 1960, Abdullah graduated from ophthalmology school before joining the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union. He eventually became an adviser to famed anti-Soviet commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was assassinated days before the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. Abdullah came in second behind Karzai in the 2009 presidential election, but he declined to participate in a runoff after alleging massive fraud on behalf of the incumbent. If elected, Abdullah promises he will get

Ashraf Ghani:

A former Afghan finance minister, Ghani earned advanced degrees from Columbia University in international relations and anthropology. He spent almost a decade teaching at Johns Hopkins University and then another 10 years at the World Bank. That was all before the Taliban regime fell in 2001. Since then Ghani has worked to develop government programs ranging from the

Afghanistan’s relationship with the West “back on track.” He says Karzai’s policies toward the Taliban have caused Afghanistan to seek peace negotiations from a position of weakness. “While the genuine desire for peace should be made clear and genuine effort should be made, at the same time it has to be very clear to the Taliban that, should they choose the path of violence and terrorism, the people in the country will stand united and defend the rights of their citizens,” he said.

plan for a transitional administration to the reorganization of the country’s chaotic finances. Now his campaign slogan is “change and consistency,” terms that may seem contradictory but indicate that the veteran technocrat wants to continue the policies that he thinks are effective while reforming those that aren’t. Like other candidates, he supports signing a security agreement with the U.S., but he doesn’t see foreign troops as key to long-term

peace in Afghanistan, said his spokesman, Sulaiman Khapalwak. “You can’t bring peace through fighting,” Khapalwak said. “Peace talks will be the main focus of the approach to the Taliban.” While Ghani would establish a commission to mediate between the Taliban and the Afghan and international governments, he promises no such negotiations for any foreign fighters who may be involved in the insurgency.

see page 7

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AFGHANISTAN see page 6

HOSHANG H ASHIMI /AP

Supporters of Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah listen to his speech during a campaign rally in Herat, Afghanistan, on Tuesday. Eight Afghan presidential candidates are campaigning for the third presidential election. Elections will take place on Saturday.

Zalmai Rassoul: The son of a doctor, Rassoul became a doctor after studying medicine in France. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, he served in several government posts, including Afghanistan’s national adviser and foreign minister. A longtime confidant of Karzai, he is widely seen as the palace’s man, though his

campaign denies getting any help from the government. Though he has been polling behind Abdullah and Ghani, he is likely to get a bump from Karzai’s tacit support. Along with battling corruption, Rassoul’s first priorities include restarting peace talks with the Taliban. “Peace is the only solution to the fight,” his spokesman, Javed Faisal, said.

Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf: Among candidates with the potential to garner significant votes, Sayyaf is the one who makes the West most nervous. A long-time Islamic hardliner, he has been seen as anti-American and even has a terrorist movement in the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf, named after him. He fought against the Soviets in the 1980s and commanded a feared militia in the civil war that broke out after Moscow withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. He is also one of several presidential and vice presidential candidates accused of wartime

Building a strong relationship with America would also be a top goal of a Rassoul presidency, Faisal said. “We do need a counterpart to support us, and it’s very good for the United States of America to stay here to eliminate al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, which are in Afghanistan or outside of Afghanistan threatening the security of the world,” he said.

atrocities — most infamously, a massacre of the minority Hazaras in the early 1990s — though he denies all charges. A former professor and Islamic scholar, Sayyaf was instrumental in bringing Osama bin Laden to Afghanistan in 1996, though he has since sworn off extremism and has condemned terrorism. He is regarded as a fringe candidate but is likely to gain at least enough votes to play spoiler. During his campaign, Sayyaf has positioned himself as more moderate, saying that Afghanistan needs a Western military presence past the

end of this year. One area where he differs greatly from the other candidates is his uncompromising view on the Taliban. He is critical of Karzai’s overtures to the insurgent group. “Those who surrender and come back to Afghanistan, they can live here, but those Taliban who are making violence in the country — every day they are killing kids, killing women — Professor Sayyaf won’t make any compromise with them,” Fahim Kohdamani, a spokesman for Sayyaf, said. “We won’t be like the Karzai government.”

Zubair Babakarkhail contributed to this report. druzin.heath@stripes.com / Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes / smith.josh@stripes.com / Twitter: @joshjonsmith

The Bill of Rights THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution. RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz. ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution. Content provided by A1 Publications, Alaska.

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At Bao Cao, where he’d been mistaken for a corpse, he told Mike O’Connor that what bothered him more than anything was separation from them. Thoughts of home likely played a factor in his determination to rebuild his strength once the overt torture and starvation regimen ended with Ho’s death. A civilian prisoner, Lew Meyer, made rehabbing the sickly Green Beret his mission. The two were soon jogging laps around their cell. As his strength grew, the old, self-assured Thompson began to re-emerge. He sought to establish leadership in various prisons where he was held, under the assumption he had been promoted on the normal schedule and was likely the ranking officer. (In fact, the Army had several times inexplicably deferred Thompson’s promotions while in captivity.) In September 1971, a reinvigorated Thompson, Meyer and another prisoner broke out of their prison camp south of Hanoi, nicknamed “Rockpile,” in Thompson’s last of several escape attempts. They were quickly captured amid a hail of bullets. When they were brought back into the prison, however, no torture and no harsh punishments awaited them. For the American POWs, times had truly changed. Pressure in the United States to end the war was growing, and the need to bring home the POWs had become one of the major concerns. Late in 1972, the long-stalled peace talks in Paris picked up momentum, hurried along by Operation Linebacker II, a devastating U.S. bombing campaign in December. On Feb. 12, 1973, a U.S. Air Force C-141 transport plane landed in Hanoi to carry out the first of dozens of groups of prisoners who would leave in the following two months. Alvarez was on that first flight out.

Unhappy return Although no one had endured a longer captivity, Thompson had to wait another month for release, with some speculating the North Vietnamese wanted more time to fatten him up for public relations reasons. He finally left Hanoi on March 16, less than two weeks shy of nine years in captivity. The blows from fate began to rain down on him immediately.

The day he returned, Thompson, who had long dreamed of his reunion with his wife and children, learned from Alyce that years earlier she had moved the family to Massachusetts to live with an Army sergeant she had begun seeing a few months after her husband’s disappearance. She was driven, she said, by a loneliness exacerbated by a lack of support from other officers’ wives at Fort Bragg, N.C., and by a simple need for help raising four children. It would soon become clear that Alyce’s betrayal went even deeper. She was the one who forbade the Army from publicizing his captivity, cutting him off from much of the honor his lengthy imprisonment had earned him. For years, the Pentagon had listed Alvarez’s name at the top of the list of longest-held POWs, although it also acknowledged there was another unnamed prisoner held even longer. In 1971, while aware that he was likely alive, the Army prepared a memo obtained by Philpott that revealed Alyce was attempting to have Thompson declared dead so she could move on with her life. “He went through hell, but I went through hell too,” she later said. “There are certain things I did I’m not proud of. But I had to do them, for my children, for my own sanity.” Still, Alyce told Thompson on the day of his return that she was willing to leave the sergeant to attempt to rebuild the family. After nearly a decade of being put through hell on earth, Thompson took the news calmly and agreed.

Descent Thompson, who according to Alyce had been a heavy drinker before his capture, began to rely more and more on the bottle now that he had his freedom. Their marriage, cold and awkward since Thompson’s return, exploded one night in 1974 when Alyce accused him of homosexuality — she’d once walked in on him embracing another man, she told Philpott — and he began punching her in front of their children. They soon divorced, and Thompson, who remained on active duty in the Army, fell further into depression and alcoholism. He fell out of touch with the children, who had believed him dead throughout his captivity. He complained of horrific nightmares. In one, he was a skeleton walking down a trail in Vietnam, and any food he ate dropped out between

his ribs. In 1977, Thompson attempted suicide with a combination of drugs and alcohol. He lived through the attempt, and through sheer determination and the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, friends said, he began to turn his Released p life around SAL VEDER /A riso P g reeted by h ner of war Lt. Col. Ro in the bert L. Stirm is family at Calif., as he Travis Air F is following orce Base re in Fairfield, 1973. In th turns home from Vie years. tn e by son Rob lead is Stirm’s daugh am on March 17, In ert, 14; dau te ghter Cynth r Lori, 15; followed and son Ro 1981, he ia, 11; wife ger, 12. Loretta; suffered a heart attack, quickly followed by a debilitating stroke that left him in a and as an entrepreneur who started coma for months and struggling with several successful businesses. serious disabilities for the rest of his Alvarez, 76, still goes daily to the life. He was medically retired from government IT services firm, Alvathe military in 1982 at the rank of rez and Associates, which he operates colonel. in suburban Washington, D.C. He It wasn’t the final blow. speaks reluctantly of Thompson’s In 1990, Jim Thompson Jr., the estranged son born the day after he was ordeal, and when he does so, like the other former POWs, he speaks in captured, was charged with killing a man he believed was having an affair hushed tones. Although he won’t go on the record with his wife. He was convicted of about his relationship with the man second-degree murder. In an interview with The New York he unintentionally overshadowed, other POWs say that over the years, Times, not long before his death at Alvarez tried to use his influence to 69 in 2002, Thompson looked back on help Thompson conquer his problems his life with deep dissatisfaction and and settle into his post-captivity life. voiced his pain in terms almost bibliIt would never come easy for cal in their directness. Thompson, who to the end found ‘’I’m quite bitter,’’ he said, his abilhis main satisfaction in what he had ity to communicate hampered by the endured as a survivor of the longest stroke. ‘’The depression and so forth. and perhaps the most brutal POW I can’t describe it — the agony. All experience of any American in the my children are foreign to me. Then Vietnam War. depression hits me. Not now, but for a “He absolutely celebrated it, and long period.’’ it made his life worth living in those But to a man whose lot in life was to endure, an admission of intolerable final years,” said Philpott, who found Thompson living in isolation in pain and an admission of defeat are Florida. Outside his condominium, he two different things. had a POW flag flying and a plaque on display to ensure everyone knew Survivors what he’d been through. “It’s a uniquely American tragedy,” As Thompson sank and sank, he Philpott said. “In the end, everything watched Alvarez ascend in public life had been taken from him, except his — as an administrator at the Peace will to survive.” Corps, deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration, with seats carroll.chris@stripes.com Twitter: @ChrisCarroll on numerous boards of directors

“He absolutely celebrated [surviving the longest POW experience of the Vietnam War], and it made his life worth living in those final years. It’s a uniquely American tragedy. In the end, everything had been taken from him, except his will to survive.”

The Bill of Rights Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Amendment II A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Amendment III No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. Content provided by A1 Publications, Alaska.

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STARS AND STRIPES

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2014 Friday,April April 4,4,2014

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Hagel is backing tobacco sale ban on bases, ships W

Small-town friends meet to reflect on small world

BY JON H ARPER

Now the dollars are one thing. But the health of your people — I don’t know if you put a price tag on that.

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — As the Navy considers banning tobacco sales on all bases and ships, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave a strong endorsement of the review Monday and suggested that he would be in favor of a ban. “I don’t know if there’s anybody in America who still thinks that tobacco is good for you,” Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon in response to a question about the Navy review. “We don’t allow smoking in any of our government buildings. Restaurants, states, [and] municipalities have pretty clear regulations on this. I think in reviewing any options that we have as to whether we in the military through commissaries [or] PXs sell or continue to sell tobacco is something we need to look at. And we are looking at it.

Chuck Hagel secretary of defense And I think we owe it to our people.” Hagel said that the financial and human costs of tobacco use need to be taken into account. The secretary said that dealing with tobacco-related health issues costs the Defense Department more than $1 billion a year. “Now the dollars are one thing,” Hagel said. “But the health of your people — I don’t know if you put a price tag on that. So I think it does need to be looked at and reviewed.” Studies show military members use tobacco at higher rates than same-age civilians.

A 2011 DOD survey showed 24 percent of troops smoked, compared with 20 percent of civilians of the same age. Last week, Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence, a Navy spokeswoman, confirmed Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus is taking a new look at tobacco use across the service. A Navy official, who spoke to Stars and Stripes on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the topic, said one option on the table is banning tobacco sales on Navy bases and ships. harper.jon@stripes.com Twitter: @JHarperStripes

DOD: Afghan War claims no US lives in March BY JON H ARPER Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — For the first time in more than seven years, the U.S. military just went a full calendar month without suffering any fatalities in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. No American troops died in Afghanistan in March, the first month since January 2007 in which no U.S. servicemembers

died in the country as a result of combat or non-combat-related injuries, according to the Defense Department and iCasualties, an independent website that tracks coalition fatalities. March was only the third month since September 2001 in which no Americans in uniform died in Afghanistan, according to the DOD. Twelve servicemembers were injured last month, according to the

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Pentagon. August 2011 was the deadliest month of the war for the U.S. thus far, when 71 troops were killed or died from non-combat-related injuries, according to the DOD. As of Monday, 2,309 American troops have died in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. harper.jon@stripes.com Twitter: @JHarperStripes

This publication is a compilation of stories from Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military community. The contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, including the Defense Department or the military services. The U.S. Edition of Stars and Stripes is published jointly by Stars and Stripes and this newspaper. The appearance of advertising in this publication, including inserts or supplements, does not constitute endorsement by the DOD or Stars and Stripes of the products or services advertised. Products or services advertised in this publication shall be made available for purchase, use, or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, physical handicap, political affiliation, or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user, or patron.

orlds and stories She stopped me on the canned collided last week goods aisle at Patch Barracks at a little coffee commissary and said, “I think shop in Altus, I know you. You’re Mitzi’s Okla., where family and sister!” friends joined me to celebrate She was right. When Amy’s publication of a book, a colfamily was at Altus the first lection of columns that have time, her kids were students at appeared in this space since the on-base elementary school the first installment of Spouse where my sister Mitzi teaches Calls appeared April 1, 2007. fourth grade. Most of the stories I’ve Cathy also came to the written over the past seven party. We met at Ramstein, years had their origins in or Germany, where she was my around Altus Air Force Base. daughter’s dance teacher. Altus is the town where my Cathy had known our family father retired after 20 years in a couple of SPOUSE CALLS years when the military. It’s also where I met the man who would take we crossed me on the next part of my paths in military journey as a spouse. Altus and We’re still traveling that road, discovered but most of my extended famthat she and ily lives in Oklahoma. I are both The day of the celebration, military my mom was there, of course, kids whose along with my stepdad, my dads retired grandmother, all of my sisters, there. We Terri Barnes a couple of aunts, an uncle, a graduated niece, a nephfrom the ew, and plenty Join the conversation with Terri at same high stripes.com/go/spousecalls of friends. I school a few wish my dad years apart, could have but had never been there too. He would most met. She recently moved back likely have enjoyed it from a to Altus, so she came by to quiet corner if there had been give me a hug to pass along to one. The place was hopping. my daughter. My sister Anita and I made The paths that cross and faces at the camera while converge in a military town Ashleigh, the baby of the give us the sense we’re living family, took pictures. Another in a smaller, friendlier world. photographer snapped a photo Those paths brought us all to of all four sisters together: a particular coffee shop that Ashleigh, Anita, Terri, Mitzi. day: Confectionately Yours, That doesn’t happen often owned by Donald Jouett, an enough. Air Force retiree, and his My grandmother, who is 94, wife, Doris. took it all in with a smile. Donald and Doris are the Classmates from high kind of people who befriend their customers, including school days dropped by. Some the military ones who come brought flowers. Others and go; the kind of people who brought along their parents, have going-away parties at kids, grandkids and other their home for airmen when relatives. Reneé, whose Air they complete their weeks of Force dad also retired in training out at the base. Altus, drove an hour to bring They love the military, and her family. Reneé and I met in their military customers love grade school and were nearly them, as evidenced by the inseparable through high hundreds of unit patches and school. We were on the staff of our school newspaper together nametags covering the walls of the shop, given by patrons as tenth graders, so when our over 39 years of business. journalism teacher, Linda, If you’re ever in Altus, showed up, it was a happy stop by for coffee and try reunion. the Texas Triple Decadence Later, I saw Linda chatting fudge. Doris was born in with Amy, a military wife Texas, and it’s her own secret whose family is stationed in recipe. Tell them Terri sent Altus for the second time. you. They know me. I met Amy a few years ago when we were both living at Terri Barnes writes Spouse Calls weekly for Stars and Stripes. USAG Stuttgart, Germany.

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The Bill of Rights Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. Amendment VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

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The Bill of Rights Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

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