hardheadjarhead
Senior Master
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5121264,00.html
As a Navy pilot captured in North Viet Nam in 1965, Stockdale was taken to Hoa Lo Prison, known as the ``Hanoi Hilton.'' His shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, his leg had been shattered by angry villagers and a torturer, and his back was broken. But he refused to capitulate.
Rather than allow himself to be used in a propaganda film, Stockdale smashed his face with a mahogany stool.
``My only hope was to disfigure myself,'' Stockdale wrote in his 1984 autobiography ``In Love and War.'' The ploy worked, but he spent the next two years in leg irons.
After Ho Chi Minh's death, he broke a glass pane in an interrogation room and slashed his wrists until he passed out in his own blood. After that, captors relented in their harsh treatment of him and his fellow prisoners.
Stockdale spent four years in solitary confinement before he and 115 fellow prisoners were freed in 1973.
Stockdale received 26 combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest medal for valor, in 1976. The citation reads, ``By his heroic action at great peril to himself, he earned the everlasting gratitude of his fellow prisoners and of his country.''
He retired from the military in 1979, one of the most highly decorated officers in U.S. Navy history.
Regards,
Steve
As a Navy pilot captured in North Viet Nam in 1965, Stockdale was taken to Hoa Lo Prison, known as the ``Hanoi Hilton.'' His shoulders were wrenched from their sockets, his leg had been shattered by angry villagers and a torturer, and his back was broken. But he refused to capitulate.
Rather than allow himself to be used in a propaganda film, Stockdale smashed his face with a mahogany stool.
``My only hope was to disfigure myself,'' Stockdale wrote in his 1984 autobiography ``In Love and War.'' The ploy worked, but he spent the next two years in leg irons.
After Ho Chi Minh's death, he broke a glass pane in an interrogation room and slashed his wrists until he passed out in his own blood. After that, captors relented in their harsh treatment of him and his fellow prisoners.
Stockdale spent four years in solitary confinement before he and 115 fellow prisoners were freed in 1973.
Stockdale received 26 combat decorations, including the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest medal for valor, in 1976. The citation reads, ``By his heroic action at great peril to himself, he earned the everlasting gratitude of his fellow prisoners and of his country.''
He retired from the military in 1979, one of the most highly decorated officers in U.S. Navy history.
Regards,
Steve
