The Times Honors a Hero

You'll only have a couple of weeks to read it before it goes behind the NY Times' pay wall, but take a moment and read their profile of Cmdr. James Stockdale, who passed away in 2005. Like most people of my generation, I knew him more as a failed VP candidate; I had a sense that he was an impressive man, out of his depth in political waters and treated unfairly by the media, but I had no idea what he'd done before siging up with Ross Perot.

Here are the first two paragraphs of the Times piece. If they don't make you want to read the rest, I don't know what will.

Cmdr. James Stockdale parachuted out of his nose-diving Skyhawk over the North Vietnamese jungle in September 1965, the war was still young. Little was known about the fate that awaited American prisoners of war. It didn't take Stockdale long to gain a clearer sense. After a few months in solitary confinement in Hoa Lo prison in Hanoi, he was introduced to "the ropes," a torture technique in which a prisoner was seated on the floor - legs extended, arms bound behind him - as a guard stood on his back and drove his face down until his nose was mashed into the brick floor between his legs. The North Vietnamese knew they were overmatched militarily, but they figured they could at least win the propaganda war by brutalizing American P.O.W.'s until they denounced their government and "confessed" that they had bombed schoolchildren and villagers.

For his part, Stockdale intended to return home with his honor intact. One afternoon, he was given a razor and led to the bathroom - a sure sign that he was being readied for a propaganda film. Instead of shaving, Stockdale gave himself a reverse Mohawk, tearing up his scalp in the process. More determined than ever now, his captors locked him in the interrogation room for a few minutes while they fetched a hat for him. Stockdale glanced around, looking for an appropriate weapon. He considered a rusty bucket and a windowpane before settling on a 50-pound stool, and proceeded to beat himself about the face. Then, realizing that his eyes were not yet swollen shut, he beat himself some more. By the time the guards had returned, blood was running down the front of his shirt. For the next several weeks, Stockdale kept himself unpresentable by surreptitiously bashing his face with his fists. The North Vietnamese never did manage to film him.

He spent eight years as a POW, organizing other servicemen to resist their torturers, and developing a code of conduct which allowed them to keep as much dignity as possible in that situation. His efforts kept himself and the men he was imprisoned with in better psychologial shape than they would have been without him. It's an amazing story.

Here's to you, Commander Stockdale.

Rob

Via Steve at Political Animal